ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝

3) THE SUMMARIES OF CHRISTINE’S AND JILL’S STORIES — “COUSINS” —
CHRISTINE’S SUMMARY - Now living in America — she relates, after her birth in London when her Father was away serving in the Army and their flat was bombed - how she was evacuated with her Mother to her paternal Grandparent’s home on Tyneside on the North East coast. To be joined there later, by her Aunt Joan and her older cousin Jill. And on her return to London, her memories of living in one of the first “Pre-Fabs” on a Bomb-Site, of which there were so very many…
CHRISTINE’S STORY — My parents were both serving in the Army when they first met. Sometime later, when my Mother fell pregnant with me, she left the services, whilst my Father stayed on. Although he was then too old to go to the front, he worked in an administrative job in Oxford for the duration of the war.

Sadly, soon after my birth in South London, my Mother and I were bombed out of our flat in Battersea. So finding ourselves homeless, it was decided that we would evacuate to live with my Father’s family at South Shields on Tyneside in North East England —leaving our maternal family behind.
Then a year or so later, after my Mother’s sister Joan, had also been bombed out of her London home, my Grandmother asked my Mother if she could find somewhere near us in South Shields where Joan and her little daughter, my older cousin Jill, could lodge.
With the area already chock-a-block with evacuees, accommodation was scarce. However, after enquiries had been made at their local church, my Father’s sister, Isobel, eventually found them a room in a house belonging to two elderly ladies.
With hindsight, my Mother now suspects, the pair were probably living as a lesbian couple. Although back in those days of total innocence, it never crossed her mind! But whatever, their preferences, they generously agreed to take Joan and Jill into their home — for what I believe was the princely sum of £1 per evacuee.

Although they were both very kind and welcoming, unfortunately they apparantly had an aversion to paying their water bills! Consequently, the supply was constantly being turned off. And every time my Aunt wanted to boil a kettle, she was reduced to banging on the pipes with a hammer to encourage a “weak flow”!
Needless to say, baths were not a very common occurrence either, although to compensate, their landladies did provide them with plenty to eat.
My Mother, on the other hand, had a ready supply of water, but not nearly enough to eat. My Grandparents were then over 70 with small appetites and it never occurred to them that as a Nursing Mother she might have a need to eat more than they did! Fortunately, as I understand, an eventual solution was found. And from time to time forays between their respective lodgings were discreetly arranged. Thus by exchange, happily we all survived the war!

In early 1945, we returned to London and I well remember the journey back home. The train was full of Military Personnel and we could hardly get through the corridors for sleeping soldiers crammed into every nook and cranny trying to get home on leave. They had even taken over the lavatories just to get a seat!

Soon we were eventually reunited with my maternal family — an Aunt who had been posted to Egypt with the “R.A.F”, my Grandmother and my Grandfather, who had volunteered as an Air Raid Warden. Thankfully they all had remained unscathed.

Not long afterwards, my Mother and I were fortunate enough to be re-housed in a “Pre-Fab” — one of the first of 500,000 which were designed for demobilised servicemen and bombed-out families. Then when the war finally ended, my Father joined us in our new home. But due to his age — then 42 — he found it extremely difficult to find a job. Until eventually, he found a position as a travelling salesman and was “on the road” from Monday to Friday. So sadly, he was only a shadowy figure in my early life.
Nevertheless, despite his absences, as soon as the settling-in process was over, my Mother and I began to make friends with our new neighbours.

Our “Pre-Fab” was one of four, created on a bomb-site in the middle of a row of terraced houses. And if I remember rightly, the weekly rent cost £1.1d!
These single- storey detached dwellings were built of steel and had a living room with an open fireplace, two bedrooms, a bathroom, separate toilet and a 1940’s style fitted kitchen. There was a copper for washing clothes, a stove, a sink, a modern fridge and a small table which folded up into the wall.

Each unit stood in its own small garden, where many families grew their vegetables. A couple of our neighbours kept chickens, so we were lucky enough to be given a fresh egg or two. I have happy memories of feeding the birds with chicken mash, from our potato peelings, and I was enchanted when the family next door, brought back several day-old chickens, which took up residence in their garden! When my Father was home at weekends he planted runner beans and tomatoes. To this day I still love the smell of tomato plants.

Although these dwellings were only intended as a temporary solution to the housing shortage, in reality they soon became a permanent feature of the post-war landscape.
And I have recently been told - I now live in America - a few of these “Pre-Fabs” are still standing today!

Back then, we had little in the way of toys, but I never felt deprived in anyway. I remember making dolls from sticks collected from the garden and dressing them in old bits of material and I made a dolls house out of the privet hedge!

But I think one of my most vivid recollections of the war and its immediate aftermath, were mostly about food or the lack of it! I remember clearly queuing up with my Mother in nearby Clapham Junction to renew our Ration Books — RB1 for adults and RB6 for children under 6 — and walking quite a distance to exchange our sugar rations for the few sweets, then available to us. I can still remember the taste of Winter Mixture and Aniseed Twist! And of course the simulated orange juice and later the organic rosehips — which country women volunteered to harvest - to make into bottled syrup to boost our vitamin C intake. Then there was the never- to- be- forgotten taste of malt and cod liver oil, which our Mother’s dutifully tried to spoon into us!

But perhaps my most vivid wartime recollection of all - were the Bomb Sites. Blanketed with brambles and clumps of pink willow herb, we peered down the gaping craters, littered with crumbling bricks, pipes and planks and wondered about the houses which had once stood there and the families who had lived in them.

