Title
The British Returning Home
Subject
The Partition of India
Description
A sound clip of Mrs Aitkin talking about returning home to the UK
Creator
Record Office, Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
Source
Interview with Mrs Aitkin for the Legacy of Partition Project in 2008
Publisher
EMOHA
Date
1947
Rights
The copyright in this recording belongs to the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland. This sound clip should only used with permission.
Format
.mp3
Language
English
Type
Oral History
Original Format
.wav
Duration
1min 36secs
Bit Rate/Frequency
96 kbit/s
Transcription
We came from Liverpool. We had nowhere to go. So my uncle said he can come and stop with us. And he was in army quarters in Leith in Edinburgh. But my mother and her sister didn't get on. So we were there for about a month and she'd give us a dog's life, you know. So we went back to SSAFA, which is the army personnel people. And there was a lovely lady in Edinburgh. She said, housing is very short, but all I can offer you is a Nissen hut. Her mother said, we'll take it. And we slept on our suitcases for the first couple of nights because we had no beds, nothing. Absolutely bare boards it was. And we stayed in the Nissen hut, as I say, six years. And she died in Edinburgh, but a year after that she got a prefab. And that was heaven compared to the Nissen hut.
Could you just describe what the Nissen hut was like inside? I mean, how many rooms and what it was like.
We had like a partition, there's one in one room with a partition up the middle, a little pot-bellied stove, a big stove, that was it, that was your heating, nothing else. And we had a kitchen next door to us, which you could use to cook your food, but you had to stay with your food because they'd pinch it. You put a joint in the oven, it wasn't there when you went back. Pinch it, the people in the camp. And if you put your washing on the line, you had to stop with that, they’d take that as well. It was Dodge City, literally. It was absolute hell. I can't describe it sometimes when I think about it. No, I'm telling a pack of lies, but I'm not. I knew exactly what it was like. But it's all they had to offer at the time. It was an ex-Navy camp, actually.
Did you find yourself thinking, oh, I wish I was back in India, or not?
My mother did.
Could you just describe what the Nissen hut was like inside? I mean, how many rooms and what it was like.
We had like a partition, there's one in one room with a partition up the middle, a little pot-bellied stove, a big stove, that was it, that was your heating, nothing else. And we had a kitchen next door to us, which you could use to cook your food, but you had to stay with your food because they'd pinch it. You put a joint in the oven, it wasn't there when you went back. Pinch it, the people in the camp. And if you put your washing on the line, you had to stop with that, they’d take that as well. It was Dodge City, literally. It was absolute hell. I can't describe it sometimes when I think about it. No, I'm telling a pack of lies, but I'm not. I knew exactly what it was like. But it's all they had to offer at the time. It was an ex-Navy camp, actually.
Did you find yourself thinking, oh, I wish I was back in India, or not?
My mother did.
Interviewer
Mr Colin Hyde
Interviewee
Mrs Aitkin
Location
Leicester
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