大象传媒

Sitting on the sofa with my mother, we listened to the voice of Mr Chamberlain informing us that, as of now, we were at war. I was seven years old. Does this mean we're going to die? I asked, my mother said "no , of course not, but I did'nt believe her.
We were a family of five,dad had a business as a potato merchant and I had two sisters, Hazel aged fourteen and Frances aged one. Iwas the middle one.
In the garden there was an Anderson shelter, which gave us the fright of our life when a barrage balloon parted from its moorings and spent the night trailing its rope across our shelter roof. We usually slept under the stairs as the shelter was cold and damp and very cramped.
My school was Sidmouth street and I would walk, after a raid at night , past burning houses and rubble, strangely enough, alone. I can never remember my parents being with me. My father had a warehouse on one of the docks, King George, I think it was.
It was when I was machine gunned on the way home from school, that it was decided that we would pack up and return to the village my parents had started out from.Putting as much furniture on the flat back wagon, we climbed aboard and we were off!
Melbourne was a small village, about 250 people, my grandparents found us a small cottage, no water or electicity, on a farm about three miles from the school(which we walked to) one shop and two pubs.There was also an outside privy ,which was the sleeping place of a very grumpy billy goat. Walking 50 yds in the dark with only a torch and then having to kick a very unwilling goat out of the way was not my idea of fun.

There was a camp for P.O.Ws in the grounds of the manor and an airfield which sent out nightly Lancaster bombers, which we used to count as they went out and hope the same number returned.We were quite lucky,we could gather wild strawberries and mushrooms to add to the rations. I do remember the taste of the jam (carrot?) and the cereal (force) which was quite disgusting. I never tried jams or cereals again until I was about 30 yrs old!
It was a very inventive time, meals were whatever one could scrounge, knickers made of parachute silk (violent yellow), every garment had at least two lives, most people could knit and sew and when garments came to the end of their life, they would be torn into long strips and with a backing of sacking, be made into hard wearing rugs.
Most of my childhood seemed to be of war, rationing was forever and everything in short supply.
I got married to an RAF man at the age of nineteen. On being posted to Germany, my biggest shock was the damage our bombs had done in Cologne, the next,was the fact that I could buy REAL cream, never been seen or tasted, bliss!!

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