大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Dunstable At War Team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

September 3rd 1939 - and little did I know that it would change my world completely. I was living at the time in Ruskin Buildings, Millbank, Westminster, London, SW1. I was two years old, my father was in the Army and my mother and I lived in this top flat on our own. All my Grandparents lived within a few minutes walk, so I would often visit.

A few days after war was declared, we were evacuated to Wokingham but did not stay for long as nothing was happening in London and mum missed her mother, sister and brothers. We had not been back long when the bombing started. When the bombing was heavy we used the air raid shelter. One night our flat in Ruskin Building was hit with an incendiary bomb; we lost everything. I can remember seeing the flat the next day when my Uncle Joe, who was in the Fire Service, went up the long fireman鈥檚 ladder to see what he could save. Sadly, there was not much left; all the curtains were hanging out of the window and everything was burned. We went to live with my Nanny Howard who lived in a flat at Tothill House, Page Street, Westminster. We would sleep in the sofa bed and sometimes Auntie Eva would sleep with us. She was deaf and would not hear the siren, so mum would shout at her 鈥淕et up Eva and get down the shelter!鈥� Then we would use the surface shelter; it smelt of sweat and dirty washing and it was damp and horrible. The bombing was very bad; one night, the sheds in the yard were bombed and I lost my pram. We had a searchlight and a big anti-aircraft gun at the end of the street and all night long you could hear this being fired; it was very noisy with the gun and the bombs dropping.

During this time of the Blitz on London I began to get a very bad cough. I think that it may have been caused by our nightly sleeping conditions. Mum called it shelter cough and eventually took me to the Doctor. He said that if she did not get me out of the shelters and away from the bombing he would get me taken away, so she made arrangements for us both to go to Dunstable. Dad was stationed at Tring on the guns with his brother Teddy. We went to live in Ridgeway Drive but were not there very long. We then moved to Blows Road and lived with a Mr and Mrs K and Mrs K鈥檚 father, whom I called Uncle John. Mum got a job at the Post Office where Mr K worked; Auntie Mary (Mrs K) looked after me. My Dad would sometimes visit but he was sent to North Africa and I did not see him again until after the war. We were very happy there; I used to play in the garden and look after my own chicken called Snowball. One day, Snowball was missing; Mum said it had gone away but I found out in later years that it was our Christmas dinner! Mrs K became ill so we had to leave.

Mum told the caretaker at the Post Office Mr M, that she was looking for somewhere to live. He said that he had a room at his house and perhaps we would like to go and meet his wife and look at the room. We went to live with Mr and Mrs M in Union Street and I was to call them Uncle Sid and Auntie Win. Mum tried to get me into school but because I was only four and a half they would not take me, so she managed to get me into a private school called Aberfeldy. It was a fee paying school and cost four pounds a term. The school was run by a Mrs C and her daughter. I didn鈥檛 like going to school; I would cry and grizzle when auntie Win tried to get me ready for school and I seemed to do nothing but cry when I was there. They then decided that Auntie Win should collect me at 12 o鈥檆lock instead of 1 o鈥檆lock for dinner and return me at the usual time of 2 o鈥檆lock. This went on for some and as I began to settle down, auntie Win allowed me to come home on my own with the other children at dinnertime. One day I decided that I was not going to school and would not get ready, so auntie Win locked me in the bedroom. When I thought that every one was at school I asked to be allowed out to play. Auntie Win said that I must stay until Mum came home from work at dinnertime. I then called her an 鈥榦ld bugger鈥� and when Mum came home I got a clout!

The other thing that I did not like was the lavatory or the 鈥榣av鈥� as we used to call it. This was situated in the yard; it was a brick building with another attached for next door. It had a wooden seat with a hole in it and a cast iron cistern with a long chain, which you would pull when you had finished. It was dark, cold and draughty and the door had peepholes in it. I would be frightened to stay in there for very long because there always seemed to be spiders lurking around. Auntie Win would scrub the lav out every week but the spiders always returned. In the summer I was much braver and would sit and play with the newspaper squares that were threaded through a piece of string that hung from a nail on the wall. There was no toilet paper in those days and sometimes I would sing and kick the wooden box for the music. We didn鈥檛 use the lav at nighttime; we had a pot under the bed. In the winter it would freeze so we would have to take a bucket of water with us to flush it down. We never spent long in there; it was freezing cold!

Auntie Win kept rabbits. I used to play with them but when she had fattened them up she would kill them and I would watch while she gutted and skinned them. She would sell the skins for a shilling and she would make rabbit stew and rabbit pie. Auntie Win was a lovely cook; I can always remember Christmases when I lived there. In October she would start to prepare the fruit for the Christmas cake and Christmas puddings. She would then collect the big bowl from the bedroom and mix the puddings in it. We would all have a stir and make a wish. She would then put the mix in basins with a cloth on top and they would be boiled for hours in the brick copper that you did your washing in. She would keep the fire going under the boiler while they cooked. She would bake the Christmas cake in the big black range. Another thing Auntie Win did was to pickle eggs. She would get the big jug down from the bedroom and pickle eggs in Isinglass. They would keep for some time but didn鈥檛 taste very nice.

