Jack Warren and my Oxford Childhood

My father worked at Osberton Radiators, developing tanks for the military. He cut his finger at work and was admitted to the Radcliffe Infirmary, then transferred to the Slade. Only my mum was permitted to visit him and he died shortly afterwards, aged 30 years (died 8.12.1941). He was a good snooker player and he played against the world champion in London.

Shortly after the start of the war, we had an evacuee girl from London. She was covered in lice and fleas, and could swear! We lived in a middle-class area of Oxford. She tended to wander off and, one day, she went to the field between our house and Botley Crematorium, where there were giant elm trees. She ran back screaming because she thought she had seen a giant dog. It was a cow!

In 1943, mother took us (me, my brother & sister (born 1942)) to Botley recreation ground. We saw a German plane shot down; it crashed in flames in a field before it could reach Oxford.

In 1944, we had a visit from two American soldiers who were my grandmother's sister's sons. They came over for the Normandy landings. My Aunt Lucy came from Toronto on a liner (she had married a man from London and emigrated to Canada in the 1890s). They founded a successful electronics firm.

I remember listening to the Home Service and hearing about the 8th Army advancing in Africa.
In 1944, we had the second lot of evacuees, this time from Surrey following a doodlebug attack. They stayed for a couple of months.
1945 - On VE Day we put a union jack flag on a broom and hung it outside the window.

Rationing - my grandmother had a successful coal and wood business in Witney (Walter Bartlett & Son), so she was quite well-off. She would bring us coal. My grandfather (O'Brien) worked at the Carlton Club in London at the start of the war. He became librarian and cashier there. It was bombed in 1940, so there's no record of his employment. His son, J.R.P. O'Brien became a don at Pembroke College.

My uncle, C.F.R. Sibley was rescued by a destroyer at Dunkirk.