蜜芽传媒

There was 5 of us in our family,my father, mother, older brother, younger brother and me, age 6 years 5 months.

On 3rd September 1939 we were sitting round the dining room table enjoying our family meal when on the grand old radio we had,news came that we were at war with Germany. How startled and shocked my parents were at this news and immediately the conversation reverted to what was going to happen to us all.

We lived in a very nice semi-detached house with a front garden and a large back one with a beautiful lilac tree at the bottom, fully-fenced with a gateway leading to the other semi which was occupied by my Grandmother, my Grandfather having died long before I could really remember him.

Life was pretty ordinary. My mother was a housewife. My father served
7 years in the Royal Navy and was currently employed with the General Electric Company since his demob about 6 months prior. Plans were being made by my parents to move out of London into the lovely county of Surrey as soon as money became available. Everything in the garden seemed rosy until this dreaded news on 3 September 1939.

Soon after this, summons came from the War Office that my father was to be recalled into the Royal Navy. Those on reserve were called upon to do their duty before the general call-up was issued. His bags packed, uniform restored, kisses all round, my mother in tears, he bade his farewell and journeyed to Chatham, his port of call. A week or two after this, he joined the ship that he had been allocated to, HMS Whirlwind, and set sail for foreign waters. Scanty letters arrived from him, being subject to Customs for fear that he would let it be known where he was and what he was doing. Our lovely family was blown apart and nobody seemed to know what was happening.

We soon settled into a daily routine. We had no young teachers any more. All those were called upon to do their national duty in the Wrens, ATS or RAF as well as Land Army, Queen Alexandra Nursing Services etc etc. Schools were allocated gas masks and we duly received our little black boxes containing such. We had plenty of lessons on how to use them and were dared not to leave them at home. At school, a large underground storeroom was given up to the teachers for drilling us into a routine. Strict instructions on how to use these big black things and what to do in cases of emergency were given. I remember we used to think this was all great fun, for at our young age one didn鈥檛 realise the seriousness of it all. I remember also, most distinctly, the dreadful rubber smell emanating from these, with so little air. That has always remained with me until this day.

As the weeks and months passed on, we became used to the daily shopping trips organised by the mothers in our street. We were never allowed to go anywhere alone and certainly not without our little black boxes. A trip to the corner shop to buy half a pound of broken biscuits was the highlight of my week. Food became scarce and we were issued with ration books allowing us very little of everything per week. I remember sometimes my mother would use up some of these coupons to buy a little something or other on the black market. This was becoming a highly organised underground market and although illegal was one way of obtaining things that one could not buy in the shops. Fruit, vegetables and salad things where unobtainable and I remember my mother鈥檚 friend, who lived just around the corner from us, boiling up parsnips (if she could get them), mash them up and put banana essence in them and tell us we were having bananas for our pudding. We, of course, firmly believed that this was the case.

One day, later in the year, we were told that Anderson air raid shelters were to be installed in our back garden. These were steel structures built very deeply underground and consisted of bunks for sleeping, a little table for putting things on and steps leading down to this. No toilet facilities, so we had to take a po with us and use that in case of emergency. Of course, we kids thought this was great fun and, when not in use, we made a playroom of it, not realising how very necessary it was to become.

The underground tube stations, which nearly every town had, were also a very necessary part of shelter, for, when we were out shopping with my mother and the air raid siren started, we would dash to these tube stations, go down the escalators, deep into the underground and on the platform we would find a corner and hide there until the all-clear siren went off. The smell of lime, which was what the walls were painted with in those days, was so strong and sickly that I remember it to this day, with all the nausea that went with it.

Sundays was always my best day. I would don my Sunday dress (we all had clothes that were allowed only to be worn on Sunday) and in the afternoon would go across the road to the little Church hall. There, we would have Sunday school with lots of lovely stories and sing many hymns. Every week I would lustily sing 鈥淚 will make you fishers of men鈥�, my favourite hymn, then we would have a cup of tea, mothers would fetch us and they would all have chats with neighbours, swap war stories and find out if anybody had different news to us. The comradeship amongst them was great. As there were very few men around, most of the young and fit males were away fighting the war, we were left with the infirm and elderly and those not fit for fighting. But what friends we had in them all, and they all looked after each other.

