蜜芽传媒

The following is extracted from a rather more dramatic version of my wartime memories which, for some years now, I have been telling Year 3 of our local primary school as part of their studies:

At the outbreak of World War 2 I was 6 years old. I had a brother who was 9 and two sisters, one 4 years old and a baby of 21 months. Initially we all slept on the floor in the Basement of our Georgian house - the 2 youngest under the very sturdy dining table. When the Anderson shelter arrived Dad made 3 lots of bunk beds in it, which only left a small amount of room in the middle for us to 鈥榥udge鈥� past one another. Just as he finished preparing the shelter things started to hot up, and the air raid warning would go every night.

We would go to bed (my sister and I shared a double bed) and would be woken by the siren's 鈥榳ail鈥�. Mum would appear at the door and say 鈥淎re you awake? Get dressed quickly and make sure Anne gets dressed鈥�. Each night we had our clothes neatly folded underneath the quilt to keep them warm, so I would try to make sure Anne was sitting up too, and starting to get dressed but every time I looked at her she would be leaning against the top of the bed, thumb in mouth and fast asleep! I don鈥檛 know if you鈥檝e ever tried to dress a 4 year old who鈥檚 asleep when you're only 6, but I can tell you its not easy and we had to be quick because you knew the German planes would arrive soon. Mum would be standing at the garden door with the baby in her arms to make sure everyone got out quickly and, as you ran across the garden you could see the searchlights criss-crossing the sky searching for German aircraft. Our shelter was always full: Mum and the baby, Mum鈥檚 elderly Aunt, a neighbour who didn鈥檛 have a shelter and her son, my brother, sister and me. It was quite a squash. One member of the household, my Mother鈥檚 Uncle would never set foot inside the shelter. Each evening he would go across the road to the pub, coming home in a very 鈥榤erry鈥� state when they closed, to stand in front of the shelter in the garden jumping up and down, shaking his fists and shouting at the German planes overhead. When he was exhausted he would go into the house and go to bed - at least there were plenty of voices inside the shelter singing hymns to help drown out the noise of what was going on over our heads and outside!. The next day as you walked down the road to buy milk or bread you would see that one or maybe more houses were now just piles of rubble and sometimes you even knew the people who had lived there. All you could do was say a prayer for them.

These air raids were going on at frequent intervals most days and every night and soon the Government made arrangements for all the children in London to be evacuated into the safety of the countryside. Our school had already gone to somewhere in Wales, but my mother had been born in America and her family offered to take the 4 of us children, and so arrangements were being made for us to go to Boston, Massachusets. In those days the only way to travel to America was by boat and it happened that the boat before the one we were due to travel in was attacked by German submarines and sank, with only a few children surviving. My parents immediately cancelled the arrangements and decided we might as well stay together and take our chances in London. Subsequently one night, one of the bombs fell right behind our shelter and the blast from the bomb actually lifted the shelter out of the ground and moved it about 20 centimetres nearer to the house and miraculously no-one was seriously hurt. Before that night my brother would tell Mum that it was unfair that the baby should sleep on the top bunk (with Mum of course!) when, as the eldest he should be in the top. He never won the argument until the night of the bomb and Mum said she had no idea why she let him sleep on top on that night, except that it must have been the hand of God because my brother had been thrown across, hitting the other side of the metal shelter but was only bruised. If that had been the baby, she would have been killed! I had been sleeping in the bottom bunk along the back of the shelter and I remember nothing鈥ntil I woke up to complete darkness to hear my Mother crying and saying over and over 鈥渨ake up鈥�. It seems I must have been unconscious and when I did 鈥榗ome to鈥� I couldn鈥檛 move because the shelter had come down on top of my clothing. After Mum cut the blankets and clothing I was out without a mark on me鈥�.except years later I was told the blast had severely perforated my right ear drum. The end of our garden and wall had gone and my brother used to enjoy going around to listen to the people who came to look at the crater tell each other stories about how many of the family had died - until Mum stopped him going there!

After that I think our parents became more afraid of letting us children stay in London and so started to make special arrangements for us to be evacuated too. Along with Mum, I can remember meeting up with lots of other children and some ladies at Charing Cross Station in London, then walking in a crocodile to the underground to get to St. Pancras Station. The train was full of chattering children with a few lady supervisors walking up and down, and our Mum. It seemed ages before we arrived at our destination and by then the train was quiet, everyone being quite exhausted. By late afternoon we finished up in the school hall of a small mining village called Bramwell in Derbyshire. The school hall was full of groups of children sitting on the floor and lots of local ladies coming in, walking around and saying 鈥淚鈥檒l take this boy鈥� or 鈥淪he looks healthy and pretty I鈥檒l take her鈥� or 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry I can only take one child鈥� until, at last there were only a few children left. Mostly, they were groups of two, perhaps a brother and sister say, and us 鈥� a group of 4, one boy and 3 girls, and our Mother who said 鈥淭hey all stay together or I take them home!鈥� After what seemed a very long while they had all gone except us, when in walked a lady who soon said 鈥淥h alright, I鈥檒l take them all鈥�.

