The Archive

Never forget

Just imagine, it's World War II and you have signed up to host an evacuee fleeing the threat of bombs and destruction.

On the morning they are due to arrive, you wonder will it be a little boy or a little girl. You imagine going blackberrying with your new young friend.

And then they arrive and it's an elephant.

That's right, one lady kindly hosted an elephant from Belfast Zoo, keeping it in her back garden through the hostilities.

I now have a brilliant mental image of the elephant turning up at her doorstep wearing grey shorts and with an enormous wooden box strapped around it's neck for a trunk-sized gas mask.

Although the story is a little confusing "Sheila was walked down the road by keepers to a red-brick house on the Whitewell Road where a woman gave her sanctuary in her back yard for several months until the bombing was over."

This rather implies that the house was not actually that far from the zoo anyway, which begs the question, how much safer could it have been?

Did they think German Bomber Command would deliberately target the zoo. "Vee must strike at zee very things zat zey love most. Destroy the zoo and morale will plummet. Unt ven vee haff also crushed the circus, they vill surely surrender. Ya."

I don't see it.

Her roses must have come up lovely though, what with having a nervous elephant about the place.

Mind you, the elephant was the lucky one.

"The Ministry of Public Security ordered 23 zoo animals to be killed in case they got free and attacked people - they included a tiger, a black bear, a lynx, a hyena, two polar bears and six wolves."

I think that's something of a shame, because if you have to lose a relative in the war, you might as well have a good story.

"This photo is of my Uncle Eric, who died in WWII."
"Really, how did he die? Sniper fire? Stuka attack?"
"Nah, he was eaten by a polar bear."

Also, Jade Goody died. I have nothing to say about that, but now I've written it, I suspect I will get a bit more traffic than normal. Which is rather sad.

posted by Peter The Great @ 11:09 AM