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My family's name is Swan and my bad, Mum, sister Margaret and myself lived in Merton Park Surrey. I was nine years of age when the war started.
My father worked for the Prudential Assurance Co who evacuated their Head Office staff to all corners of the country. We were very lucky to be sent to Torquay where life until the fall of France was very amenable. After France fell Torquay was subjected to fighter bomber attacks on a regular basis. The house we rented suffered light damage as a result.
My father was called up in 1942 and as a result the rest of the family returned to London to be nearer to relatives also so that I could attend Kingston Grammar School as School Certificate Exams were fast approaching. We bought 14 Ruxley Lane Ewell as our house in Merton was let.
In February 1943 the Germans instituted the "Little Blitz" in an attempt to get the D Day headquarters which were somewhere in South West London. It lasted around 7-10 days. One night a stick of bombs fell in the back gardens of the houses in Ruxley Lane. The back of our house was severely damaged. I shall always remember the smell of dust and plaster as we cleared up the mess.
After some time work was put in hand to repair the house. The workman finished on n Friday, on the Sunday a flying bomb landed a street away and blew in the front of the house. In the ensuing three days two more landed within a couple of hundred yards causing further serious damage, making it uninhabitable, so we went to stay with my Aunt and Uncle in Bristol. We moved back to London after n few months so that I could continue my studies at Kingston. As the V2's had started my sister went to boarding school in Stirling Scotland.
On the 1st February 1945 I said goodbye to my Mum and caught the bus to Kingston. At around 1pm I was called to the Headmasters study where my very good friend and neighbour broke the dreadful news to me that my Mother had been killed and our house totally destroyed. The bottom dropped out of my world, I was devastated, particularly as it was not due to enemy action but one of our own planes on a test flight. Why test a plane, over a built up area when planes of the mark had crashed very recently. We have never had an answer to that question. In fact we had very little help from the authorities, whose genera! attitude was bad luck, get on with it. It seemed so ironic that having suffered multiple damage to our houses due to enemy action, it was destroyed and my mother and her friend killed by our own forces,
Thanks to the unstinting help from family and friends and my marvelous father, we gradually put our lives together again.

See also — 4130849 (Mrs Canter) and A4261998 (Sheila Miller)

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