大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Beryl Bickerstaffes permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

One of the main convoy routes was to Archangel in northern Russia taking arms and armaments to Russia. We had 鈥渁id to Russia鈥� weeks to help provide for this. These convoys were constantly harried by U boats and received a good deal of bombing as their route took them quite close to coastlines under German occupation. Constantly in autumn, winter and spring they had to chop ice off the superstructure and rigging of the boats so that they did not become top heavy and capsize. This was awful work at many degrees below zero. One of the clients at the Psychiatric Day Centre where I worked from 1972-1992 had been a Royal Navy Crew member on these convoys and the stress was the originator of his mental illness. The merchant ships they were protecting also had to chop ice off their ships. The convoys to Malta and Gibraltar were also under heavy bombing, machine gunning and u boat torpedoing and Malta itself was so heavily bombed that it was given the George Cross for bravery. Gibraltar was also subjected to constant attack from German shipping and planes. My cousin Muriel鈥檚 husband, Ron, was stationed on Gibraltar for most of the war. There was a tradition that, as long as the Barbary apes were living on Gibraltar, it would remain in British hands. Churchill was so anxious that they should thrive there, he had some 20 apes imported from Morocco to keep up the numbers and improve stock.

One thing that I think my fellow pupils found very difficult to cope with was school friends whose fathers or elder brothers were involved in the area of fighting. We didn鈥檛 like to ask in case the news was bad. Most would tell their friends when their mother had received a letter or military postcard. These were ready printed cards with phrases that the sender could cross out eg. I am well/ill and just a couple of lines for a message at the bottom. There were given out when the unit was involved in heavy fighting.

Nottingham due to its relative closeness to the East Coast , was swamped with refugees, mostly male, from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, France, Ukraine, Norway and Denmark and quite a few of them married local girls (Rene the cook at the Day Centre, had married a Polish Air Force Meteorologist) and large numbers of them decided to remain here after the war and lots of the anglicised their names. Rene鈥檚 husband changed from Kowlowski to Kay and a man who used to work with Ron changed his name from Jan Mileorek to John Mills.

Most of the foreign army personnel were decently behaved towards the local populace in general and to women in particular. It seemed that only the Americans were badly behaved (maybe this is my prejudice) but maybe this is their culture. Certainly it is a fact that they were responsible for a large number of illegitimate babies during their time here. Quite a few married and their wives were taken to America on War Brides Boats.

Whilst I was in Prague (now capital of the Czech Republic) I saw the book in which the Czech military who go to Britain and who fought the Germans from our shores and in special units from our air force are listed. There is also a special book for those who died in service in their country on foreign soil. Most of these latter were in the Air Force.

In the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland there were large numbers of Norwegians and for a long period the Shetland Bus (a fleet of Norwegian fishing boats) ran from Lunna House to several places on the Norwegian coast taking agents in and bringing refugees out.

Also after the war but whilst petrol was still rationed, people began running cars on gas. Each car had a roof rack on which was a large bag which contained gas; as this was used, the bag began to sag over the sides of the vehicle. Buses were also adapted to this form of fuel, although it could not be used on double decker buses on routes which ran under railway bridges; double deckers often had to go underneath such bridges in the centre of the road anyway.

No-one of my generation had much of a normal childhood although we did keep up Christmas by everyone in my father鈥檚 family who lived near enough to walk there going to Grandma and Grandads for Christmas Day where we played party games. No buses ran on Christmas day, of course, so we had to walk from Sneinton to Hyson Green and back. Auntie Ciss and Uncle Horace and family would have had to walk from West Bridgford (unless uncle had his car running) and uncle Cyril and family would have to walk from Wollaton Park. Uncle Burt and Auntie Maud were in Cornwall but Elsie lived with Grandma and Grandad and so was always there. The adults had their tea in the dining room, the so called the 鈥渂ack room鈥� and we children had to eat ours in the breakfast room or outer kitchen situated between the dining room and the kitchen where the washing up and cooking was done. I used to be quite put out about this but when I had children of my own I realised that it was a good idea it was!

On VE Day everyone went down to the Market Square and waved flags and hugged each other and the Lord Mayor came onto the balcony and made a speech as did high ranking officers of the armed forces and the international forces.

