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This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Suzanne Longstone and has been added to the website on behalf of Hilda Jones (Waters)with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Hilda was fourteen and a half and attending the John Howard County High School when war broke out in 1939. She was actually evacuated on 2nd September, one day before war was declared, and sent with her eight year old brother and two other girls from Hilda’s school to Much Hadham, Herts. They only stayed there a week and Hilda remembers being poorly treated, the general opinion being that if they came from London then they must all be slum children, so not worth bothering about too much. Hilda was intelligent and had passed to go to the High school, so even at the time she felt this attitude was unjustified. Luckily for them there was no school at Much Hadham so Hilda and her brother were soon moved to Bishop’s Stortford to stay with a childless couple who were much more pleasant. There was half-day schooling and they earned the odd penny doing odd jobs for the couple but Hilda was homesick, so after they had spent Christmas ’39 back in Hackney Hilda stayed on in London whilst her brother was re-evacuated. Her older brother was in the Air Force and her older sister had evacuated to Bangor with her job in an Insurance firm, so it was just Hilda and her parents at home.

Hilda wanted to leave school but had to wait three months to get her Leaving Certificate to make this official, despite there being no schools open in Hackney at that time. Hilda spent her days at home until the certificate arrived and then she went to work in the office of Hector Powell, a firm of tailors. She was an office junior and spent her days filing invoices and the like. After about eighteen months in this job she was caught by the manager dancing the jitterbug (not very well either!) in the office. He was definitely NOT impressed and she was given the sack! Hilda was worried about her father’s reaction to the news but luckily he was fine about it. She soon got a new job in the offices of a textiles warehouse and stayed there for the rest of the war.

Hilda was in London through The Blitz and particularly remembers being looking up and feeling surrounded by red skies when they came out of their Anderson shelter. This was not a favourite place as it was damp and claustrophobic. Once a landmine went off in the next block, blowing in all the windows of their house and bringing down the internal wall between the two downstairs rooms. Hilda’s father came in, shaking himself free of glass, to make sure Hilda was safe. She got told off because she had French knickers on! If there was a raid in work time then she used the shelter there and also had firewatching duties on the roof, looking for incendiary bombs. Going out at night wasn’t possible so Hilda liked to go to afternoon Tea Dances with her friends. At home in the evening she would read, knit, play cards and listen to the radio. She just accepted things as they were and didn’t fight the restrictions placed on her. On VE Day she went out in the daytime with an American she had previously met on a holiday in Paignton, Devon, and went with him to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.

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