大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Alison Tebbutt by Alison Tebbutt of the Derby CSV Action Desk Team on behalf of Dr. Lavelle and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was about eleven when war broke out. We were living on Ashbourne Road. We used to keep hens, about thirty of them. I had great fun with those hens, and knew them by name! I almost went into farming, instead of medicine. We provided eggs for rationing, for anyone needing them. If we had a surplis of eggs we'd put them in a large pail filled with waterglass to preserve them and they'd keep for months. we could fit around several dozen in each bucket.

One day when feeding the hens, a german bomber came over the house, he was very low down. I could have easily been shot. Suddenly, three spitfires came over and followed him.
My dad was a doctor, but he also had allotments and woud harvest potatoes. My sister and I had to take a trailor, only a two wheeler, and had to carry them all the way home. It was a lot of fun.
Because my Dad had polio as a boy, he didn't go to war. He and I used to go camping just outside of Derby. Once, I heard the whistle of a bomb outside. I got under my campbed-fat lot of good that would have been!

I used to help out on a farm at Staunton Harold. There was an Italian prisoner of war camp nearby and we'd have to go there several times a week and collect the swill for the pigs - about 2-3 dustbin fulls. One or two of the POW's would help out on the farm. Some were better at English than others but they were all very nice.

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