大象传媒

During the war and, I think, for some years afterwards my worked for B.I.S.C. (ore) Ltd, the British Iron and Steel Corporation, and I have a feeling he was directed to work for them and so was exempt from war service - though as he was 37 at the outbreak of the war he might not have been called up in any case. I can certainly remember that he was glad and relieved to get back to the Baltic Exchange some time around 1950, I believe. He was too young to fight in the first World War and, I think regretted this, as both his brothers, Jack and Donald did. I have a letter from Uncle Jack of 25th May 1918 advising him not to join the army cadets which, at the age of 16, he had wanted to do. In World War 2 he served as a fire-wactcher during the incendiary attacks in the Blitz on London and also in the Home Guard near where we lived at Pinner.

We moved there at the end of 1941 and, during the previous 18 months, Mum, Nanna, Tony and my cousin Maureen were evacuated to Bettws-y-coed in North Wales where dad used to visit us although I was too young to realise the danger. I have a few isolated memories of sirens, our iron 'Morrison' shelter which was in the centre of our front room and used as a dining-room table, and the barrage balloons which I was taken to see one bank holiday and Hampstead Heath. I can remember the ghastly drone kof the 'doodlebugs' too, and have a strange picture in my mind that I was asleep in the Morrison shelter which, for some reason, was erected in our back garden. Whether this actually happened or not I am not entirely sure, but my memory seems to recall that I dreamt these awful sounds were being made by my parents when I awoke to find them at work peacefully gardening. I believe that some doodlebugs fell uncomfortably close to our house and certainly a V2 rocket had landed about a mile away, too far to cause any damagae thankfully, but somehow moving a bolt on a window in the hall, inexplicably, as this was a window which we never opened ourselves.

Shortly after the end of the war, when some German prisoners were detained in England, we were offered the servies of one of them to do hard manual labour in the garden. Dad had laid out an imaginative plan for our garden, doing away with the straight paths and creating an oval lawn in the centre. The prisoner made a good job of laying and S-shaped path with paving stones and dad later added a trellished arch above, three apples trees, and a plum trree in the small top lawn creating an orchard, and a beautiful pond with a water iris which he later stocked with carp and goldfish.

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