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I was born in January 1942 at West End near Southampton. Most of my memories of the war years are hazy to say the least and I have had to rely on things told to me by my late parents. I do have a recollection of my father being home on leave and I was told very severely by my mother not to into the front room of our cottage as his rifle and other items were behind the door. That would have been in late 1944. At the same time I remember going down to the bus stop one night to say 'good-bye' when he returned back to his unit (he was a Sergeant in Honourable Artillery Company); I can still see in my mind's eye the faint lights of the bus because, in the total darkness (there must have still been a blackout) they seemed to be very bright as passengers embarked and then total darkness as they drove off up the hill towards Southampton.
Before that, early in the spring of 1943, my mother remembered one incident that completely terrified her. I was in my pram on the front lawn, the weather being quite warm. She was doing some work in the front garden when she heard the faint sound of explosions in the distance. What happened next paralysed her with terror as, with a tremendous roar, an aircraft suddenly appeared over the trees at chimney height spraying the area around our part of the village with machine-gun fire. She could clearly see the pilot and other crew in the plane. She found out soon after that nobody had been hurt and amazingly no houses were hit. A single German fighter-bomber had bombed the airport at Eastleigh and decided to get rid of some of its ammunition before high-tailing it back to the Continent. I, apparently, slept contentedly through the whole incident which probably lasted no more than 5 or 6 seconds.
I do remember the Canadian soldiers who were parked on the road outside of our cottage in the weeks before D-day. West End was in the restricted area around Southampton. Nobody was allowed in or out of the area without special passes and I gather that they were not easily obtained. Every road around the area was jammed pack with vehicles of all descriptions making movement quite difficult.
Mum used to invite the soldiers into the cottage for meals and tea and I, as a toddler, would be taken out and allowed to sit in the cab of one of their lorries. One soldier in particular stands out in my mind. I used to call him 'Soldier Bill'. Apparently we reminded him of his own family back in Canada. In the years that have past since I have often thought about 'Soldier Bill' and wondered whether or not he and his companions survived the war and returned safely home to Canada or was he one of those who did not return home. I shall never know. Did he meet up by chance with my own Dad, who being in the Honourable Artillery Company was part of the 3rd Canadian Division who landed on Gold Beach? Who knows. Later in Belgium Dad was billeted with a Belgian family. Camilla and her husband sent us letters and cards for a number of years after.
Life for Mum during those years was not easy. While Dad was away she received 18 shillings a week in 'benefit' of which 8 shillings was rent for the cottage. The other 10 was to feed and clothe the both of us. When you translate that into modern money 90p doesn't sound very much.
After the War things slowly got back to normal for us. Dad did not return until the summer of 1946 – he was out in Germany for a year in a small town called Bohmte (near Osnabruck) as part of the occupying force and the whole experience thoroughly sickened him. Having to take food away from elderly people and children who were clearly very hungry but who had exceeded their ration was not an edifying experience. Had it not been for that I am sure, from what he said from time to time, that he would have stayed on in the Army as a regular soldier. He wanted to forget the War and rarely spoke about it. Although a member of the British Legion he would have nothing to do with the parades on Armistice Day, always politely declining to take part. He wasn't alone in having those sentiments.
Sitting with family and other friends on Sundays after tea throughout the 1950s and quietly listening to their conversations it became obvious to me, as I got older and more understanding of what had happened, that the war had impacted upon and dominated their lives; even twenty years later family and friends' conversations soon returned to the subject of the war and just occasionally the conversation would die down momentarily as people were alone with their own thoughts. It was the major event in the lives of very ordinary people who were suddenly pitched into quite extraordinary events and went to places where they never expected to visit - North Africa, Ceylon, Iraq, the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. Everyone had been involved in some way or another – one Aunt was in the RAF, another was personal assistant to Admiral Beattie, all of the men folk had served in one branch or another of the Forces. As a family we were lucky in that all of our immediate family had returned home safely except for one second cousin who died in the jungle in Burma.

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