大象传媒

I have to go back to 1939 when war was declared.

I remember the excitement running through the whole of my body. I was a young girl in my teens, not a thought of the terror of war and the heartache it would bring to hundreds of families.

All I thought about was the young men in army uniforms, blackouts, getting caught in the pictures (cinema) when the sirens went off, a good excuse for staying out late because when that happened you had to stay in the pictures until the all clear came. (So I didn't get a telling off for being out late)

This was like being in the middle of a story, it didn't seem real. We didn't think about the heartache, death and destruction that war brings, but we were young kids and we thought like kids.

It was one awful day, I remember it so well. There was a knock on the door and a man stood there and asked for Mum. She brought him in and he informed her that he was from the Shipping Office.

You see my Dad was in the Merchant Navy. He was torpedoed on his last ship but insisted that he went back to sea even though he was in his 50s, but that was my Dad, and now this man came to tell us the news that my Dad was dead and was buried out in Suez.

My Mum and the family were devastated, he had gone and we would never see him again.

I think I grew up that day and realised what a terrible thing war was about.

My Mum had no husband and us kids no Dad - We didn't have a body to bury or to mourn and I realised there were thousands of families in the same situation as us.

I shed a tear for the whole human race.

DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.

Tess Fenton
Liverpool 2005

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.