´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Learning Centre on behalf of Samuel Spencer with his permission.
The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in August 1929 in Jamaica which was in the British West Indies in those days and I went to Bonnyside School. I was 10 when war broke out.

I remember that when planes came over we used to run and hide because we thought they were going to drop bombs. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We lived in the country and there were lots of bushes to hide in and at nights we weren’t allowed to show bright lights so we had wooden shutters and we lit lamps with paraffin not kerosene oil.

We heard a lot about what was happening in Europe but we didn’t know what was going to happen to us. The only time we couldn’t run and hide when planes came over was when we were at school. There were hundreds of planes coming over but they never did drop any bombs. In the towns there were air raid shelters where you could go but in the country were I lived there weren’t any so you had to hide in the bushes.

My dad got the paper every day but we didn’t have a wireless or telly in those days so as children we didn’t really know what was going on.
The scariest thing was at night when we were lying in bed and heard planes going over. We used to peep out to see if we could see any bombs dropping so we could run.

There were nine of us so my parents obviously worried when we went to school whether we were all going to come home. But as children we were never really scared. You heard things but you didn’t really understand what it meant because you haven’t got much sense at that age.

Sometimes you laughed when you saw the planes. But the ones we were most afraid of were the white zeppelins that didn’t make any noise and flew low.

We cultivated and grew our own food — yams, breadfruit, bananas, coconuts - so we didn’t really experience any shortages.

When the war ended they sent a truckload of sweets to our school. I was so excited and the truck took us all home. As it got to my gate I jumped down before it stopped and fell off and nearly broke my neck. All I was worried about was that I didn’t mash up all my sweets.

Everyone was shouting and happy and saying ‘war is over’. But I was happy because I’d got all those sweets.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.