大象传媒

At the beginning of World War Two, I was living at home with my Mother, one of my sisters and one brother Steve who was not able to serve in the armed forces due to an injury which left one of his legs shorter than the other and he spent years laid in a hospital bed in Rivelin Valley with weights on his leg to try and stop it going any shorter, the accident happened when he was carrying a sack of coal on his back up a flight of steps to a house on Abbey Lane at Beauchief, when he slipped and fell with the weight falling on his leg.

My eldest brother Joe was serving at Stradishall airfield in the south of England and it was the time of the Battle of Britain and they were bombed constantly night and day, he was terrified and after months of being attacked, he collapsed with his nerves and was taken into the hospital at the top of Bank road at Matlock in Derbyshire. He lost his speech and could only stammer over a single word, when my Mother and I visited him, he could only say 鈥淚t鈥檚 my MMMMMother but nothing else, so we couldn鈥檛 hold a conversation with him. I took him bars of chocolate that I had saved up after queueing for hours at a shop on Norfolk Street in Sheffield.

After the War when he had partly recovered, his commanding officer wrote to his wife and explained to her that my brother would have to be cared for and re-assured for him to get better completely, but she never replied and threw the letter on the fire, so, my Mother took responsibility for him and he eventually made a full recovery. Needless to say his marriage collapsed, so he lived alone for the rest of his life after losing his baby girl aged three years whom he never saw again and ran his own taxi business until he died just a few years ago, about 2002 aged 85 years.

My Mother, brother Steve, sister Nancy and I survived the rationing, Blitz鈥檚 food shortages, still living in the family home which was a council house on the Manor Estate and although we had suffered during the War, there was no muggings, or murders and atrocitys like there are now. My sister Nancy died of Cancer of the Cervica aged 62yrs. and my dear Mother died aged 84yrs. In 1978, My brother Steve died aged 64yrs. Of Cancer of the prostate and now, there are only two of us left, my eldest sister Leah aged 89yrs. And Myself Harold aged 78yrs.out of a family of six as my father died aged 37 of an industrial disease when I was three years of age.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.