We found out she really was an angel of mercy! She already had 3 children of her own, a boy who was slightly older than my brother, a girl who was a couple of years older than me and one who was a year younger than me, so now she had 7 children and a husband to look after in her not very large farmhouse! My brother didn鈥檛 stay long he missed London and the 'excitement' and so returned to Mum and Dad, but we girls were very happy there. Mum and Dad came to see us frequently and we could play with our new friends in the fields and streams locally. An evening treat was when Mr. Bradley said we could go into his strawberry patch and eat as many as we could find! We helped to feed the pig they had in the orchard and the chickens and ducks. Each morning my job was to go across the road to the farm to get fresh milk in a jug straight off the cooling machine where it had come a few minutes earlier from the cows!

From the Bradley house in Ault Hucknall, Derbyshire, it was a long walk along fields, down through the wood and along a path to the school. It was a journey I will never forget for two reasons: the lovely summer walk and the pervading smell of coal from the Coalmine opposite the school! I think there were about 12 other children from London and the Southeast and I well remember on the first day all the local children standing round us laughing and copying our London accents. Not surprising when you realise that, unlike today, not very many people had cars enabling them to travel around as we do, and all voices heard on radio were '蜜芽传媒 middle class' - we never heard a regional accent of any sort. Therefore for those children we were like foreigners! I'm not sure how long we were in Derbyshire but I do remember seeing Spring, Summer and Autumn seasons, returning home for Christmas. We continued to write to Mrs. Bradley for many years.

On returning to London, things were a little quieter but we still had to get up on some nights and go into the shelter or, when we were out with Mum shopping perhaps, and the siren went we would have to go into the nearest shelter until the 鈥楢ll Clear鈥� went. During this period my younger sister and I went back to school again in Greenwich 鈥� this time there were only about 8 or 10 of us and lessons were held in the cloakroom because there was only one little window high up which had been bricked up. We worked with daylight from the open door in warm months, and studied by the light of an oil lamp in cold months. We had no desks, sitting instead on the wooden top of the shoe cubby holes and so my memory is of learning spelling (I can only remember learning how to spell Mississippi), being told about other countries (geography), mental arithmetic, having quizzes, but no written work!

One memorable event from this time has stayed with me over these past 60 odd years, despite the initial doubt as to its veracity from all who heard it:

Because there were only a few of us, we would walk down the hill to another school for lunch and as I was one of the oldest I would walk at the back and the Teacher in front. On this particular day, half way down the hill just as we turned the corner on to a level road, the air raid warning went. The teacher said we must all run the rest of the way, so we were out of breath as we reached the school entrance and the teacher said we must all wait under an entrance 鈥榖ridge鈥� because at that moment we heard two very frightening things: the noise of some German planes and the unusual 鈥榬at-atat-tat' of machine guns!! After a short time it became quiet and so the teacher said we must run across a very large playground into the school itself. When we arrived I couldn鈥檛 immediately get in because of the number elbowing their way through the door, so when I heard the noises again I looked up to see what the aeroplane was doing. Imagine my surprise when I saw this German plane VERY low and with the cockpit open and turning across the playground. The pilot was wearing his helmet but not his goggles and he was smiling and waving at me!!! Later I discovered they appeared to be 'playing', swooping down over the hill in Greenwich Park, between the two towers of the Naval College and turning to fire at the large clock faces on each side of the square tower of what was then Greenwich Town Hall. Happily, within the last 10 years or so I have discovered that that same memory is shared by at least 2 other people: During a 蜜芽传媒 radio interview I heard a well known actor (I think Edward Woodward) talking about his childhood during the war in London and his account exactly replicated mine. Also in an email 'conversation' with a woman now living in Canada who had gone to the same Grammar School as me, she too gave the same account which she had witnessed from her Kindergarten school opposite Greenwich Park. I have to say that my experience on that day enabled me as I got older to appreciate that, although during the war we were encouraged to think of all Germans as enemies, in fact many did not want war any more than we did and in the event suffered more than we did,

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