CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO WARS
My book is a memoir of life before, during and after World War Two, seen through the eyes of a little girl. It is written with today’s generation in mind for whom the past is “a foreign country”.
I give an impression of life in the mid-thirties, using an imaginative reconstruction of my parents’ relationship and my birth, based on stories told me by my mother. Soon after my birth a family secret is revealed which undermines my parents’ relationship. My four half-siblings come to live with us.
My first personal recollection is the Declaration of War in 1939. Three of my half-siblings are conscripted and my father volunteers. Early relationships are described and my first experience of loss. I struggle to make sense of Death.
Starting school is a happy occasion, and all is well until 1943 when I become ill. On my 7th birthday a shocking diagnosis is made, followed by my father’s repudiation of me.
Our previously happy relationship is sundered and I learn to fear him. The next five years are suffused with bullying and casual cruelty, and culminate with the murder of my pet dog. I vow never to speak to him again.
Life is punctuated with the arrival of the doodlebugs and I experience a near-fatal encounter. Just before V.E. Day, I see the newsreels of the liberation of Belsen. It is a shocking revelation and my first encounter with Evil. It leaves me traumatised.
Peacetime is a mix of elation and depression. We are now safe but everyday life remains unchanged. Rationing continues for several years and the days of austerity, due to Britain’s war debt, are grey. My illness is finally cured in 1946 with the advent of penicillin, but I suffer an unrecognised depression. Finally, aged 12, I begin to find my own way to a new life.
