大象传媒

There was a sound of cheering, elated cheering, from the wireless. And the grave, triumphant voice of Chamberlain. 鈥淲ho is that?鈥� I asked my mother 鈥淲hy are they cheering him?鈥�. 鈥淗e is a wonderful man鈥� said my mother happily. 鈥淗e has saved the country鈥�.

We were to learn differently a few days later. A neighbour and friend came rushing to the house. She and my mother were closeted together. 鈥淲e are at War with Germany鈥� said my mother despairingly. I ran upstairs to my bedroom and looked out of the window. I imagined the enemy surrounding the house, and myself at the window shooting at them. I was nine years old.

The days after that seemed out of control. My father who had been home on leave from Iraq where, as a civil servant in the Air Ministry, he had been posted, was summoned to return immediately. So he had to leave us.

We queued for ration books, for identity cards, for gas masks. There was panic in the air. My mother made a decision - London was not the best place to be. So off we went to Euston Station, my brother, myself and the dog, Rusty, shepherded by our anxious mother, a gentle and reticent Scottish woman who kept her counsel, and expected and received our unquestioning obedience. We boarded the Flying Scot and nine hourse later we were in Glasgow and at the house of an uncle with my grandmother and aunts The uncle was not pleased. He had his own problems. 鈥淭he dog will have to go鈥� he said. My cousins and I whispered and giggled, enjoying all the disruption. What was said between the adults I do not know, but next day we were on our way to MacDuff on the Moray Firth, a small fishing town where my mother鈥檚 aunts lived in a large gaunt house on the the sea shore. They took us in as evacuees and there we spent the first winter of the War, returning to London in 1940, in time for the Blitz.

One night I woke up and found that instead of my bed I was on a mattress on the floor downstairs. The sky was blazing, bombs falling, airoplanes droning. We slept downstairs for a few nights then came to an arrangement with neighbours who had a cellar. We would rush in there when the sirons sounded , and return only with the all-clear. Nights were disrupted. So was school to my delight. At the sound of the warning we would troop down to the convent cellars. It is a terrible thing to say, but the air raid warning made me feel excited, and the All Clear to me was a flat depressing sound. However I felt differently some years later when I saw the film 鈥淚n Which we Serve鈥� An ordinary family in a house just like ours sheltered under the stair case when the sirens sounded. The house was demolished and they were killed. In the next raid - for the first time - I was afraid.

There were new games: capturing German spies, daring to go in roads cordoned off because of suspected unexploded bombs, collecting shrapnell and in the case of my brother other explosive devices. He got into trouble for that, and songs - 鈥淰en der Fhurer says, Ve is der master race, Ve heil, heil, heil, Right in der fuhrer鈥檚 face鈥�, and 鈥淯nderneath the spreading chestnut tree, Mr Churchill said to me, If you want to get your gas mask free, Join the blinking ARP鈥�.

Finally our father returned from Iraq. He was posted to Harrogate, a completely different country for us. Relief from the sleepless nights for our parents, new schools for us - for me a small village school, where the teaching was excellent, but the girls different from the convent school ones in London, and very different again from the school in MacDuff, (where for a time we attended only half the day, because of the sudden intake of evacuees from Edinburgh.)

A baby was born in January, our brother. And in August we returned home. Another year in wartime London at the convent. I finally refused to go back there. 鈥淭rouble with the nuns鈥� as my father put it when he was visiting his mother and sisters in Glasgow. 鈥淪end her up here鈥� they said. And so I began a new school yet again. I went from the 鈥減osh鈥� convent where I was miserable to a convent in the heart of Glasgow where I spent the happiest days of my school life.

In holidays I would come home. By now the flying bombs were falling. My grandmother did not want me to come home because she feared for me. But I persuaded to my parents, with no understanding or thought for my grandmother鈥檚 fears. We would watch the 鈥淒oodle Bugs鈥� overhead, and pray that they would not stop. The V2s were fascinating. You heard them crash and explode, and seconds later you heard them coming.

In Scotland our school would send parties of girls to help the farmers in October - mainly lifting potatoes - 鈥淭attie-howkin鈥�. It was back breaking work, but what fun we had. One year we stayed in Fasques House in Kincardineshire, Gladsone鈥檚 old home. We slept in dormiteries and had pillow fights, and midnight feasts.

The war for me was woven into my childhood. It was different for my mother, my father (who served in the Home Guard in Harrogate) and my brother who who joined the Air Training Service, was posted to Andover and many exciting experiences. He had taken his Matric exam in 1944 under difficult conditions. Every so often the boys had to duck under their desks as German bombers flew over.

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