We still had Council services. The dustcart was now manned by women and came once a week. The postman was always an elderly man and we had post twice a day. The whole street would always be on the alert at the time the post was due. If it was a postman, they would be smiling and waiting for their post. If it was a telegram boy, the whole street would fall silent and wait with bated breath in case he came to their house, the carrier of bad news. This was a nerve-racking experience, but one that became quite regular.

The months rolled on to a year. News from my father was rather scanty, telling us how very tired they all were and hungry. They hadn鈥檛 stepped foot on land for many months and were all homesick. He mentioned that he had a premonition that he would never return home and was extremely worried about this notion that haunted him. We could only hope and pray that he would be safe and that we would all see him again.

We woke up to a sunny morning in June 1940 and started getting ready for our usual day at school and Mum getting ready to start her housework after depositing us safely at school. The sudden hush from the street took us to the front door to see the telegram messenger riding his bike and coming straight down the street. As a 7 year old, I can remember most distinctly the ashen strained look on my Mum鈥檚 face as he stopped at our gate. My grandmother was present and she took the telegram from him, opened it and gave it to my mother. Her cries could be heard everywhere and the neighbours rushed to us, holding her and trying to calm her down.

This was the gravest day we had yet experienced and, we hoped, the worst. My mum cried for a whole 3 weeks and my grandmother dared us not to mention my father at all. We, of course, were really far too young to realise the devastation of it all. My grandmother took over the household and we left my mother to mourn our loss in her own way. The War Office notified her later that HMS Whirlwind was on the coast of England after doing her stint in foreign waters when a German submarine that slipped out of Southern Ireland, a country that was flying the neutral flag, torpedoed her.

There were only a few survivors, of which my father was not.

The news that the blitz of London was not too far distant came as no surprise to everybody; the air raids had been building up, as was the lack of necessary supplies of everything. By this time, we had all been trained very well in what to do in cases of emergency and thought that we were 鈥榖ig stuff鈥� and knew it all.

Evacuation of children was imminent and was the talk of the street. The Government decided it was best for the children to be moved out of London to safer counties until it was safer for them to return. All children had to be labelled and listed as to where they would go and who they would go to. This was too much for my mother. She didn鈥檛 want to lose her children after just losing her husband, so she made contact with my father鈥檚 sister in Bridgnorth in the county of Shropshire on the border of Wales and it was arranged that she and we three would go there for the time being. They owned a public house in the village and were prominent members of the community, being involved in many of the village affairs. Great excitement, it was like going on holiday.
We prepared our cases with what few clothes we had and my mother bought the tickets and we were off. Never having met my aunt and uncle before, I did wonder what it was going to be like. I should never have worried, because they were just wonderful. My mother couldn鈥檛 afford to pay our way, so it was organised that she would look after the house whilst my aunt and uncle ran the pub. It worked out extremely well. The farmers used to bring goodies in for us and we ate more and better things than we had in London.

We all went to the little Church of England school there called Saint Leonard鈥檚 and once a week we would all march through the village and go to the church for a lesson of church etiquette. The old church was in keeping with the village, which was of Oliver Cromwell鈥檚 time. There were still turreted walls surrounding it and most of the old buildings were historical. A walk around the village, called the Castle Walk, was beautiful, overlooking the lower village and combining the river Severn.

I thought we were in seventh Heaven, never having been to such a lovely place before.

I made lots of friends and they all referred to me as the little London girl. We had many walks and, being allowed out on our own without the little black box was wonderful. We climbed trees, swam in the streams that ran down from the Welsh mountains, and even swam in the river Severn. I couldn鈥檛 swim before I arrived, but the school and locals soon taught me. What a wonderful life I was living and somehow the death of my father slipped into the background. I didn鈥檛 perform too well at school. The curriculum was so different and with all that had happened in London, I think things didn鈥檛 sink into my brain too well. Anyway I managed and soon was one of the villagers.

