大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Louise Smith on behalf of Bruce Firth. The story has been added to the site with their permission and Bruce Firth fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

WWII started for me in 1939 when I was just ten, walking along the sea front at deal with my big sister Joyce pushing baby Arthur in his pram. When the sirens wailed, Joyce led us running all the way home. That iconic picture if the family in the living room gathered around the bakelite radio listening to the Prime Minister declaring 鈥淭his country is at war with Germany鈥� could have been pose in our kitchen.

Less than a year later, when it was realised that deal would be in range of German guns from across the Channel, Joyce and Noel (my 7 year old brother) and I were amongst the crowds of children with gas masks and name labels waiting to get on a train to be evacuated. At the last moment, Mum rescued Noel and lifted him back over the fence while Joyce and I made our merry way to South Wales.

My school got off the train at Cwmfelin and I well I remember being in the church hall where we were chosen by local people to go and live with them. I was billeted with Mr Thomas, an independent milkman, and his family. He kept a horse in a field above the house and his cart in a shed nearby. I often accompanied him to catch the horse, hitch up the cart, drive o the farm to collect the milk and start the milk deliveries before being put off at school for the proper start to my day. I loved it all.

The family was reunited in Plymouth where Dad had been posted with the Royal Marines in the summer holidays, when Mum could stand our being separated no longer.

Less than a year later, after several nights cooped up in the cupboard under the stairs during the start of the Plymouth Blitz, and my big brother Cedric and Dad out fire fighting most nights, I was evacuated again to St Austell, Cornwall. I was chosen again, this time to live with an elderly music teacher and his wife in a bungalow outside the cemetery. I loved that too, although it would have been better if I had had a bike. However, after Mum had come to see me win the high jump in the first year athletics in the summer, she took me back to Plymouth just in time for the worst raids of the war. Noel and I were caught in a riad on the way to the library after school. We ran with books on our heads while shrapnel fell around us. We were shepherded into the basement until the all clear. When we emerged in the middle of the night, we crossed the road to watch Plymouth city centre blazing before our very eyes. Next morning on the way to school I negotiated mountains of red hot glowing bricks where large stores had been.

Plymouth and I were never the same again. But we survived. Resurgam.

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