大象传媒

The war broke out a few weeks after my thirteenth birthday and ended just after my nineteenth, thus neatly taking out my teens. Not that the teenage scene, as we understand it today, had been invented then. For one thing everyone was too busy to bother about us and in any case all the opportunities of modern teenage life, were pretty non existent. Clothes were grimly utilitarian to the point of hideousness. Make up was available (for some reason it was considered to be good for morale) but was fairly basic. Food sustained life but that was about all. Even if you were old enough to drink, pubs frequently ran dry and cigarettes were hard to come by. Drugs, of course did not figure in our lives at all.

And yet we had fun, somehow. We saw a lot of films and did a lot of dancing. We danced to the same music as our parents did because there was no suggestion that this was not cool. In all the drabness, the cold, the deprivation, we managed to create an imitation of normal life and even to enjoy ourselves. A great tribute to the resilience of the young.

Underlying everything else was fear, which came in two forms, chronic and acute. Chronic fear penetrated every corner of our lives. Fear, that somehow, unthinkably, we would lose the war. Fear that someone you loved would be killed. Fear that rationing would become even harsher; that your boy friend would be posted to the other side of the world and never seen again; that the war would go on forever.

Acute fear was rarer and civilians probably only felt it during air raids, that at least was my experience. Coventry was only three miles across the fields from our home and for nearly a year from August 1940 onwards, we didn鈥檛 have any quiet nights. Sometimes it was Coventry鈥檚 turn, sometimes Birmingham or it could just be that the Luftwaffe was on its way to Liverpool or elsewhere. But whenever the siren went, my mother would herd us all into our home made dugout shelter in the garden 鈥� me, my brother, my cousin, various odd bods who were billeted on us from time to time, the cat, the dog and the budgerigar. After a while my cousin and the odd bods mutinied and said that they would rather die in their beds than freeze to death in the shelter. Even I began to feel fed up rather than frightened.

Then came November 14th 1940, the Big One. I had been to the cinema with my first boy friend, as we rushed home amidst the most hellish din, we could hear shrapnel clattering in the road all around 鈥� strangely I don鈥檛 think we realised how dangerous this was. My boy friend had to phone his parents to say that we couldn鈥檛 get home. Incredibly in all that inferno, the phones were working, the operator sitting there calmly saying, 鈥� Number please.鈥� Then we headed for the Shelter, even my cousin and the odd bods joining us. But first I remember my mother, all five foot nothing of her, standing on the lawn in the brilliant moonlight, for some reason wearing her nightie and dressing gown, shaking her fists at the sky and shrieking at the planes, 鈥� You buggers! You buggers!鈥� I thought God help any pilot who bales out and lands on our lawn, She鈥檒l tear him limb from limb.

In the morning we dragged ourselves out frozen stiff and exhausted and I got ready for school. Sleep or no sleep, hell or high water, you were expected at school, so off I went. When I reached the corner where our lane joined the main Coventry Road I stopped short in horror, for as far as I could see, there was a long column of people trudging by, pushing a few belongings in prams and wheelbarrows. They were dirty, bedraggled, ashen faced, dead eyed. I had seen newsreels of this kind of thing happening in France and Poland but in KENILWORTH? Where were they going? Who would look after them? There were ambulances of course and a number of valiant WVS ladies with tea urns but that seemed to be all. Later, we heard that a small hotel in Kenilworth鈥檚 town square had taken in as many people as it could. A few nights later, the hotel was hit by a landmine. I don鈥檛 know if there were any survivors.

Early on in the war, my New Zealand aunts wrote begging us to go out there for the duration. My mother refused. Although she was too busy coping with her large household to contribute directly to the war effort, she nevertheless had some idea that her place was in England at Churchill鈥檚 side. In any case she was utterly convinced, against all logic, that a) we personally would be safe and b) that Britain would win eventually. Right on both counts as it turned out, though she would never admit that America and Russia had anything to do with it.

As for me, I have to say that, miserable, terrifying, heart- breaking and awful as the war here was, I am glad that I did not go to New Zealand.

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