大象传媒

This all started with Mr. Chamberlain. He was supposed to have gone over to Germany to talk peace and when he came back, he spoke war. He wasn鈥檛 back five minutes before we declared war. On Sunday the 3rd of September my father was outside doing the vegetables for the Sunday lunch, and at eleven o鈥� clock we were all playing around when everything went quiet, and Chamberlain said, 鈥淲e are now at war.鈥� They were dreaded words. Everybody went quiet, then some people cried, some screamed, and sadly, some people committed suicide because they were so frightened. Anyway things went on from there. As soon as the eleven o鈥� clock war statement was made, we had a raid warning. Nothing happened really but it was a warning, and then as time went on the boys were called up. I had a brother who was older than me, eighteen and still young, and he was killed at Dunkirk. Although he joined the army in 1938, he didn鈥檛 do two years. Anyway, after that, things started getting bad in Poplar. My mother started being ill and my father was all over the place. My mother suffered through my brother being killed 鈥� she wasn鈥檛 herself.

When it came to the point I joined up because my brother got killed. I joined the army, the ATS, and I did have some happy days but I also had some sad days. I was in Ack-ack. I was at Portsmouth one time and we had two brothers who were limber gunners. On a Saturday morning a raid started and the chaps all went on their guns. We went on our posts, and one of the chaps started elevating the gun up. A limber gunner had his fingers in the cog and as he held his hand up, all the fingers were missing. That was another sad day. When it was peacetime, there were still sad times then, because people weren鈥檛 coming back. But we were happy to think we had no more air raids, and people just started getting on with their lives. I was too sad to be really happy because my mother had just died.

Three days before the end of the war, which was on the 15th of August1945, my mother died (on the 12th August). She went all through the war and wouldn鈥檛 go down the shelter, and then she got run over by a bus, of all things. We just went to pieces after that. I came out of the army, married, set up my own family and that was my time during the war.

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