大象传媒

My family lived in Brockley, South London in 1939. My father was a sergeant in the River Police based at Wapping or Waterloo Police Stations. My mother, as was the norm in those days, was a full-time mother; I was six years old; my brother, Tony, eighteen months old when war was declared.

My father, although he had done seven years in the Royal Navy, was not called up as his job was an essential service - a reserved occupation - and only younger members of the force were enlisted. My mother, brother and I were sent away with the first wave of evacuees. We went to Godstone in Surrey and were billeted with the blacksmith's family. I remember that there were some type of caves at the back of their land which contained large deposits of sand so there were always soldiers there filling sandbags.
Shortly after we arrived there the siren went and everybody came out into the streets looking for the fire - the siren had been their fire alarm. When told it was the air raid warning as there were some enemy planes in the vicinity we all scuttled back indoors!
We were warmly accepted by the villagers and I settled down at the local school. However, this was the time of the phoney war and my mother decided to return to London, much to my annoyance as I had just been chosen to be Mary in the Nativity play!

We stayed in London until the blitz began in earnest and then my mother, brother and I were evacuated again, This time we were not so lucky. I cannot remember where we went but we were billeted with a family who were seven-day adventists and firmly believed the world was to end very shortly. I remember there was a well in the garden.where I believe a child had fallen in and drowned. Although this had been capped it worried my mother and as she was not very happy there, we went to stay with a great-aunt who lived in Luton.

Whilst we were staying in Luton my father would visit us whenever he could. I remember on one occasion we all went to the railway station to see him off There were several people on the platform including two or three soldiers. Then suddenly the siren went and almost immediately there were planes overhead and bombs falling. My father shepherded everyone into an office/waiting room on the platform. This was reasonably safe as the windows were high up and taped. Then an A.R.P. warden arrived and ordered everybody out . We were to go to the proper shelter. As this involved crossing the line using a glass-sided bridge my father argued with him saying this was more dangerous. Luckily the all-clear went and so the problem was solved.
We had experienced the first hit-and-run raid on the Vauxhall Works in Luton. My father never got to London that day as the railway line had been hit and the train couldn't get through. We went back into the town and I can remember seeing several houses damaged, their roofs lying in the street. The Vauxhall works had also been damaged but not too badly.

When there was a lull in the bombing we returned to London. We moved from Brockley to Kensington to be near my grandmother and step-grandfather. We lived in the lower half of a house in Kensington Park Road. My grandparents had a shop, a newsagents called Bostons, in Portobello Road, between Oxford and Cambridge Gardens.
As a newsagents was considered an essential service one of theibasement storerooms was converted into a shelter for the use of customers and staff - steel pillars to support the ceiling, the window bricked up and a low door built into the wall dividing the house from next door so that we could escape if the house took a direct hit. We spent the next couple of years spending some time in London and some time with relatives living in the suburbs. My mother worried about my father in London when we were in the countryside and my father worried about us when we were in London so we went backwards and forwards according to enemy action.

When my father was on night work we would stay with my grandparents and sleep in the shelter below the shop. My grandparents had several pets and at first the parrot, the dog and the cat all came down into the shelter with us but after a while I'm afraid the parrot was left upstairs. She had much better hearing than us and would start a high-pitched whistle when she heard a bomb falling. This became too much for everybody's nerves so she had to take her chances upstairs. We did go up one morning to find the windows blown out and the cage lying sideways in the garden and the parrot squawking very loudly but unhurt.

When we stayed at home in Kensington Park Road my brother and I slept in a cupboard under the stairs and my parents slept in the passage beside us under a strong wooden board supported by trestles. I have some very pleasant memories of the times when there was a lull in the bombing. The house next door to us was a boarding house. During the war New Zealand soldiers were billeted there. They were stationed at the New Zealand Post Office in London, distributing mail between New Zealand soldiers and their families. We gave them nicknames, some named after the seven dwarfs - I particularly remember "Doc" Private Aitken who came from Dunedin. We had a piano which my mother would play for sing-songs. These always ended with a Maori war dance which caused the whole floor to shake. One Christmas my brother and I received a large tin, like a catering tin of corned beef with a key to open it. Inside were several large bars of chocolate. A marvellous treat!

During this time I attended Fox School in Notting Hill Gate. We had a shelter in the playground and if the siren went we had to take our books with us and continue the lesson in the shelter. Our very strict teacher, I believe her name was Miss Wibberley, was not going to let Hitler stop her children passing the eleven-plus exam! The lesson we most hated was when we had to wear our gas masks - they were hot and uncomfy.
We left London again when the V1s (doodle bugs) began to fall. These really unnerved my mother. We had gone to school as normal when the first V1s began to fall. By early afternoon my mother's nerves were shattered and she went to the school and brought us home. We very quickly left London again. This time to stay in a bungalow near Fittleworth in Sussex which belonged to the local dentist. He owned two, his wife and two sons occupying the other. My mother's best friend and her two children came with us. A couple of nights after we arrived a V1 crashed into a nearby field. So much for escaping them!

We did not go to school as the nearest village, Fittleworth, was nearly 3 miles away. Each morning my friend, Jean Garratt, and I used to walk up the hill to the nearby farm carrying a jug for milk, collected straight from the cow. Bread was delivered by a local baker so we only had to go to the village shops once a week. We supplemented our meat ration by putting out snares for rabbits. This seems awful now but the meat ration was very small and we were a long way away from the butcher so missed out on the chance of unrationed offal.

After a brief stay in London we returned to find that there were soldiers everywhere, billeted in camouflaged tents in the woods. The lanes were deep with trees growing either side and difficult to see from the air so along each one tanks, jeeps, lorries and ambulances were parked. Soldiers were taken out on route marches - some landed up in our garden when they'd had enough!. Then one morning they were all gone - D-Day had started. Now we had aircraft flying over us each day and some returning badly damaged. One morning when Jean and I went to the farm to get the milk we heard a bomber coming back, obviously in trouble. We looked up and behind us - the Lancaster bomber, smoke pouring out of one wing, appeared to be right on top of us. The jug of milk went flying and we both fell flat on the ground. The plane crashed a field or two away. I think that was the most frightening moment for me in the war.

On VE Day we were in London and I went with my family and some of the New Zealanders to Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. I remember seeing the Royal Family and Churchill on the balcony and singing and dancing round bonfires in other parts of the West End.

One of my last memories to do with the war was seeing rats running away when the authorities demolished the shelters in the gardens across the road. We quickly shut all our doors and windows!.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.