大象传媒

The day the war started nothing happened, my brother was 10, I was 12 and we did not understand what it all meant, we lived in Birmingham, later we understood. We arrived home from school, had our tea and went to the Air raid shelter, my brother going with my mother and I waiting with my father until he had had his meal.
There was heavy bombing many nights, each morning I went to the Police Station to look at the list of casualties from the previous night, happilly none of our relatives were killed. Our own house was badly damaged, but we had to stay there until my parents found another house to rent, fortunately a family who were moving to the country let us have their house. We had a table shelter, I think it was called "Morrison".
One afternoon coming home from school, there was a plane overhead, passing the greengrocer's shop the adults called us to come under cover, we obeyed, just in time, the street was sprayed with bullets.
My brother was evacuated to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, I stayed at home, and for a few months we were split into small groups, usually in people's houses, it must have been difficult for the teachers, they did the rounds of the groups, but I cannot remember that we did much school work. Soon we were back at the School building, all the young male teachers had been called up, and the married women were called back to teach. Not the norm before the war, I remember one teacher was pregnant,Wow!
We also had an older brother, he was 17 and rushed off to join up, but was sent home 'until he was grown up' he did go into the Navy at 19, he was on Russian convoys, I remember on one leave he did not want to go back, they had escorted 30 Merchantmen, but only 5 reached the destination. The conditions on ship were very poor and the bedding got wet, he contracted T.B., he was discharged and spent time in a Sanitorium, were the beds were outside, after a while he came home, but he did not get better, he went back into hospital. He was in a ward for the dying, which he found very depressing, we decided as a family, to have him home so that his last few months were made as good as possible, he died aged 25. I was with him when he died, then aged 20, my parents were bereft, so I made the funeral arrangement. The war made me grow up very quickly. At 16 I joined the Fireservice as a voluntry Fire woman, we manned the telephones during the evening, and slept at the Station, but were never woken. When there was a fire the professional fire personel took over. I did several courses and learned how to use a fire extinguisher, being young it was easier for me to pass the exams than for the older ladies who had left school for many years before. It was a grown up version of the Girl Guides, which I enjoyed.I joined because we all wanted to do something to help the war effort.

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