大象传媒

Realizing that war was imminent, my grandparents built two adjacent houses in Asfordby where they lived and our family, my mother, father, baby brother and I moved from Leicester because it was considered safer. I do not remember moving, but I do vaguely remember the grown-ups solemnly listening to the radio on September 3rd 1939 and I knew that something terrible had happened. Almost immediately my father, a Pharmacist was called up, and after a few months in Munford in Norfolk, he was sent to Egypt where he spent five years working as a Pharmacist in military hospitals. I don't remember him going, but life changed. My mother, who by law had given up teaching when she was married, had to return to the local school and we were made to have lodgers - men from the local 'gun' range. As I got older I began to sense my mother's worry about my father, and I especially remember a period of several weeks when she had no letters, and then, to cap it all, received a large trunk, wrapped in oil-skin, containing some of his clothes. She assumed he was dead and it was terrible. But eventually a whole batch of letters arrived, and in one he explained that he was sending home some unwanted clothes. Poor mum - she had a dreadful war. Always a worrier, she also had to cope with teaching, lodgers, air-raids and an added burden when I had to go into Leicester General Hospital for a hip operation. My father's car had been comandeered, transport was difficult and unlike my father, she hated anything medical. My experience in an under-staffed hospital is another nightmare of a story, but eventually I was home again and the war ended. A months later there was great excitment because my father was coming home! I was terrified. I didn't remember him and I knew that because he was my daddy I would have to kiss him! He arrived home late one evening, in army uniform, unshaven, carrying a huge kit-bag and I was not impressed. It helped when he distributed presents from the kit-bag, and by the next day, when he was clean and shaved and refreshed, I loved him dearly. He died aged 80, and for all those years I worshipped him, not just because he was a wise and wonderful man, but because he came back into my life as a 'novelty' and someone very special.

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Sara-Jane Higginbottom of the CSV Action Desk Leicester on behalf of Barbara Harrington and has been added with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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