´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Rita Edmondson and has been added to the site with her permission…

During the last war in 1941, my father was in the Royal Artillery number 973320; he was stationed down in Kent at a village called Elam. (We lived in Barnoldswick at the time.} When my mother could, we would go down to Elam and stay with the village policeman, his wife Ivy and their two children Donald and Jill.

My father’s job in the army was a cook; he used to cook for all the officers. One night after he had served dinner, he sneaked out to stay with my mother for the night, intending to return early in the morning to cook breakfast for all the men. Looking out of the window the following morning he saw a German soldier at the bottom of the garden. ‘Ruth,’ he said to my mother. ‘Come quick, there’s a German down in the garden.’ Well, he could not do anything about it, as he shouldn’t have been sleeping out. So my mother went and woke Nobby (the village policeman) and he rang the army who came and caught him. The German however turned out to be a British officer dressed up in German uniform, seeing how far he could get before being challenged.

When I look back on the times spent in Kent they were very, very happy, although a war was going on. As children I can remember the Luftwaffe planes flying very low over the tops of our heads and the Mickey Mouse gas mask of course, in fact I could go on and on, but better not.

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