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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mrs P. and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in Charlton in Feb.1930, lived on the main road which ran from Woolwich to Greenwich, about a mile from the Woolwich Arsenal where my aunt and uncle worked. In spite of having 7 children, Mum’s parents had a greengrocers shop and horse and cart round, down near the Thames.

It was 1939 when we had to wear terryfying gas masks and caused me a life long fear of suffocation, and, as we were at risk, Mum, myself, younger sister and 5 year old brother were evacuated to Cranbrook in Kent, Mum and brother staying with a Mr and Mrs Woodcock near the village centre, and we two girls with Mrs Turner in a detached house higher up with an orchard and nearby woods. As in Charlton, the school was nice, then Mum got us a small rented house, and we were there when war was declared in Sept.1939. We still went hop picking to earn some money, but them, due to family reasons, had to leave and return to Charlton.

With the Arsenal being about a mile away, bombing was fierce and when the siren sounded, night or day, we had to rush to either Siemens shelter or the large underground one in Maryon Park, putting pillows over our heads as we ran, then hearing bombs whistling, silence then a thud as they dropped.

Sometimes, at home, we watched the dogfights in the searchlights, and the next day, collected shrapnel from the garden, mine was kept in a chocolate box!
There was reputably a land mine dropped in a nearby street, flattened all the houses, killing only one person who had refused to get to a shelter.

We were bombed out a few times-one day the whole family walked the mile to Woolwich, the siren sounded and we had to take shelter in the cellar of a shop near the ferry. After the all clear, we emerged to find the trams had stopped running, so we had to walk home,seeing barges on the Thames alight.Houses were also ablaze and as we neared the tall Siemens factory, saw shattered windows, people running along the top floor, and smoke coming out. Further along, our street had been cordoned off, there was an unexploded bomb, so we had to walk up to Charlton village to see if we could stay at Aunt Maude’s house for a while.
Eventually back home, we sometimes used our own garden shelter and I recall an explosion causing me to fall from the top bunk-without hurt.

So now, we had to be evacuated for a second time, approx.200 miles to Huddersfield and as the train emerged from the long Standedge tunnel and we saw the bleak cold moors, it was like another and much harder world. It was, by now, autumn of 1941. With other evacuees, we were taken to Dean House hospital, near Holmfirth, then later, the four of us were taken to a big dark millowners house where there was a cook,it was up a curving drive with lots of trees round, and I started school while there in Sept 1941, about ¾ of a mile away.

We were treated as comers in, found the people hard and often unkind and nosy-one parent lifted my dress to see if I wore a petticoat, another wanted to know where our coupons went. Later, Mum was able to rent a small cottage in the grounds of another millowners house, two up, one down with the toilet outside, down a sloping path, then steep steps, and across a cobbled yard- the toilet was two tubs with a wooden seat with two holes in it, we were horrified. And because all our possessions had to be left in London, money was very tight and Mum used to be afraid of us falling on the way to this awful toilet,especially in the icy cold winters, if we fell, there wasn’t any money to pay the doctor.

Our being in this small lodge provoked more resentment, even though it was empty owing to the gardener being at war- no sympathy about our plight.

Mum used to be very hurt, Dad was based in Peterborough delivering tankers of a deadly poison called Toluene, so she had no support of an adult nature, and three sometimes sickly children to care for on little money. I was dressed in a neighbours second hand dresses so that she could swop coupons and get food- she knew the value of good nourishment for young people. She used to mix our rations of butter and marge with milk and soya to make a nice spread, and cooked good basic meals which I always appreciated. In London she used to make our clothes, never used a pattern and also sewed paper chains at home to make money but as we were bombed out we hadn't any furniture or a sewing machine now, so she had to go into a mill and do a man’s job to help her family- it was heavy work and she wasn’t too well.

She never settled up North, due to the unkindness and missing her Father and 5 sisters in London and always wanted to go back home, but couldn’t leave her children. There was plenty of parks where we lived, a treat would be a picnic in one, or a trip on the Woolwich ferry to a park where we sat and watched the ships going up the Thames. We had a good sized house, and the toilet, although outside in the garden, was a proper WC, not a crude tub which had to be emptied!

At school, I learned to speak in a more neutral way- saying crayon instead of crahn — but still suffered when I braved the smokers fug on the top deck of the buses hearing what I thought was distant falling bombs, I was too shy to find out that the thuds were caused by the ducts on the trolley buses. And later, when at work, couldn’t understand why my back went icily cold- and that turned out to to be a piece played in music while you work, which had a piece called the London Suite on — and that had the sound of a siren in it.

I have longed for all of my adult life to be able to see my childhood places in Charlton and Kent, but Huddersfield with its magnificent scenery nearby is my home. Sadly, because of the everyday lawlessness, I feel more fear now than I ever did in the bombing.

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