大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Website by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Diana Taylor and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My husband, Vic Taylor, was a SAPPA in the Royal Engineers in Burma. He had a bad time, he didn't talk much about it, he was building the railways as the Japs bombed them.

He told me on one occasion, they were all laid on their beds, he got up to talk to his friend, and when he got up and walked away, the bed where he had been standing was full of bullet holes, if he had stayed he would have been dead.

The Japs used to strap themselves to the trees and you couldn't see or hear them, and then they would shoot the men as they passed by.

My husband was not taken prisoner, but his nerves were very bad when he got home. When
he came back on the boat, there were 600 coming back, but only 300 got off at the other end.

Of course I was about five years old when the war started. My Mother was quite old, she didn't want me to be evacuated by myself, so we went together to a farm at Pott Shrigley. But she wouldn't stay, she said the bed had got fleas. When we got home the only thing she was worried about was that I had left my best white knickers behind.

I went under the stairs when the air raids came. My Father was an air raid warden. My Sister, who was older than me, used to go to her boyfriend's in Salford and they were very badly bombed.

On VE Day we had a street party. I was 11 then.

I remember my first banana. I just looked at it and Mother showed me how to peel it. I remember queuing up at Lewis's for Polish sweets. I remember my Brother-in-law coming home on leave, and he stood his rifle in the corner, and he had saved all his chocolate for us.

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