大象传媒

Last year I sat down and decided to put pen to paper and record my memories of the Second World War. When the war started I was only six years old, and my first recollection was sitting in the living room of our end of terrace house in Croydon and hearing the famous speech by Mr Chamberlain.
My next recollection was being sent away to stay with my aunt and uncle in stone in Oxney near Tenterden Kent, my uncle Ralph was the vicar and we lived in the very imposing vicarage sitting on the hill opposite the church on the outskirts of the village. the family them consisted of aunt Millie, uncle Ralph and cousin Helen who was about the same age as me, plus two Scotties. I remember helping my aunt polish the brasses in the church and dusting the pews but it seem extraordinary to me I cannot ever remember attending a church service. My uncle took me to the little c of e church school close to the vicarage. I remember watching the road members repairing the foot path and I ran down the path and fell over and remember looking down at the big hole in my knee and looking around on the floor for the piece that had fell out of my knee I still carry that scar today. I also remember a Christmas at the vicarage. I was taken on a trip into a town and was taken to see Santa Claus I cannot remember meeting him but I remember sitting in the back of my uncle's car and my aunt was saying 鈥渙h! go on let him open his present" I was clutching a pretty wrapped parcel and when uncle Ralph said "yes" it turned out to be a small box of paints those little square paints that you had to put water on them to get the colours. It was after lunch on Christmas day that aunty and uncle took us down the large hallway to the lounge at the rear of the house, throwing open the door we were greeted with a large decorated Christmas tree sitting in the French windows and the room beautifully decorated throughout. That Christmas brought back another memory, we were taken to the village hall to see the local pantomime I think it was "snow white and the seven dwarfs".
I remember our walks around the countryside and the Scotties chased the rabbits along a high escarpment that uncle said that the sea used to come right up to there in olden times.
the only other memory that comes to mind was on one Saturday uncle Ralph took me to the large outhouse at the vicarage and upstairs was the most fantastic clockwork train layout and we had the most wonderful afternoon, I remember I had difficulty in winding up the trains.
I came home just before the blitz started.
The blitz started before I went away, I remember watching the German planes bombing Croydon airport, and my mother grabbed me and took me indoors. We did not have an Anderson shelter at the beginning and we shared next doors. We all had to sit in chairs around the sides. We were kids then and the war seemed to be a great adventure, we swapped pieces of shrapnel. We used to walk through the cemetery on the way to school looking for shrapnel and the fins of the incendiary bombs, which came down among the gravestones.

The second time I was evacuated was at the start of the blitz, this time it was to a little village called Eltisley, between St. Neots and Cambridge in Cambridgeshire. One of our group had measles so we were kept in a hospital, so I was late getting to my billet. I was put with a couple who was old in my eyes the old man had a wooden leg they had a son that worked on the land and they had a farm hand lodging there as well, he had the job of fetching the drinking water from the village pump every evening carrying two buckets of water on a yoke across the neck and the buckets were suspended on chains, on bath night the water was collected from the village pond. Every Friday night the people went to the woman鈥檚 institute to collect extra rations this was given to people who worked on the land during the war, I used to be given the crust and jelly off a large pork pie that was among the extra rations.
There was one time that a big convoy of British troops came through the village and it must have been a long convoy because every night they pulled up on the grass verges out side our houses and we talked to the men on a tank.
I also remember the night the Germans bombed Caxton gibbet air field the sky lit up. I remember the church bells ringing to celebrate the desert victory at El Allemande.
I remember the hard winters we had in the war when we couldn't get to school for at least a week at one time. I used to like the long summer nights we used to enjoy when we went pea-picking, bean picking and potato lifting I used to go along with my aunt to help as they were paid by the weight or sack full they picked. She also sent me to the fields when they were reaping the corn with the old type reaper and binders and we followed behind stacking the stooks six at a time to dry in the sun. When the stooks were collected and taken to the rick in the corner of the field we were sent out gleening that is to collect all the ears of corn laying on the ground this we took home to feed the poultry that were kept to supplement the rations. us youngsters always liked to go to the fields where they were thrashing a rick they had a big traction engine driving the thrashing machine and we collected a big stick and tried to hit the rats and mice as they run from the rick as the sheaves were thrown on the top of the machine, when a sheaf was lifted the mice scattered in all directions and we had great fun trying to catch them and beating the dogs to them.
I was glad in some respects when the blitz subsided and my mother came to take me home my other aunt came with my mother to pick me up and we missed the bus to St. Nets to catch the train. so we started to walk and a passing motorist stopped and gave us a lift, I remember my aunt trying to give the man a pound note for his trouble but he refused, I always had the impression that my aunt Jemima was very wealthy, well she had more money than my mother as she brought both my sister and I up on her own as my father died when I was very young.

when Hitler decided to throw the doodle bugs and v2 rockets at us I was home and remember the doodle bug fell in our road we had just got into the Anderson shelter in the garden when it dropped and the blast blew my mother down on top of us in the shelter we were all so frightened that we never left the shelter until it was light, and what a scene of devastation greeted us, there was no windows left in our house even the whole window frame from the lounge was laying across the dining table. outside the other side of the street had completely disappeared all that was left was great piles of rubble stretching from one side of the street to the other, one thing I remember which was most poignant standing up in all that devastation was a solitary telegraph pole and hanging on the top was a feather pillow, I stood there and wondered how it got up there and stayed in one piece in all that devastation.
I was then bundled off to Shirley near Birmingham were I stayed for around for a few months I spent v/e day there but was home for the v/j day celebrations (v/e; victory in Europe day.) (v/j; victory in Japan day),I stayed with a middle aged couple who had two children in a nice semi detached house which was built just before the outbreak of war as the street was in various states of building.
I remember I did a paper round and used to buy national saving stamps every week I was lucky this time as a lot of my friends from Croydon were evacuated to the same area and we spent many a happy times together and it was at this time that I had my first serious association with the other sex i.e. girls!! Well I learnt a lot during that period as we had to find out things for ourselves in those days. we used to visit the local parks were there was a big lake also we found a lot of exciting places to play our war games behind the main Solihull Stratford road was a large wood yard where they stored big wooden crates and we used to make camps in them and had secret societies, there was a large wood close by and was a good hunting ground for conkers. I remember the day that Churchill announced the end of the war and we had a holiday from school and there was a sort of celebration in the street a man played an accordion and another man brought out a large rocket that he said he had saved all through the war for this day, well we all stood back as he lit it there was a phut! And spluttered and nothing happened we all had a good laugh over that. I cannot say really how I felt that day when we got on the coach to return to London I wanted to see my mum so much but I did not want to leave the friends I had made also my first childhood sweetheart.
So it was on a coach and train then a coach to Tavistock School Croydon and waited for my mum to come and picked me up and took me home.
So every thing started to get back to normal as best it could with all the restrictions still on for it took the country some years to get back so some sort of normality.

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