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My mother, Edna Kate Jones (nee Ilsley), was 23 years old and had been married for less than two months when War broke out in September 1939. To begin with she continued her job as a telephone switchboard operator in the West End of London, whilst my father continued his job as an ironmongery shop assistant in the East End.

Obviously, like everyone else, my mother was affected by the war from the beginning, but its effects started more seriously for her when my father was called up into the RAF in 1940. He was a Medical Orderly in the Nursing Branch (see the story: 'David Jones in the RAF'), spending a good deal of his time at Hornchurch in Essex, from where he was able to get back to their home in Leytonstone, in East London, fairly often on a 48 hour pass. Nevertheless, my mother found that she had to spend a good deal of time on her own, or with her own mother and family, during my father's 6 year absence.

My mother did not volunteer for the Forces or do other war work, rather seeing her best contribution as bringing along part of the next generation! My sister Valerie (now Hodges) was born in November 1941 (see my father's story for an anecdote about this) and I was born in May 1944. So my mother had no heroine's war; but like many thousands of others, she had to face the daily struggle against the hardships and privations.

She had few stories to tell about those years. But two I remember clearly. In one she would recount how the boyfriend of a colleague at her firm (she worked for Lawleys in Regent Street) came in one day and was showing off with his gun when it went off accidentally. My mother felt lucky not to have been injured. In fact, she probably got nearer to being under fire than my father ever did!

The second story was of an incident which I think had a more lasting effect on her. She was apparently out with me as a babe-in-arms in 1944 when a doodlebug stalled overhead and she was terrified that it would land on us. Luckily it exploded far enough away for us to suffer no physical harm, but I believe the incident damaged my mother's nerves. With my sister and me she was packed off to other family in Plymouth to stay for the next few months. After the war ended she was clearly still suffering as I recall my father taking us all to somewhere in Surrey so that my mother could talk to one of his former Medical Branch officers who was in practice there.

All in all I think my mother had a good deal harder a time than my father. She did her bit in circumstances that were often difficult for her: the Blitz; on her own with two young children; food shortages and queues etc. And, although she never said so, I suspect that in some ways she was affected for the rest of her life by the doodlebug trauma.

I am proud of her.

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