The Gold Watch

By Lucy Purvey

It was fortunate that Lilly was in the kitchen when the bomb went off. All the bay windows at the front of the three storey Victorian house imploded resulting in airborne razor like shards of glass.

There is a slow motion moment after such a catastrophic event when all the senses are overwhelmed. It was only later that Lilly recalled the smell of burning, the dust on her skin, the darkness, the fear that she had been blinded and the strange eerie silence of a world without electricity.

  

Dougal, the dog, was eventually found, shivering uncontrollably. He had squashed himself into an unimaginably tiny space under the stairs. Neighbors, friends, relatives cleared the debris. The windows were boarded up and the glaziers arrived the following day to take measurements.

Like the windows, Lilly found that her thoughts were splintered. In terms of people versus possessions, the importance of family and friendship strode out way ahead. But having faced her own mortality she now knew she wanted to leave something behind. She glimpsed the future where a little girl proudly announced, 'This used to belong to my great grandmother'.

She thought about the gold watch in the jeweller's window. And when her mind was made up, she went to the attic, took the precious savings for a rainy day and bought the watch. The note to her astonished but delighted daughter on Christmas Day read.

'Let this be a token of my love for you. Let it celebrate life. Keep it in the family, a reminder to all who own it that there are few things in life greater than a mother's love'.

Me and my parents

Author's Note:
I was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, a country divided by politics and religion. I left in 1970 when extremists on both sides of the politico-religious divide had become active. Small businesses  were  considered a legitimate target by one of the paramilitary groups. One such business had its administrative headquarters on the street where my parents lived. My mother who was then in her 60's was alone in the house when the bomb went off. This incident took place in Belfast in the 1970's.


Lucy Purvey lives in Cambourne, Cambridge, UK

The Bourn Connection

By Judy Opitz

Me in WAAF, 1944

During World War Two I served in the WAAFs[1] from 1942 to 1946 as a motor transport driver.  After demob and enjoying a variety of jobs for a couple of years, I migrated to Australia in 1958 as a Ten Pound Pom[2].   I worked my way round the capital cities until on a holiday from my job in Melbourne I joined a safari in the Northern Territory where I met a crocodile hunter.  I married him and together we set up a non-safari style tourist venture in the region.  Ten years later, in 1974, I took time off to fly back to England to catch up with English relatives.  I stayed with my sister and brother-in-law in Cambridge and they lent me their car to go wartime memory hunting.

 I couldn’t wait to drive to RAF Bourn to see once again the aerodrome where I had been stationed in 1944 as driver attached to 105 Pathfinder Squadron.  My job was mainly taking the Mosquito[3] aircrew to and from the various dispersal points when they were on ops or test flights.  There was very little left of the airfield I knew.  I stood on the site of the Squadron Flight Offices, which were now no more than a crumbling block of concrete, and imagined hearing again the scrabbling of bicycles against the outer walls as the air crews reported for briefing.  I could almost hear the AFN[4] radio playing Glen Miller’s signature tune Moonlight Serenade which usually coincided with evening briefing time, and the shuffling of the crews in their thick, lambs-wool-lined flying boots as they went up and down the passageway past our drivers’ rest room.  I recalled sitting in our vehicles, sometimes on freezing winter nights, waiting for the first faint sound of the returning aircraft, so that we could dash to dispersal to pick up the crews when they returned – if they returned.

I drove down to the old WAAF quarters but they had almost vanished under a ploughed field.  However, I found the wrecked Sergeant’s Mess and scrunched over broken glass, old teacups, and caved in walls, trying to imagine it as it had once been.  Another car drew up beside mine where I’d parked it on the roadway that used to run through the middle of the aerodrome.  A young man got out and approached me with a brochure of some sort in his hands.  “Hello,” he smiled, “are you a farmer, too, and interested in this land?  It’s not a bad piece but one would have to clear all those awful old buildings out of the way first.”  Blankly I mumbled “No, er, I’m just sort of looking, trying to remember a few things.”  “Oh, you looked like you might be thinking of buying.” “No,” I explained, “it’s just that I’ve come over from Australia on holiday and I’m catching up on a few old memories.  I was a WAAF stationed here in the last war.”  “Oh, that,” he said, dismissing the war as completely inconsequential.  “Well, give my love to Down Under and all that”, and he got in his car and drove off with a friendly wave.  I was stunned.  How could anyone treat this land which had seen so much sorrow in such a cavalier fashion?

