大象传媒

Transcript of taped interview

We finished at the Salisbury Teacher Training College the following June of 1940. My parents were in Guernsey, they hadn鈥檛 been able to get away, so I went up to my aunt in Berkshire, and then, I had already been promised a job by they called themselves the county of Southampton then, but it was what we now call Hampshire, county of Hampshire, and I was going to start teaching in September, but meanwhile I was really strapped for cash, because what I had was only a students allowance, but my aunt was a very kind lady, and said you stay here till you find something, and she herself was a teacher, and she said why don鈥檛 you write to the County of Southampton, and explain your plight, and one of the other friends who was with me, a Guernsey girl, Marie Le Lievre, she was also going to teach in the same county, so we both wrote and explained what had happened, and they were extremely kind, the authority, they gave us both a school to go to at the end of June, beginning of July, the exams were finished, it was July. They kept the schools open during the war, in the holidays, so that they would know where their children were, so we were able to start teaching in the August.
I was sent to Farnborough, in Hampshire, and I was there for the whole of the War, I had a lovely school, and lovely children, and my friend, Marie, she was at Eastleigh, rather near Southampton and she got a bit more of the bombing. So that was our adventure.
About the middle of the war, I was staying the holiday, and I was now arrived at Wokingham, with this aunt who was so kind to me, and we were all going to church, it was a Sunday morning and it was Holy Communion, and we were kneeling at the communion rail, and in spite of this being rural England suddenly there was the noise of machine gunning and planes swooping overhead, and we could hear the bullets flying by next door to us, and there was a little old man who would go out from church and let his chickens out, he just did it to dodge the sermon, I think, some of the chickens were machine-gunned, and they died. Further along, about a mile or so away, there was a boys army school, Arborfield College, and they swooped down, and the boys were actually on parade, and these fighters swooped down and machine-gunned, but the boys were told to scatter. Fortunately, none of them was hurt, but it was a very close call for them. So that鈥檚 just a brief encounter. The countryside could be dangerous too.
I stayed in Farnborough for the five years, and I came back to Guernsey in the November of that year. And I couldn鈥檛 get over the fact that the streets were so narrow. I was walking up Hauteville, because my parents were living up Hauteville, and the road at the bottom was so narrow I felt I could put a foot on each pavement and walk up the road.

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