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The following childhood memories were recalled by Roy Scutt.
For a while nothing much happened that I can call to mind but my next vivid memory was waking up one morning covered in scabs. I was shortly to learn I had caught the dreaded 'scabies'.
Once again I was taken to the same hospital in Liskeard. Twice daily I was put in a bath filled with a blue liquid. It was agony. It felt like someone was holding a blowlamp onto your private parts.
In the middle of the bathroom was a cylindrical heater. I would have to get out of the bath and walk around this heater until all this blue liquid had dried on me. This time mum never thought it was worth coming to see me.
After leaving hospital, life continued without any major incidents until the American soldiers arrived. We would walk up the long track that led from the farmhouse to the road and sit and watch the soldiers ride back and forth in their jeeps. Quite often they would throw us some chewing gum and for this reason we thought they were the most wonderful people on earth.
The girls quickly realised what the soldiers had to offer. They also realised what the soldiers wanted in return for their 'goodies'. We would often see one of the girls take a soldier into the barn. We would run round the back and look through the cracks in the wall to watch what was going on. This all added to my education.
By now I was almost eleven years old. I knew there was a war on but it had no great importance. The only time it was brought to mind was when the German planes dropped their bombs on the fields as they were escaping from the British fighter planes. It never occurred to me that I could easily be killed on these occasions.
When you are a child you never think of the future, only of now. I don't remember having any desire to go 'home'. I couldn't remember what it was or where it was. I was not being mistreated. No one cared about me and I never cared about anyone else.
My childhood was about learning how to survive. This has led to an adult who has very little compassion for other peoples' problems and who is frequently accused of being unfeeling. When a person becomes an adult he is the culmination of all his previous experiences. What is ingrained into a person as a child is virtually impossible to eradicate.
I do not remember my return to civilisation, only that I was met at the station by a strange man who turned out to be my mother's gentleman friend. It was soon obvious that he would have preferred that I hadn't come home.
I was sent to school for the first time in six years and it was a source of amusement to the other children that I could neither read nor write...........but that's another story.
Roy Scutt, 2001
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