ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

My name was Ann Thompson, and in September 1939 I was five years old. I lived in Bromley, in Kent, with my parents, Doreen and Alan. From the time of the Munich agreement onwards, in 1938, I had been moved out of the vulnerable area near London, to what my parents thought would be safer areas - ie with relations in Hertfordshire, and in the Fen country in Cambridgeshire. But in September 1939, at the time the war actually started, I was back in Bromley and at school. This was the time of the phoney war, when there was an eerie quiet all through Europe.

It was not until well into 1940 that things started hotting up, and in June of that year British troops were finally evacuated from Europe - the famous Dunkirk evacuation - and my parents then thought that invasion must be imminent - or at the very least bombing raids on London, which turned out to be the case. So in June 1940 my mother and I travelled down to Devonshire to a village called Belstone on the edge of Dartmoor, where an aunt was already installed. After a few days, my mother found a half-house to rent, and we moved there, in Sticklepath, near Okehampton.

After some months, having seen me start school and settle down, Mum decided she should go back to Bromley, to look after my father, who was still working in a Bank in Bromley. My grandmother then moved down to look after me, bringing with her her other daughter and her son. After a few months my grandmother's sister, having lost her husband, also moved in, and this was how it continued until 1944. I continued at school and saw my mother every so often, when she could come down from London. One of her projects when she did appear, was to collect up fresh eggs from friends in the village, which she carried back to London in a suitcase perched on her knee on the crowded train, to be preserved and used as an addition to the then limited diet. My father I saw less often. He had wanted to go into the armed forces, but had a minor disability, and his employer had told him they would not keep his job open for him if he went - so he continued to work in the Bank, and joined the ARP (Air Raids Precautions), as did my mother.

By 1944 I was 10, and had passed the scholarship to go to the local grammar school in Okehampton, but by then my parents felt it would be preferable for me to return to London - just in time for the V1 and V2 rockets to be lauched on London!
So I went back to school in Bromley, with regular visits to the shelter in the school grounds, until the rocket launches came to an end, as did the war in May 1945.

My story is probably not very different from that of many others of my age, and I was lucky in that although I had to leave my home and my parents, I lived with relations, not with strangers and made a friend in Devonshire with whom I have had contacts ever since.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.