大象传媒

My War
We were six in my family: my father was a regular soldier, an officer in the Gunners: my mother stayed at home to look after us. My older sister was crippled from the age of six, with rheumatoid arthritis, and was ten at the outbreak of war. I was nine,my younger sister was five, and my brother was one. I remember my father announcing at breakfast on Sept 3rd. 1939 that we were at war with Germany. I felt a bit anxious, and wondered what it would mean for us.
We lived twelve miles south of London: and very soon we were travelling down to Somerset where our Grandparents lived. In a short time, we three girls were attending St. Katherine鈥檚 school near Taunton: I as a boarder, and my sisters as day-girls. There was much uncertainty about what to expect.
My father was moved from place to place, and the rest of the family moved with him, attending many different schools: I was able to stay at St. Katherine鈥檚 because I was a boarder: the holidays were the best times, being with my family.
Eventually we moved back into our own home: just about the time when the bombing of London was at its height! We had a dug-out shelter in the garden, lined with concrete, and we went to bed in bunks there every night. We went to sleep to the sound of enemy Bombers, R.A.F. fighters, anti-aircraft guns, and sirens. Our parents were very calm, and I don鈥檛 remember feeling afraid, except once, when an incendiary bomb fell in the garden: but it petered out and came to nothing.
One night there was a particularly heavy raid,and a loud bomb wakened my brother: my mother went to comfort him, and he said 鈥� It鈥檚 all right Mummy, I鈥檒l take care of you鈥�.
Every day my younger sister and I had to exercise the dogs, which we did on the large Common just behind the house: often we found shrapnel, and once we found an unexploded Flying Bomb: these started coming over us towards the end of the war: they looked just like a small plane: as long as one could hear the engine, one was safe. If the sound changed to a rattle, it had passed: but if it stopped,that meant it was coming down, and one had to go for shelter. Later on the V2 rockets started: they gave no warning of their coming, they just landed, and one hoped one would be somewhere else.
On my way to and from School, I had to pass through London: the Underground stations were full of bunks, and people who had been bombed out, camping. That was when I learned about the courage of the Londoner: they weren鈥檛 sitting down feeling sorry for themselves: they were cheerful, helping one another, making each other cups of tea鈥�..
I remember the war ending in 1945, and the celebrations all round us: but my father was killed in Holland in 1944, so we didn鈥檛 feel like celebrating.: he had given his life for his country.

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