大象传媒

I remember the big house across the way; it belonged to Captain Hibbert, and his wife came to our house to fit us out with gas masks. I don't know what year it was; I was born in 1938 so I was quite young. Mum and Dad had full-size ones, and this woman wanted to give me one that looked like Mickey Mouse, but I didn't want that - I wanted one like mum and dad's.

I had my way! I don't know if they left the children's gas mask for me, but I don't remember seeing it afterwards.

My brother remembers standing outside our farm when he was about 17, watching a plane flying around, and it dropped two bombs on Puddlestone Court. It's now owned by a hotelier, but then it was a military hospital, I think. He remembers that the dirt flying up in the air when the bombs dropped was frightening. We didn't have many bombs, and I don't remember them.

We had one German PoW working on the farm, Fritz; he had worked in the Post Office before the war. My sisters fancied him! He used to send them Christmas cards after the war, and they had beautiful writing on. He came over here about 10 years ago, but unfortunately I didn't see him. I remember he told me about skis, when we had snow, and when he had told me about them I made some, but they were much too short. I can see him now, sitting on the settee, with one of our workmen, and I asked him how many soldiers he had killed. My mum said "You shouldn't ask him that!" He was very polite, and just passed it off; he was a very nice man.

And the first time I smelled coffee was when we had Italian PoWs. They were all sat in the field, brewing up this coffee. They kept the ground coffee in little round tins. It's funny how you remember things like that. We had two Italians; one of them, Julio, lived in our farmhouse. When he left, he left a bundle of clothes, which my dad was supposed to send on, but he never sent us the address. I don't know how we would have sent it to Italy, anyway.

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