Transcript for: her father's role in the war and people's fear of the telegraph boy
Interviewee: Maureen Wood
Subject: Almondbury High School
What were your own experiences during the war?We were always afraid, we used to hear about friends and neighbours getting letters that their relations had been injured. My own father was one of the first lot into France. We thought it was wonderful, he used to tell us all about it when he came home, but it was scary because we heard of people round about whose relations had been killed and we used to be afraid but he somehow survived. He went into France then he came back to England, they escaped from France and from there he went up to Scotland. They went there for more training for six months and from there he was sent to North Africa, we didn’t see him then until the end of the war, that was quite a long time. We were ten or eleven and when he came back I was fifteen, so it was a difficult time. He was very lucky, went all through North Africa and into Italy.
We did get a telegram during that time when he was in North Africa and everybody was worried when they saw the telegraph boy. My mum hardly dare open it but it was to say my father was in hospital, he hadn’t been wounded, he’d had an operation; he was treated by a top surgeon from London who was out there. Then the next news we heard he was in Italy and he was sent back home from there because he joined before the war he was one of the first to leave the army and he was ‘as old as the century’ he used to say, he was 45 when the war finished.