"Well, the end of the war came along and we had what we called Victory Europe Day, VE Day, and we had a big parade in Hull and all sorts of stuff. Well, my mam took me and Pat to Hull to see things, the parades and that, and I got separated. I was lost so I went to this man and I told him, I said - I couldn't say 'Robert' - I said "I'm Lobert Leid and I'm lost!". So he took me to the police station, and they were very good. Now, you couldn't get sweets and that during the war, and they gave me what was called a 'toffee apple'. It wasn't a real apple, it was like a block of seaside rock shaped like an apple. I got that and I got a cup of tea and they let me play with the air rifles and that, until me mam came and picked me up.
Well, the war was ended and we were rehoused in prefabs (which are instantly built houses) and we lived there for a few months. My dad was still in the Far East - he'd been there during the war, fighting - and he was now a commander for a German prisoner of war camp, so we were called over to Egypt to go and live there with him in 1947. I'd never seen my dad before, and when we got off the ship - we went on a ship from Portsmouth to Cairo, Port Said, and the ship was called The Empress Of Australia - my mam said to me "that's your dad, over there, look," and there was this officer there, a really smart officer, so I ran up to him and hugged him on the knees 'cause I was only little really (I was 7 but, due to the war rations, I wasn't that big), and I stood on his shoe unfortunately and the next thing I know I was getting such a big bang on my ear where he belted me, and that was the beginning of when I met me dad. I never liked him after that."
"Pleasant greetings, eh?"
"Yeah. So, we're in Egypt, and erm.. I was a young lad, I was swimming - I did a lot of swimming - and won races and that. I learnt to swim in the Suez Canal, which was quite.. something people don't normally do, and one of the things me and my friend used to do was swim across the Suez Canal to Palestine and pick oranges, have a couple of oranges, and then swim back to Egypt. That was what we used to do.
Well, things went by, I went to a school in Egypt, we left Egypt, I went to a school at a place called Knutsford, moved from there to Anlaby (we lived in wooden huts in Anlaby, it was called a 'transit camp'), we moved from Anlaby to Tuxford, from Tuxford to Worksop, and then Worksop to Retford. While I was at Retford school I was promoted to a prefect and then head boy. Well, that was the end of my schooling because at 14 and a half I left school. I wanted to get a trade so I wrote to the army and had a medical check up for the army, had to pass an exam in English, maths and physics, because I wanted to be a tradesman. I passed all them so they signed me on, and I was given my ticket to go to Chepstow, where the army apprentice college was."
"Where abouts is Chepstow?"
"Chepstow is in Monmouthshire in Wales, it's in south Wales. Anyhow, I got to Chepstow, we got picked up at the railway station and there was me and about another 100 boys turned up, and we got picked up and taken to the camp. First thing they did was cut all our hair off, took our clothing off us and gave us army denim overalls and a pair of boots, and then we had to go into the office and what we called a 'sausage machine' where they take all your information from you. I went in when it was my turn and they said to me, "Oh, you were born in August, 1940," I said "that's right, sir," and they said "well, you can't come yet 'cause you're not 15," he said, "so you're gonna have to go home again and come back when you're 15.". I didn't like that because one of the reasons I left home was because me dad used to hit me quite a lot."
We're up to 8:56 minutes now. I recorded about 17 minutes again today, so I'm probably going to be transcribing up more tonight so that I don't have too much to do tomorrow.
Friday 14 October 2011
Thursday 13 October 2011
And When We Came Back Home The House Had Gone!
"Hi, I'm Robert Reid, and this is the story of my life from when I was two years old.
When I was two years old, the war was on - I was born in 1940 - and the war was on with Germany. I remember from when I was two years old that I was playing in my grandma's house on the table, walking on the table, and I was so small, when they put the teapot on the table I accidentally put my right foot in, and it went straight into the teapot of boiling water. My grandma and my mam grabbed me and stuck my foot in a bag of flour, and that seemed okay, that worked.
The next thing that I remember is that we were getting air raids every night. We lived in a house in Hull - that's in Yorkshire - and we lived near the docks in Hull, so we got bombed every night. We went to my grandma's house because of the shelter that she had in her back garden - it was called an 'Anderson Shelter' - and we used to go in there when the air raid sirens went off. When we came back, our house had been blown up, so we got another house next door, and the same thing happened to that house! We went to my grandma's for the air raid and when we came home the house had gone!"
"That's pretty bad luck, isn't it?"
"Ha! Well, I went back (this is going forward a few years now) two years ago, and where our houses had been - erm, we lived down Brunswick Avenue, Franklin Street in Hull - you won't believe it but where our two houses were (they were next to each other, and they were in the middle of a long row of terraced houses) there were still two gaps where the houses were! All the other houses were okay and being lived in.
