大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Ann and has been added to the site with her permission. Ann fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My father was in the League of Nations in Geneva. In 1936/38 it packed up and he went to work for the International Court in the Hague, where I lived and went to school.
We had a German maid in the Hague and when there were rumours of war my father asked her if she wanted to go back to Germany and she said "No, I'll be waiting for Hitler to come here."
I remember when war broke out. My father's face fell at the dining room table. It wasn't until November that my father decided to send us to boarding school in the UK. We took the Rotterdam, a ferry, to Gravesend. We had to put on lifebelts. On arrival at Gravesend I remember hearing the man on the land wanting to know a password. "Red white white red" - I remember this being said and repeated. I remember it was all blacked out at the station, except for an eerie blue light.
My father went back to the Hague with a Christmas pudding made by his sister in law. He went back by plane and had to pay extra for the weight of the pudding.My mother went to Brussels to see her mother.
Then the Germans came to Holland and the whole International Court went to sleep at the Spanish Embassy under the Spanish flag because Spain was neutral.
The diplomats were respected and the Germans sent them by special train to Geneva.
I was in boarding school in the UK, age 7, and knew practically no English. I spoke French.
Eventually, maybe in 1940, my mother came over on a ferry and met up with us. She came in full mourning dress including a black veil, because of her mother's death. We lived on a farm in digs. The rumour in the village, Wadhurst, was that my mother was a German spy.
By summer of 1940 the music teacher shared our digs and entertained soldiers in the village. She gave me a German bullet that had been cleaned out. It was later confiscated at boarding school and I never got it back.
When there were dog fights, the gym mistress blew a whistle - two short whistles followed by a long one - and we had to go to the cellars. Once there was a dog fight immediately overhead.
I remember streams of German bombers, even in daylight.I got to know the sound of German planes. There were matresses on the floor in corridors to accommodate all the children in boarding school.
We moved to Malvern, but only for two weeks because there was a terrific raid. We went to Ambleside in Lake District. We changed digs five times because people were suspicious of my mother's foreign accent.
We didn't know what was happening to my father. Eventually we heard he'd arrived in the uk. He had had time mountaineering with friends in Geneva. Then he went to Portugal and got a merchant navy ship to the UK. The sun kept rising in a different place, as the ship was zig zagging all the time for safety. It took a month to get from Portugal to the UK.
The 大象传媒 wanted my father because he spoke several languages. He spent the rest of the war working in censorship. He allowed a mention of Croydon airport, and was told off! He had to sleep, eat etc at the 大象传媒 in London. They slept in dormitories and Wilfred Pickles complained about my father's snoring!
My father got us back to Wadhurst and we stayed there for the rest of the war.
I remember hearing the first doodlebug. I recognised it as a very frightening sound. There was a nasty flame at the back. We had a very good view from school. One came down in the middle of Wadhurst and killed one or two people.
The RAF threw out tin foil to cause interference to communications. It landed in the school grounds.
My father retired from the 大象传媒 at 60 and he went to Germany after the War and visited the Reichstag and picked up some carpet underlay as a memento.
Then the International Court started up again and he went back.

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