大象传媒

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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Phil Sealey of the Somerset County Museum Team on behalf of Amelia Bruce and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

鈥淲hen war broke out I was only two so I don鈥檛 really remember much about it, but my parents told me we moved down from Aberdeen because my father was in the Post Office and he was transferred south. Just after, about a month after, we moved down to Taunton and our rented house in Aberdeen was bombed, we were lucky.
We moved to Hovelands Lane and the only thing I remember about this house was it was semi-detached, only recently built and it wasn鈥檛 actually finished, there were those white blobs on the windows, which they apparently always put on homes, which weren鈥檛 quite completed. Before we had stayed in The Avenue in Taunton.
I was only about three then and in the living room we had a big Morrison table, an iron table, so during the war when the sirens went off in the middle of the night my sister and I were carted downstairs and put under this Morrison table, on mattresses. My mother had this tea set given to her by her sister as a wedding present about five or so years previously, she loved the tea set so much, it was real bone china and that was really precious in those days. She used to take this tea set from the sideboard and put the whole set under the Morrison table, and we, as children, dare not go near it or we would have been in trouble.
I also remember we had these gas masks, which I think were in cardboard boxes with cords to put around your neck. We鈥檇 take the gas masks to school every Monday and we used to parade up and down the playground practising, after the war we had to give them back. And ration books; we were rationed for sweets. Every month we were taken to the sweet shop and we could choose just a few sweets to last us the whole month. We got through all right because my father was a bit of a scrounger; he got to know the butcher and that sort of thing. He managed to get a little extra from time to time. I think we were quite lucky.
Also, in those days, I had relations out in the Hawaiian Islands. My father had two brothers out there and they had children, they were a little bit older than us, so when they had grown out of their clothes they used to send them to us 鈥� they were summer clothes because it is a bit warmer there, we had plenty of clothes in summer. My uncle was in charge of a sugar plantation and he used to send bags of sugar over as well, also he could get soap powder and that sort of thing out there. My mother was so upset once because the sugar bag and the soapflakes bag had burst and gone one into the other, so that was the end of that.
As war finished we all went down to Vivary Park where they put on a Sports Day for all the school children, after the sports we went home and we had a small street party in Hoverlands Lane. At the end of the war we were only about eight or nine, my twin sister and I. We were allowed to go to the street party for a little while then we were sent off to bed.
There were no streetlights and when we were young it seemed like night when it probably wasn鈥檛, it was early evening, and on a starry night we would count all the stars in the sky. It was great fun to see, the stars and the moon, especially on a clear, frosty night; they were very bright.
We went to North Town School in Taunton; we started school during the war and then just continued
Alright, not as interesting as most people, but in those days I think we made more of life than they do now, because we had to make our own life. Times have changed, now sixty years later, we鈥檝e seen both sides, as it were.鈥�

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