大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Joy Smith and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I am not old enough to remember the war, but want to tell my mother鈥檚 story. Her name was Florence May Petley.

She had evacuee children to stay and when the bombing got really bad in London she had two tailoresses to stay for six months. Dad was very pleased to have someone to keep him in clothes! At weekends the children鈥檚 parents would come down and stay. One evacuee boy told my Mother that he didn鈥檛 want any of her dirty milk, as the milk he had came out of clean bottles, not out of dirty cows.

I have a letter from Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) expressing her appreciation to my mother for taking in evacuees in the early days of the war.

Mother joined the American Red Cross at Snetterton. She had been working on that base before the Americans arrived, and just stayed on when they came. One day she was at the wedding of an American officer when a conversation started up about what different nationalities were known for. When asked what the British were known for she replied 鈥淧luck, for standing alone against the Germans鈥�.

The Red Cross ambulances would drive out to the planes as they came back in and she said that she didn鈥檛 know how some of them got back to England as they were in such a terrible state 鈥� the men and the planes.

One day they were told to set out the tables and prepare food for a great feast. They thought someone important must be coming, but it turned out that the American pilots had laid on the food for the Red Cross themselves. They had actually been preparing for their own feast.

One day the Americans were doing some marching and she expected them to come out on parade all dressed up as the British did. But when they came out it turned out that some were in uniform, and some weren鈥檛. The Red Cross girls found this quite amusing.

Mother thought a lot of the Americans. When my brother was ill they said they would get her anything she needed for him.

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