大象传媒

On a lovely bright Sunday morning, I was pushing a neighbour鈥檚 baby in her pram round the corner from my house when there was the screeching of the air raid siren. I left the baby where she was and just ran home! Panic followed when her mother came rushing to my parents to collect her, and after a severe scalding for me all ended well.

Soon after the beginning of the war we were issued with the suffocating gas masks and the ration books, and life changed for us all. The air raids became the ruling factor of our every day lives, as our school was closed for six months. But we soon realised it was not to be the holiday we at first thought it would be. The innocence of childhood was soon to be shattered when the bombs began to fall all around us. My Father dug a large hole in the garden and soon the Anderson shelter was erected, covered with soil from the hole and a good sized entrance was built of wood and heavily reinforced with sandbags. Little did my Mother realise at the time that this was to become her first refrigerator. I think it was early in 1940, soon after my eleventh birthday, that a bomb was a direct hit on the house 3 doors away which prompted the authorities to organise the evacuation of the children in 3 roads round my house which, for some obscure reason, had previously been declared a safe area.

Very soon my Sister, Brother and I were put on a train along with many other children and eventually ended up in a small village in Berkshire. My Sister went to live with 3 other girls and my Brother and I were together with a middle aged couple. We lived in a large house and there were 3 maids, a cook, 2 gardeners and a chauffer. Right from the start we were welcomed by them all and so began, what to me was a life of luxury. My Mother and Father came to visit us once or twice but it unsettled us so they did not come again. After a short time at the village school I had to move to the senior school in another village and this meant I was supplied with a bicycle. This was a great treat as I really enjoyed the ride each day as it was summer time and the countryside was beautiful and a new experience for a girl from the town. Winter though was another story.

Unfortunately we missed home so much and after our Sister had returned home, we begged our parents to let us return also. This proved to be the wrong move as we were only there for a matter of days when the 鈥渂litz鈥� started. Every night we would sleep in the shelter, going down a little earlier every day as we knew the doodle bugs would start coming over about ten minutes earlier each night.

My father was often not with us during the night as he was a street warden and had to sleep at work one night each week on air raid duty. One night when he was on street patrol, he came to our shelter and said, 鈥淐ome and look at this!鈥�. There was a dog fight going on between two planes, when suddenly, one was hit and we saw the crew parachuting out. Just as we were engrossed in this, there was an almighty bang from a mobile gun which was just round the corner. We never went out to view anything again!

My friend lived a few doors up the road with her parents, grandparents, uncle, and baby sister. There house was destroyed when we had another bomb and the council re-housed them about thirty minutes away. It came as a dreadful shock when I heard three weeks later that all of them, except my friend, had been killed when their home had received a direct hit.

This bomb in our road had caused a lot of damage to our house. The only room that was anywhere near habitable was the living room. The front door was blown off its hinges 鈥� and we found it in the kitchen. All the windows were broken and the ceilings came down, and there was chaos everywhere.
Hail the Royal Marines to help clear things up by putting tarpaulins on the roof and waterproof material on all the window frames. When it was washed and washed and washed thoroughly, this material made quite acceptable clothes! One of the marines who came to do the repairs to our house in 1944, noticed me when I was across the road, and as I came back to the house, he spoke to me. He asked me to go out with him. Since we had been told by our parents not to have anything to do with the service men, I asked my friend to go with me. The young marine kept returning and we were married in 1947. He never lets me forget that first date 鈥� and my friend coming along with me.
My husband Alfred's story- see People's War Story 7713137

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