大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Judy Kirsch, a volunteer from 大象传媒 London CSV on behalf of Peter Walker and has been addedto the site with his permission.He fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

.I was three years old. It was a bright, sunny Sunday, on 3rd September 1939, not a cloud in the sky where I lived in Denton Northamtonshire. It was the day war broke out.
We didn鈥檛 have a wireless set and about 12 o鈥檆lock my father had gone to the pub for a pint when the next door neighbour came in . It was Mrs Percival ,who had a wireless set, and she told my mother that we were at war with Germany. A few minutes later there was an alert and at that moment my father came home from the pub. We went into the field adjoining the house to look for German planes, but there were none. This is my first memory of the war.

Some weeks later, we were told that the evacuees were coming, and my mother and I went to the village green to wait to greet them. Double decker buses came ( I think there were 6) and brought the evacuees who were taken into the village school. There they were allocated to homes and we had a mother and two children. They stayed with us for about 3 months and because the bombing had not started, they went home. Later when the bombing started in earnest we had a girl, older than me, probably aged 7, from Walthamstow. Her name was Rosie Morad. Rosie stayed with us for 2 years. During a lull in the bombing her mother fetched her back. Our house was full of tears,I remember, because Mother had got attached to her. I missed her. We used to play bombing.I used to sit under the table and she banged on it. Those were the bombs! I was sad to lose my playmate. Later in the war when the V1s started we had another evacuee called Bernice Windsor. I don鈥檛 remember her as well as I remember Rosie. She was older than me and didn鈥檛 stay as long.
One of my clearest memories: it was Bank holiday Monday 1942. We had walked to the next village Yardley Hastings, about 2 miles away, to see my grandmother. My father鈥檚 oldest brother Uncle Jim was with my mother and me My father was the youngest of 11 children.

It was a grey, overcast day, and at about 3.30 in the afternoon we had
started on our return journey and were between Yardley Hastings and Denton. The alert had gone but there was no sign of planes and so we continued to walk. Suddenly,from the cloud,came a German plane, followed immediately by a Spitfire. My mother immediately pushed me face down into the ditch and jumped on top ot me. Uncle Jim jumped in too. The ditch was dry but full of stinging nettles. I now know that the German plane had dropped a string of bombs in Wellingborough killing 10 people. However, the spitfire brought the Heinkal down in Finedon These details I recently found recorded on a memorial in the centre of Wellingborough, erected by the local history society.

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