大象传媒

My story starts with my Grandma who couldn't settle anywhere when Grandad was away in the navy. When Mum was little, they lived in Malta, Portsmouth, Plymouth, wherever Grandad happened to be based. Unless, of course, he went somewhere she couldn't follow him like the Arctic or the Tropics. According to Mum, he enjoyed WW1 so much, he went back for another dose.
After having got over the fact that war had been declared. Her and Mum were in the cinema, I forget what they had gone to see, but the program was interrupted by the announcement that our country was at war. Grandma responded with "Oh the buggers, the bloody buggers" Mum said that was the only time she ever heard her mother swear.
She then proceeded to condition herself for war by joining the Women's Home Front, learning to shoot small firearms and wearing her gas mask whilst doing the vacuuming.
They moved around the country, London, Plymouth and Greenock were the places that I remember from Mum's accounts but there may have been others.
According to her WW2 were the best years of her life, she was 15 years old when it started. All I know of it were the little anecdotes that she related to my brother and I throughout our lives together.
The accounts of the numerous air raids they went through were delivered with amusement. The lady in Greenock, for example that they met as she swept broken glass and brickdust from the front of her devastated home. "Och!" she said "there's one thing about these bombs, they make you forget the war"
The time the siren caught Gran in the bath and Mum shoving a tin of talcum powder through the door shouting "Dry yourself with that". On one occasion in London, they gathered their prized possessions, retreated to the nearest underground station and rolled themselves up in blankets and slept on the platform. Sometime in the night, the patrolling air raid warden trod on Mum's hand. The sound of bones crunching woke Gran up but Mum slept on oblivious. In the morning she woke up with a purple throbbing hand and the boast that not even Hitler could keep her awake.
She volunteered for firewatching where she spent nights wrapped up in an astrakhan coat and a headscarf, clutching a thermos flask for company, on a roof somewhere.
There was no shortage of social life. She belonged to a youth club that went to and organised dances regularly. Each club had its own signature tune. Mum's was Glen Miller's 'In The Mood' and it was played by their hosts, the moment they walked into the establishment.
On one particular night, she was being escorted home by a boyfriend. She was wearing a brand new dress that had taken nearly all her clothing coupons. It was a truly romantic night, until a Doodlebug flew over, suddenly the engine cut out and her gallant companion threw her to the ground and sat on her, while all she could do was scream, swear and spit like a wildcat at him for ruining her new dress.
The story that stuck in my imagination was the one in which they were in London and Mum was travelling to work on a bus the morning after an air raid. It passed a block of flats that had been destroyed, except for the toilets that still stood like towers, one on top of the other. All the doors were hanging open except for one at the very top and Mum wondered for many years on she wondered if anyone could still be in it.
In Plymouth, she worked in an office in a building that overlooked the Sound. One day her boss was standing at the open french windows watching enemy bombers flying over. A bomb must have exploded nearby sending a chunk of scrapnel through the window which embedded itself in the floorboards between his feet.
For their entertainment, they woukd sit in the ornate shelter that graces Plymouth Hoe to this day, overlooking the sound and watch the 'dogfights'.
The war years were the most important years of my mum's life as she couldn't stop talking about it. I believe, with everyone pulling together and feeling that they were fighting a common enemy that was a threat to humanity, regardless of whether they were military or civilian improved the quality of life that I experienced during my childhood that followed.
And I know that if Mum or Grandma had come face to face with Adolf Hitler (without his many bodyguards) I wouldn't have held out much hope for his safety.

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