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WORLD WAR II — My story

My name at the time, before I was married, was Rita Rousell and 1939 found me living with my mother and two grown up sisters and their children at Eden Road, Elmers End, Beckenham in Kent about ten miles south of London. I must have been nearly five years old when the war broke out and had already learnt to read and write. I attended the local school called Marian Viran, at least I think that was the name, it was quite a long time ago and I might have got the last name wrong. I was born late in my mother’s life and there was over fourteen years difference between the youngest sister and me. Both sisters were married with their husbands in the Army. Joan was the eldest with Margery the youngest. My mother had three other children, two girls and her only son. Nancy, who I believe was my mother’s third daughter died at the age of seven with meningitis. The other daughter Gertrude, owing to circumstances beyond my mother’s control, was lost until after the war. This was due to a divorce way back when her children were very young and she was separated from them through no fault of her own.

Her son, William Ronald Rousell known simply as Ronny by his family, had joined the Royal Navy before the war had started. His wife’s name was also Joan and by late 1939 they were expecting their first child. To better his income Ronny transferred from surface ships to submarines increasing his wage due to additional danger money submariners were entitled to and became First-Class Chief Stoker aboard HMS Thistle, one of 22 diesel/electric submarines of the T-class (14 of which were lost in service between September 1939 and October 1943). Although the submarine did not have a boiler and therefore no stokers were required the rank I assume was carried over from his time serving on surface ships and he was most probably Chief Engineer in charge of the engine room. During the battle of Norway in April 1940 HMS Thistle was ordered to patrol the coastal area and destroy any enemy vessels she encountered. After an unsuccessful attempt to sink a U-boat also patrolling the area, the same U-boat, U4 later attacked the Thistle sinking her with the loss of all hands on the 10th April 1940 south-west of Stavanger, Norway. This was obviously a great shock to all concerned and especially for his wife, who lost her baby as a result of the distress. However, she still waited until after the war in case Ronny had survived somehow and had been taken prisoner since no bodies were ever found and were only ever reported missing. After the war, finding no evidence of any possibility that he had survived, she eventually emigrated to Canada.

Soon London was being bombed heavily night after night. I can remember how the skies glowed bright red from the fires that had occurred after the bombing raids of which there were many. I remember we all had gas masks and had to carry them wherever we went. We had an Anderson shelter in our small back garden, which was only used when things got really bad. I remember well sleeping in the cramped conditions; it was not very big for three grown ups and four children. Joan had two daughters, Patricia and Gillian, Patricia being the eldest, and Margery had just one son named David, a babe in arms. Out of all the children I was the eldest. Although the family stayed in Beckenham for the duration of the war, I was the only one that was eventually evacuated. It was when I was nine and Hitler had started sending V1 rockets over to kill us. By this time I had changed schools and now went to a Roman Catholic school called St. Anthony in Anerley, near Penge. My family had become Catholics during the war due to my eldest sister, but that is another story. I would eventually stay at the school until I was fifteen but vowed and declared that I would not be a Catholic when I was old enough to choose for myself, yet I have to admit the teachers were good and it was just the religious part that I hated. The bombs were dropping all over the place and my Mother’s friend lost all her family in one raid. I remember well while playing in our small back yard, German planes flying over just above the chimney tops, machine-gunning anyone as they flew past. They were that close that you could see the pilots, close enough to even see that they wore goggles. We all dived for cover and thank goodness no one was hurt on this instance but later that day we heard that a lot of children had been killed coming out of a school not far away by these very same German aircraft. It had been a lunchtime when this atrocity happened, in broad daylight and I cannot remember why I was not at school on that particular day myself. I can also remember climbing the stairs to bed one evening and on reaching the top I felt the whole house vibrate after a bomb had exploded nearby. We certainly had some near misses. The new threat from the Doodle Bugs had finally convinced the school that things had become far too dangerous and decided that it was time to evacuate the children, at least those that were willing to go, although I must say that we did not have much of a choice. Just how many eventually went I do not remember, I only remember the group that ended up at the same place as I, which was Huddersfield in Yorkshire. Silver Street was the name of the road where I finally stayed, right next to a canal not far from a place called Kilderbank. We were very late in being evacuated from London since this was 1944 and most evacuations occurred much earlier during the war. As I mentioned earlier I was the only one from my family who eventually went. I was away for nine months and it was the worst time of my life. I stayed with an elderly couple that had a daughter that lived in Scarborough and whose husband was in the R.A.F. As a sort of a break for one weekend I stayed with them. The elderly couple were kind enough, I was fed and clothed but it was the school that I went to that was so awful or rather the teacher that I had. She looked quite old, well into her fifties as it appeared to me at the time and was very strict and I mean strict. With her hair pulled tight at the back of her head in a bun, she was quite ugly and stood for no nonsense regardless of the fact that we were evacuee’s and very homesick. She would not hesitate to wrap you over the knuckles with the thin edge of a ruler or squeeze the lobe of your ear until it tingled and burned. Some of us evacuee’s when we could get together plotted to run away and make our way back home but this proved more difficult than we thought and we eventually gave up on the idea. I had only one visit from my mother in all the nine months I was there, and even on that occasion she was not very well when she arrived and only stayed the night before returning home the next day. On one day while in Huddersfield, everyone heard a strange sound and no one knew quite what it was except the evacuee’s; it was a Doodle Bug. It seems ironic that this was the reason why we were evacuated from London in the first place but it turned out to be the only one that had got that far north, however I cannot remember if it did any damage. Then out of the blue and what seemed like a mad impulse the rest of my family decided that they would move north to Birmingham as things in London seemed to be getting even more dangerous now that the new V2 rockets were also coming over. They only spent one night there and all returned home the very next day as they hated it so much.

