大象传媒

I was 8 years old when the war ended so therefore do not have any 'stories' as such. What I have is a series of disjointed memories.
One night there was an air raid and my mother was waking us up in order to get to the shelter which was in the garden. (My Dad was in the Army). I remember my Mum telling me to look out of the upstairs window. There were search lights and shells bursting in the sky and I remember my Mum saying 'You'll never forget this'. Afterwards as years passed, I thought she must have been optimistic that we would survive. Two houses were destroyed by a land mine at the top end of our road that night.
I remember being on a ferry at the Pier Head and seeing a troopship - presumably ready to leave. My Mum said 'God help them' and at the time I couldn't work out why she would say that.
My Aunt lived with us for a while because her husband was in the Navy and she and my Mum had to cope with lots of little tasks around the house that would have been 'mens work' before the war. They loved the radio as everyone did during the war and would laugh or cry according to the broadcast. My Aunt named her son after an American pilot who was sent on a suicide mission and whose story was told on radio. I remember saying to my Mum, 'I'll be glad when the war is over'. She asked me why and I said because there won't be any news once the war is finished. She then told me there would be even more news. (Oh no !) I hated the news because it would go on and on and on...and it made my Mum and Aunt cry.
One of my most vivid memories is one night we were at the Pier Head. It was a moonlit evening which was of course the only light. There was a man walking ahead of us under the Overhead Railway and he whistled a son in perfect pitch and it was wonderful. My Mum said he would be a sailor returning to his ship.

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