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A young wife and mother in the East End of London

“Being near the docks in the East End of London they’d hit the docks and everybody round about had had their roofs go. I heard the siren go as I was getting ready for bed and I had my boy with me, he was only a baby and I thought ‘Oh damn you I’m going to bed with my baby.’ I had got one cupboard ready as we always found wherever a place was bombed there was always a cupboard left standing and one of the ARP chappies had told me that sometimes a cupboard was much safer or under a table. Anyway this night I was really rattled and I thought oh I’m not going in the cupboard and I got into bed. I could hear a lot of commotion and the planes were coming over and I still didn’t stir, I laid there with the baby he was asleep, you could always settle down a baby especially if you were breast feeding and I was cuddling him. I could hear this plane subconsciously. I took no heed and suddenly there was such a roar, a weird noise and in my half sleep and in mind something happened I couldn’t explain what that noise was going on above me and all of a sudden all I could feel was spiders going all over me. I thought where’s my baby, I felt for him, he was alright, almost in the middle of the bed under the covers and I could feel these spiders going all over me. What had happened the roof had caved in and the spiders were everywhere and strangely enough that cupboard was still standing that I’d prepared, where I was going to put the baby in. I was able to stay in the house afterwards. There was always a gang of people who made repairs and they finally gave me some sort of a roof, not a complete one, a makeshift roof. I stayed there and after that episode I got another billet.

Evacuated to Cornwall and Yorkshire
I was evacuated to Falmouth. I liked it down there, I was happy. I came back then - went away to Yorkshire. I had several homes during the war, my husband was in the Army and he used to get billets for me and different chaps had their wives and families, they could move to be nearer to them. My children were born in Yorkshire. I loved it. I was expecting my second child, waiting to go to the Clinic to find out where I was to have my confinement. I was living in Tadcaster, near Leeds at the time. A few days later my husband came home on leave to look after our eldest son whilst I was taken by ambulance to the Nursing ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ called Hazlewood Castle. Our second son was born on 15th May 1945 and I hadn’t decided on any boys names. One of the other ladies had a newspaper and the headline was MONTGOMERY and I discovered that his Christian name was Bernard, so I called my son Bernard after him!â€�

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