大象传媒

I was just ten when war was declared. We were visiting my aunt and her family in her lovely remote country cottage in Worcestershire. It was Sunday morning and everyone was home. We were all collected together in the livingroom to listen to a voice on the wireless.

Silence fell.

The voice made the announcement, which meant nothing to me, but the silence among the adults became somehow deeper and almost tangible. My uncle turned off the wireless and still no-one spoke.

It was my baby sister, crying, who eventually brought reality back. And I was sent into the garden with my cousin to play.

Surprisingly, and to me unexpectedly, I was left to stay with my aunt 'for a while'.

I settled into country life with my cousin -we drew water with my uncle from the pump outside, dug up vegetables from the garden, lit our oil lamps at night, sat singing on the gate to the field opposite, and ran down the little hill to dry our freshly washed hair. Like a dream it seemed. Time seemed to stand still.

For six months I went to the village school with my cousin - all school ages were there in one class. So very different from life in Erdington, in the outer suburbs of Birmingham.

Eventually I went home with my family - my father had had an underground room built in the garden. We went into it down a step ladder. It was equipped with bunk beds.

Sleeping there came later.

In the early days we slept upstairs in our house as usual - but one night there was a terrible clanking of what sounded like chains over our roof. My parents dashed into our room, scooped us up very hastily, and scrambled us into our new underground room in the garden.

Almost right away, there was a terrible, terrible explosion.

Then, at last, the sirens went off.

Next day we discovered that a house just a few hundred yards away had been bombed to the ground. We did not sleep in our beds upstairs again until the end of the war. We had experienced the first bomb in Birmingham.

Life went on as war-time usual Many children were evacuated but I stayed home. I went for lessons once a week to my teacher, Mr Madison's, home. I was the only one. I sat on a sofa, just able to see over the chenille-covered table-top. He sat opposite on a dining chair. He marked my work, chatted about it a bit, gave me more and lent me books, a very varied selection, to read. This learn-by-yourself experience proved valuable in later life.

My father, who was a brilliant production engineer, managed two factories making Spitfire parts. One was in real factory land, Nechells in Birmingham, and the other in Shenstone, a tiny village just outside Lichfield. Both factories worked 24 hours every day.

On his way from one to the other, Dad sometimes looked in on us - at whatever time of day or night it was - to check we were OK.

One night - a very noisy night with German aircraft droning overhead, anti-aircraft
guns blazing - he came home, down of course into our underground room.

Very quietly he woke me, his finger on my mouth to silence me and stop me waking the family. Then he wrapped me in a blanket and carried me up the stepladder. He open the heavy iron 'lid' which protected the stairway, and said 'Look about'.

Outside the sky was brilliant orange with huge shafts of red flickering up and down, white search lights arcing to and fro and across each other, highlighting tiny black silhouettes of German aircraft droning across the sky. Anti-aircraft guns were blazing. It seemed to me, as we would say now, 'surreal'.

Quickly my father took me back down the stepladder. As he did so, he whispered - 'That is Coventry burning. Never forget it.'

I never have.

Right away he went off to work again, as I lay trying to focus it all.

When he could, as soon as he had business in Coventry he took us all to see the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. The wooden splinter cross had already been erected - and the ruins were still smoking.

Many people were wandering through the debris, weeping.

My father was later awarded the MBE for his work producing Spitfire parts.

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