The nine months in Huddersfield seemed like a lifetime, by then the couple I was staying with must have had enough of me. Perhaps they being elderly found it was a bit too much and I was then sent home in the care of a railway guard all the way back to London on my own. They had informed my family that I was being sent home who then arranged that someone would be there to meet me at the station in London. Some of the other passengers were kind to me giving me sweets when they discovered I was an evacuee and travelling on my own. Although it was arranged that someone would meet me, there was some confusion and they went to the wrong station. Luckily for me a couple that had also been on the train heard of my plight and took care of me so I went to their home instead. I don’t remember much of this except their home had an indoor air raid shelter, sort of like a large cage with a thick concrete top. They questioned me about where I lived and even after giving my address they were still no wiser on who to contact or how to get there. I could also remember the number of the bus that I used to go to school on, and from this some how I did eventually arrive back home although still to this day I do not quite know how. By this time everyone was out looking for me and strangely it was my tenth birthday, January 22nd 1945 and somehow my family had managed to get hold of a second hand bicycle for me as a present, which I certainly never expected. They were not at all pleased with my state of health; I had lice in my hair and worse still ‘Scabies’ of which I had to have medicated baths to be taken in special facilities at the local swimming baths.

My sister’s husbands both survived the war. One served in the Eighth Army under Monty and was one of the Desert Rats and then went on to the Far East to fight the Japanese. I do not remember where my other brother-in-laws served but they both came home safe and well. When the war was over I remember the celebrations and street parties were organised, as you will see from the photo taken of the very event in the street where I lived throughout the war except for those nine months of my evacuation. The street seemed to have been missed by the many bombs and rocket the Germans had sent over, we were by all accounts very lucky.

Although my mother lost her only son we can count ourselves fortunate that the rest of us survived. I am now the only one that goes to the Portsmouth war memorial on Southsea seafront where my brother’s name is engraved along with the many others in the Royal Navy that died. I will continue to visit this memorial to remember Ronny until I am unable to do so any more now being in my sixties. He will then be just another name out of the many who paid the ultimate sacrifice but I hope this document will be kept in the archives of history so that he will not be forgotten, and also how some of us lived through a terrible war of hardship, rationing and not knowing if one was going to live or die from one day to the next. Sometimes I look back and wonder had it all been worth it and I often think how things are today and ponder had they given their lives for nothing for we still have wars and still people die, and for what?

Rita, Southampton.

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