大象传媒

All I can remember - I was only 10 or 11 - is after Dunkirk. All the soldiers coming back from Dunkirk were put into camps at Barons Cross, before they were sorted out and sent back to their units. They were marched through the town - it was a strange sight. The camp's now a housing estate.

Bateman's Buildings was where the Americans did something with cooking; my aunt was engaged to a Quartermaster Sergeant stationed there, a lovely man, and was all set to go to America with him when the war was over. She had been married before to a sailor who was on a ship that was sunk. But my grandmother became ill, and my aunt was the youngest daughter, and she was expected to stay at home, so she didn't go. I thought that was really sad. But then she met Herbert Amos, who had been away all through the war, at Monte Cassino and other places, and when he was demobbed she met him and they married, and she was happy. They kept a pub in Leominster for years - the Lamb Inn, in Stoke Prior.

The American Sergeant used to bring us nylons, of course. And he used to bring big cans of bacon, about a foot long; you had to use a key to open them, like with sardines. You cut it up into slices and fried it. And we used to eat bread and sugar - I thought it was horrible. And to this day I don't like bananas. I never had one through the war, and when they gave us these awful squashy things it was a real disappointment. My sister Margaret tried to eat hers with the skin on! Well, how would we know what to do with them?

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