大象传媒

I was seven when the war started and I remember being bought into Bristol and I watched College Green being dug up and I remember the workmen giving their clay pipes to the children. I lived in the country 12 miles from Bristol in Timsbury. My father had fought in the First World War and was too old to fight in the Second. He was stationed in Egypt presumably as a base unit for Gallipoli.
I do remember the night that the bells rang and that was supposed to alert the people to an invasion but nobody ever owned up to ringing them. There was no panic but a feeling of fear. I do remember waking up one sunday morning and as i looked out the window and the ground was covered in white enemy propoganda leaflets.
When chamberlain was talking to the nation in 1939 I went in to find my mother and she was shelling peas and weeping and I don't think I understood why she was upset I don't know that I knew what war meant. We were rationed but I don't remember being hungry and when shops had somthing like a delivery of anything immediately a queue would form as we didn't have ration books then and we queued up to get whatever it was. We didn't have sweets or fruit or bananas.
Right at the beginning no rationing was organised but later on we had ration books. We only so much in the way of butter and meat. I remember a meal my mum made that I liked; corned beef with boiled onions and an white onion sauce.We had that a lot. When the Americans came, spam came and believe it or not it was delicious. It was absolutely lovely. I remember being issued with a gas mask and my baby cousin had one that he was put right into it as it was big enough to take the whole baby.

Although we were 12 miles from we saw the planes go over and we knew they were attacking Bristol. Sometimes we had bombs dropped around us quite early in the war. I remember one day my mother called me she was standing by the back door and search lights from Bristol were beamed across us and it had caught an enemy plane. It screamed down the beam supposedly to put the light out of action. Our family came from Bristol to have a weekend respite because if they weren't actually involved in things they would have to do firewatching. If you worked in a factory you would have to do your stint at firewatching. Then in april 1942 Bath was bombed and they had no defenses whatsoever. My friends house was bombed and her father had put some of the family under the stairs and the other under the table and they had to be dug out and were homeless the people next door weere all killed. We only had a few stray bombs. We all collected around the holes in the ground and bought home shrapnel and nobody as far as i know kept the propoganda leaflets that were from very early on in the war. Nobody seems to remember these propoganda leaflets from enemy planes telling us to give up. Rather frightened me that a German was close to me. We had several big country houses around and the houses and the grounds were used to house troops and because we kept a pub with several bedrooms my mother was told she would have to accomodate 2 officers. I remember when the chilren from London were evacuated my father went to the local village hall and offered to take a child and they woulnd't let the child come because we lived in a pub even though our accomodation was superior to the others. i always thought something was wrong there.
the Welsh Guards and the Royal Engineers black Americans and white Americans and we also had French Canadians and the only problem with drunkeness was from the French Canadians who threatened my father because he wouldn't serve them after time. i remember the villagers gathered arond to protect him.
i remember the women in the village even the married ones were more than happy to fraternise with the soldiers. i remembered they'd go round the village all day with curlers and they'd all come out with beautiful curls and made up in the evening. The women especially liked the americans becuase they had lots of money and could provide them with things that we didn't have like nylon and food! several went on to marry the Americans and the English troops and of course amongst those who fraternised there were broken marriages and some illegitimate babies. i was only 13 when the war ended so i wasn't particularly friendly with the troops. we never had any trouble they were extremely respectful and veyr friendly. my father was very patriotic and when Paris was liberated he got a large Union Jack and a French Tricolore and put it on the flag pole on the roof of the pub and on VE day he draped every flag he could get hold of from a balcony and that incluedd a Hammer and Sickle, Stars and Stripes and because he couldn't get a white end sign he got a red end sign

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