大象传媒

I was 13 when the war started and we'd lived in our quiet little vilage of pontesbury when Dad George Challinor (known as Spring)was called up. We were in Sunday school and we had to be there early to listen to the radio. Our teacher came in and told us war had been declared. There was no Sunday school in the afternoon and so I went for a walk with my cousins. When we came back the station was full of evacuees. 750 arrived at 3.30pm on the Sunday and another 800 the next day, all from Liverpool.
In a few days big lorries arrived full of soldiers. They had tents by Pontesford hill at first and there was a huge ammunition dump across the front of the hill. There were barricades at each end and no one was allowed through without a pass. All those people had come to our village to be safe but it was a time bomb really.
More soldires arrived and there was a big army camp down Hinton lane and on the top of Hall Bank.
We were very fortunate not to have an air raid because we had no air raids shelters and we never did have any. We used to go down into the pantry.Our raid siren sounded like a motor horn
There were rumours there was a spy in the village and he was sending messages from the top of Pontesford Hill
The soldiers were very good to us and they put on parties and a pantomime for us.The ladies of the village took it in turns to run the canteen for the soldiers and we also had land girls and timber fallers.
The black out made no difference to us because we had never had street lights. The village children and the evacuees were all friends together. Many of the evacuees joined the Pontesbury army cadets.
We kept in touch with the evacuees. We had 2 at our house Billy and Dougie Rose,and I arranged reunions with my friends from 1984 for 7 consecutive years

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