大象传媒

I was three years old when World War II started. We had a 12 year old evacuee who could draw very well, but he got homesick and went home. Then a woman, Peggy Collins came, and stayed with her daughter. They shared the back bedroom. Peggy worked in one of the factories in Braintree. Mother did not approve of her smoking; sometimes she went to the public bars for a drink in the evening.

By this time the Americans had come. There was a large hospital built at Black Notley by the Americans 鈥� all in rows of single story Army Huts. A mile up the London Road towards Chelmsford there was another American Army Camp. Now when I walked to school with my brothers there was vomit and the smell of urine outside the pubs and then the publican often would be washing it away with a bucket of water and stiff broom. Seeing coloured people for the first time fascinated me. Then later seeing them in mid blue suits and swathed in bandages being helped by their comrades to walk to the town saddened me.

I can remember the convoys of army lorries with soldiers on board and then the tanks screeching and twisting as they lumbered along leaving track mask in some places in the road. When the convoy stopped, everyone went out with bottles of beer for the soldiers. When they moved off, I found in the gutter a little doll. I picked it up and washed it and called it William. It was made in Japan.

At first, when the bombing started, we would get up during the raid and sit on the cellar stairs communicating with the aid of an empty glass mile bottle with the neighbours in the adjoining house. As the raids intensified we slept in bunks in the clear, but after a while my brother got extremely ill and w went back to sleeping upstairs.

When a German plane come down in a field up the road. We all went to see it and my brothers collected some of the cockpits thick plastic window. With the aid of a hot poker they fashioned it into jewellery for me. The smell of the fumes was overpowering. 鈥淲hatever are you children doing?鈥� my mother said, and promptly opened all the windows.

Our Lloyds Bank on the corner of Coggeshall Road and Bank Street got a direct hit. A group of us stood forlornly round the crater. 鈥淲here has all our money gone?鈥� my brother asked anxiously. No one could answer that.

When peace was finally declared, I asked my Grandmother what peace was, and what would they talk about on the news. Her reply The Queen sneezed today!

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