The preparation for Christmas was lovely; about a week before Christmas we would make the chains to decorate the room. You could not get Christmas trees so Auntie Win would get me a branch and put it in a pot. We would then make bells to hang on the branch from milk bottle tops and pompoms out of odd bits of wool. When no one was in, I would go into her bedroom and look under the bed to see what they had bought me for Christmas. Mum and Auntie Win always managed to get me something; a toy Post Office, a Snakes and Ladders and Ludo game, sweets, an orange and a Rupert Annual. One Christmas I had a dolls house. On Christmas Eve, Auntie Win would be busy getting food prepared. She would make mince pies, prepare what meat she could get hold of and light the fire in the front room. On Christmas day, Auntie Win would cook the dinner. Mum would be delivering the mail, as there was a delivery on Christmas day. Uncle Sid would be round the Pub then come home so drunk that he could not eat his Christmas dinner. We would push him up the stairs to sleep it off, before he went to the Post Office to put the blackout up. Some Christmases Auntie Win鈥檚 brother Ron and his wife Flo would come and spend the day with us. After tea they would push the table back, get the gramophone out and I would have to turn the handles and play Bing Crosby singing White Christmas while they danced.

Summer was also a lovely time; I would play out with my friend Barbara and sometimes I would be allowed to stay for tea. Mrs P would always let me have salad cream on my eggs and salad; I thought it was delicious as my mother never bought anything like that! Sometimes I would be allowed to sleep the night. Mr P had use of a friend鈥檚 car and they would often take me with them when they went on an outing. We would visit Ashridge and Barbara and I would wander through the woods while Mr and Mrs P stayed in the car and read.

Barbara and I joined the Brownies. We could not get uniforms because of the war so Mrs P used an old brown curtain to make us both Brownie uniforms. The tie was made from a triangle bandage and dyed yellow. We had lots of fun at Brownies and later went up to the Girl Guides. I also joined dancing classes doing ballet and tap and I was in several shows.

In the summer on a Sunday, we would have an early tea and go to the cemetery to see the graves of Auntie Win鈥檚 relatives. Sometimes we would go up to the Dunstable Downs and on the way home we would call at the Globe pub for a drink. I would have to sit outside with my lemonade and packet of crisps.

We were told one day that a German plane had come down in a field near Brewers Hill, which was a cart track in those days; Barbara and I decided to go and have a look. We got to where the plane was; it had crashed into a hedge, its tail with a swastika painted on it sticking up in the air. We became a little nervous thinking that perhaps the Gerry was still in it, so we had a look, but they had taken him away.

We would often visit London during the war as mum wanted to see the family and she would take me with her. We would get the bus to Luton Station and then catch the train. I was always very frightened when the train came puffing and rumbling into the station and would hide behind mum. The train was always full of troops and there was never any room to sit. Sometimes a soldier would give up his seat so that we could sit down. When we arrived at St Pancras station we would catch the no. 73 bus. This would take us along the Thames embankment and past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Everything looked dull and dismal; covered in camouflage with barrage balloons in the sky to stop the buildings being attacked from the air. I would look at the bombsites with wild flowers growing out of the brickwork. On one occasion when we visited my Nanny Howard towards the end of the war, we were sitting talking by the fire when there was a terrible explosion. All the windows rattled and somehow we ended up under the table. We heard later that a V2 rocket had blown up a few streets away. I was so frightened that I never went to London again until after the war.

Once, when we were coming home from one of these visits, the train came to a halt in one of the tunnels a few miles out from St Pancras station. We sat in the carriage in the semi- darkness for a very long time, when a Guard came along to tell us that there was a bombing raid going on overhead. I think mum thought that it was too dangerous for me to go again, so I would stay with Uncle Sid and Auntie Win.

When mum was working at the Post Office she would often take me out on the collection rounds with her. One day she stopped at the Rubber Works and went inside to collect the mail when the air raid siren sounded. All the women came out screaming and went down into the shelter. I was sitting in the Post Office van when I heard a V1 rocket (doodlebug) overhead, followed a few minutes later by two Spitfires. I heard later that it was shot down near Watford.

One day mum said that the war was over and that my dad would be home soon. Several weeks went by and we had a street party to celebrate the end of the war. One day mum received a telegram to say that Dad was on a bus in Luton and would like us to meet him at the bus stop opposite the Grammar School in Dunstable. Mum was at work so auntie Win dressed me in my tartan skirt and red school blazer and Uncle Sid and I went to the bus stop. I was very nervous as I could not remember him at all because he had been away for so long. After a while a bus came along and stopped at the bus stop and a soldier got off. I knew it was my dad as his number was on his kit bag and I had memorised it. As we walked up Union Street I felt very proud of him; everybody was clapping their hands and saying, 鈥淚s this your Dad Shirley?鈥� Auntie Win was waiting for him and had prepared a boiled egg for him. He would often say, 鈥淚 had just come home from the war and all I got was a boiled egg!鈥� I don鈥檛 think he realized that eggs where very hard to come by and food was on ration.

I have written this memoir as part of my family history. It is about the very happy years spent as an evacuee in Dunstable during the Second World War. I would like to dedicate it to Uncle Sid and Auntie Win (Mr and Mrs M), for the kindness and love that they showed us and for putting up with me, as I was often a naughty little girl. I really loved them and I still miss them.

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