大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Pat Mantell from Sidley UK Online Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs Jo Fagg with her permission.

My parents, my brother aged 7 and myself aged 13 were on a farm holiday in Devon the day the war broke out; I remember it was wonderful harvest weather and of course, to me, the whole thing was a bit of an adventure. It certainly prolonged the holiday as my father who worked in the Bank of England had to phone in each day to find out when to return to London as the bank were evacuating to a large estate in Hampshire. Eventually he left us to follow their instructions and mother, Michael and I returned to London where mother arranged for our house to be let and the three of us journeyed to Folkestone to where my school had been evacuated. This of course, was before Dunkirk when all the schools were whisked off to Wales. My memories of evacuation centre around the stable diet of mince and marrow 鈥� avoided to this day; and Sunday visits to the Less Cliff Hall for a concert. Mother would take my brother and I to tea in Fullers, their speciality was walnut cake with that special fondant icing that we loved. I can remember going for an evening walk with mother in the blackout, which was terrifying, with no street lights or car headlights, just a small beam torch.

After Christmas we had news that my father had found a cottage to rent in Andover, snow was thick on the ground and we couldn鈥檛 get out of Folkestone for a few days. In due course my intrepid mother got us back to London, the house emptied and the three of us transported on icy roads to Andover where we arrived at our wartime abode just ahead of the furniture lorry.

From then on life was fairly peaceful, the only bomb to fall demolished a local village pub where a family from London were having a rest for the weekend from the London Blitz. We had the odd stick of incendiaries, but the fire watchers soon coped with them with the bucket of sand and stirrup pump. Everyone was on alert for invasion and the plan was that church bells would be rung. One day mother and I were coming home and heard the dreaded bells. My brother had taken the wind up gramophone into the garden and was playing Ding Dong Bell. Other memories of the time were the terrible smell of chicken food being cooked and the green face of my father the first time he tried to kill the Christmas bird.

Time passed, I left school and joined father in the bank where I was deemed to be in a 鈥榬eserved鈥� occupation. In due course the Canadians and Americans populated the local area and we teenagers had plenty of fun and games 鈥� by some miracle I survived with my virginity although I suspect that mother and father must have suffered some sleepless nights. I was just over 18 when the Second Front started and my most vivid memory is returning from the cinema late in the evening of June 5th and overhead was the eerie sound of hundreds of gliders, a sight and sound I shall never forget and of course later one got to know of the appalling losses.

These wartime years were for a teenager a mixture of good times but great deprivation, rationing of food, clothing, no cars, television not yet available, but there was always the radio and one went to the cinema a lot. We all had bicycles and it was comparatively safe to wander the country side with one鈥檚 friends. Setbacks such as Arnhem, the Rhine crossing and the battle of the Ardennes one measured as a teenager in terms of boyfriends one lost, which, looking back was very distressing at the time but one got on with life. How different it would be today with the 鈥渂ox鈥� bringing it all into one鈥檚 front room. I鈥檓 glad I was a teenager and not an adult with husband and family in daily danger, but it did teach me the right values on life and death.

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