大象传媒

My memories of the first day in September 1939 were being taken from Coventry to the Abbey in someones car along with three other girls and we were overwhelmed with the countryside and the massive structure of the Abbey.It had a prescence as, I suppose, for generations it had been a place where beings went for healing and health and refuge in times of conflict.

In the gatehouse I found a seat and looked out over the abbey as my future home not realising that this was the first time I had been away from my own home which would be subjected to the furies of war and the eternal conquests of men.

As a child I was readjusting to new circumstances.We were called by one of the nuns to go to the stables and collect straw to fill palliases which I, of course, had never encountered before. We made our way over to the stables where I was overcome with the sight of all these wonderful horses watching our giggles as we put all this straw into the opening of this sack. Of course no one explained that one could fill them too full? So me and my friend spent several anxious nights pulling straw out all over the floor in the midde of the night, setting the other girls off into giggles which had to be suppressed as sister Patrick could be on the prowl. Eventually, we got it all comfortable and ship shape.

In the very early mornings we were called for mass and had to get down flights of stairs to the ground floor where the Chapel was located, plus we had to get two young children who were allocated to each girl who was capable of dressing them and getting them ready for the day ahead, followed by breakfast. Then the daily routine of school work. Bless the dear Sister Rose who was in charge of the cooking, and fed us to the best of her ability. The whole routine of this was a new way of living for a nine year old child , but I really enjoyed the feeling of the place itself and the presence of the wonderful trees and grounds of the Abbey where we spent many happy hours playing.

Except for the feast day where we were given a packet of bread and jam and a bottle of lemonade, to spend the day as we pleased and give the nuns a rest? We were in the nearby fields, when suddenly this dark shape of a aircraft loomed up behind us and then we actually waved at the pilot who had to bank to avoid a high tree, as he turned back on course, he sprayed us with bullets, and we all flattened ourselves into furrows in the ground, he did this twice, but fortunately we were under the protection of higher forces. Luckily we had run to the shelter of the gatehouse and were sittiing on an old wooden seat, where possibly generations of beings had rested or needed the protection of the Abbey itself, a refuge in troubled times. As it was , we were being collected together by a frantic Lady Leigh, who herself was a Mother of a family, with a husband away at war? Also the nuns, this old battered van picked up quite a few of us, and got us into the safety of the old Abbey. Proving that DESTINY does in fact rule our lives and I was to pass through many more adventures to reach to where I am now, an elderly woman sitting quietly with help to reconstruct a small girls appraisal of circumstances that took her away from her family and saved her for another day. We are all on this plane, for this very reason, to survive.

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