大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Graham on behalf of Barbara Hornbrook and has been added to the site with her permission. Barbara fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My father was a sergeant major in The Royal Hampshire Regiment when the war began, but he wasn鈥檛 in England, and neither were we. His company had once again been posted to the Middle East and we were to join him later. We travelled out on a passenger/cargo ship called The Madura and on the way we sailed through the Bay of Biscay, which was very rough, past Gibraltar and stopped at Marseilles. Under cover of darkness we watched as hundreds of bicycles were unloaded. Someone said they were something to do with the Spanish civil war, but I was only about 6 or 7 years old so it didn鈥檛 mean much to me. The next stop was Malta for two days, and a guided tour of the island. So many steps 鈥� but I can still remember the view from the top of the town. Then it was on to Port Said where we stayed for three days before travelling, partly by road and partly by rail, to a place called Sarafand in Palestine in the middle of the desert. I think we may have arrived in 1938, because I remember having a Christmas and Easter in Sarafand. I also recall people listening to the news from England quite a lot and the radio playing patriotic music, which we also had to learn at school. A few days after the broadcast on the 大象传媒 saying, 鈥淓ngland is now at war with Germany鈥� I had my 8th birthday.

While we were in Sarafand there was a measles epidemic among the army children and to prevent it spreading to the local Arab community we were taken to an army isolation hospital in Jerusalem. I was sent there first and my sister a couple of weeks later. Evidently, while she and my mum travelled along a notorious road called The Seven Sisters in an armoured car they were sniped at from the surrounding hills. This road is very steep and has sharp bends, and racing at a speed of knots is not a good idea. A similar incident happened when we went on a local bus to Jerusalem with local people and goats and chickens going to market. There was always an armed soldier on public transport so we felt reasonably safe when we heard the sound of shooting coming from the hills as we travelled down this same road. The bus had seen better days I think because it rattled as it gathered speed down the hills and round the corners. The guard said it was the bus backfiring, but we knew better. Everything on the bus was thrown about and we had a job to stay in our seats. I don鈥檛 think the bus was hit and we arrived at our destination safe and sound. In the back garden of the house we were in was an air raid shelter which was really a great big hole, 6 feet deep, dug out of the sand. Every time it rained it would half fill with water. The only way to get into it was down a ladder, which disappeared under the mud at the bottom, so it was just as well we didn鈥檛 have to use it. I had to have my tonsils out while we were living there and had the operation in the English Mission hospital in Jerusalem, run by nuns. It happened to be Easter time and because of the religious festivities some of the wards were closed down, and mine being one of them I was sent home before my tonsils had healed properly, resulting with a haemorrhage. This was partly due to the long journey, and the heat. The day it happened my father had taken my sister to the gymkhana, along with a lot of other children and their parents, which left my mum on her own to try and stop the bleeding. I can鈥檛 remember how she did it but I do remember sucking on ice from the ice box, and then later on drinking this vile iron medicine followed by lumps of Easter egg, to take away the taste.

Sarafand was quite a large camp with lots of army personnel and their families, but now some of the men had been posted elsewhere the camp was rather insecure for the number of women and children there, so one day we were given 48 hours notice to pack clothes and personal items to go to Jerusalem. The camp on the outskirts of the town soon filled up and some families were billeted with local families in the town itself. The rest of us were housed in a requisitioned convent called The Casa Nova. For a while we were taught by nuns in the convent, but later attended the school at the Alenby Barracks, and travelled back and forth by bus. The convent was inside the old walled city of Jerusalem and we were often locked in for hours, sometimes days during curfews when skirmishes broke out between local people. One day my friend and I decided we would walk home from school and hid in a ditch till the bus left. It was quite a long walk and we took a short cut through an orange grove and an Arab village. My friend seemed to know where to go but we ended up getting lost and arrived at the convent just in time for the evening meal. The big gate to the Old City was locked and a soldier let us in a side door. The convent door was also shut and locked and we had to be let in by the guard on the inside. My friends mum was so pleased to see her and gave her a hug. My mum gave me a slap for being so stupid and I didn鈥檛 get my evening meal. Later we found out there had been a curfew and half the army was out searching for us. It wasn鈥檛 all doom and gloom. We were fortunate enough while we were in Jerusalem to visit the many sites connected with Jesus, his birth place and crucifixion. I remember my father taking us to The King David鈥檚 Hotel to celebrate one of our birthdays. And one day when we were out shopping in the town, my mum stopped to talk to a friend. We wandered over to a shop with toys and sweets in the window, and while we stared at the toys two Australian soldiers stopped to speak. One said my sister reminded him of his little girl in Australia. Then he introduced himself to my mum and gave her his home address so we could write to her and say we had met her dad. We did write but never got a reply and we don鈥檛 know if her dad ever went back home. I suffered with my asthma at the convent because it was so cold and damp, and the army doctor ordered my mum to take me to stay with my father who had been posted to a place called Moascar in Egypt,鈥� to dry out my lungs鈥�. To get to Moascar we had to cross the Suez Canal on a very dingy ferryboat which was so narrow everybody had to stand up. You could post letters at the ferry station, so my mum sent a card to my gran at home in England had our first real taste of war in the desert. We heard sirens for the first time, and had to go down shelters in the middle of the night. These shelters were also trenches dug out of the sand but much dryer this time. There was no cover so we could see when planes were coming and the dogfights overhead in the beams of searchlights. I think this must have been after the Italians came into the war on the side of the Germans. Not long after that little holiday we had news that we were being evacuated from the Middle East to South Africa.

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