"In Hiding"

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Tom Queally             English Coursework                  Mr. Griffin

“In Hiding”

        From that day on, I lived, ate and washed in our small sinister cupboard under the rotting wooden staircase. It was the day that Britain declared war on Germany, since that day I have hated and despised anyone German, I could never forgive a nation that murdered my family and caused such devastation to my home land. I vividly remember visiting my aunt who was a little richer than us most weekends in the run up to the war; it was such a treat because she owned a black and white television. My brother and I always wanted to watch the films but my parents insisted on watching the news; I can picture even now the blurred clips of Hitler talking to his troops, my brother and I used to tremble as he spoke. My mother always used to sympathize with us; were as my father used to get very irritable and rather cross with both my mother and us.  

        My mother use to work in a factory and my father was a fugitive of the Home Guards; instead he worked in the mines pulling along the heavy coal carts. Because my parents earned so little they could not afford to send my brother and I to school, instead we would just stay at home and cycle around on some old shabby bicycles we found lying beside the canal. Most days we would cycle to the RAF base, which was a few miles away from, were we lived to watch the planes being prepared for the inevitable war that lay ahead. My brother and I used to think watching the planes was fun until the day the war began; at that point we realized what a brutal and terrifying affair war was going to be, this is when we took to living under the staircase because we were so scared. My mother and father only earned enough to feed us as much as necessary to survive on, a few years ago my father was made redundant that’s when my little sister Margaret died because there was not enough food to go round the table. Even my brother and I often fell ill, simply because we did not have enough food to keep our bodies strong.

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        As I said during the day my mother and father went work, so my brother and I were left alone in our cupboard with very little to do. It was cold and damp we just had old dusty scraps of matted carpet to keep us warm. Under the stairs it was also very dark; streaks of light crept in through the cracks but very little. All we could really do was talk, sleep or play chess, when we wanted to play we would have to light a candle so that we could see; we were able to buy a new ...

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