大象传媒

It was Sunday June the 2nd 1940, a very sunny day and hot. I was 11 years old. The schools in Yarmouth were being evacuated and the local buses were commandeered to take all the school children to Vauxhall Station, Great Yarmouth. We didn't know where we were going and we ended up at Retford, a small town in Nottinghamshire. I went to stay with a lady called Mrs. Chambers, who was very formidable, at Moorgate Retford. I didn't stay with her long because she didn't seem to like little boys running around her polished floors. I then went to stay with a lady called Mrs. Brackenberry. A little tiny lady 5 feet tall - we got on very well. I stayed with her for a while and then my parents came to Retford and we went to stay in Century Road.
One morning at school we were startled by a burst of machine gun fire and the whole class went mad and rushed to the window, I know they shouldn't have done with the machine guns, but there was a barrage balloon that had broken its moorings and it was dragging its cable. A fighter was going round and round it firing bullets into it, but it didn't seem to have much luck.
I left school in February 1943 when I was 14, you had to leave school at 14 then, and I went to work in a small bakery. They were restriced by rationing and there wasn't many fancy cakes they could make so I soon became an expert at making jam tarts. The jam used to come in 7lbs jars - the big jars you had to warm in the oven. The jam was as stiff as anything.
Only one bomb was dropped on Retford and that missed its target. Retford was surrounded by Coventry, Sheffield and Derby and when the Germans' planes went overhead we knew where they were going, we said, well there's someone going to get a raid tonight.

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