´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Alan Jeffery CSV from Kent County Library Services on behalf of Gwen May and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Born in the village of Withyham in Sussex, I went to the country in Sussex during the war. We were not bombed, but several stray bombs dropped near us. There was a searchlight battery about half a mile from our home in what we called ‘our cowslip field’ it was never the same after the war.
I remember going back to school one Monday morning to hear that several pupils had been killed when the Whitehall Cinema in East Grinstead had been hit by a stray bomb.
Although we were rationed, sweets and foreign fruit were very scarce yet I cannot remember ever being hungry. My Mother kept chickens so we always had eggs and the occasional chicken. We also had rabbit and plenty of home grown vegetables.
Father was in the Home Guard so was often on duty at night. We had incendiary bombs dropped in the garden one night and I remember walking across the field near our home to look at the crater made by a land mine.
Although we had evacuees in Hartfield at the beginning of the war, when the V2 rockets came I was evacuated for about three months with some of our school to Taunton in Somerset, I hated it and couldn’t wait to get home.

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