大象传媒

I probably have the war to thank for my idyllic childhood in rural Hampshire. I was born in Southampton in January 1938,and,but for the war,was destined to be brought up in urban surroundings. However, a direct hit on the local church in 1940 rendered our house unsafe, and we had to move to Winchester, where we were taken in by in-laws until we were re-housed by Vickers Armstrong, who had built a small development of fifty semi-detached pre-fab bungalows, in woodland, for workers who had lost their homes in the blitz. One hundred families lived in this small community, with managerial staff finding themselves living next door to canteen ladies, but the system worked, as everyone was in the same boat, everyone had lost their home to German bombs, so we all had something in common straight away.

In Southampton, my maternal grandparents and my parents had shared a house. My father was musical director of Southampton Icerink and had his own dance band, my mother taught piano from home, my grandfather had recently retired as a crane driver in the docks, and my grandmother was the main home-maker. When war came, as my father was not called up to fight, he took on work as a carpenter in the docks, and became an ARP warden; my grandfather returned to work as a boilerman, learning new skills. My father still kept up his band work, and my mother still taught piano. When we were bombed out of Southampton,however,everything changed.My grandfather was offered this new pre-fab home provided he became boilerman in a hidden rural location, where Vickers were still designing and building planes hidden within a stately home, and the surrounding farm buildings, which were converted into hangars and workshops.My father would keep his job in Southampton, and be bussed there daily free of charge. My family jumped at the chance of their own home in the comparative safety of the countryside,with continuing employment for both men, and so my rural life began.

Strangely enough I can vividly recall my life as a toddler in Southampton. I have memories of the night-time raids when,on the way to the shelter in the garden,I would see my grandfather putting out incendiary bombs with buckets of sand, or using a pail of water and a styrup pump to squirt water onto fires on rooftops. i could see the searchlights and enemy planes caught in the beams before being shot down in the channel.I can remember no peronal fear of the noise or the lights, but I was very aware of the fear of the adults,as they rushed me to the air raid shelter.Yet, sixty odd years later, my son was amused to see me react to music playing in his car which included the sound of an air raid warning siren, he said that I immediately began looking up into the sky, covering all angles to check for approaching danger!

I can remember being so proud of my father looking so handsome in his ARP uniform. I used to have a siren suit that kept me warm during night time raids, and one of my father's friends from the docks had made me a miniature tin helmet to wear, just like my dads. Of course, I never knew until I grew up of the harrowing experiences my father had when he was on duty. He never forgot running for several yards alongside a decapitated man before the man finally dropped to the ground. His worst experience, which haunted him for the rest of his life, was the recovery of the bodies of nun's and little children who had sheltered but were all killed in the basement of a municipal building.

Like many children I enjoyed the sight of barrage balloons floating above the town, and I can remember one runaway balloon coming to land in our street, where it was chased and eventually secured to a lamp post by it's trailing ropes. I always associated these balloons with Dumbo, and I can remember laughing at the men holding onto the ropes who were falling over and being dragged along the ground by the balloon. The tale was often told of one man being cut in half when he became entangled in the rope, but I was never sure if this was true or just an urban myth.

My life in the country is just one long memory of the fun we had with all the allied troops living in camps in the surrounding woods. My favourites were the Americans, who showered us children with sweets and comics, took us on wild rides in their jeeps, and into their camps to show us movies and give us parties that I will never forget. We had Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders in camps and convoys of lorries and tanks in every lane, and on the walk to school. Black Americans were camped separately, and did not mix with the civilians outside their camp, but in the evenings many families would walk over to hear them sing gospel and folk songs as they sat around campfires. The only young black American that I knew hung himself when he knew that he was about to be shipped away to fight in Europe, he had come to love Britain so much, and didn't want to leave.

We only had two British soldiers in our area, they manned the road barriers on the crossroads close by my house. They had to control the flow of traffic on the narrow country roads, which were constantly blocked by convoys of lorries and tanks on their way to and from the Southampton docks, and the fleets of red double-decker buses taking workers to and from the docks and the local secret Vickers establishment, or to wherever they worked. My grandmother befriended the two young British soldiers who lived in a tent at the crossroads. She let them bathe in our house, and she did their washing, and had them in for the odd meal. They had to visit separately, as one was always on duty. We were all saddened when towards the end of the war they had to leave, and it was only much later that I learned that Jackie had been killed, and Tommy lost both legs in the D-Day landings.

As children, we never seemed deprived of anything during the war. Convoys on the way to Southampton threw unwanted money, food, sweets and even toiletries at us as they passed us on our walk to school. Kindly adults who befriended the allied troops were rewarded with tinned food and nylons, we lived on tinned ham, corned beef hash and fruit salad, I even developed a lifelong love of instant coffee from the Yankee soldiers. Even my dog benefited from the large hard biscuits thrown out with the emergency ration packs. We children went for the foil wrapped chocolate and chewing gum,and the sticky chewy fruit and nut bars, whereas our parents liked the dried coffee and soup sachets.

Not only did we pass allied troops on the way to and from school but we had a prisoner of war camp, holding German and Italian troops, and a displaced persons camp, holding Polish men and women on our route. The two camps looked very alike, both had high mesh fences topped with barbed wire, and powerful lights, and both were patrolled by soldiers with dogs. The odd thing was that the prisoners of war were all far friendlier than the Polish people towards us. I still have a wooden plate carved for me by a German boy whom I befriended, in as much as he walked along the perimeter of the fence chatting to me, and I gave him the odd sweet or food from my lunch box! The Polish women in particular were rude and aggressive,and made abusive comments to us in their own language - we were far more scared of them than we were of the prisoners of war, especially as they were allowed out of their camp! At Christmas, our prisoners built a beautiful miniature church which they lit from within, it even had coloured glass windows. It lit us to and from school on the dark winter days, and it cheered us, just as much as it must have cheered them.

I was lucky enough to only suffer the loss of one school friend during the war, a pretty little girl with chestnut curls, her name was Marigold. Se lived in an isolated cottage on farmland with her family, but she and her grandfather were killed in a direct hit on their house by a bomb dropped from a German plane that was ditching it's cargo before running the gauntlet of guns on the coast, as it made it's way home to Germany. We had several bomb-craters left in the woods which quickly became ponds, and we picked up shrapnel and leaflets, and silver foil which was used as Christmas tinsel by many. We picked up the odd parachute which the women used for it's silk from which they made clothing. We knew not to touch anything made of metal or any toys, but we often took 'bombsticks' home to our father's,who used them as fence posts. We lived through rationing, but the countryside was full of free food which was put to good use, and I never felt deprived of anything. The radio was our only piece of technology used for home entertainment, even our gramophone worked by clockwork, but it still gave us great pleasure.

I really loved my wartime rural childhood, and would not have had wanted to live any differently, from the way I did then.

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