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This story was submitted to the People's War site by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Learning Centre on behalf of Rocky Williams with his permission.
The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in St Elizabeth, Jamaica in 1933. I was six years of age when war broke out.

My first memory from that time is my family hearing on the wireless that war had started between Germany and England and we were very excited then, knowing the danger of war.
Then as time went by we experienced a curfew, you couldn’t walk on the streets at night and the police were very vigilant at keeping people off the street. We also we had blackouts at night and we had shortages of goods that we imported like kerosene oil and that because of the war. As time went by we had to be very careful as children. You came home from school and you had to be indoors by dusk which was about 6 o’clock. And mums and dads were very vigilant at checking where the children were and everything like that. You were in early whether you liked it or not! Before the war you said you were going out and your parents didn’t have to worry about you, you just went out and you might stay overnight at a friend’s. We didn’t have telephones in those days.

My father was a farmer, a cultivator and living on a farm we had a lot of freedom. I had eight brothers and four sisters so we were a big family to look after. My parents weren’t so anxious about what would happen to us but they were anxious about the curfew, there were police patrolling the streets and they didn’t want to get into trouble.

We had cousins who were fightingin the war. Some were in the Air Force. One was a bugler and he wounded his leg. We were always excited to get news from abroad and how it was progressing. Fortunately we were young and didn’t understand much about war and in 1944 when I was 11 until 1945 when the war ended I experienced more and understood what war was all about.

It didn’t seem real at first because it was so far away but as time goes by and you want this and you want that and you couldn’t get it with shortages here and shortages there you knew.

The only products that weren’t short were the products of Jamaica like sugar and bananas and citrus fruit because we didn’t have to import them. But we were short of other things like flour. Most of our meals were our own products from the farm. Rice wasn’t too bad because we had rice in the West Indies.

We didn’t know the danger of war. We jumped here and we jumped there and during the day were were at school so we didn’t know the danger. It was all right really. It was only after the war when we read about what had happened and learhed about it in school that we realised how the danger of it. We never felt in danger ourselves but we got the Jamaica Gleaner every day and as a young lad I wanted to know what was going on and read about it.

I remember when victory was declared. Joy was in the air. We went to school and we were marching and oh yes we were singing ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britain never, never shall be slaves.’ We regarded ourselves as British because we were ruled by the British Government.

I came to England in 1956 to see what it was all about. I had heard a lot about London especially. We were Commonwealth citizens and we were free to travel. We thought the streets were paved with gold but unfortunately we were disappointed! My first impression when I came to England was that the houses were factories because they all had chimneys with smoke coming in. In Jamaica we didn’t have to have fires in the home.

I started work at a chemical works in Bristol Road, Gloucester in May 1956 and never returned to live in Jamaica.

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