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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Jane Van de Ban of CSV media on behalf of Eva Edwards and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

It was a terrible war, but a wonderful world. People had a completely different spirit.

The story of the wedding cake
My mother used to go to markets all around to get things. If you heard through the grapevine there was something available, then of course you dashed off to try and get it. Every time we heard there were onions or potatoes, for example, she would go to East Ham market and queue. Wherever you went, you had to queue.

I got married in 1942, and my mother wanted to make a wedding cake for my wedding. She must have gone to loads of markets to get the ingredients. You couldn’t get what you needed for a cake, so I have no idea how many markets she must have gone to to get the ingredients for the cake.

What a cake that was. When we ate the cake, it was full of pips — she’d used sultanas and not the seedless ones.

The baby and the bomb raid
During the war, I lived in Custom House, Plaistow. I was living with my mother. My husband was in the army and he was abroad, fighting. I had my first baby, my daughter Marie, in 1943. When I was pregnant and about to give birth, we asked permission if we could have a little fire to keep the room warm. So we did. All the doodlebugs were coming over during the birth. My father was an ARP warden, and he said afterwards that the wardens lined up outside and they heard the baby’s cry. All the neighbours came in.

During one of these raids, my mother and father were caught under the bed. Fortunately they were all right, and they moved around the corner to another road called Chauntler Road.

I was there too with the baby. Then a year later, I was expecting again. That was my eldest son, Frances. When he was about to be born in 1944, I went to hospital. At that time, it wasn’t doodlebugs any more, they were using the V2s, and one of the bombs hit the road I used to live on. People used that road for shopping and a lot of people were killed. My road had all the roofs blown off. And I was in bed waiting for this second one, the baby. I heard the bomb come over, and I was in bed. Couldn’t move, and the ceiling was coming in. My midwife ran away in fright. Once the raid was over, the midwife came back to apologise, but by that time the baby had been born. She just came back just to finish me off!

That was quite a bad experience. In fact, it was terrifying. I was lying there, asking for help, but there was nobody to help me. In fact, I was quite poorly afterwards. They allowed my husband leave, and he came back for a while, but then he went back, and I was left with my Mum and the two babies.

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