RAF Bourne, 2014

I got back into the car and sat there a moment as memories came flooding in.  I thought of the Australian aircrew I had known, one of them the crack Queensland pilot, Bill Blessing, who was killed in ML964 over Caen.  And I remembered dancing with English pilot George Whiffen at a NAAFI[5] dance the night he joined the Squadron.  He could talk of nothing but his new wife called Doreen.  Sadly he went out on his first raid a few nights later in ML913 and never came back. 

I thought of Pat Enderby in MM134 swinging on take-off after losing an engine one day on a test flight, and crashing into a barn next to the WAAF quarters.  I happened to be nearby and joined a group of WAAFs desperately trying to make a chain and pass buckets of water from the Ablutions Block to douse the fire.  An ambulance and fire engine were quickly on the scene but it was all too late to save Pat.  And I thought of Alec Lickley, and his navigator, Johnnie Cameron, who one night after a raid on enemy territory, got badly shot up and only just managed to get back across the English coast.   Their Mosquito, ML987, ended up in pieces in an orchard but miraculously they lived to fight another day.   By the time I left the airfield I was quite ragged with grief after bringing back to mind not only those I have just mentioned, but so many more names and the crashes and the death toll.  

I didn’t see the airfield again until some 40 years later when I left tropical Australia to retire in a somewhat cooler England.  I now live in Cambourne, a new town built close by the old RAF Bourn.  What is left of the airfield is now used by the Rural Flying Club and I often see and hear their single-engine aircraft fly overhead on a training flight.  The sound brings back memories of those gallant men who once flew there and gave their lives.  I salute them.  May they never be forgotten!

Judy Opitz lives in Cambourne, Cambridge, UK

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[1] Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was formed in 1939 when another world war became imminent.

[2] Ten Pound Poms referred to a scheme for migration to Australia after World War II. “Pom” meant British people.

[3] British long range fighter-bomber

[4] American Forces Network

[5] Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes

Babcia

By Lucyna Jachacy

We, a family of four have been living in Adelaide for the last six months where we relocated from Cambourne in Cambridge. It had been our home for the past 10 years. We are Polish, born in the Silesia region.[1]

I would like to share a story that my grandmother told me on many occasions. However, when I started writing this story down, I realized that there were so many facts missing and I wished she was still with us so that I could ask her more.

My Grandmother

My grandmother was born in 1925 in a small village in the south west of Poland, the seventh child of the family.

When World War II broke in 1939, she started to work as a maid for a very wealthy German family living in the area. At that time, the village was on the Polish-German border and most of the mines were owned and run by German engineers. She never mentioned how she was treated by them or if she liked them or not. That is something I wish I could ask her now…

In January 1945, following the victory of the allies, when the Russian army started taking over cities in the Silesia region and forcing the Germans to retreat from their positions, the German families had to leave their homes and workplaces and relocate to Germany. That was the reason why the family my grandmother was working for, decided to flee and resettle in a small town in the north-west of Germany. 

My grandmother agreed to join them and in 1945, she took a train with the others to continue to work as a maid for that family but this time in their country.

After a short time, she had to leave their home as she was no longer needed. I believe that the family simply could not afford her living with them even though they were not paying her any money.

My grandmother stayed and worked as a maid in the house of a local priest. In 1947, she received her first letter from her mother sent through the Red Cross. The letter said that my grandmother was greatly missed back home. Her mother asked to come back with the help of the Red Cross.

