大象传媒

I was born in May, 1939 when preparations for war meant my mother was provided with a respirator designed for a baby.The baby had to be put totally inside and an adult operated a pump which let in filtered air. My mother said she tried it once but I screamed my head off so she was relieved when I grew larger and it had to be exchanged for mask suitable for a young child. We called these "Mickey Mouse" masks and I was pleased to have one different from my elder sister - I felt special! When I was about 2 years old Mickey was deemed too small and the official letter arrived to say that it had to be exchanged for a child's standard, I had my photo taken holding the toddler mask, standing in front of the Andersen shelter which my father erected in the garden. I look sulky - I was not happy.
I have an elder sister and I remember waving her off to school and my mother warning her not to pick up any bits of shrapnel. Many of the boys (including my husband)had trouser pockets weighed down with the metal as the more unusual the shape the better to "swop", but among the debris was the odd,unexploded item and so it was dangerous.
My father joined the Bristol Fire Brigade in 1930 and he and his trained colleagues were worked hard on the Home Front. We lived in Bristol which suffered about 70 raids and when the sirens went off he had to return to duty. He could also never finish a shift until the fires were out and my mother never knew when he would be home. She became friends with a neighbour with a daughter whose husband was a policeman. They had much in common and we often bedded down for the night in either the Vincent's shelter or our own so we were company for each other without our menfolk. I cannot remember my father ever being in the shelter. Men had to be drafted into the Auxilliary Fire Service to help fight the bomb fires and these were mostly married, family men who lived locally to the Stations which were set up in Church Halls etc. or, in our case, a large house. My father went on a training course and was promoted until he was responsible for 100 men and women in two Stations. He came back from fighting a fire in one particular raid to see his own addresson the incident board. A bomb had landed on our roof but luckily it was only an incendiary and proved to be a "dud" and only did slight damage. But at the time my grandmother was staying with us as she had been bombed, too, so my father could have lost his mother, wife and two small children in one raid. My mother had popped our of the shelter to make her M.-in-law a cuppa and found the house full of ARP neighbours and the fire hoses trailing up her "new staircarpet". The fire was put out and the roof made secure but P.C,Vincent checked around later and put his foot through the ceiling. We had a hole in the small bedroom for years - no materials were available to replaster. The gaping hole frightened me as did the raids - When they became less frequent and we could go to sleep in our beds I remember being wakened up by my mother and seeing the searchlights beaming through the curtains and the sound of the bombers overhead.
Everyone knows we knew the different sounds of the plane engines - listening up the chimney magnified them. War to me was terror - I shall never forget being frightened. But we learned to sleep through most of the noise - amazing!
One neighbour was Mr.Reg Dando and his rather grand shed served as ARP centre for the cul-de-sac. He had the stirrup pump and bucket and a camp bed - all very exciting stuff for us kids! We used to peep through a crack in the door. Reg. was a batchelor who, with his Mum, lived with this widowed sister and her daughter. He worked for the "Evening Post" and the newspaper received a gift of Red Cross parcels from the children of America to the children of Bristol. Naturally a hundred parcels would not go very far so the employees of the paper were given two tickets per family. Reg had his neice, Doreen, and she chose my sister, Margaret, to be the other lucky recipient. They went by invitation to the paper and were each given a cardboard box decorated with a red cross. When all the children had a box there were two left and my sister (much to my mother's later chagrin) asked that, if they were spare, please could she take one home to her little sister. So I also had a parcel. Each one contained a small board game, bag of marbles, sweets and chocolate and a pair of plastic sandals which had to be kept for years until they fitted. I still have the marbles which were so beautiful that we were not allowed to play in the gutter with the boys in case we lost!
One weekend at the height of the bombing my mother and her friend decided to have a weekend in the Cotswolds to have a break. We went by bus and unfortunately chose the worst time to go as it was the time of the big raid on Coventry and all night the heavy bombers flew low overhead on the journey to and from that city. We all got into the big double,feather bed and huddled together for comfort. The large brass bednobs shook with the continual vibration! The next day we went home as Mrs. V. vowed she'd rather die in her own bed at home.
I started school and took part in a practice air raid trip to the shelter. This was a horrid place which seemed to me to be a long way away - too far to go in a real raid. Shelters always had their own smell of damp and concrete and musty/dirty dankness. This school shelter had a strong smell of cats urine - at least we were spared this at home.
At last the war was deemed to be coming to an end and D Day would surely bring home the local fathers, altho' not the Dad who had died in Burma. Mrs. Garmston came door-to-door collecting money for the wonderful party we would have in the street. The amounts were written down in a book and as the troops bogged down in Europe the few pennies were cut down - for us children the promised party seemd very far away. But it all happened in May - the flags and the table went up and it was really rather a cold day to sit out and eat jelly at trestle tables! The boys grabbed all the best cakes but the party fare was limited by wartime rations. No fireworks were availabe but we had a big bonfire and burnt stuffed figures supposedly Hitler et al and we stayed up very late.My parents scraped the paper off the front hall windows and the blackout curtains came down, but no sweets appeared in the shops. Mars bars were best because they could be most easily cut into four slices. When the American soldiers had been billeted in a nearly factory we begged for chewing gum and a single strip of Wriggleys could also be cut into four... it was years before I found out that they came in packs and not just strips. The "big" children put me in the front of the crowd when we went to bother the"Yanks" as I was smaller and might be more appealing. After all, when we went to the Cotswolds for our disastrous "break" I sang !I got sixpence" on the doorstep and passing soldiers gave me a whole sixpence to myself!
My sister and I were grateful we were not sent away as evacuees, which we could have been, and in fact my parents had two sisters to stay with us. Their father was a fireman from Croydon and when Bristol seemed to have been spared any raids the firemen there were asked to accomodate their colleagues' children. As an officer my father felt he had to set an example and anyway it was a good thing to do. My mother said she would take two girls to fit in with her own but she ended up with teenagers! The eldest was 15 and actually worked in a local grocery shop but the youngest, only 13, went to school. She was quiet but her sister a glamorous youngster who would have loved a good time and resented the heavy discipline my father wanted to impose. They stayed about a year and my mother was relieved to sent them back "intact" and resumed normal life, such as we could. We have lost touch with the family.
After the VE Day party came the August of the big bombs and the VJ Day party. I enjoyed this much more as it was warmer weather and we dressed up for it. I had joined Mrs, Holden's "Brislington School of Dance", held in local halls and her husband's wireless shop (in the next road). I wore my Irish Jig costume and just as it was getting a bit dark Mrs. Holden appeared and asked me to come and do the dance for her. Without telling my mother I went off and, with her on the piano, found myself dancing in front of a huge crowd. They had pulled the piano out in front of the shop and Mrs. H. rounded up all the local pupils she could find for a concert. My mother was frantically searching for me when she heard my name announced over the loudspeakers. We had a photo taken and I will include it at the end of this article (which is much longer than I'd intended).
The war was over - we had been bombed, taken in London refugees and also members of our family who had also been bombed. We had managed the shortages of rationing thanks to the veg. we had grown and the odd rabbit brought in from my Grandfather's trips to Somerset as a train Guard.We had also kept chickens for a while.
My father's health suffered from all the difficulties and responsibilities of his job and seeing fellow firemen die on duty from shrapnel and even freezing to death. He could no longer hold such a high rank and died at the early age of 47. We were very lucky as a family and the soldiers came back from abroad and we all picked the pieces of the new peacetime life.