It was all to be too short-lived. The blitz of London had subsided quite a bit and my mother decided it was time to get back home. She would have to look for a job and we must all get back to normality. I was devastated. I had learned to love Bridgnorth and its occupants and I was going back to a London street, where things like all the railings had been taken away for the steel to make ammunition, shops were bare and the air raids were still on, plus I would have to cart around my little black box. What frustration.

We all said our goodbyes, my friends and their families all shedding a tear or two, as was my aunt and uncle, but my mum had made up her mind that she had to get back to normality. My grandmother was still in her little house next door to ours and was looking forward to having us back with her.

So, without delay, we were back on the train the next day, heading for Euston Station and back to our little semi-detached house in Tooting. Grandmother was delighted to see us and we soon got back into stride. Back to my old school and wow what a difference again, I could not keep up with it all; it was so different once more. I was beginning to think that I really was a dunce. The only thing I was good at really was singing and games.

By this time my older brother was due to sit his 11-plus scholarship, which would give him entry into a grammar school. He was very bright and I loved him dearly. He sailed through all of it and was registered into the Battersea Grammar School. This school had been moved out of Battersea, London and into Ware, Hertfordshire, just north of London.

He was so excited at the thought of leaving home and joining a school full of boys only. My mother bought his school outfit of grey flannels, white shirt, tie and a very 鈥榝lashy鈥� blazer; white, red and black stripes. The whole family traipsed off to Kings Cross Station where we met up with many of the other boys that were going, the platform full of striped blazers. They were all saying, 鈥渉o---ld that tiger, ho---ld that tiger鈥�, which we later found out was the chant of the school. It was wonderful. Of course, all I could think of was that I was losing my brother, who I was such pals with and loved dearly. What was I going to do without him and his support in all that I did? It seemed that I was losing everything I held dear. Life was going to be so miserable, I was sure.

My mother had found a job for herself and was now employed as a civil servant with the GPO. She was on call and had to go wherever they needed her, sometimes into London itself, and do her duty with the War Office, or other government buildings. She also had to do her share of fire fighting, which meant being on the roof of the War Office and notifying the proper personnel if fires were seen in the vicinity.
I believe she enjoyed this, as it was something she was doing towards the war effort and also brought her into contact with other people. Of course, she was not keen to leave us at home, but we had our grandmother, who moved in with us.

And so the weeks went into months. Every night without fail we had an air raid and we were yanked out of bed and taken off to the Anderson shelter in the garden. I remember so well creeping out of the house in the black of night, looking at the sky to see all the searchlights in full beam picking up the outline of the barrage balloons and the crack of the ack ack guns that were housed on the nearby Clapham Common. Time was of the essence because the enemy planes were overhead so quickly, but my mother resolved this by sending us to bed fully clothed with only our shoes to put on. We got so used to this that it was now an automatic procedure. News from my brother was good; he was enjoying himself and never had to go through the experience of going to bed fully clothed and being yanked out in the middle of the night, but oh ------ how I missed him.

Germany had announced that they had a new aeroplane, which we all called the 鈥榖uzz bomb鈥�. This was a plane that flew over and suddenly the engine would stop, silence would reign, and everybody would wait in anticipation to hear where it would drop. One night in 1944, one such plane was heard in our area. We believed it was looking for the Battersea Power Station, a target of great concern to the Germans. As usual, my younger brother and I were pulled out of bed by my mother and grandmother. Shoes were donned and we dashed downstairs ready to get to the Anderson shelter, but, alas, there was no time for that. The plane was getting nearer and louder and my mother, in her wisdom, decided that rather we should hide under the stairs in the little cupboard that was used for the gas meter and cleaning materials. Chairs were quickly put in and all four of us sat there and waited. The plane was overhead and suddenly the engine stopped. I can鈥檛 tell you what we experienced; it was just fright. Then the blow. The bang was so loud and so heavy that the whole house shook. We didn鈥檛 dare open the door, frightened at what we would find.

continued in part 2

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