大象传媒

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from 大象传媒 London Online on behalf of Maureen Wilson, and has been submitted to the site with her permission. Maureen Wilson fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

I was a war child, and my memories of the war, the most vivid memory I鈥檝e got, I was about six, coming out of school, and a German aircraft coming down the middle of the road and machine-gunned about eleven children. I was pulled into a sweetshop, and the bullet holes hit the door, and obviously saved my life, but not those poor little devils. And then I ran home to my mother and she said 鈥渨here have you been, your dinner is burnt!鈥�.

Other memories, staying in a street arch when it took a hit, and a load of people got killed in there towards the back end which is now London Underground, and in Bermondsey itself, we were in a Morrison shelter, coz there was eight of us in the family, can you imagine the eight of us? We were like rabbits! And when there wasn鈥檛 a raid, we used to play ping pong on the top of it, but night after night it was continual bombing and my mother was pregnant at the time, and I remember my father putting a tin hat on me and saying 鈥渃ome on love, we鈥檒l go out鈥�. We went through the street, heard the bomb, and when I looked back up (because the hat had slipped down), the whole street was gone, but there was a baby sitting in a high chair with a spoon still in its hand.

I saw so many things. Our car was taken over by the army, the guns and all that, so many things. VE Day, I was at Buckingham Palace with my brother, I was getting on for ten, and he was seven, and we were squashed up against the railings, my nose actually on one of the railing, and it was just electric. It was such a wonderful time, and people were so different, we were all dancing, and they grabbed hold of us and threw us in the air, and then the King came out on the balcony, but I鈥檝e got a lot of admiration for Winston Churchill, I was down at the war museum this Thursday and met his daughter, and shook her hand. And I met Richard Todd the actor and Lord Hague, and they all knew and asked me where were you in the war? And I said Bermondsey, and they said did you get evacuated? I said yes, for two months, but she was a right old so-and-so, she ill treated us so we tore the sheets up, got out the window and escaped, but we didn鈥檛 get very far coz a police man caught us and said where are you going? We were in Leicester, but our father came and got us and we stayed on for the rest of the blitz, and we had about fifty-three nights of continuous bombing, and playgrounds were bombsites, but a brilliant time. You look at kids today and you think they don鈥檛 have a life, but for a child in the war it was marvellous, none of us were scared, and we only ever once went into an underground, my father said 鈥渨e鈥檙e not going in here, it stinks!鈥� I did see lot of things a kid shouldn鈥檛 see. I saw the whole of the Docks when it was alight, the whole of the docks alight. My dad said 鈥淟ook at that love, you鈥檒l never see anything like that again in your life鈥� I hope鈥�.

It means so much to be here at the VE Day celebration, but it鈥檒l never be the same as it was on that night, the dancing, the yanks were over there, they were singing from Buckingham Palace, down St James鈥檚 Park, down While Hall, through to this square, and down to Leicester Square, and for two kids of that age, we walked all the way back to Bermondsey!

I鈥檝e never really met any of those friends that I was friendly with because I ended up on one of those old railings, I got blown down into a basement, and landed on an iron spike. A police man came along and he sawed me off, put me on his bike and took me to the hospital while I was holding the spike. I saw that police man again down at the old war museum on Thursday, dressed the same as we knew them, and I said I sat on that crossbar and was taken to hospital with a spike coming out of my mouth. He said how did you do that? And pretended to clip me around the ears, because that鈥檚 what they used to do! Back then I used to take their mac鈥檚 off and whip them around the legs with them!

It was a grand time to be alive. Our parents didn鈥檛 think so, my Mum was petrified; she would shout 鈥渦nder, under, under鈥�, and we had legs and arms all over the place, your feet would be in someone else鈥檚 mouth, but it was fun, it really was.

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