大象传媒

When war broke out in 1939 I had just been married, I lived with my husband at Smeaton Manor where we both worked. We worked for the Godman family; my husband was the butler and I was the cook. The family were good to us, it was a nice place to live and work.
I used to think the family were so lucky, they seemed to have everything,they were wealthy,had a lovely house and an only son who they adored.
The farmland they owned was very good and productive, we had Jersey cows for milk and lots of fresh produce to eat, once the war started they had to work even harder to increase production for the war effort, everyone's roles changed and we had to help out where we could on the farm.

However, when war broke out the son joined the army as an officer,he was a major, but tragedy struck when he was killed on the 1st advance on D day. His parents were devastated, especially his mother, she entered a permanent state of mourning and was never the same person after that. It was so sad.
I was pregnant so we had to leave the farm as I could no longer work as a cook.
We moved into Darlington and my husband was sent to work at Harperley Prisoner of War Camp.I was really lucky that he didn't have to go and fight, at least he was safe at home and my family had their Dad while growing up, unlike lot of women and children. I was really fortunate in that way.
My husband used to tell me about the P.O.W. camp, his job was to supervise the prisoners, who were mainly Germans or Italians, as they did work on the local farms or mended roads etc.Even though they didn't speak the same language they all got on, my husband really liked some of them, especially the Italians; they were really artistic and clever.
One day my husband took in a piece of wood, when he came home it had been carved into a toy for the baby by one of the Italians.
Getting food while rationing was on was sometimes hard, folk would queue for hours at Stringfield's the local grocers if they heard there was a delivery of oranges, they all hoped they would get one! Bananas were scarce, only young children or the ill or elderly were allowed them so bananas were like gold dust, everyone wanted one!
It took years to save up coupons for things like curtains, my mother wanted new bay window curtains and heard of someone who had a parachute, the parachute was cut up and distributed to various people, including my mother. She was very pleased with her new 'parachute curtains'!
My brother was sent on active service, he was one of the first to go into Auschwitz after it was liberated, he found the experience very traumatic, it was someting which he never forgot but rarely talked about. Back home we didn't really understand what was going on, people at home didn't know the full story of the war until after it was all over. It must have been terrible for my brother, absolutely terrible.

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