War Is Declared

Interviewer: You would've been 16 when war was declared.

Right.

Interviewer: Do you remember that day?

Yes.

Interviewer: Tell me about that day.

Can I go back a little? Ok, when I was eleven, my father, for my birthday, bought me or bought us a tandem; a bicycle made for two. And as a result, every weekend, because he worked inside all the time, he was a shoemaker, shoe repairer, and because of this he wanted to get out in the fresh air. So every weekend rain and shine we took off on this tandem. And he took me all over the North country of England. And we, I just adored him for the way he showed me life outside of my hometown. On the day the war broke out, that's a real expression from England, on the day war broke out, we were on the bicycle; it was a Sunday afternoon. We cycled from the town of Shipley to the town of Otley, O-T-L-E-Y which was about eleven miles. When we got there, everybody went into the town square. It was only a little town. We went to the town square, and you would see, literally, hundreds, hundreds of bicycles. All shapes, sizes parked around, and yours might be the seventh bike and everybody was so honest, you just parked your bike there! One on top of the other, one against the other and there'd be dozens and dozens and hundreds of bikes. And all the places around catered to these people; cyclists. We all belonged to cycling clubs and every weekend we went somewhere, sometimes with the club. You'd see ten or twenty people cycling together. It was a wonderful thing. And so we congregated in the square and then we sort of realized there were a lot of civvy's there, as opposed to cyclists. And they started congregating in the square and somebody started putting up a little platform and so I said "Oh I wonder what this is all about? " So we parked the bike and congregated with the rest of these bicyclists, all clad in their cycling attire. And suddenly there was a kind of a disturbance and a group of people came in with a guy who was obviously town crier. He had the full regalia and the bell. And he stood up on this platform with a guy with a chain around his neck, which we knew had to be the mayor and he tolled the bell "Oh yea, oh yea!" And then he made his little speech and introduced the mayor. And the mayor pulls out this great big sheet of paper, reads the proclamation that Britain was at war with Germany. And everybody cheered, went and got on the bicycles and off we went again. We didn't stop doing what we were doing, we simply got on our bikes and off we went!