大象传媒

When the War began I was six years old. I remember my father would come and wake me up when the sirens sounded at night and put me in the Anderson shelter in the kitchen to sleep on a mattress. It was quite big and took up all the room in the small cottage. I don鈥檛 know how my mum ever managed to cook in there. When the incendiary bombs fell in Happy Island I seem to remember going along the road to a garage where the Trevett family lived; when we went home the sky was lit up by all the searchlights.

My Dad was working in Elliotts grocery store when bombs fell in East Street. He was lucky it was lunch time and had come to meet Mum and I at the British Restaurant (where the Women鈥檚 Institute is now) for lunch.

My biggest memory however was on the Sunday in August when we were walking over West Allington Bridge and looked in the sky to see two planes flying so low we could see the swastikas on them. My Dad pushed Mum and I flat on the ground and lay on top of us, as the siren began to wail: it was very frightening. After they were gone we went into fields at North Mill and stayed under the hedge until the all clear sounded. Several people were killed in West Street that day.

We used to go to Wooth farm near Pymore, visiting friends, and I remember coming at home at night when it was pitch black and walking over Coneygar Lane to be greeted at the bottom by sentries on guard: 鈥淗alt, who goes there, friend or foe!!鈥� My Dad was in the Home Guard and would spend time on the cliffs in the pillboxes, I imagine on the look-out for the enemy.

My uncle Jim was a sergeant in the Royal West Kents and never came home from Dunkirk. His name is on the war memorial in South Street and in Dunkirk as he has no known grave. My Dad never got over his loss, although he lived to be 94.

Mrs Pullman, our neighbour, had two evacuees and when they arrived they also had a sister whom she couldn鈥檛 accommodate, so she came and stayed with us temporarily until a suitable home became available. One of the boys had been in touch with Mrs Pullman and visited her until the time of her death. He named his daughters Janet and Diana after myself and Janet (Legg) now Bullock.

I remember the soldiers marching out to the Station and also the Americans at the Garage in East Street with their chewing gum, going to school in King Street and having to file in the trenches (now gardens and car park), Mr Foster who regularly inspected our gas masks, ugh! How great when it was all over and food was more enjoyable again. I learnt to cook with dried eggs, made fish cakes with tinned fish, etc., but we always had food, albeit rationed.

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