大象传媒

I was nearly 11 when war broke out and was living in Gratitude Road, in Greenbank, with my two sisters and brother. My father had been in the First World War and had a bad heart, so he wasn't allowed to serve second time around. My mother was a housewife and my father was a commercial artist, but when war broke out he had to go and work at BAC - and they put him in the paint shop. In fact, he ended up in the artists department later on. He was up there when they had the shelter raids that killed a lot of people, but he had a lucky escape as, although he had been running to get in a shelter he never made it - and in the process saved his life. In those days children weren't told about those things, so I only found out much later on and he never talked about it.

Back home, my sister and myself used to go down to the Anderson shelter in the garden on our own and my mother would stay with my other sister under the stairs as she was asthmatic and the shelter was too damp. I remember the raids quite well. There were search lights in the sky and guns going off. One night I was running down the garden and I can still vividly remember it all going on around me. I didn't have the sense to be frightened - I thought it was all wildly exciting! All I could think about was going out the next day and seeing how much shrapnel I could find. My brother was never in the shelter because he was about 14 and the lads of that age were often messengers and he would be out delivering missives to people all over the city. It's just unbelievable when you think about 14-year-olds doing things like that now. I also remember we had six chickens in the back garden. If you had chickens you lost your egg ration and the idea was that you would eat them eventually, but we were all too fond of them to put them on our plates.

At the end of 1940 my eight-year-old sister and myself were evacuated to Nanpean, near St Austell. We went by bus down to Stapleton Road Station and then by train. When we got to St Austell we were takn by bus to our new home. I can remember being so excited. I'd actually wanted to be moved away - even though I was genuinely sad about the thought of missing the raids, the idea of moving away from home for a while was equally exciting. The temptation was too just strong! We were taken to this village half way between St Austell and Newquay in the middle of the China Clay District and I remember seeing the clay all piled up like great white hills - although I had no idea what they were. We were placed with a woman who had a four-year-old child, whose husband was in the Army. Her mother-in-law was a Cornish woman and it was her that took us into the house and I couldn't understand a word she said.
She also looked like a witch and when we realised we weren't staying with her we were pleased. But when the lady we were being looked after came home she was worse. She'd probably had us pushed on her or she taken us for the money they were paid. While we were with her, she made us eat all the stale food even though food was rationed. The only time we got the nice food was when her husband came home and he wouldn't have her treating us like that. We were there for a year. But it wasn't that bad, we had friends and there were so many London evacuees, all from Hackney, so there was lots to keep us occupied. I'd never met such wild people in all my life. So many of them were Jews. When I first was introduced to a Jewess I thought it meant she was some kind of princess as I'd never even heard the word before. There was no control in the classroom. I shone at school because I'd actually attended secondary school whereas many of them hadn't because of the raids up in London. I'd never heard people swear before I met them.

Altogether, we had a good time and it turned out that the woman we'd thought was a witch became our favourite person there. She would look after us much more than her daughter-in-law ever did. We returned home at the beginning of 1942. The bombing in Bristol had finished by then. We were pleased to get home. We'd had some houses around us bombed, but really it felt like not that much had changed. We went back to our school, which had been called east Bristol Central School but when we got back it had been changed to Junior Commercial School. The boys had all gone to the technical school and girls had stayed there and because they'd been there for longer I felt I was far behind them.

I was 14 and a half when I left school, which was 1943. I took a job as a typist at Bennett Bros. There offices in the Counterslip had been bombed and they'd moved to John Street, where I worked. They were a printing and stationary firm and I stayed with them until I was 18. By that time I was working there, there were a few raids but not may. The news on the radio was always bad though, so we were alive to it. It was behind everything that you did. As a young woman you didn鈥檛' have so many clothes because of the rationing. People didn't have the money to buy fashionable clothes. We had skirts made out of trousers and hand-me-downs. But, then in those days you wore the same for a week anyway, it didn't bother me.
But, I used to make broaches out of old broken chains of beads and wire and sell them for the Prisoners of War Fund. I sold all my dolls for that, too. It was the sort of thing you did, you know, because you were always aware of those people were out there in the field. I felt it was something I could do.

When we heard about the D-Day landings we would rush home from work to listen to the latest news. We had a map up at work and you would move little flags to show how were advancing as the news came in. I remember going to the News Theatre at the top of Castle Street at lunchtime when they entered Belsen Camp to see the piles of bodies. We went there with our sandwiches. We'd heard about it on the radio and when we saw it we were appalled. I'm still appalled now with the memory of it. That was the first idea we'd had what had been going on. Even the soldiers who went into the camp had no idea what they were going to find. It was truly terrible.

On VE Day I went to the Centre, with everyone else in Bristol, much to my mother's annoyance. It was choc-a-block, you could hardly move. We milled around generally, as part of the general excitement. We had a street party in Greenbank, but, at 16, I didn't really want to go out. To me it was something and nothing. I stood there in the street because I had to, but I didn't want to run around in a funny hat. Although it may sound strange, the time after VE Day felt flat and unexciting. But this was mainly because, as a family, we didn't have anyone in the forces and weren't affected as much as other people. But there was no news to run home for - you just didn't here so much about the Pacific Ocean battles and it didn't have the same effect on you. They called themselves the forgotten army and I suppose in many respects they were.

Every generation thinks they've had the best of worlds, but nothing has really lived up to those years and what we went through. We had more out of life than any other generation. Maybe because of we all went through in the war we have an appreciation that those who haven't experienced it wouldn't understand - and I wouldn't change it for anything.

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