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The war started for me in Ipswich when I was 12 years old (b.28.09.26), sandbagging the local secondary school which was being used by young women from the East End of London. Many of them were pregnant and all were frightened and unhappy.
My elder brother and I listened at home with our parents to Chamberlain declaring war. Mother very concerned about our future as father had spent the '14-'18 war in India.
One of my earliest memories was being sent home by a friends' step father to get my gas mask when the air raid sounded. I can remember that he was a special constable and him boasting that he had read 'Mein Kampf' and he thought that Hitler was God's gift to humanity!
Father was an upholsterer and for obvious reasons had no work, but managed to make some money making gas mask cases from the rexine he used on chairs. Mother escaped war work because of my age.
Everyone had to help bury the Anderson shelter in the back garden. Father made bunks and shelves but it was very cold and damp in the winter and often there was little time to take anything from the house to make conditions more bearable. We had a Beaufors gun in the road behind us that was incredibly loud. My brother was nearly killed by shrapnel as he fell into the shelter, that was terrifying and we had to pick pieces out of the roof the next day. Sometimes if a plane was caught in the searchlights, people would come out and cheer, but nothing was ever shot down.
One morning when we came out of the shelter, the whole road and those around were covered in strips of material, silver on one side and black on the other. We had no idea what it was and speculation was rife about it being a new 'secret weapon'. It turned out to have been dropped by the Germans in an effort to jam the radars and was called 'windows'.
The German planes used to follow the railway line inland from Felixtowe and also used to follow the River Orwell, both led them straight to the docks. Mother and I stayed in her bed during the worst dock raid when the wood yards caught fire. The bed shook as the bombs dropped 2 or 3 miles away. Father thought we were mad but it was an incredible sight. Through all this we had to leave the regulation 5" of water in the bath in case of fire bombs and we all had stirrup pumps.
At school we had evecuees from Ilford and Wonford County High Schools so it was a bit crowded, and deep snow in winter didn't help. They then left and many of us were evacuated too but I don't think many people left. One girl went to Canada before the Benares was sunk and I can remember her being very frightened. During one summer holidays when they expected us to be invaded, we had to go to school, mostly doing hobbies and games. This was so the authorities and our parents knew where we were in case the worst happened. They must have been very anxious times for adults especially as we were only 10 miles from the coast. The police put on courses for us, showing us how to escape from the upper floors of buildings etc. Another was when they let us smell poison capsules. When they broke open a phial of phosgene gas under my nose, I nearly choked to death. Through all of this we studied for our school certificate exams, spending a lot of time in the shelters. Gradually we only left classes when the air raid sirens went off. There was no heat so we wore coats all the time.
Food was short. We once had whale and horse, which even the cat wouldn't eat! Entertaining was out of the question and we couldn't eat at friends' houses as 2oz of butter didn't go far. There was a British restaurant in town where the food was very cheap and basic. There was not much of anything and you had to wear your clothes until they literally fell apart.
We spent a lot of time on the local heaths where we once saw a plane tumble out of the sky and explode not far away at Martlesham. There were many airfields around with foriegn and American troops. One tea time, an allied fighter crashed in the park at the bottom of the road and I can remember being appalled that people were picking up souveniers while the body of the pilot was still being recovered.
With great enthusiasm we waved at the Dakotas pulling their Hausas, low enough to see the troops going out to Aarnhem. There appeared to be hundreds of them and the sight of those gliders is one that I will never forget, especially when it became clear what had happened to the soldiers when they arrived. There was the odd bomb that was dropped away from the docks and a girl I knew was killed when she went back indoors to get her bag. I was chased down the road on my way home from school one day, by a Heinkel flying very low on his way to drop a bomb on the docks. I was sure that he was going to machine gun me, I could see the cockpit and I was the only thing moving, but luckily he didn't.
We had a landmine in the park, close to where the plane crashed, one afternoon as we were in the cinema. This meant that we had to the long way round to get home and even then only residents were allowed to enter the area. When we got home we had to open all the doors and windows in case it exploded, but again we were lucky and it didn't. One night my grandparents had one land right opposite their house. My uncle, who was fire watching, went across to find it had a flare on it. He bravely put it out, saving much desruction, for which he recieved an award. They had to sweat the explosives out of the bomb as they weren't allowed to move it through the cemetery close by in case it blew up!
Our closest brush with death came at 7am one morning when a rogue plane dropped a bomb with no warning just at the end of the road. You could tell by the scream that it was very close and we only had time to dive under the bedcovers. The doors and the windows were blown in and all the ceilings came down as we were hiding in our beds. Two girls were killed at the Rectory on the coirner, as was a very friendly warden who was killed when he was blown into the park wall. By this time, we had become so used to the situation, we just had breakfast and cycled to school.
As the war dragged on,we spent our days at Ransomes sports club on the edge of town. We would spend summer evenings playing tennis and later stand around watching the doodle bugs splutter on their way north, while casually whacking may-bugs with our raquets. V2's you didn't hear. I remember saying to a friend at the club, who was on leave from the rifle brigade, to keep his head down as I wanted to paint him the next time he was home. I heard later that he had been shot by a sniper through the forehead and I felt that I had killed him.
Eventually the war came to an end and there were massive street parties. The hastily made wood and tarmac road surfaces were ripped up to make enormous bonfires in the side roads and there were bands and dancing in the centre of town. Everyone who could walk was outside and you found yourself joining in with complete strangers and it seemed as if the whole town was open.
My brother finally came home from his ship that had been out to the Far East and he brought with him a small broken tea cup that he found in Hiroshima. I still have that cup today.

These are a few of my recollections from this time and I hope that they are of interest to others.

Marie Miller (nee Cook)

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