For her way back, she was given some money by the priest. Unfortunately at the border, she had no choice but to give the money away to the soldiers who searched her. She returned to her family absolutely empty handed. Her return was quite a surprise to everybody and she quickly realised that there was no place for her in the house, as during her absence, one of her sisters had got married and had a baby; so the new family took my grandmother's space including her bed.

To make her a place to sleep, her mum filled one of the sacks used for grain with straw and covered it with a piece of cloth. My grandmother remembered it as the most uncomfortable bed she had ever slept on. The situation did not get any easier. The family experienced poverty caused by lack of work.

Finally she found work in the local brickyard and was able to help her family.

As I mentioned at the beginning, my grandmother often recollected her time of living in Germany. Even when nearly ninety, she remembered some German words and expressions. She often recalled how good her life was with the German priest and the other German maid who worked with her. How comfortable her bed was, with pure white bed linen. How well she ate! I am sure that with time she idealised her stay in Germany but what was obvious was that she clearly regretted coming back home and bore a grudge that her family when writing the letter did not let her know about their situation and the situation in their village. 

She believed that her life would have been much better had she stayed on in Germany.

I always found this story interesting as it was in such a contrast to what we know about the situation of many other Poles taken to Germany to work during the Second World War.

She was not forced to go – that was her choice. I am not sure she realised that she was very lucky to work and live at that parish. It also shows that there were places where Poles were treated well.

She repeatedly told us that her life become much more difficult and she suffered a lot after the war was over, not while it was on. 

Unfortunately her brother was forced to fight for the Wehrmacht (German army) and was lost during the war. This situation put her family in great danger as the Russians, who officially freed the area from being under German occupation, started executing local men who had been soldiers in the German army even though they were aware that Poles living on the border had been forced to serve Germany[2].

Lucyna Jachacy lives in Adelaide, Australia

 

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[1] This region in Poland bordering the Czech Republic was occupied by Prussia in 1742 and remained part of the German Empire and later Germany till 1945.

[2] Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, leaders of the Big Three of the Grand Alliance met at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam to determine the political future of Europe as the war was coming to an end. At Yalta, in southern Russia where they met in February 1945, it was decided that a provisional government would be established in Poland before free elections were held to decide the government. Soviet Russia was to oversee the process. What followed, however, is history.

When the War Began

By Joan Duncan

I find it hard to believe that I was born only six years after the end of World War I; it was as remote to me as a child as it is now. My father[1]  used to take me and my mother to visit his great friend who had been with him throughout, and I was thrilled by the stories they used to tell. It all sounded so exciting to a little girl who led a very sheltered life in a dull London suburb, and even his account of how he had been gassed, and led out of the railway embankment in a line of men, each holding the shoulder of the man in front did not shock me. 

My father William M. Haw

My father had been a telephonist attached to the heavy guns, and was very proud of his association with the Royal Artillery, whose tie he wore on formal occasions. His legacy from the war was a permanent cough and a very weak chest, but I never heard him complain that he had no disability payment.

During the 30’s there were many wars going on around the world, but I was not affected in any way until the Spanish Civil War in 1936. There was much talk among the adults about the Communists. Then British sympathizers were going out to Spain to fight against the King of Spain and his government, and there were terrible tales in the newspapers of the bombing of cities and the destruction caused. One day there was a photograph, now very famous, of a child orphaned by a raid, sitting alone amongst the ruins of a street. This picture had a profound effect on me at the age of twelve. I began to realize what war really meant to ordinary people living ordinary lives, and of course it was quite near to home, unlike the invasion of Abyssinia also in 1936. For a while, we schoolchildren had been amused by the strutting little man who had become Dictator of Italy, and when his troops invaded first Abyssinia then Eritrea, we booed every time we saw him on the cinema news screen; and we cheered pictures of Haile Selassi[2] with his family arriving to safety in London. But again this war had been very far away from our lives in Britain. During this time we were becoming more and more aware of another Dictator in Europe as Hitler was beginning to make his presence felt. Again, to us at school, he was something of a joke, especially when he made an important speech. We used to goose-step around the playground with an arm upraised, shouting “Heil Hitler!” and “Sieg Heil!”[3] It became clear that Germany was re-arming and building up a very large army, but, as now, our politicians seemed to lack any feeling of urgency, and they continued to argue amongst themselves about the danger looming. I recall several warning speeches by Mr. Churchill.[4] While all this was occurring our King had abdicated, and we had a coronation of the new King and Queen to look forward to.[5]

