大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Story gatherer Jessica on behalf of June Dummer. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.
I was 11 years when the war started, and lived in Derby. My very first memory was the first Air raid. We had a big cellar, and my mother had put chairs, a mug, and some games down there and she made a flask of tea and some sandwiches each evening. The first time the siren went, we made for the cellar steps and I gripped my mum鈥檚 hand and said,
鈥淢ummy, I鈥檓 scared!鈥� she just looked at me and said
鈥淭here鈥檚 no need to be scared, wait until it hits you, that鈥檚 the time to be scared!鈥�
When I had left school at 14 years, I went to work in Frank Longden鈥檚 Factory; we made medical hosiery and stump socks for the boys who had lost their limbs.
Mr Longden was a wonderful boss, his voice would come over the tannoy system, telling us how our boys were doing, if they had made a real advance he would tell us to close down and take the afternoon off to celebrate, and collect 5 shillings 7/6d or 10 shillings according to our age to spend.
He also allowed us to use the canteen for dance lessons and we also had an entertainment group, and one evening a concert had been arranged for the wounded boys, they were at Redleston Hall, and a coach had been booked to bring them down.
We were waiting for them, they arrived with many different injuries led in by helpers, we suddenly saw a wheel chair being pushed down the aisle by two soldiers, both had a crutch each and were laughing, but the youngest boy in the wheelchair had lost both his arms and legs, his face was full of life and laughing and joking with his helpers, he had a 2 inch leather strap round his chest and another further down - to keep him in his chair. But I will never forget his face, it was round, with dark hair and dark eyes - it was up to me to get them all singing, and he was just as noisy as the rest.
NO I will never forget them, or their dreadful 鈥檞ounded鈥� uniforms which were brilliant royal blue, white shirts and scarlet ties - just awful, they seemed to be cut like pyjamas, I expect to make sure they fitted everyone.
When the Americans came to Derby, the white boys were let out one night and the black boys the next night. We just could not understand this as they were all so kind and polite to us.

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