大象传媒

As a child born in 1940, the only memories I have of war time are those of being taken to London Road Station in Leicester when the Americans were coming by train, and when it drew in, they threw sweets, chocolates and "monkey nuts" to the children on the platform. These nuts are what are now called peanuts, but we children just ate them all, shells as well!

In Scraptoft, a village to the east of Leicester, there was a prisoner of war camp and every Wednesday and Sunday we had two German prisoners of war come to tea. The two we had were lovely ordinary young men caught up in a situation they didn't want to be caught up in at all. One was a doctor called Joseph Jacobs from Essen, who spoke good English, and the second one was called Bernhard, but I don't remember his surname. He spoke no English, neither of them took milk in their tea I can remember, they had a slice of lemon which I would imagine was hard to come by in wartime. Nearly every week they brought a gift either for my Mother, my Brother or me. These gifts were made out of anything they could lay their hands on, tin, wood, cloth. I remember a lovely wooden jewellery box for my mother, a butterfly with wings made of tin attached to a piece of wood on a wheel, and when it was pushed, the wings flapped. I had a cylindrical tube painted blue on a pole with wheels which I carried dolls in.

After the war my parents kept in touch with Joseph for many years, and I remember her parcelling up some of our grown out of clothes and sending them to his children, no new goods were allowed to be sent.
They seemed to thoroughly enjoy their time of freedom with our family twice a week, and I remember they were picked up before dusk and taken back to camp. I often wonder what happened to these two very nice young men.

"This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Michelle Moore of CSV Action Desk on behalf of Jill P. Wilson and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions."

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