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During the Battle of Britain I was 5 years old and was sent from my home in Kingston-upon-Hull to my Uncle Charlie’s in Kent. Everyone thought it was a phoney war and that nothing much would come of it, especially after World War One. I couldn’t understand why I’d been sent away and remember playing up quite a lot; I would sometimes not eat my tea and it would get thrown in the bin. However, when the bombing started I went back up north after my mother sent for me. We always put our shoes where we could find them, and sometimes didn’t get undressed at night, especially on moonlit nights. This was because you could be sure there would be an air raid because they could see the river more clearly and follow it into Hull to find the docks. On one occasion my granddad got blown out of bed by a blast but still refused to go to the shelters. I remember being shoved under the table with a gas mask on. Our house suffered twice, eventually becoming uninhabitable.

The local jam factory — called CWS, had shelters built in the ground floor and after particularly heavy bombing we ended up there, with lots of other families. During one bombing the CWS was hit by landmines and incendiary bombs, and I remember running, and seeing all the other children run, and walls falling in. On this occasion I remember losing my mother for a couple of days and it was just me and my cousin Cyril who was 3 years older than me so we joined with another family. The next morning I remember collecting shrapnel, we were just fascinated by the beautiful colours, the blues and greens. After this my whole family got taken in by another family who welcomed us into their home, even though it meant their house was cramped and beds had to be shared. This system was good as it allowed us all to stay together.

A few months into the war, when I was 7, my family were evacuated from Hull to my Auntie Millie who lived in a village called Upper Weston on the outskirts of Bath. We were lucky because it meant all the children were together and that my Auntie and mother stayed with us. My Uncle was away in the Army, and my father was away in Egypt with the Army, but there was still a full house. I remember on the train down it just felt like an adventure and we were on one of those trains with corridors and compartments. The train must have been quite empty as we played houses in them the whole way, pretending the compartment was a sitting room!

My mother worked in the Horseman and Gear factory opposite Victoria Park which was a factory which assembled parts for aeroplanes. There was a large American presence in Upper Weston and there was a hospital nearby, Coombe Park — which is now The Royal United Hospital. When the American wounded used to walk through the village for exercise in their blue robes, we used to hang over the school wall waiting for them to throw us some chewing gum, which they always did! During this time I joined a dance class. The class was near Bath Abbey and I remember having dance shoes. I can remember them clearly, they were dyed red, and I can vividly remember the smell of the dye, even now. We did a performance of the Nutcracker suite and I was the Sugar Plum Fairy. I also did lots of acrobatics which I loved. On one occasion we were invited to entertain the troops and I remember them clapping even though we were complete amateurs! Afterwards we met the Captain and I had a big steak sandwich, it was so different from anything I’d eaten for such a long time and it was so big I couldn’t fit it in my mouth! One of the Americans asked me if I would teach his friend, nicknamed ‘Tiny’, how to do the back bend. His friend walked into the room and he was the tallest man I had ever seen and could barely fit through the doorway! I looked form one to the other and said incredulously, ‘I can’t teach him, he’s too big!!’.

We left Bath to go back to Hull to live with Nanny and Grandad in the last part of the war. When we left we took a Golden Labrador called Max with us because no one wanted her, and when the train stopped at stations we used to walk her up and down the platform. The war wasn’t quite finished though, when the siren went we had lessons in the school basement.

On VE day came peace at last. I remember people dancing on the shelters in Union Jack knickers and the children watching from the ground!

Part of me thinks it was the best time of my life. We used to sit on the stairs outside my house and watch the troops parade by. We used to copy them and march along with sticks and brooms, and used to play war games. It wasn’t panicky for children as we had no concept of life and death; the scariest times were when air raids were actually occurring.

After the war we moved to Bridlington where they were still using the air raid siren as the fire alarm and that sound still used to make us run. Even now, if I hear a plane overhead, for the briefest moment it brings it back.

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