大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Barnsley Archives and Local Studies Department on behalf of Mollie Cooper and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."
My father worked at Cortonwood Pit so he was in a vital job and was not sent away to fight.

I was born during the war and have few early memories of it. I did have reoccurring nightmares when I was a child and they always involved droning plane engines and I hated any planes flying overhead. I think that these must be connected with the war.

I had a brother five years older than me so that when evacuees came to Wombwell my mother and dad agreed to take a boy of my brother鈥檚 age.

Alec joined our family. His father had been married twice and so he had older bothers and a sister, Anne, who was in the W.A.A.F.鈥檚. His mother was dead and his father later re-married.

My mother always said that Alec had an unhappy home life and was happy with us. One day she baked an apple pie and left it to cool. Alec and Lawrence (my brother) were playing and were supposed to be looking after me whilst she finished a job. When she came back into the kitchen, I had tipped the rest of the sugar bag over the apple pie. My mother was mad as that was the sugar ration gone! Alec and Lawrence had to use the syrupy top of the apple pie as a sweetener for the rest of the week as it could not be wasted.

Alec鈥檚 father came from London whenever he needed any clothes buying as he would not send my mother any money to buy them herself.

My mother and dad wanted to adopt Alec at he end of the war but his dad refused. About ten years later Alec turned up at our house. He was so please to find us still living in the same house. He had not had a happy life back home and said that he wished that he had been able to stay with us.

He was now in the R.A.F. and we kept in contact for about the next ten years. He eventually went to live in Canada and eventually we lost contact.

We still have a photograph of him as a small boy and part of a letter written by his sister telling him 鈥渢o be a good boy鈥�.

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