- Contributed by听
- Barbara Cross
- People in story:听
- Barbara Cross (nee Reader), Gladys and Robert Reader, John Reader. Also King George VI.
- Location of story:听
- London and Berkshire
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A4111859
- Contributed on:听
- 24 May 2005
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I was born in December 1940 in Shrewsbury, although both my parents came from London. I remember very little of the war; it was normal life for me. But I do remember standing under the stairs playing with my little black tin pram 鈥 presumably during an air-raid. I was evacuated with my mother and little brother to Buckleberry in Berkshire for part of the war. We lived in a cottage that belonged to a French family who had (I鈥檓 told) returned to France. The cottage was right next to a wood which rather frightened my mother because she thought the Germans might parachute in and hide in the woods. Because of this we eventually moved to a farm in Stamford Dingley.
In 1945 we moved back to London. Apart from the pub next door our building consisting of three flats was the only one occupied. The school opposite had been flattened during the war and all the houses along the road were too badly damaged to live in. What a shock for my brother and me after the green fields of Berkshire! Mum hated it, but we had to come back because Dad鈥檚 job had been held open for him when he returned from service.
Recently I came across a sheet of paper with the (presumably) King鈥檚 Coat of Arms at the top. It is dated 8th June, 1946 and had the following script:
鈥淭O-DAY, AS WE CELEBRATE VICTORY, I send this personal message to you and all other boys and girls at school. For you have shared in the hardships and dangers of a total war and you have shared no less in the triumph of the Allied Nations.
鈥淚 know you will always feel proud to belong to a country which was capable of such supreme effort; proud, too, of parents and elder brothers and sisters who by their courage, endurance and enterprise brought victory. May these qualities be yours as you grow up and join in the common effort to establish among the nations of the world unity and peace.鈥
(signed) George R.I.
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