Of course, when we realised what had speeded up the end of the war with Japan there was much ambivalent feeling and it all seemed horrible and frightening and we realised that we could all be destroyed from afar. Then there was the germ warfare and the delightful means of destroying all the people but leaving the buildings intact for the aggressor to inherit.

When soldiers over ran the German extermination and work camps news came out, people were terribly shocked. Some members of parliament went on a fact finding mission to Belsen and other camps released by the British and this visit was filmed. My mother took me off to school to go to see this film footage. I went cold all over and felt faint and the audience was absolutely silent and everyone got up at the end and just left the cinema without speaking to each other, some people were crying. It was unbelievably horrible to think that this had been going on whilst I was going to school and endeavouring to lead a normal life despite the war. Whilst I was worrying about having enough coupons for clothes and being annoyed at having to get up when bombers came over, these people, including children my own age had been suffering and dying in these places. Had this been how Etta鈥檚 parents had died or had they been taking to Auschwitz and gassed? I didn鈥檛 know what to say to her but my father who was good at this sort of thing went to see her and her aunt and uncle and said that I was to call for her on the next day to go to school with her.

Many years later I visited Theresienstadt with my youngest son, Gunnar. We were guided round by a man who had been in camp and whose mother had died there. He had been a carpenter and had made what he thought stools but which he found our later had been for prisoners to stand on to be hanged.

Many years after the war, with permission, I planted some forget me nots in the Garden of the Remembrance outside the Holocaust Museum there. My Israeli friend Dov, tells me that they are spreading under the trees.

Some of the young men who had gone to war from our Church came back. Most of them had been in the Sherwood Foresters who had been sent out to Singapore and taken prisoner there by the Japanese. They had worked on the Burma railway and many of them did not return. One of them, Cyril Ashmead, went to visit the mother of his friend, Alan Shipman, who had died whilst building this infamous railway. She would not let him in and refused to believe him when he said that Alan had died of typhoid fever 鈥� she was convinced he鈥檇 been tortured to death. This upset Cyril very much. He had terrible ulcers on his legs and was very emaciated. Whilst in the camps, he had to decide whether to eat his rice or whether to use it as poultice on his ulcers in an attempt to cure them. So his missed this small amount of nourishment.

When the war ended there was a general toing and froing of refugees all over Europe moving in every direction trying to get back home to their relatives (should they remain alive). Ron鈥檚 colleague, John Mills, started walking East to get back to Poland and then walked all the way back West and came to England. Another couple that we met after we had taken up archery met in this way. She was walking with her mother to get to Britain and he was also walking the same route 鈥� soon after their arrival in England they married.

Germany was divided into four sections, each under the jurisdiction of one of the winning powers, French, British, Russian and American (in hindsight the beginning of the East/West divide). The capital Berlin was also divided into four sectors under the same power which is why there is a Berlin corridor through Western Germany and why there was a daily airlift of goods to West Berlin. This division lasted until 1989 when the wall came down and the East and West Germaners could meet again.

In the Western Sectors Refugee camps were set up by the International Red Cross, where people were fed, clothed and given medicines etc. There was a scheme run in England where by each refugee entering a camp wrote their name, the camp they were in, where they came from and the relatives for whom they were searching. These were typed out here in English, French, German and the language on the refugee concerned onto cards and one card was sent to each refugee camp and put up on a set of large boards in alphabetical order. Anyone in a camp finding a card belonging to a relative or friend, unpinned the card and took it to the people in charge of the camp who then contacted the camp in which their relative/friend was and they were put in touch with each other. A very large number of displaced persons were put in touch with each other again in this way. Unfortunately an equally large number never heard from their relatives or friends again. My mother came home one day and said to me 鈥淚鈥檝e got you a voluntary job. You are to go to the red cross headquarters and type out cards which will help put refugees in touch with each other again. I said you would go there straight from school and work two hours.鈥� This was typical of my mother who is nothing if not bossy. However, just for once, I didn鈥檛 complain as it seemed worth doing. I was alright on the English and French but the German and own language of the person concerned were often typed out letter by letter slowly. Still, this was the case with other people who were better typists than I was. I鈥檓 sure that, had it been invented then, we would have been grateful for tipp-ex, however we all became very proficient with a rubber.

Some refugees found out from others that their relatives had been dead since early in the war, as, when people were fleeing the German onslaught across Europe in 1940 the German planes were bombing and machine gunning refugees on the road, presumably to clear them so that their own transports could get through.

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