大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Jas from Global Information Centre Eastbourne and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr Deacon with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

I was born 11.20 a.m. on 3rd September 1939 at Hankham, near Pevensey. My first memory of the war was that my mother, brother, sister and myself went to Ripe, Nr. Lewes, to stay with friends.

My mother took me outside one night and we could see what I thought were moths and one of these moths turned into a flower; obviously it was a German plane, which had been shot down. My father was in a reserved occupation, i.e. a farmer, and also a St. John's Ambulance helper.

On our smallholding we had a pig and one morning I went to see this pig and, according to my parents, it had run away but, in fact, it had been secretly been killed because of the meat rationing.

Every night, of course, there was the black out and no lights at all could be seen. One night, however, for a reason I did not understand, the whole of the house was ablaze with lights and no black outs at any of the windows.

As I had been brought up to remember that we should never show any lights at all, I was so frightened and couldn't why the house was so bright that I dashed under kitchen table and stayed there until my parents explained to me that the War in Europe had come to an end.

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