大象传媒

My name is Maureen Bunday, nee Treacher and these are my memories of life during WW2. I was four at the time, we lived in Dagenham, and we spent every night down in the Anderson shelter. My mum used to make four beds up every night and put little nightlights next to us.

I remember my dad putting his cap on when the planes came over and we used to laugh that his cap wouldn鈥檛 protect him. I remember the park at the side of the house in Dagenham being full of guns and when the sirens went off, the ground used to shake. I had two friends who lived in the next street who had a direct hit on their house and were killed.

At the age of 6, in 1941, myself, my sister Beryl who was 6 years older, and my mother, were evacuated to Wheathampstead in Hertfordshire. My grandmother joined us later. We lived right on the top of the hill, and were billeted with Mr and Mrs Gray. Later a lady called Mrs Arnold who owned a row of cottages, had one which became empty but fully furnished and she let us live in it. My father came to join us and got a job at Murphy radios in Welwyn Garden City. He used to cycle down the narrow lanes to and from work which was about 20 miles!

I had an artificial leg, having had my leg amputated at age 16 months. I could only wear a 鈥減eg leg鈥� because they didn鈥檛 bother about disabled people the way they do today, and the peg leg often used to break. I went to various limb-fitting centres and eventually to Roehampton where they gave me my first leg with a foot on, when I was 8 years old. I can remember going to school the following morning and the children couldn鈥檛 understand how I had a foot! My mum had told me I was going to get a leg with a foot and I thought it was going to be a real one with real veins and skin. At the Roehampton Artificial Limb Centre, the sights I saw there, with the soldiers, were awful. Some had no legs, some only one arm, some were blinded. We used to feel so sorry for them but they were always cheerful. Roehampton seemed full of bright blue uniforms which is what the disabled servicemen wore.

In 1944 we went to Welwyn Garden City; there were houses being built with flat roofs and we managed to get one. Then my aunt and her son came to live with us, another aunt and her daughter came to live with us, and some weekends when the husbands came to visit we had to put up as many as ten people in our house. Then the doodlebugs started. We used to get under the table, because there were no Anderson shelters in Welwyn Garden City 鈥� because it was in the country then, and no-one thought it was going to get bombed. We used to wait for the doodlebugs to go silent and every time you used to think it was going to hit you. A friend also told me that when the German bombers had finished their raids on London, if they had any bombs left over, they used to drop them in the fields around Welwyn!!

Because of the war, us disabled civilians didn鈥檛 get seen to 鈥� all the care was for the soldiers 鈥� and I had to wait six months for an appointment to have the artificial leg lengthened (because I was growing so fast). Because of that I eventually got curvature of the spine. One time my artificial leg broke and the only way I could get round was on a three-wheeled bike. I wasn鈥檛 allowed to go to school because they were afraid of me falling over, so my mum had to go and get homework for me. This went on for six months.

When people complain about the National Health Service today, they should have experienced life for a disabled person during the war when there was no NHS.

15 May 2004

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