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My father was a Firewatcher, and Warden. As a warden my father distributed gasmasks and tin hats. The gasmasks were stored in their boxes in rows from floor to ceiling with just enough room to walk between the rows in our back room. The tin hats were piled in a corner.

My mother was also a Red Cross nurse attached to the First Aid Post, Fairlight Hall, Fairlight Road , Tooting, which had a cat named ‘Fap’. Being a child I spent much time at the FAP, and during school holidays I sometimes accompanied my mother when her duties provided ambulance cover escorting hospital patients out to the suburbs. The ambulances were often adapted Green Line Buses, with the drivers door opening into the bus. On one trip the fire extinguisher went off. My mother hastily swung the extinguisher towards the driver away from patients then out of the door spraying two unsuspecting policemen with foam who were passing by.

Because of the war I was sent to boarding school — a convent, mostly with German Nuns but an American Head Mistress, also a nun. Towards the end of the war the school bought an old Tudor Manor House vacated by the troops. Opposite was a German POW camp. The nuns persuaded the powers that be to allow some of the prisoners to come and erect swings for us, and later when the camp was dismantled the prisoners re-erected two of their huts on site for us to use for a recreation room.

Back to London again, towards the end of the war when the FAP were no longer needed my mother was required to continue working as I was not at home. She was then employed by ‘Hartleys’ jam factory as a nurse. One of her responsibilities was to give the German POW’s working there, their dose of cough mixture. Because of its fiery taste some of the men called it whiskey — you can imagine the resulting furore.
Later the factory also had Italian POW’s and after the Italian surrender the POW’s were allowed more freedom and could cycle about the town, their cycles had red cross-bars and after dark they had to be accompanied by a British citizen. One of these prisoners was befriended by our family and I remember my father and ‘Carlo’ sitting opposite each other with a Italian dictionary between them having long discussions. Carlo’s family owned a marble factory in Carrara, northern Italy.

This is an aspect of war one does not think about and therefore I thought I should record it.
In 1997 I handed photocopies of photos of the local Red Cross and Wardens to Wandsworth Borough Council, together with the Fire Guard register, who tell me they have placed them in their local history collection, sending copies to Wandsworth Museum together with some badges.

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