In early 1938, Germany annexed the Sudetenland[6] and marched unopposed into Austria, and we hoped he was satisfied. It was becoming more and more obvious of his attitude to the Jews, and many Jewish children, often without their parents, began to arrive in Britain. To a teenager, Europe was becoming a very troubled place. The next demands from Hitler were for lands in Czechoslovakia, which he claimed were former German territories. Things were really becoming serious; there was much scurrying about by our and other countries’ politicians which culminated in Mr. Chamberlain’s famous piece of paper. I remember his arrival back from Berchtesgaden[7] to Heston Airport, close to where I lived[8]. He was waving delightedly at the crowd as he passed the end of my road; and I think he really believed he had scored a triumph, though there were many heads shaking around me. People did not have faith in Hitler’s word. I remember that Mr. Chamberlain’s car was in a procession of many dignitaries, including some French generals, noticeable by their round colourful hats, my first view of something soon to become very familiar around London.

During the following months, I think we became more aware of the danger we were in. Shelters were dug in London Parks, large water tanks appeared on pieces of waste land, and the A.R.P (Air Raid Precautions) were established. Civilians were asked to volunteer to be air raid wardens, and for heavy or light rescue work; the Auxiliary Fire Service needed men and women to train for support work, and the W.V.S[9] got busy with plans for the evacuation of school children from inner cities. Gas marks were issued and instructions given on how to gas proof a room for a few hours. I have a vivid memory of the day gas masks were fitted, and collected from the local school. As soon as it was put over my head, I started to choke, and I panicked and tore it off. The same thing happened every  time we tried, and I shouted that I would NEVER wear it, come what may!

3 September, 1939

Our Caravan

Me in 1939

The school holiday was spent as usual at our caravan in East Wittering, Sussex. My mother and I were thinking about packing up and taking the caravan to its winter quarters, when we realized that the move might be sooner than we thought. A night or two before the declaration of war, we had a trial blackout and we had to find dark material to cover our windows. The people in tents had considerable difficulties, and as the entire street lights were extinguished, it was very eerie. But this was soon to be the pattern of our lives for the next six years. The only news we received in the camp was by the radio owned by the family of Romanies[10] who had been allowed to use the field for a few nights, while their fairground was cleared. We all flocked round their caravan, and they brought the radio out on to the caravan steps so that we could hear Mr. Chamberlain’s speech.[11] A few minutes after the first shocked feeling that it was really going to happen, the air raid siren sounded!

Joan Duncan lives in Cambourne, Cambridge, UK

[1] William Martin Haw was an Associate of the Royal College of Music and a professional violinist of high order.

[2] Haile Selassi, born Ras Tafari, was Abyssinia, now Ethiopia’s last Emperor, 225^th in line. Following Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, Haile Selassi fled in exile with his family. He stayed in Bath at the Fairfield House and briefly in London.

[3] Nazi salute meaning Hail, my leader and Hail victory to signify obedience to the leader and nation

[4]Winston Churchill warned of the dangers of the rise of fascist powers in Europe. He remained a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. Chamberlain became Prime Minister in May 1937.

[5] King Edward VIII abdicated to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson, thereafter taking the title Duke of Windsor. His younger brother George VI became the new King.

[6] German name of the region in the north, southwest and west of former Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic German speakers.

[7] Neville Chamberlain met Hitler and without consulting Czechoslovakia promised to give Germany all the areas where more than 50% of the population was German. Then he persuaded France to agree.

[8] Orchard Avenue in a West London suburb.

[9] Women’s Voluntary Service.

[10] Gypsies.

[11] At 1115 BST, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war with Germany. It was a Sunday.