大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of Vera Scott-Jackson with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The Waterloo bound train slowed down at Clapham Junction and from then on proceeded by stops and slow starts. The view from the carriage window was so startling that the image has remained with me for almost 60 years. In a brilliantly sunlit blue sky hovered huge silver balloons gently swaying on their invisible tethers, illuminated by the sun so that they scintillated like sequined hippos. The skyline of the city, once a familiar plane of roof-tops and chimney pots, was now a jagged edge of torn walls, slate-less rooves and wide rubble-strewn spaces. I could not believe what I was seeing and dreaded what was to come. My mother, her arm around me, was also staring through the window, awestruck.

"What happened?鈥� I asked at last, but she for once was speechless and I saw a tear course down her face. We hugged each other. 鈥淧oor old London鈥�, she said, 鈥淚 hope your aunty is all right.鈥�

I don鈥檛 know which year this happened. It was my first visit back to London since I had been evacuated to Hampshire with my school in Balham in 1939 (we lived in Althorpe Road, Wandsworth). My mother had come to the house in Fleet where I was living to take me to my aunt鈥檚 for the weekend. My cousin was getting married. Her fianc茅, Jim, had a 24-hour pass from the Army and then he would away somewhere to the War. All families were disrupted at this time so there were few relatives at the wedding. My sister was nursing at Westcliff-on-Sea and my mother had been staying near me occasionally while father remained in London. I can鈥檛 remember who else was there, but auntie鈥檚 little house was very crowded.

When the train finally chuffed into Waterloo Station I was stunned. The huge glass dome was partially shattered, glass crunched under our feet as we walked along the platform. Tarpaulins and sheets of canvas were used to make temporary shelters all over the station concourse, which was packed with people hithering and thithering, mostly in uniform. The air smelled not just of steam engines but of a mix of wet brick dust and charred wood 鈥� even now a smell like that takes me back to London in the War. Weeds were already growing over the railway lines and amongst the rubble. Most poignant of all were the homes exposed to the world where the front walls had been blown away, looking like opened doll鈥檚 houses. There was the pretty wallpaper hanging in shreds, a torn curtain at a broken window, the fireplace on a wall but no floor.

I remember little of that weekend wedding except for my cousin鈥檚 beautiful nightdress. She had been a professional dressmaker before joining the ATS and had created a froth of frills, lace and ribbons from a silk parachute. As was usual then the wedding party had all been in uniform. We tried to sleep in auntie鈥檚 air-raid shelter in the garden but it was too noisy with the persistent BANG! BANG! BANG! From the guns and explosions, and anyway it smelled too damp and earthy. So we sat on the steps wrapped in blankets, drinking cocoa, watching the patterns of searchlights in the sky and the light of fires at the docks. I don鈥檛 remember being frightened and when the 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� sounded we went back to our beds. Next day my parents took me on the train back to the peace of the lovely green countryside and the kind people who looked after me.

Vera Scott-Jackson's school's intructions for evacuees at A7540940 and her cousin Lenny's story of a "tail-end Charlie" in the RAF at A7452380.

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