大象传媒

My father's smallholding was on the road between Rossington and Tickhill, we lived in a clearing in the woods. One day my mother came running into the house shouting, "Here's the Germans, the Germans are coming". Through the trees came lots of men in camaflouge with guns, but it turned out to be our own soldiers out on manoeuvres from Hesley.

On another occasion two parachutists came down into our woods and got entangled in the trees. We thought they were German spies, so we all ran out with pitch forks and sticks. My father ran out with his gun, (even though there was no ammunition in it).
We left them dangling there and news spread like wildfire and soon there was quite a crowd of us all armed with anything we could lay our hands on and all shouting up at these two soldiers.
Once again it turned out to be our own men, but I'll never forget what a commotion and excitement it caused for us. It was a story we told over and over again for many weeks.

I was in London when war began and I can remember seeing children on the station platforms going to be evacuated to the country. They all seemed very excited and noisy in contrast to their parents seeing them off and who looked dreadfully sad and apprehensive.
I was going on a train to Scotland to get out of London, going to stay with my husband's family there.
During the journey there were no lights on the train and it was freezing cold. When we finally got to Glasgow our faces were black from the soot from the engine, but because we couldn't see each other we hadn't realised, how we laughed.

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