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This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by ^{About links} on behalf of Judy Hawkins and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was only two when World War Two broke out and my very first memory is of Christmas 1940 and that cold winter. My father was stationed at R.A.F. Coltishall in Norfolk. He was not in the Air Force but in the Royal Artillery on searchlights at the airfield.
At that time I was still an only child and my mother followed my father around as much as possible, getting rooms near him.
I remember the house we lived in. It was built of flint and shady and dark, it was the lodge to a large house and estate. I have since re-visited it and it is still shady and dark.
The lady with whom we lodged was the caretaker of the big house and was always dressed in black or dark clothes and had a huge bunch of keys hanging at her waist. She kept turkeys in her garden and when ever it rained or threatened to rain we all had to rush out and shoo the turkeys under cover, as turkeys objected to the damp and were likely to sicken and die.
I remember Christmas morning 1940 and it was bitterly cold in the bedroom. I sat up in a big double bed with my mother and opened my Christmas stocking. I don’t remember getting up — I think we stayed there as it was the warmest place.

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