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1942 Redcliffe Square, Redcliffe Gardens, Philbeech Gardens, Earls Court London. Bombed out 3 times.
Father, Donald Heath, originally from Devon and was serving as a London Policeman operating from West End Central Police station.

I, June was two years plus when we received a hit of some sort causing the big house we had a flat in , to burn fiercely. I was suffering from whooping cough but was well wrapped up and placed in my bassinette pram…….if I close my eyes today I have a vivid picture where my line of vision is partly blocked by the pram’s hood, I am looking around it at the flames as my Mother and Father are running in and out of the building, (where we had a basement flat) with belongings and throwing them all across the pram. My age and medical condition details were given to me when I was older when I described the imagery in my mind.
We were bombed out of three different houses where we had a flat and between two of the 'bombings' I disappeared (aged 2) and was found on the corner of the square saying 'I got two homes'.
I can remember being in bed (already in my specially made sheet bag so that I could be picked up quickly) when my dog started going mad at the noise. He had to be put down.
The third bombing was the last straw for my parents so my Mother and I went down to my grandparent’s home in Devon and a little later my Father was called up into the Navy.

My grandparents owned The Crown and Sceptre public house on the Exeter to London road A30 at Whimple. Exeter airport is about 2/3 miles away towards Exeter and was being used by the American Army Air Force. The men spent a great deal of their free time in our pub.
I can remember lying in bed listening to the laughter downstairs anticipating that I would one day grow up and be able to join them!! There were blackouts of course and I would watch the vague shadows and listen to the sounds of the convoys of military vehicles including tanks trundling along the road whilst I was in bed.

I can remember games with my two cousins in the skittle alley at the back of the pub. My grandmother had a daily help called Mrs Harris (coincidentally)and she used to make cornish pasties to be sold to the airmen in the pub (what was in them I can only guess). She would occasionally drop one accidentally and bring it out to us little ones in the skittle alley all wrapped up in a tea towel, my grandmother, who was a business women through and through, would have been livid. It was such a luxury as our rations were very boring and limited. This was probably 1943/44.

June 1st 1944 my fourth birthday just a few days before D-Day.
Unbeknown to me the American Airmen somehow managed to get a special party dress made for me as a surprise. It was white gauze type material with pink ribbons, I remember it so well but I do have a lot of black and white photos to assist me.
I have vivid memories of waltzing around in it and there being a great deal of excitement whilst *photographs were taken.
My party was held in Grandma’s posh lounge bar, my Uncle Bill had a ventriloquist’s dummy and he entertained my cousins and I with the dummy and tricks/magic. Apparently many of these men did not return from the D-Day invasion.
We lived in the pub between late 1942 and sometime in late 1944/early 1945.

One day I was sitting in the dining room and I saw a sailor walk past the window and it was my Daddy home on surprise leave. He had come from America having been in the Battle of the Atlantic. He had been able to buy me a doll and for my baby brother a grey soft toy elephant. As he had been in the States I had told everybody that he would have stars on his sailor’s collar and apparently it was the first thing I looked for.
Late 1944, my Mother’s brother got her a bungalow to rent in Lancing, it was from here that we walked into Brighton for the VE Day fireworks.
I remember insisting on cycling there on my three wheel bike and then getting into trouble for tiring very early in the walk and it had to be loaded onto my brother’s big pram. This memory always makes me feel exhausted and yearning for bed. I can’t remember the fireworks or anything else!!!

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