大象传媒

I was born on 14 March 1936 and that was at a little farm 10 miles from Sheffield. My only memory of the war was when we were returning from my grandmother鈥檚 cottage about 6 miles from Sheffield. There was a bright red glow in the sky and I think either my brother, mother or father said they are bombing Sheffield again. I guess I would be 5 or 6 then.

The next day I remember my father saying that we must have come past a bomb on the road up to the farm and we were lucky to still be alive. I was in the sidecar of the motor bike driven by my father.

I remember playing on the Moor with my brother behind the farm and we 鈥渆xplored鈥� a lot of strange concrete structures with what looked like lamps at the side of them and when we came back home I remember by brother Geoff saying to my mother there is something funny on 鈥淩od Moor鈥� and then my father said 鈥淥h they are trying to get the bombers to bomb that rather than Sheffield. It is all lit up at night but Lord Haw Haw at one of his broadcasts said they knew about Rod Moor and they are coming back to Sheffield again鈥�.

My brother and I regularly collected blackberries in the autumn because there was no other fruit around. I remember clearly the farmer once telling us we had stolen his blackberries and we had got to give them to him (my father was a farm labourer).

I clearly remember VE day at school, although I don鈥檛 think many of us understood. It just seemed like another assembly.

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