So anyway, going back to where I was, when I was a young lad, we went on a trolley bus. Now, this was a bus that was run by electricity, and to get the electricity, it was on lines like a tram. It got the electricity from lines above the road. We were going back one night and the air raid sounded. We were stopped by an air raid warden, and everybody on the trolley bus had to get off and go into a concrete swimming pool as a temporary shelter, and he told us that as the trolley bus was going down the road, the blue flashes from the electric cables, as it went over the joints, were attracting the enemy aircraft and a fighter plane had come down and it was machine gunning the road. When we came out and went back into the trolley bus to carry on when the air raid had finished, in the street were hundreds of dead people. What had happened was, as the air raid happened, all of the cinemas in that street got everybody to go out. Unfortunately, they went out, and that's when they got shot by this airplane.. Erm.. I mean, I saw it, but it didn't affect me because I was so young, I, I knew the people were dead and the blood was in the gutters but.. I was too young to realise what it was about.
One of the things about the air raids, when shops got bombed people used to go and help their selves.Well, in the toyshop up the road there was a doll's pram, and that shop got bombed one night, and I told my sister Pat - now, you've got to remember, I was about three and a half years old - but I told my sister Pat I'd go and get her this doll's pram. And I went, but somebody had already got it. When I told Pat it had gone she cried her eyes out for hours! She was about four, four and a half mind, she's a bit older than me."
Here's the first 4:16 minutes of the 18:32 minute first recording. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be posting more later.
When I was two years old, the war was on - I was born in 1940 - and the war was on with Germany. I remember from when I was two years old that I was playing in my grandma's house on the table, walking on the table, and I was so small, when they put the teapot on the table I accidentally put my right foot in, and it went straight into the teapot of boiling water. My grandma and my mam grabbed me and stuck my foot in a bag of flour, and that seemed okay, that worked.
The next thing that I remember is that we were getting air raids every night. We lived in a house in Hull - that's in Yorkshire - and we lived near the docks in Hull, so we got bombed every night. We went to my grandma's house because of the shelter that she had in her back garden - it was called an 'Anderson Shelter' - and we used to go in there when the air raid sirens went off. When we came back, our house had been blown up, so we got another house next door, and the same thing happened to that house! We went to my grandma's for the air raid and when we came home the house had gone!"
"That's pretty bad luck, isn't it?"
"Ha! Well, I went back (this is going forward a few years now) two years ago, and where our houses had been - erm, we lived down Brunswick Avenue, Franklin Street in Hull - you won't believe it but where our two houses were (they were next to each other, and they were in the middle of a long row of terraced houses) there were still two gaps where the houses were! All the other houses were okay and being lived in.
So anyway, going back to where I was, when I was a young lad, we went on a trolley bus. Now, this was a bus that was run by electricity, and to get the electricity, it was on lines like a tram. It got the electricity from lines above the road. We were going back one night and the air raid sounded. We were stopped by an air raid warden, and everybody on the trolley bus had to get off and go into a concrete swimming pool as a temporary shelter, and he told us that as the trolley bus was going down the road, the blue flashes from the electric cables, as it went over the joints, were attracting the enemy aircraft and a fighter plane had come down and it was machine gunning the road. When we came out and went back into the trolley bus to carry on when the air raid had finished, in the street were hundreds of dead people. What had happened was, as the air raid happened, all of the cinemas in that street got everybody to go out. Unfortunately, they went out, and that's when they got shot by this airplane.. Erm.. I mean, I saw it, but it didn't affect me because I was so young, I, I knew the people were dead and the blood was in the gutters but.. I was too young to realise what it was about.
One of the things about the air raids, when shops got bombed people used to go and help their selves.Well, in the toyshop up the road there was a doll's pram, and that shop got bombed one night, and I told my sister Pat - now, you've got to remember, I was about three and a half years old - but I told my sister Pat I'd go and get her this doll's pram. And I went, but somebody had already got it. When I told Pat it had gone she cried her eyes out for hours! She was about four, four and a half mind, she's a bit older than me."
Here's the first 4:16 minutes of the 18:32 minute first recording. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be posting more later.
There's A First Time For Everything
Today I'm going to meet up with my granddad to record him for the first time. I'll probably put up sections of his life rather than the whole thing at once, eg, a neighbour's house being bombed one day, shooting wild boars the next.
The transcription should be up in the next couple of days. Keep watching these pages.
Wednesday 12 October 2011
The Beginning
Have you ever noticed how interesting the elder generation is? I certainly have. After having grown up on a rich mix of exciting tales and captivating memories, I realised that I was being incredibly greedy by keeping my granddad's wonderful life to myself. Because of this, I've decided to record him and transcribe his adventures onto this blog. After that, I may move on to another person, and then another after that. I hope you enjoy these old stories as much as me.
