大象传媒

My mother related this story about the first time she heard the air raid siren in 1939 at the age of 8.
"My first recollection of the war, I think, was going to school and getting fitted for a gas mask.
It was horrible, the smell of rubber and feeling of suffocation. I was eight at the time and lived with my eldest sister. She looked after us - our parents had died when I was a baby. I remember hearing the air raid siren for the first time. My sister's mother-in-law called it the "sirene" which we always laughed about later. It was a real scary sound. I was running an errand at the time and I was scared out of my wits. I remember running so hard my gas mask bumping against my bottom. The shop-keeper Mr Hughes and my friend's father Mr Hornby laughed at me for being scared. All the grownups weren't scared. They just stood around in the road talking - it was something different in our lives. My brother Ted was in the army 鈥� got posted out to Burma. He was in the 14th Army. Later on 鈥� can鈥檛 remember what year 鈥� he was reported missing believed killed. But happily for us he was only wounded. In a tank hit by a Jap sniper 鈥� all the crew were killed (and the little dog they had with them). All except Ted. His leg had been hit. He tied a tourniquet round his leg which saved his life but not his leg. This happened on his 19th birthday. My sister Pearl (who is five years older than me) and me were told that we would be evacuated to Canada 鈥� to our Auntie Millie. We were all ready to go and very excited when our big sister said she didn鈥檛 want us to go because a ship carrying children had been hit by a torpedo and everyone lost. I remember too when my sister鈥檚 husband got killed. He hadn鈥檛 wanted to go to war 鈥� they had just had a baby boy born in 1939 and he just didn鈥檛 want to leave him. Anyway he was posted to British Guyana to train to train Black troops. He thought this would be good because we could all follow him out there and be comparatively safe. But this wasn鈥檛 to be either. His boat was torpedoed by Japs just off Trinidad in 1942. One day after this I had to go to the grocer鈥檚 shop owned by Mr and Mrs White. They had a son Geoffrey who was a captain in the Navy. He knew my sister鈥檚 husband and they met up with each other in Canada before Bert (my sister鈥檚 husband) got killed. Bert gave him a letter to give to my sister when he was next on leave. So when I went to pick up groceries Mr White gave me the letter. I recognised the writing and ran all the way home to my big sister totell her that Bert wasn鈥檛 dead. I always think back now and realise how much it must have hurt her.
These are all the things that hurt us most but we were very lucky. We had no bombs and life went on as normal. But we had lost one good man and our brother lost a leg.鈥�

Mollie Weatherall (born 1931)

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