And for many children of my generation, these ruins became our personal playgrounds. Of course we all knew that they did not really belong to us, but in our childish fantasies we liked to think that they did!

In my mind’s eye, I can see them still and oh, there were so very, very many of them.

JILL’S SUMMARY — commences with her early memories of “Mr. Hitler’s War”, lying in bed listening to the bombs falling on London, walking with her family on Wandsworth Common when a German plane was brought down by the ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝ Guard and waving to a Troop Train on Clapham Junction station packed with soldiers returning from Dunkirk. She also remembers the night their house was demolished in a raid, taking refuge in a street shelter and her subsequent evacuation travelling on a crawling train with her Mother to South Shields on Tyneside. Later she recalls her Father’s courageous war service in the 8th Army, parachuted into Greece, behind enemy lines as a special operative, to train the Patriots hiding in the mountains, her poignant recollections of her Father’s farewell, after coming home on leave, before fighting in the Malayan Jungle against the Japanese and ending with her memories of his final homecoming returning as a shadow of his former self.

JILL’S STORY — What do I remember of the Second World War? At that time, I was at that very early stage in my life when one is keenly aware of one’s surroundings. And so by the time the bombs began falling on London I knew all about “Mr. Hitler’s War”!

Before 1939, our family home was in the South West suburbs of Fulham, but when my Father joined up — just ahead of the declaration of war — my Mother decided to make her home with her parent’s on Wandsworth Common. And it was there, I have some of my earliest memories of lying in bed at night, listening to the wailing sirens. This was my excuse to get out of bed “shouting sirens”, get into my little boiler suit and under the table in the dining room. I was told this was the safest place for me and I spent many hours there. Sometimes I wore my Mickey Mouse mask whilst I was being taught to read and write.

One other early memory I have is being out walking one day with my Mother and her sister, my Aunt Betty, on Wandsworth Common, when a German plane came down low — so low, that the ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝ Guard brought it down! The noise was naturally deafening! Terrified, we ran for our lives and I found my arms almost being pulled out of their sockets! But what frightened me most of all, was the sight of my Mother crying once we had arrived home.

Yet another memorable occasion was being on Clapham Junction Station and seeing a crowded, troop train. Soldiers were hanging out of the windows waving. My Mother picked me up and pointed to the men saying, “Never, never forget them - they are very, very brave”. They had just returned from the hell of Dunkirk and I have never forgotten that day.

Meanwhile, my Father had been sent to the desert in the 8th Army and then trained as a special operative. He was dropped by parachute behind the enemy lines in Greece to train the Patriots hiding in the mountains. Later, he was awarded several very, important medals for his bravery.

One night our house had a direct hit and I was awoken by my Mother who in order not to frighten me said, “Wake up Jill we have just had a “nice” bomb!” I remember the room was full of smoke and I was amazed to see a door lying on the floor, which we had to walk over to get out! The house was reduced to a shell. Goodness knows how I slept through that!
We then set off for the street shelter. But half way there, I said to my Mother, “I could not go without my Teddy Bear”! So Mummy, taking her life in her hands, bravely went back to find him. Amazingly Teddy had survived (and today he sits on my grandchildren’s bed) Now, with Teddy safely rescued from the rubble, we all set off once again to the shelter. My next worry was how to get to sleep without anyone seeing I was sucking my thumb. So when a passing Mother said to me, “It is okay to suck your thumb Jill”, I was absolutely mortified!

My Mother — ahead of her time — did not believe it was right that children should be evacuated away from their Mothers. So the two us risking the raids, stayed together throughout the war. And the very next day after our house was blitzed we went up North to Tyneside. We travelled on an unheated, crawling train packed full of soldiers. It took us seven hours! There at South Shields, we stayed in the home of two elderly ladies for the remainder of the war.

There were no sweets, no bananas, no new toys and no new clothes, but what one never has one never misses — or so it is said! These shortages continued for long after the war had ended. So long in fact, that I was a Girl Guide when a parcel of clothes — jumpers, dresses, cardigans and coats — came from America. Each girl was allowed to choose one garment apiece. I remember spending the longest time searching before I finally came away with a pretty, candy-striped, skating skirt. My Mother was furious! And no, I didn’t even skate!

One of the happiest memories I have whilst living in South Shields, was being given a very, special parcel for my birthday. To my delight, when I opened the brown paper wrappings I found a lovely, pink birthday cake from my Daddy! Of course it hadn’t really been sent by him, but then I believed it had. And it still makes me cry to remember just how many years I continued to believe that he had sent it from where he was fighting. I was in complete shock when years later the truth just “came out”! My Mother was amazed that I had truly accepted it for so long. Her thoughts were, of course, to keep my Father’s memory alive.

Then one never-to-be-forgotten day, my Daddy came home on a month’s leave. And when he left, I remember being hugged so close against him that the buttons of his soldier uniform pressed into me. When I looked up at him, his eyes were shiny and glassy but then I was too young to understand that they were the unshed tears of a man leaving his family and going off to fight.
He was dropped by parachute once again - this time into Malaya — where he fought in the jungle against the Japanese. Here he stayed until the end of the war.

Although my Mother and Grandparents tried to keep the bad news away from me, one day I somehow found out about the Concentration Camps and I learnt that people were being gassed. I worried so much about this, until I worked out that my Mother and I would just breathe into each other’s mouths and we would be safe. I slept well that night.

At last, the great moment arrived, when my Daddy finally came home. By then, he was a shadow of his former self. He looked so thin and so yellow from contracting malaria of which he suffered from for the rest of his life.
Again he received many medals for his courage.
But after all the time which had gone by, he was alas, a Father that I did not know.

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