大象传媒

On September 3rd 1939, at the age of 12, I was evacuated from London to some family friends who lived in a large very old Sussex farmhouse in the village of Ardingly,Sussex.
My temporary foster father, Mr C, had served in WW1 on the Somme. He was avery patriotic man and he did his best to make any serviceman in the district feel at home. the first Commonwealth troops to reach this country after the outbreak of WW2 came from Newfoundland. In the summer of 1940 some of thesesoldiers were stationed in Ardingly. Their camp was only a third of a mile away near the church. As soon as this happened MrC invited the officersto the house for a sherry party in the evening and 12 other ranks to tea and sandwiches with us kids in the garden on a Saturday afternoon. Those poor backwoodsmen, what they thought of us I don't know! After two weeks of this hospitality we noticed that one chap turned up for the third time. It turned out that he took the place of one of his mates who was too shy tomix with the posh people who lived down the lane, He did like
our tea and sandwiches!
On one day a fairly large group of German aeroplanes returning from a daylight raid on London flew quite low over the farmhouse. Our guests called us to hide under the trees so that the airgunners in the planes could not see a whole lot of soldiers with us and take pot shots at us all. It was a bit scary!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.