大象传媒

Mrs Ainsworth is willing to have her story entered onto the People's War website and agrees to abide by the House Rules.

When war started I was 10 years old. My father was expected to leave the Royal Navy after completing 23 years service. Of course this didn't happen as he was only 39 years old and was retained.

He went off mid-1940 and didn't return until 1946. My poor mum was pregnant expecting my young brother February 1941 but with all the trauma around us with bombing etc he was born December 17th 1940.
As I was the eldest of five I grew up very quickly. My grandmother who suffered badly with asthma lived with us as did my great grandmother. We were a full house. We lived on the top floor of the new flats built in 1939 just outside the dockyard wall at Mutton Cove so we saw a lot of bombing.

April 1941 the Blitz - Sirens went off and before we could get down steps to the surface shelters in the yard we had all doors and windows blown in so we knew we were in trouble. When we eventually made it down the steps we had problems getting to the shelter as a land mine (they told us later) had landed in the front of our exit leaving the biggest crater I had ever seen. There was absolute chaos but we were helped to the shelter and safety. From then on we had a permanent routine for several years. We arrived home from school had baths or a good wash, whatever we had time for and went to the underground shelter which was in our school playground which was two blocks of houses away from the school.

One particular day at school the sirens sounded and we were all running in single file to the shelter. We were told to always keep close to the wall in the lane. We heard this aeroplane very loudly and looking up we saw it coming towards us firing machine guns. It was so close we saw the pilot with one of these hoods on and rather an angry look on his face. I have never forgotten that look. I can see it whenever I think about it.

I lost my grandmother during the war and my baby brother had a badly cut head from a falling door when my mum was carrying him to the shelter. He was then only 4 months old.

I had two cousins who were like big brothers to me. One in the Royal Marines, the other in the Army Devon Regiment. He was sent to Burma 1945 14th Army. He was there for the remainder of the war being injured by a Japanese sniper and still carries the shrapnel in his back today.

VE Day was not full of joy for us as a family as my father was still at sea and my cousin still fighting in Burma. Our celebrations didn't start until thankfully they came home safely. When I look back on it now I can only wonder at the strength and courage of my mother who took care of five of us plus two grandmothers. She too was only in her thirties.

My husband Walter (who or course was not my husband then) used to tell me of some of his horror stories. He was in the Army (Royal Engineers) and was with the 8th Army in Africa. He drove ammunitiion trains and had several hair-raising experiences driving from one city to the other full of explosives etc with
German planes bombing him at the same time. There were such a lot of brave acts that I am sure will never come to light. My father would never talk about his years at sea during the war but we do know that he was at the Battle of Crete which according to history books was horrendous. He was also on board HMS Glorious at one time.

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