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by Barbara Anne Salter

I can remember it as though it was yesterday. My Dad, a gunner in the Royal Artillery, had been dropped off at Thornton Heath railway station and it was a short walk to our house in Pridham Road.

Neighbours used to sit outside their houses then,in the days of 'no television'and talk to eachother! I was playing out on the street when I heard someone shout, 'Look,here comes your Dad!' And there he was walking down the road in his uniform, with his kitbag on his shoulder. People were calling out to him,'Welcome home Son! and clapping. I ran up the road to him and he put his kitbag down and jumped me into his arms.

This was one of my Dad's visits home 'on leave' because I can remember my Mum crying when he went back.He would bring us gifts of beautiful silks and embroideries from far flung places and on one of these visits home I saw my first hand of bananas.

Our house was a 2 up 2 down terraced cottage. My Mum would do the washing in a big copper built into the kitchen under which we would burn anything that came to hand to boil the water. My Mum would move the washing round in the boiling water with a 'copper stick', pull it out, put it through the mangle in the garden and hang it out on the line to dry.There were no mod cons then! We had an outside toilet and used newspaper not toilet roll. We didn't have a television but we had a radio which had a big battery called an accumulator which we had to take up to a shop in the High Street to get charged up.

It was the radio and the 'wardens'who kept us informed as to what was happening during the war. We would hear from the wardens, who had been hit locally and how many casualties there had been.

I cannot remember being hungry during the war years but I was a skinny child anyway and was given cod liver oil and malt out of a big brown bottle both at home and at school. My mum would buy 2oz of spam and make a meal out of it! We had eggs from my nans chickens (everybody kept chickens then), powdered milk and powdered or 'pom' potatoes which were horrible. I would regularly get sent down to Mrs Willbournes who owned the grocers shop on the corner to ask for 2oz of sugar or some tea on next months coupons because we never had enough and Mrs Willbourne saying 'your mother is always doing this, she won't have anything left for next month now'.

I can remember the sound of the sirens as plainly as anything. Every day, sirens to tell us to take cover and sirens to give us the all clear.If we weren't sure and things didn't seem too bad we would shelter in the cupboard under the stairs. Some people would even run under the table when the sirens went off which would have been of no use at all. But when the bombing was really bad we went into the Andersen shelter which had been partially dug into the ground in the back garden, covered with corrugated iron and then with earth. I used to get thrown down there with a blanket and a mattress and I can remember how damp it smelt.

I remember the sound of the planes but I don't remember seeing any. We had blackout blinds on the windows at night or else we were in the cupboard under the stairs or the Andersen shelter. I certainly wasn't allowed to stand outside and watch!

I was evacuated when things started to get bad and I don't think my Mum waited for the official evacuation. Instead we went to stay with my uncle's elderly parents in Lancashire: me, my Mum and my Dad's youger sister Doreen. They lived in a tiny terraced cottage with cobblestones right up to the front door.The whole place smelt of 'tripe and onions' which is what the old man 'Tom' always seemed to have for his tea.

But although they had offered to have us there, they didn't really want us and they soon got fed up. The old woman in particular didn't make us feel welcome. I didn't like her and I was very unhappy there.

There were American troops billeted locally and we would ask them 'if they had any gum, Chum!' I also remember going to the local school hall and being given some clothes which included a brown mac which I hated, but I have no recollection of ever actually going to school during the war years although I suppose I must have done.

Then one day the police knocked on the door in Lancashire and told my Mum to go home because our house had been bomb damaged. The doors and windows had been blown in, the stairs had collapsed and the ceilings were down. Anyone could walk in and take our possessions. My Mum later said that if we had been sheltering in the cupboard under the stairs at the time we would have been killed.

Sadly there were casualties. Two bombs had hit the grocers shop and the greengrocers on opposite corners at the end of our road and people had been killed including children. Several houses in the road were bomb damaged.

I don't know how long my Mum left us for but the Council repaired the bomb damage and eventually I went home.

On VE Day there were tables the length of the road, which I would guess must have come from the Mission Hall where we used to go to Sunday School. We had music and dancing. We wore paper hats. We all hung bunting and flags (great big proper flags) out of our windows which were tied to the bunting and flags from the houses opposite so they were right across the road. Everyone contributed some food. We had powdered lemonade (there were no bottled drinks). There were games and I remember that my Mum went in for a mothers running race and fell and hurt herself so badly that she had to be taken indoors. My sister and I came first and second in a fancy dress competition in outfits my Mum had made from paper.

You might be wondering why I called this piece'the Germans at the end of the Garden'. Well, as a child,I spent a alot of time at my Nans house in the next road. There had been a couple of German planes come down locally and one night we saw lights at the end of my Nans garden. The wardens came in and told us they thought we had Germans at the end of the garden!. In fact it was sparks from some power lines. Not a particularly exciting tale but it did give me a good title!

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