大象传媒

I have always lived in Audlem. At 11.00 am on 3/9/1939 I was on Holmes Bank field watching the Fun Fair packing up after the Flower Show the day before. There were two, lovely Showman Traction Engines with their trailers which were fascinating me when a lady came to the door of her caravan and called out that England was at war with Germany. The evening before the local Fire Service gave a demonstration on how to deal with an incendiary bomb with a long handled shovel and sand.
I was 11 and at school in the Wirral where an air raid shelter was built under one of the games pitches. When the raids began at night on Liverpool and Birkenhead we trooped down to the shelters in our dressing gowns. Later, when raids became nightly, bunks were built and we slept there. We used to collect shrapnel like the boys in the film Hope and Glory. There was a plan to send the school to Canada and we had our passport photos taken. This plan never came to fruition; whether it was due to the fate of the SS Volendam & SS City of Benares I do not know.
In 1941 I moved to school in Malvern but had only two terms there as the Radar Research Establishment took over the school buildings at very short notice. The only large unoccupied building in the country was a castle with no proper water supply and the school nearly folded. Harrow school had many of it's buildings not being used by the school due to depleted -numbers and so Malvern took these over for living accommodation and shared others, such as classrooms, with Harrow on a rota basis. One night during a raid two enemy planes lost power and crashed; we cheered as we presumed they had been shot down. It was next morning on the news that we heard that they were a new German weapon, the V1. They continued day and night. We used to dive under our desks if we heard their engine stop. Months later a V2 landed a mile or so away and we went to look at the crater. On VE day the local Fire Station had a piano in the street and a group of us sang songs with them. We were also allowed out in the town in the evening to join in the celebrations.
One night in the school holidays I watched a raid on Crewe with my father. We heard a swishing noise which was incendiaries landing at Woolfall. It is said that some are still buried there in swampy ground. A British training plane crashed between Newhall & Burleydam, a friend and I pinched some bits from the wreckage and brought them back in a trailer behind one of our bikes. My friend's father told the police and so the local Sergeant came and removed them with a gentle ticking off to me. In the summer holidays I helped with the harvest at May Bank farm.
Living in the countryside was comfortable compared with town life. We grew our own vegetables, kept chickens and occasionally got illegal butter from a local farmer. My parents were worried once about some meat they received from the farmer but the wife said not to worry as the Inspector had some as well!
I realized that my time in the war was a lot easier and more comfortable than for many children in this country and certainly in Europe.

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