大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War site by Christopher Hall for Kent Libraries and Archives and Canterbury City Council Museums on behalf of Jean Parker and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was 10 years old in September 1939 when war broke out. We already had some evacuees from London staying with us, I don't know why, but I suppose the government thought war was imminent and so they evacuated quite a few in preparation.
We lived in Folkestone, Kent. There were six of us in the family- Mum, Dad, Peggy the eldest, Bill next, Muriel and then me (Jean). We lived in a 3-storey house in Linden Crescent -number 56. Although it had five bedrooms, I can't remember where my mother put the evacuees. Oh, I forgot to mention that my Grandfather -my mother's father -lived with us at the time.

However, on that fateful day in September I remember we were listening to the radio when Mr Chamberlain made his speech. I know that I felt scared. I had heard stories about the First World War from my father (although he was a Scotsman he had been in Canada and had joined the Canadian Cavalry -but that's another'story). Soon after Mr Chamberlain's speech the sirens went and I thought the Germans were already here, but it was just a practice.
For a few weeks everything seemed peaceful, so much so that the evacuees decided to go back to London and once again the house was ours.
My Grandfather joined the ARP .He looked so smart in his navy uniform, he must have liked it too because I can hardly remember him being out of it!

We were then issued with gas masks. I had an adult one, but children were given Mickey Mouse ones with big round eyes and in colours of black and red. Babies were given huge ones like today's space helmets, only bigger. There was a pump at the side, which mothers had to push in and out. Thank goodness we never had to use them, but we had to carry them with us everywhere. My mother bought me a case for mine; it was green and I thought it was very swish. We also had identity cards, which we also had to carry around with us.

1940 -At school things were pretty nonnal, but behind the scenes they were getting ready to evacuate the school to Wales. That year we had a fairly normal Christmas, but rationing had come in to being, but knowing my Mum she probably had prepared for this.
My father worked for a building firm called Otto Marx. I think his parents were German, but he was born in England. However, my father worked for him for years, just a jack-of- all-trades, doing all the jobs nobody else wanted to do. He also worked at the Pleasure Gardens Theatre working the spotlights, and another job he used to do was look after the boilers at Christ Church in Sandgate Road. I mention these things as they come into the story later on.
At the start of 1940 the evacuation of schools in Folkestone started. I did not want to go, so I stayed behind, but it was not long before the war started in earnest and we were shelled. We had an Anderson shelter in the back garden and we spent nearly every night in there. By this time my mother was getting worried about us, so she decided to send my sister Muriel and I to my Aunt Lil's in-Iaws who lived at 9 Birchanger Road, South Norwood. Aunt Lil lived a few miles away in New Addington. My sister and I lived there for about 6 months, but we were unhappy. We were treated very kindly, but we were homesick, so we asked Aunt Lil if we could go and stay with her. She was my mother's sister, so it felt a little bit better to be with her.
1941 -I must explain that at this time there was not much of a blitz going on, although we had air raids, it seemed pretty quiet. However, we did go to Aunt Lil's and were happier there. Little did we realise that Biggin Hill Airfield was just a few miles away and that it would be the target of many bombing raids.
When the siren went we had to go down the road to a brick shelter which was in a field. We were very friendly with all the people there and sometimes in the middle of the night, when the warning went, we would have an impromptu party .There was a man and a woman (I never knew who they were) who used to come round and entertain us with singing. Also there was an elderly Warden who was in charge of the shelter who was a very sweet and lovely man.
All this time my mother, father, sister Peggy who was 20 at this time (and engaged to a man called Len) and my brother Bill (18), were still living in Folkestone. One day we received a letter from my mother saying my uncle in Scotland had died and that my father was going up to Scotland to his funeral and on his way back he was going to call in on us.
It was a Sunday. Aunt Lil was preparing the Sunday lunch when the sirens went off. She hurriedly scribbled a note to say "gone to th'e shelter", in case my Dad arrived, and off we went. By the time we got there, there was the sound of planes in the sky and the noise was terrific. There was a dogfight going on and bombers coming over in waves. Now at the shelter there was like a passageway before you got into it and there were three or four men standing there watching the dogfights. Aunt Lil handed out some cotton wool to put in our ears when all of a sudden there was a blinding flash, the lights went out and the place was filled with smoke. I can't begin to tell you what we saw when the smoke cleared. After all these years it is still a painful memory. Suffice to say the Warden was killed and several other people badly injured. It is a scene that I will never forget.
The rescue people were there in minutes and told us not to look down, but it was just as bad to look up. As we came out of the passageway we could see the crater the bomb had made just at the side. As we walked back up the road the all clear went and for some reason, I know now what, I started screaming. A nurse came running down the road and put her arms around me and took me into the rescue station. I was given sal volatile. My sister was only 16 at the time, but she cuddled me, we were both so frightened. The next thing we were told was we were going to a rest home in the country called Coombe House. I don't know whose house it was, but it was a big mansion with two huge rooms each side of the hall. They were like two dormitories, men on the left, women on the right. We were there for a week.
Afterwards we were told that my father arrived on the Monday only to see the note pinned on the door saying we had gone to the shelter. He went there and was horrified to see the destruction and blood. He was distraught, but after seeing someone in charge he learned that we were safe and at Coombe House. He came to see us and we were over the moon to see him. He told us that he was going to send us up to Scotland, including my mother, brother and my dad's sister, Auntie Jean, and we could hardly contain ourselves knowing we were going to see our mother after nearly a year .It seemed a long time until that Saturday when she would be coming, but at last it arrived.

The plan was that my Grandfather would come up with my mother. She would stay in London while my Grandfather would come to Coombe House to pick up us, but it did not work quite that way.
When he arrived to us he stayed with his youngest daughter (Aunt Lil) longer than he should, but at last we were on the train to Charing Cross. We did not know at the time, but my mother, getting very worried that something had happened, decided to go and see for herself and our trains must have passed each other. We arrived on London just at the sirens started. We were told to go to the underground. There seemed to be hundreds of people milling about and we wondered how we could find anyone in that crowd, when suddenly we saw Bill and Aunt Jean and we learnt what had happened to our mother.
It was getting late in the afternoon and we waited and waited for Mum to get back, when a policemen told us that we should go to St Martin's in the Field where the crypt had been turned over to a shelter. I was worried that Mum would not find us, however the siren went again and Aunt Jean decided that it would be the best place for us.
As we went down into the crypt, to my childlike eyes it seemed a huge place and everywhere you looked there were wooden bunks and beds, and a small canteen where you could get a drink and a roll. We could hear bombs dropping and gunfire. Would we ever see our Mother again? But somehow we felt safe in that church. Muriel and I were exhausted and we curled up on those wooden bunks and fell straight to sleep. I awoke to hear somebody crying and there was my Mum, tears running down her face. She had had a nightmare of a journey back from Coombe House, shunted back into tunnels and stations and she had arrived back in London with the blitz going full blast and not knowing where we were. Then someone told her that if we were anywhere we would be in St Martin's in the Field. I think she was crying for sheer relief at finding us.

The next morning we took the first train to Glasgow. There is only one memory that I have of that trip. I had fallen asleep lying across my mother's and Auntie Jean's laps when I had a dream of the dog fight and I awoke screaming "they're coming, they're coming!" I remember there was a man sitting opposite. He was peeling an apple. He cut it in half and offered it to me. I accepted and thanked him.

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