大象传媒

One thing that vividly sticks in my mind is the street party held I imagine after VJ day in August 1945. I was 3 at time. I remember the trestle tables with what seemed liked hundreds of children along the street. We were tucking into things we had scarcely dreamt of - sandwiches, cakes, jellies and pink and white blancmanges in the shape of rabbits. This amused me because I was only ever used to jellies made in pudding basins and set in the bath filled with cold water.

I always remember the steam trains packed with troops. As often as not my mother and
my brother and I had to travel in the guards van as seats were non existent unless we were willing to perch on an army kit bag in the smoky corridors. Everyone seemed to smoke then. Blackout curtains turned up for years later made up into different linings.

I did not see much of my father in the war as he was in India until 1946, narrowly escaping when the troop convoy he was in was attacked in the Mediterranean in 1943 en route to India. He remembers the troops being confined to the lowermost decks waiting in full kit. Guns were firing , the ship was shaking, orders being shouted.He thought his last hour had come. The adjacent ship was sunk and survivors were brought aboard the ship my father was on.

My older brother remembers the air raids in Liverpool but felt safe in the Anderson shelter in the back garden, as long as he wore his tin hat.

One great uncle was on the last ship to get safely out of Singapore when the Japanese invaded. He said people were crowded on the dockside crying and begging to get on the boat and although the captain took as many people as possible he could not overload the boat to a dangerous level.
My great uncle survived the war, although an uncle was blown up by a land mine in North Africa and another great uncle in the Merchant Navy was lost in 1943 two days from Cape Town when all contact ended.

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