大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Louise Angell of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Derby, on behalf of Ron Smith. The author understands the sites terms and conditions.

My earliest memory of the war was walking from home, holding dads hand, as he went off to the rail station en route from France, where he served on ambulance trains. Pressing a shilling into my hand he promised me a visit to Radcliffe's Toy Shop, situated on The Spot, when he came home. "It will buy you another Dinky toy," he said. Yes he did come home.

A little later, seriously ill with diptheria, I was committed to the Derwent Isolation Hospital at breadsall. The hospital has long since been demolished, to make way for housing, but that's another story. When the sirens sounded, as they often did, we patients were lifted, still on our mattress, and placed under the wire mesh of the bed. This was to give protection from possible falling masonry in the event of an air raid. Lying thus, I would watch mice running along the skirting boards of the ward!

A couple of years later, the war still on, we lads would walk the streets following an air raid looking for shrapnel; we also chatted to the crew of the local barrage balloon, three streets away.

When VE Day was finally declared, an effigy of Hitler was strung between facing bedroom windows of our street. A bonfire was lit in the middle of the road, beneath Adolph, and fuelled until it caught fire; how we all cheered!

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