大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Dianne Burtrand of Chelmsford Library on behalf of Ken Jones and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born in Stock near Billericay on April 30th 1939, on my Grandfather鈥檚 smallholding. When my father was called up he went into the RAF. My Mother and I moved to Mountnessing near Brentwood to live in a big old house that had been made into two houses. My mother and I lived in one half and my Mother鈥檚 sister, husband and son lived in the other half. Once I started school my mother got herself a job at Hoffmans factory in Chelmsford. One day when I came home, I was six at the time, my Aunt said she was going to take my cousin to the pictures in Brentwood and asked if me if I would like to go with them. I said yes and she wrote my mother a note so she knew where I was when she arrived home from work. While we were in the pictures we heard a tremendous bang. When the film finished we caught the bus home, but when we got off the bus we could see our house had been bombed. A doodle bug had fallen in the field opposite and taken the roof off our house. My mother and some men were digging in the rubble and as we went in the gate she ran over to me crying and said she thought I was in the rubble as she hadn鈥檛 got the note my Aunt had left.
We all had to move into my Grandma鈥檚 house at Ingatestone until the house was repaired. Previous to that my Father had been captured by the Japanese in Singapore and spent four years in Changi jail. He went away when I was a year old and I never saw him again until I was six and a half.

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