大象传媒

Our thanks go to the pupils of Hugh Sexey School in Blackford, Somerset, who collected and prepared these stories with the help of local war veterans. The authors are credited at the end of each story.

Mrs J Gamlin鈥檚 War Story

On May 11th 1940 a bomb landed in Mrs Gamlin鈥檚 road, Killing a girl and her father. Mrs Gamlin鈥檚 father was a special constable and had to go and deal with the deaths and the bomb. Next day Mrs Gamlin was evacuated to the Quantocks. It was ten years before she was allowed to go back home. When she got back she saw that most of the buildings had been bombed or destroyed.
Lots of young children were evacuated to the countryside because of V1 and V2 bombs being dropped. Mrs Gamlin made lots of new friends her best friend was called Patsy. During her stay at the Quantocks she had to grow up very quickly.
Later she was moved to Devon where she met up with her mum and younger brother. Her dad then joined the army and was sent to India. For her the saddest thing was hearing that people she was close to were dead. At the end of the war she became a red-cross nurse.
If Mrs Gamlin had the opportunity to go through the experience again she would because it helped her to grow up properly.

By Thomas Haggerty, Jamie Fitzpatrick and Sophie Watkins.

My World War II
Story

Mr M. Manners was 12-16 years old when the war started. The Germans had made their way into France and were firing V2 rockets over the Atlantic Ocean to England. These rockets where A.Hitler鈥檚 secret weapon. They flew over 200miles and 50miles into the air at 3x the speed of sound and came down at 4x the speed of sound so when it came down no one could here it.

Mr Manners was eating his breakfast in the morning when a bomb (V2 rocket) blew up down his street, and his house exploded. Mr Manners was lying unconscious in an armchair. When he woke up he found is aunt dead and his mum severely injured and died a few days later. He found out a few minutes later he had bit of shrapnel in and all over his body. Wooden beams holding up the house had fallen all around trapping his aunt. Mr Manners was rushed to hospital later the same day. After that he went to live with a relative on a farm in the countryside.

By Ja鈥檓ahl McMurran, Rosie Shepard and Laura Wilment.

The Memories of Mrs Searle, an Evacuee

Mrs Searle鈥檚 memory consists of, how she felt, what she did and the friendships she made during the war. She was age 12 when the war started and age 17 when the war finished.
As a young girl, age 12 at a London train station, Mrs Searle boarded the train and felt as if she was going on the journey to oblivion. She looked back one last time at her family and then sank back into her seat. She felt bewildered and with her luggage label like luggage being packaged off, to an unknown place. But then she looked out of the window and saw the countryside fly passed her and she knew she would never see anything like this again. The rest of the journey went by like a lightning flash as she talked to her friends from her school.
When she arrived she thought that all the people there would be thick and dirty, but she soon found out that she was wrong. As she sat in the chair waiting for somebody to take her home, she felt the worst feeling she would ever have in her life, and she remembered her family and realised that she taken them all for granted. Then finally two women came and took her to a new home.
Her new life meant that she had to go to a new school, meet new people and make new friends, which was a lot easier than she thought. The first time she was evacuated only lasted six weeks, as everybody in Sussex was calling the war phoney, because all the action was happening in France, so she went back to London. The journey back to London felt a lot slower than the journey from London
As the first time she new everybody from her school, but this time she only new one or two people. She鈥檇 phoned her mum from her billet so when she arrived she saw her mum straight away and went home.
A couple of months after she鈥檇 arrived back home, Mrs Searle now at the age of 13 was playing in the garden with her sister, when she heard a noise, it sounded like an engine, but then it stopped. She had heard rumours that when you heard this noise it meant that there was a bomb coming. Luckily the bomb landed around ten streets away from her house. So the next thing she knew she was transported back to Sussex.
When she stepped off the train she saw her hosts immediately, so she went home with them. Her best friend, who funnily enough was a teacher, made her stay in Sussex a lot easier whose name was Gladys Traunter. She was kind to the evacuees as though they were her own children. Mrs Searle (age 13) had always counted on her family for help, but in Sussex she went to Miss Traunter for advice or help. Mrs Searle always wanted to find out more about where she lived in Sussex.
Some of the friends Mrs Searle made during the war where lifelong, like Gladys Traunter who only died last year (2003). Mrs Searle now in her early 70鈥檚 reckons that her life wouldn鈥檛 so interesting or stimulating without the war and is glad she was part of it.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.