大象传媒

The first time I ever heard the words "war baby" was in the 1960's when I was a grown woman. My husband and I went with my Mother and Father to our local British Legion Club for a social evening. My parents met a couple of people that they hadn't seen for years. My Mother said 'this is our Dorothy', the lady said, 'Oh the War Baby'! I asked my Mother what she meant and she said the people born during WW2 were called War Babies.

I was born in 1942 and the first time my Dad saw me, I was four years old. I remember to this day, the first time I saw my Dad. My mother had taken me out, I don't know where we had been, but as we got back to our home in Manchester, she stopped at the front gate and said shall we go to your Nana's house? I said yes, and then remember being very upset because she changed her mind and we went in the house.

When we walked in the house and opened the living room door, there was this man in uniform fast asleep on the couch, his trouser leg was pushed up and he had a bandage on his leg. My Mother cried and said, 'this is your Daddy'. I remember seeing his kit bag and he had bought me a soft toy, it was the cartoon character Pluto, and if I remember rightly it was blue. He bought me a little leather bag with maps on it, which was from India and my Mother had a lovely embroidered gold coloured table cloth with a gold fringe.

Many years later, I found out that my Dad had served in Dunkirk. He was with the Royal Artillery and was on the 'big Guns', heavy Akk Akk, I think they were called. He never talked about what happened a great deal But he did tell us, that after they evacuated Belgium and were at Dunkirk, he stood in the sea for days and was among the last of the men to be taken aboard a ship. He managed to get on one of the big ships, and my Dad said they were packed in like sardines, all the way home. He lost his dog tags, which someone found and he was reported missing.

But my Dad was one of the lucky ones, he came home.

I know he served in India too.

My Dad has passed on now. But I and my sister Lynne, who was born after Dad had finished his Army service, are very proud of the fact that he fought to make this a free country. We do not know the hell my father really went through in the war. But we would like to pay tribute to our Dad CLIFFORD BURY, GUNNER ROYAL ARTILLERY, born 1917 and died 1977.

Dorothy

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