大象传媒

Mrs Bicker was 12 when the war started and 17 by the end of the war. She is now nearly 77 and lives in sheldwich near the school. At the time of her story she lived in marden near Maidstone. She lived near to an aerodrome and she could hear the planes going over her house in the evening. On a Sunday when she was sixteen she saw two planes go over her house fighting the enemy plane came down in a garden about half a mile away from her house the pilot did not survive. Her father worked on a farm as did her mother her mother was doing hop training with the help of some German prisoners they had to do the odd jobs that were around the farm. One of them once walked off and was found in a wood a few fields away from the farm. Her grandparents lived in a farmhouse, when the American soldiers came over they housed some of them before the end of the war her grandmother moved and the Italian prisoners were kept there. The prisoners were made to help around the farm they were good at what they did, they made her a table cloth from silk thread they also made toys but she never received any. She liked to go because she liked to see what they had done to the house; she had a young evacuee from London staying with her. Her family lived on rations that they received weekly their rations were very limited, but as her father worked on a farm they would receive a little more. They had an Anderson shelter in the back garden and a Morrison shelter in her sitting room in case her family could not get into the back garden. She and her family had to use them few times. She heard doodlebugs and was scared at first but became desensitized to her fear these were bombs that would come over day and night. Her father was in the home-guard and was on duty at the night, as he owned a motorbike he was a dispatch rider this means that he would take messages from one place to another. When she found out that the war had ended she felt relieved that the English troops were coming home as he had an uncle in Dunkirk and another that was captured and taken prisoner by German troops. Mrs bicker added with her permission. She is aware of what this story is used for.

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