大象传媒

As World War Two was declared I started school. Within a short while many of my schoolfellows had been evacuated, and I had been sent to live with an aunt in Poole. As this aunt lived in central Poole very near to the gasworks, and bombs were soon dropped in this vicinity, I was quickly brought back to Southampton so that, according to my paternal grandfather "we can all go together, if we have to".

Because I was so young my memories of that time are very disjointed, just snapshots of various happenings. There were many nights of disturbed sleep, spent in our garden Anderson shelter, or in a nearby communal shelter, beneath a shop. One night I remember going to sleep as usual, and waking up in my father's arms, as he walked to the communal shelter, on a cold snowy night. The sight of searchlights in the sky, the sound of guns and bombs dropping, destroyed buildings, all became commonplace. But when one such house was the nearby home of my best friend it became suddenly very real even if still difficult to understand.

During the worst part of the blitz my mother decided to take me each evening to stay in nearby Chandlersford, away from the factories etc which were being targetted. We left my father and brother to stay in Southampton, my father to carry on with his usual work on night shift at the gasworks, and my teenaged brother to do whatever was necessary with the A.R.P. As Christmas approached one year, I believe it was 1941, I was as excited as usual. Shopping with my mother I showed her a doll in the window of Edwin Jones, and pleaded with her to arrange for it to be my Christmas present. Alas it was never to be because Edwin Jones was bombed that week and with it my doll!! Throughout this hectic period of frequent bombing raids the school staff were very understanding. We were told that if there had been a raid the night before, we were allowed to come to school at whatever time we woke up. How we learned to read etc I don't know and yet we did. Despite all the problems we enjoyed our childhoods. All children like to collect things. We were the same, but we collected pieces of shrapnel from the previous night's raid!We spent ages examining the various pieces, comparing their size, shape and brightness. We also benefitted from having probably less attention paid to what we were doing. The preoccupation of the adults with what was happening in the war, and surviving on the food rations, meant that in the daytime we seemed to have a great deal of freedom to explore the environment around us.Very occasionally the seriousness of the situation filtered through to us:- when we heard the bombs dropping particularly near, when we saw destroyed houses very near to our own homes, and when we saw people emotional about the loss of home or loved ones. My last clear memories are of the incredible joy when both V.E and V.J. days arrived. I shall always remember the continual smiles, singing and dancing round the Bargate, although it was dark and past my bedtime.

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