大象传媒

I remember Chamberlain's broadcast on 3/9/1939, and my Mother crying, and when I asked her why, she said, "War, and I have four sons". She was born in 1895 and had memories of the horrendous casualties of the 1914/18 conflict.
I was born in 1930 and had three elder brothers, two served in the forces, the eldest was declared medically unfit, but became a Motor Cycle Dispatch Rider in the A.R.P. He also owned a 0.22 Sporting Rifle.
I was at a very inpressionable age, and during the invasion scare my Mother used to take the rifle and some ammunition to bed each night and place it on the bedside table. I really thought that she intended to use it as a sniper, which made me feel very proud of her. Her real purpose never entered my head until years later.
I remember hearing the bombs that were dropped in Newcastle where we lived, and one night just after the sirens were sounded, Mother had roused me from sleep and I'd just got out of bed when we heard the "Whoosh" of a bomb dropping, she threw me back on the bed, and lay over me. The bomb, which was a time-bomb, landed about a hundred yards away in Liverpool Road, Newcastle, opposite the P.M.T. Bus Garage. My eldest brother appeared shortly afterwards, he had been on duty with the A.R.P., and insisted that we spent the rest of the night sleeping under the (Stout) Kitchen Table. We didn't have an Anderson shelter.
These incidents were only minor, considering the horrors other people endured during the war, but they were very real to us at the time, and as a ten year old quite exciting, Mother probably had another view.

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