大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Age Concern, Dorchester on behalf of Victor Day, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Day fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was 8 years old at the beginning of the war. I lived in Weymouth with my mother and father, elder sister and younger brother. The whole family clustered round the wireless set to hear the expected announcement of war on 3 September 1939.

The first effect of the war for us children was that the schools were closed for about six weeks because the French and Belgian troops were billeted in them. The schools closed again when the bombed-out people from London were sent down to Weymouth. After that we only went to school for 2 hours a day. There was only the Headmaster and one lady teacher because all the other teachers had joined up. There were 94 children in my class.

The first bombing of Weymouth was in June 1940. My father was working on a tug in Portland Harbour. We all overslept and we were woken by the screaming noise of the bombs and the German aeroplanes. We were told that the Foylebank had been hit and that my father鈥檚 tug had been sunk. Father was reported missing, presumed dead. I really loved my father and felt numb and miserable. In fact, father was picked up out of the water by another boat, brought ashore by the Oil Rigs on the Causeway, Portland, where he thumbed a lift back to Weymouth. He walked into our house in the early afternoon. Mother shouted, 鈥淲e were told that you were dead 鈥︹��.. you鈥檝e got b***dy dirty boots. Wipe your feet!鈥� I was absolutely delighted when Dad came in. Dad was wearing only overalls and had been in the water for a long time. He had lost his job with the loss of his tug boat. He had to go to the Labour Exchange which sent him back to work in the dockyard on a bigger tug.

We had three evacuee girls whose mother had been killed in London and whose father was moving around the country with his job as a NAAFI Manager and Chef. Mother collected the girls off the train and had to strip them when she got them home 鈥� they were absolutely alive with nits and lice. Their father disappeared, so my parents just kept the girls 鈥� so they came to be part of our family, and still are.

I enjoyed the war, apart from the nights when I was terrified. When the siren went we had to go into the Morrison Shelter; my brother and I slept on the top bunk and two of the girls on the lower one. I was always keen to see what was going on during the day. We collected the best and biggest pieces of shrapnel to take to school.

There were two American Negroes billeted next door but one 鈥� they were brilliant fellows. They used to give us all kinds of foods such as tomato juice and pineapple bits. When the Americans came we thought that there might be a chance that we would win the war.

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