大象传媒

The following recollections have been written on behalf of my mother Mrs Maisie Cowling and form a series of little stories often told to me and my brother over the years.
My mother begins.... My first recollection of events leading to the beginning of the war was the frequent bulletins on the radio, my parents listening and becoming more grave-faced. I was still at school when the war began and I lived with my parents on a small farm near to the East Coast . For some unknown reason sugar had almost completely disappeared. I went with a friend and her father in their car to Boston to collect a huge bag of sugar which we put on the carrier on the back of the car. My friend and I were revelling in the drama - sandbags piled up in doorways and around shops. On the way home my friend's father stopped for petrol. The man serving the petrol was in tears because of the news of war. My friend and I sat in the car nudging and giggling because to see a man in tears was unheard of at that time.
On the 3rd September I remember hearing Mr. Chamberlain making his historic announcement telling the nation that we were at war. That evening my parents went to church as usual. I was left home with my little brother when I heard a plane high in the sky and sounding really ominous. This was an event then as planes in the sky were not common. I became very frightened and thinking that the Germans had come to kill us ran down the lane to meet my parents and so feeling a lot safer back at home ...... a river bordered our farm and the bridge, which we had to cross, had been mined. On our way to school we would avoid stepping on the inspection cover thinking that it was mined and would explode if we trod anywhere near it!......in 1940 a section of the Royal Artillery was billeted in our farmyard and soldiers were posted on sentry duty on the bridge crossing the river. Consequently if we had to pass by we were challenged with the question " Friend or Foe? On hearing the soldier's rifle cocked for firing you always answered quickly.......at school we had gas mask drill and at a given sign from the teacher we had to scramble quickly into our gas masks and get under the desks. Thankfully this practice soon ceased when gas attacks became increasingly unlikely....... as the war progressed prisoners of war came into the county and some of them were brought to help on the farm. At lunchtime they were allowed to have their food in one of the sheds. My mother, feeling sorry for them, sent me in with a hot meal for each of them and regarding them as the enemy I quickly gave them the food and rushed out again......
Cycling home from my music lesson one Saturday morning and coming through the village I heard a plane and looking up I could see what I thought were birds flying very near to the plane thinking how strange that was. The next thing I knew was a loud explosion and debris - the objects had in fact been bombs! Two people were killed on that day and several buildings had been destroyed...My brother and I made Christmas decorations from whatever was lying around - coloured paper, beads, eggshells, strips of silver paper dropped from aircraft, some of which we gave to the prisoners of war to make their Christmas better...... Lincolnshire being almost one vast airfield due to its flat terrain meant that on dark moonless nights the sky above would be alive with enemy planes on their way to bomb our cities. My father was in the Royal Observer Corps and plotted the position of these planes when on duty. The observer post was situated in one of the fields with two full-time men on duty in daytime and one part -time when my father manned at night.The pay was 1/3 per hour for a four hourly shift and to help identification the silhouettes of the planes were printed on cards.......

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