大象传媒

I was born in June 1937, so my memories of the war were very much those of a young child. At the time war broke out we were living in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham. Until 1942 when my younger sister was born, there was only me, the eldest child and my elder sister who was born in 1939. My father was an accountant at a company that made, among other things, rivets, so although he tried to join up, he was not allowed to. He did however, join the Home Guard. At times it must have been hard for him because he had to do a day鈥檚 work, then if there was an air raid at night, he had to go out and patrol the neighbourhood.
There were one or two events which stick out in my memory very vividly. One was my parents listening avidly to the radio to hear the news. I think that must have been around the time of the Battle of Britain and it was clear to me, even as a young child, that they were very worried.
I remember some of the air raids well. Our shelter was a construction of metal arches which my dad constructed in the dining room. Before we had that we had huddled into the downstairs lavatory which was half under the stairs. In the shelter we had hammocks and I can clearly remember being woken by my parents to go down into the shelter. For a young lad it was all rather exciting. One could hear the planes overhead and the whistle of a bomb falling followed by an explosion. The nearest to our house was about 400 meters away and sounded very close at the time. It totally demolished a house, which to my knowledge, has never to this day, been rebuilt. In the morning, after air raids, we would go out searching for strips of paper which was black on one side and silver on the other. We also used to hunt for shrapnel. The paper was dropped to confuse German radar, I believe.
I 1941 I think, I can鈥檛 remember exactly, my mother and us two children moved up to Blackburn to stay with an aunt and uncle to get away from the bombing. My dad had to remain in Sutton Coldfield to work. Soon after we arrived, we heard planes overhead, which I insisted were German. The grown-ups told me I was talking rubbish as no German planes had been over Lancashire. However, next day, the papers gave the news of the bombing of Liverpool, so I must have been right.
I remember my dad鈥檚 car, a 1935 Austin Six, being laid up for the war. My dad had to use a small motor bike to get to work and to occasionally take us to school on.
We had, for a while, a German Jewish refugee and her young daughter living with us. She used to help my mother. For some reason my sister named her 鈥淲oggie鈥� and that was how she was always affectionately known by us. She had managed to get out of Germany in about 1938 but her husband was left behind and during the war she got news that he had died in a Concentration Camp. The poor woman committed suicide about a year after leaving us. She always said that her time with us was her happiest in England. I wish I knew what happened to her daughter, Eileen.
Another very vivid memory later in the war, probably in about 1945 when we had moved to Edinburgh, was when my mother told me that the Extermination Camps had been found and that thousands of Jews had been killed in them. I must have been only 7 or 8 at the time, but the horror of hearing that news has never left me. I know where I was and exactly what I was doing when my mother told me.
My parents used to visit miners in the coal pits to help morale. I am not sure how a visit from my parents really helped, but it was something they used to do with others from a Christian group called Morale Re-Armament. They used to go to a lot of MRA meetings in Birmingham at the weekends and we as children were dragged along in the train too.
My war years as a child were very happy times. The family was close and despite the scarcity of food luxuries, we never seemed to go hungry or lack anything. I remember great excitement once when bananas became available for a short while. We used to eat half and save the other half for another time.
I had an uncle in the Navy and one summer when we were staying with my grandparents who lived in Formby, near Liverpool, he came home on leave. He brought home a whole branch of bananas from somewhere he had visited. He also brought packets of Butterscotch. Both were a great luxury. While he was home, he took me to Liverpool docks to see aircraft from America being unloaded from a cargo ship. I think his naval ship had come in after escort duty with a convoy. While he was home, his son, Ben, my cousin, and our families went down to Formby beach. Ben and I found a small bomb on the sand. We tied seaweed around its fin and dragged it back to the family. My uncle immediately saw the danger, told us to leave it and moved us all away. He then called the police or some other powers that be, who came down and detonated the bomb. We were lucky it didn鈥檛 explode as we dragged it over the sand.
Those are my main childhood memories of the war. For me they were exciting and happy times, because after all, I really did not know what peace was like.

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