大象传媒

Emergency legislation was rushed through for everyone to carry an identity card. The penalty for blackout infringements was a fine of 拢500 or two years imprisonment Petrol was de-branded, pooled and rationed and London zoo slaughtered all their poisonous snakes. But none of these things meant much to me at the time. I was still at school and there was so much going on that our lives were changing completely.
Although Dorset was considered safe enough to take evacuees from London, it became dangerous after France fell and there were daily air attacks. During one particularly bad air raid the ships in the harbour were bombed and all I could see was a hugh cloud of thick black smoke rising from behind the high green bank flanking the houses. Rumour had it that the whole of the dockyard was afire.
I shall never forget that day for both my parents were working in the dockyard and it was hours before we heard they were safe.
Soon after this my Mother took us three girls away to the safety of the country. I was the youngest. We went to a small village not far from Savernake forest where air raids were unheard of, in fact the nearest siren was seven miles away.
Unable to stop the habit of listening for droning enemy aircraft I stood, quietly alert, one summer's evening but all I could hear was bird song. There had been a brief storm freshening everything. The trees looked newly washed, the flowers in the garden seemed much brighter. the scent of honeysuckle was strong and to this day whenever I smell honeysuckle I am transported back to that village.
The scent of the pigs was equally overpowering but not so pleasant. The pig pen in the long garden at the back of the house had a plum tree overhanging it and I often enearly toppled in with the pigs trying to reach the plums.
The house was owned by friends of the family, a very kindly couple. It was large by village standards. It had a slate roof and was built of brick. At the back an extension had been built on afterwards which formed two separate rooms called backhouses. One of these covered a deep well. It fascinated me. It was usually safely covered but whenever I heard the bucket clanking down into it I would dash out to peer down into its murky depths. I aleways shuddered and felt scared but couldn't resist looking.
Things like butter and milk were kept in a great earthenware jar beside the well for even in Summer it was very cool there.
In the other backhouse there were logs and small trees ready for sawing. There was a special stand to hold these and when I had lived there for some time I was allowed to saw them into short lengths and then chop them up for firewood. I delighted in this as I had always been a sickly child, the sea air affecting me, now I was much stronger cycling to other nearby villages and going for long walks, exploring the countryside.
The cycle belonged to the son of the house who was very kind to us, as indeed were all the villagers. Early in the Spring one old lady invited us out to tea. At the top of a long winding lane and on our way there we found some snowdrops nestling under the trees. They looked like pearls among the moss and fallen leaves and when we were closer each one seemed to be hand painted in tiny patterns of soft green.
Of course we gathered some for the old lady but when she greeted us at the door of her cottage she threw up her hands in dismay, crying 'don't bring 'em in, they're awful bad luck'
I have never heard this superstition anywhere since. After tea she told us about the bluebell woods some five miles away and on a bright Sunday in April we were taken there by car. To our delight we suddently came upon a pool, perhaps the result of a wet Winter, but still a lovely surprise. Tall, elegant ferns like ostritch feathers were reflected in the water, masses of bluebells surrounded it and clumps of late primroses and there right in front of me were my very own favourite cowslips. I remembered taking these to school when I was first there and teacher putting htem in a jam jar on a sunny windowsill.
The whole place seemed enchanted and stayed on in my memory like a beautiful painting. We went home laden with wild flowers, the long stemmed bluebells draped over our arms dwarfing us.
Looking back I was happy in that village, but I still wanted to go home to my friends and family.
Later, I was to think about the bluebell woods often when I was sitting in the air-raid shelter at night.
There was a kind of pattern related to air-raids. There would be contin uous raids for some time and then quiet spells. I retuned during one of these. No sooner had I returned then the night raids started again. We spent every evening and some times most of the night in the public shelter. We had our own Morrison shelter in the house but we hated crawling into it. Anyway, the time passed more quickly in the communal shelter where people were talking to each other.
One evening we didn't make it across the road to the shelter before a 'plane was shot down into the high bank in front of us. It went whining down, smoke pouring from it and so fascinating to watch. Amid the thunderous gunfire and the bombs dropping all over the Island I think I fell into the shelter head first.
It is almost impossible now to remember things as they happened, in sequence that is, but a kaleidescope of pictures present themselves. For instance, one night when my Father wasn't firewatching he intended coming to the shelter with us but didn't leave when we did. We returned after a short sharp raid to find him sitting on the floor too shocked to move, covered in glass and window frame. The whole thing had sailed across the room shattering around him. He was unhurt so we were able to laugh about it later, we felt more like crying but that's how people reacted in those days.
Planes were overhead and sometimes dropping bombs before the siren had stopped wailing, On one of these occasions unable to get to the shelter in time we ran through a neighbour's garden and into her house. She had a basement that was actually under the pavement and we all went into it. The noise was terrible as it echoed through the passages. The crunch of the bombs and the roar of the big Pom-Pom on Westcliff shook the foundations and nearly deafened us. I was more terrified that night than I had ever been before.
But there are good things to remember too - like everyone being nice to each other. It was like Christmas all year.
Double Summertime which I loved. Those long sunny evenings went on and on. The dancing in the streets is unforgettable too. But before that there was the night we hard our own planes coming over in wave upon wave, and could see that each one towed a glider. We stood and watched them for a long time knowing that it was the beginning of the end of that awful war.
Jean Wallace-Gould (Weymouth)

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