大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site at Fawside, a community and environmental charity based in Allendale. It was written on behalf of Mrs Dodd-Noble and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Dodd-Noble fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

On 3rd September 1939, I was one of a group of people (twelve children, ranging from babies to 11 years old and 12 adults) on holiday in Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland when war was declared.

Some of the older children were nervous and the adults were anxious and heavy hearted.

One family rapidly returned to Oxford and two fathers to Newcastle to plan evacuation for their families. The rest of us stayed in the castle and some of us went to school locally.

Meantime huge concrete blocks were built along the beaches to impede any German landings by tanks. Later the local coastguard feared German ships were appearing on the skyline, mistakenly in fact, but we all piled into cars with our few possessions and returned to Newcastle, then on to the Mortal Man Hotel, near Windermere in the Lake District, the first stage of our evacuation.

There were 8 children in the hotel, 2 babies and the rest ranged up to eleven, and all eight got Chicken Pox, one after the other! A nightmare for the adults and the hotelier!
After a while, a large house became available for us at Cark-in-Cartmel, Lancashire. It had a large garden with fresh vegetables available. For us children, it was a haven but, for the mothers, and especially the grandmother, it was a struggle.

The men had been called up 鈥� fathers and uncles, and all but the elderly from the village.

Several of us school-aged children bicycled and bussed to a school in Grange-over-Sands. Uncles, aunts and friends came to Cark to rest from the war and the bombing in London.
The German planes flew over us at night to bomb Barrow-in-Furness where aircraft carriers were built and, on a return flight one night, dropped a spare bomb near our village - our only immediate experience of war.

Rationing during the war was difficult for the adults, but local people gave us fresh eggs occasionally, which was a treat, otherwise they were the dried variety, which made unappetising scrambled eggs.
We were all slim and fit but never hungry: in the autumn, we would have family 鈥榖lackberrying鈥� outings on our bicycles and, for a treat, we would cycle to Windermere and row on the lake. All a far cry from the raging war, but our grandmother and mothers were worrying about sons, husbands and brothers so, every night at 9pm, we had to be quiet when the 大象传媒 gave the news.

I remember D-Day, 5th June 1944 most vividly, when our much-loved uncle was shot through the spine on Sword Beach in France.
My grandmother received the following telegram, dated 11th June 1944:
鈥淵our son Major Gill admitted to this hospital suffering from wounds caused by enemy action and placed on the dangerous case list.鈥�
She was shattered and went off to be near his hospital. We children were all subdued.

My cousin and I went to a boarding school, evacuated from Eastbourne, and housed in the old Ferry Hotel, on the shore of Lake Windermere.
During our time there, Rudolph Hess, the German Nazi leader, made a secret flight to Scotland in 1941, to negotiate peace, and we heard that he had passed near us in the Lake District on his way to prison in the UK.

We were still at school at the Ferry Hotel when the war in Europe was won and VE Day was celebrated.
Eventually, as a family we returned to Northumberland but, by then, my father had died and my mother, my grandmother and my wounded uncle lived together, he in constant pain, which was to be the cause of his death some years later.