大象传媒

MEMORIES OF WORLD WAR II

MY FATHER Lesley Alfred Vinall Smith entered the Royal Air Force as an apprentice at RAF Halton in 1924, he served in Iraq and India in 1928 until 1934. In 1938 he was posted, as an Instructor, to the Air Armaments School at RAF Manby, Lincolnshire. My mother, baby sister Sylvia and I joined him there; we were billeted in Manby Hall Farm (now demolished) there was a pond by the gate into which I fell one day. This was not a happy time as the housekeeper there did not want an RAF family foisted on her, she was pretty awkward at times restricting my mother鈥檚 access to the kitchen for instance. The room we lived in had a large table covered by a chenille cloth and was lit by an oil lamp. There was also what seemed to me to be a huge white dairy, I was upset one day by seeing rabbits hanging upside down from large hooks in the ceiling, they were dripping blood into a large enamel bowl. As I recall the farmer was a nice man. There must have been a very hard winter around that time for I have very clear memories of playing a riotous game of snowballs with my Daddy and him laughing as we tumbled in the snow, I also remember that he had a crown on the sleeve of his uniform. In due course we were given married quarters on the Station itself. Around this time my father was posted to Iceland working with Coastal Command.
In 1941 my father was serving in the Middle East where he stayed for the duration of the war. That same year my brother Leslie was born in the Cottage Hospital, Louth, my mother told of giving birth to her son as glass shattered all around her during an air raid. My mother was eternally grateful to George Hood, who home on leave from the Royal Navy, spent time with her while visiting his wife Evelyn otherwise she would not have had a visitor. Sylvia and I were looked after by two teachers, I think Miss Curtis and Miss Jamieson who lived in Louth, while mum was in hospital. At the time I was a pupil in the preparatory department of King Edward VI Grammar School for Girls; the uniform sticks in my mind as a big navy velour hat, a gym slip and wrinkled black stockings (Nora Batty eat your heart out) . . . these stockings were held up by long suspenders buttoned on to a liberty bodice and I was only six years old! I remember being taken to the NAAFI on the camp, in a building opposite Manby Church, and crying when they put my new baby brother into a gas mask.
At sometime families were moved from the camp for reasons of safety and security. My mother Lydia, known as Diddy, found us alternative accommodation in the nearby village of Grimoldby. I think that we were nearer the runways in our new home than we had been in married quarters! Our house was on the flight path of aircraft coming in to Manby. Manby was not an operations station but I certainly remember Lancaster bombers coming in, perhaps for repair, and to this day the sight and sound of the Lancaster in the Memorial Flight makes my feet go funny! I remember one with flames coming from it being so low that it seemed to be going to take our roof off, you could see the crew. I believe my fear of flying stems from what I saw and heard during our time in Lincolnshire, which was known as the Bomber County.
I remember going to see film shows in a hanger and the bedlam that ensued when the film broke down and young airmen started catcalling and whistling. We also used to sing songs like 鈥淩un Rabbit Run鈥�, etc.
One day my grandfather CPO John Stephenson Royal Navy, who was on leave from service on DEMS during the Atlantic convoys, marched us and several of our playmates passed the guardroom of RAF Manby. There must have been a pretty rowdy exchange between the RAF and the Royal Navy as I can remember it clearly sixty-five years later.
Granny, Lydia Stephenson, used to come to visit us from her home in Walthamstow in East London, sometimes bringing her sister Grace Vale. On one dark night on their way home from a local whist drive Mum and Aunt Grace fell down the dyke at the end of our road; Aunt Grace鈥檚 efforts to scramble out of the dyke were pushing my mother further down. Granddad couldn鈥檛 see them but could hear the altercation and observed: 鈥渨here are you, you silly buggers鈥�? The hilarity when they got home woke us children.
Occasionally we were brought down to Walthamstow to visit Granny in Folkestone Road, We had to go into the cellar when the siren sounded, my four-year-old sister complained bitterly and hoped 鈥渢hat Hitler dropped his dinner out of the aeroplane鈥�. Next day Sylvia went to pat a dog it bit her just missing her eye and nearly splitting her lip in two, she bears the scars to this day! The owner of this dog insisted that it was suffering the effects of the previous night鈥檚 raid. I can remember mum crying when she read in the Daily Mirror of many children dying in a London school during an air raid; I have recollections of seeing a picture of coffins in the paper. As children we read Arthur Mee鈥檚 Children鈥檚 Newspaper.
So many memories of people long gone, Mrs. Tonks, a large lady who ran the village shop; Rene Drew who had long golden hair; Granny and Granddad Blackie who kept an eye on our young family while our father was away; Doctor Brown with the gruff voice; the Reverend Reeves in his biretta and black cassock who frightened me鈥擬rs. Atkinson who I remember as elderly she probably wasn鈥檛. The dreadful day when my baby brother lost the tops of three fingers when he put them under the chain of a bicycle that was up on a stand, nowadays they might well have a stab at sewing them back on. My mother鈥檚 anger when I came home one day, after falling from my bicycle, sporting an American field dressing she had no time for Yanks as she called them because of their late entry into conflicts . . . of course she knew that it was a case of 鈥渂etter late than never.鈥� My mother playing the organ in Manby Church having to wake the elderly man to pump the organ, after he fell asleep during the sermon, so that the service could continue. Long golden days playing in the stooks in the cornfield at the bottom of our garden. My mother having to spend hours letting the fluid out of large blisters on my legs every summer, quite a painful process for me as a little girl though I was lucky that I had the form of Ambulosa that I did as one of the others can be a killer, I grew out of it when I was fifteen.
I remember opening the door to my father, by this time a Flight Lieutenant, when he came home after the war and, although we had kissed his picture 鈥淕oodnight鈥� every evening at bedtime while he was away, calling out to my mother: 鈥淢ummy there鈥檚 a man at the door.鈥� Was he hurt? I hope not because we loved him so, he was a kind gentle man whose trade as a Fitter Armourer seemed to be at odds with his character. I often wonder how women left on their own coped, as my mother did, while their men folk were away, my heart goes out to those whose daddy didn鈥檛 come home. We were lucky!

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