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Mum’s Memories of WW2

A Wedding.

Until my marriage I lived in Fulham Park Gardens, London SW6.My fiance in Barnes. WE had both volunteered to join the Civil Defence and he became a London fireman when the war began.
We decided to get married on 11th August 1940, which unusually for a church wedding was a Sunday. My new husband could only get leave for that day and his family church in Barnes was prepared for the wedding to take place on a Sunday.
We were lucky enough to have a photographer, in wartime, and fortunate enough to have proper photographic plates, the last he had.
Likewise the cake was a full fruit cake with the usual 3 tiers and beautiful icing, produced just before restrictions really bit.
The last cake in the shop, after that wedding cakes had cardboard surrounds made to look like icing!

We lived in a flat in Barnes and our first child was born at home. I remember much of the terrible bombing, but no more than the day we survived one.
I was in the kitchen and the baby was asleep in her cot. I suddenly started to feel shaky and rushed upstairs and took her out of her cot. My husband said we should run for the Anderson shelter in the garden but I said we didn’t have time so we took her under the stairs, as was common during raids.
Every time a bomb fell we huddled together with the baby between us not realising she was getting a bit overcrowded.
When the raid was done it was obvious a house closeby had received a direct hit, consequently our windows had been blown in. When I went upstairs the cot our daughter had been sleeping in before was covered in shards of glass, she had had an amazing escape.
It took a whole year before she grew again despite moving to live with cousins in the West Country and after the experience of being squashed between us suffered from claustrophobia.

The Blitz.
My parents were still living in London and my husband in the fire service. He was on duty during the Blitz. The engine was called into Central London, and the hoses run down to the Thames for water. However the attack was timed to co-incide with low tide and he said it was terrible to witness because the hoses were not long enough and all they could do was wait for the tide to come in, while such destruction was taking place.
I was living in Barnes and our landlord called to take me to Barnes Common to see a sight I will always remember. London was burning. At first I thought it was an awesome sunset but I realised the sun was behind us and above the streaks of red were volumes of smoke.It was a terrible thing to see.

Of course there were humorous moments. He often had to sleep at the fire station and one particular night the men got little sleep. Every time they lay down to go to sleep a whistling was heard, as if a bomb was on its’ way down. The men scrambled. Yet again the whistle of the bomb was heard and they assumed an attack was taking place. Eventually one of the men realised that his airbed was deflating, it had been a puncture all the time.

My mother was a volunteer with the WVS (later to become the WRVS). She would go and help out after bombings. One of her most awful memories was the bombing of the cinema in Putney High Street. She said there had been so many young people among the dead and injured, it left a first hand impression of the futility of such actions on this middle aged civilian.

Nora Stacey (Nee Woram) - Bride
William Stacey - Groom

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