Transcript for: her grandparent's and great grandparent's experiences of war.
Interviewee: Frances Evans
Subject: Moving Minds - Imperial War Museum North
My mum’s side of the family is Polish, so my Grandma was firstly evacuated to Germany, to work on the farm of some German people, and later sent back to England; she was completely split off from her family. If you ask about it now, she doesn’t really remember much about her roots, her family, so we’re unsure exactly of that. My Grandad, who’s now dead, he was about 16-17 and he signed up to join the army in Poland as a soldier. He died before I was born, so I haven’t been able to ask him anything, but I’ve heard some things from my mum, a bit of background.Do you have other relations who fought in the war?
My dad’s Granddad, he fought in the First World War. He had a really bad injury and he had to struggle on for a long time. He got shot through his arm, and it punctured his lung then went out of his back, so he had a pretty nasty injury. He had to make his own way to a hospital; it was about five miles by himself. They wouldn’t have got any attention for themselves; he would have just been left if he hadn’t gone for himself. He had to get his arm amputated after that, but he survived from it.
That’s an interesting story. And you think about that one?
Yeah, especially from a young age those were the main things I knew about war. It’s now that you take more interest and see things on the news and thing like that, but those were my first knowledge.