大象传媒

This is an account of the difficulties of growing up through the second world war, as spoken by my late grandmother Jill Primrose Twentyman Pellew when I interviewed her for a school history project.

鈥淲e lived 18 miles from London which was really rural at that time but near Northolt aerodrome. This became the base for certain bombers and we used to see them going out on raids and count them as they flew out. I even remember seeing re-fuelling being practised in the air above us. As part of her war effort my mother spent several evenings a week working in the canteen at Northolt. I remember people of all nationalities spending evenings at our house.

I remember the first siren that went off just after the declaration of war by Mr Chamberlain on the wireless and we sat in an inner hall without any windows until the all-clear siren went. In the afternoon my elder sister June and I were evacuated to somewhere near Rugby. We were only there for a week because it was so badly organised with no food or anywhere to sleep. It was a huge country house but we had to stay in the stables. I wrote home and my parents came to collect us within a week 鈥� there was still petrol at that time.

I went to Northwood College and became the youngest boarder by far. Every time the sirens went we had to go down to the air raid shelter which was very damp. We slept in something called the Refuge Room at night which was a reinforced classroom.

I remember we once had a bomb down the road at tea time and everyone ducked under the table. I don鈥檛 think anyone was killed that time but because my parents only lived 5 miles away I was always worried about them being hit by a bomb.

This bombing was not as bad as the later bombing because at least we usually had warnings and were able to get to the air raid shelters. Later, perhaps 2 years after, the bombs became doodlebugs (V1s) which were much more frightening. They made a loud ticking noise overhead. When this noise stopped you counted up to about 10 and then you would hear the explosion nearby. The worst night I remember was when I was about 10 at the beginning of the summer holidays when we were kept awake all night lying together on the sofa and we could hear the bombs all night long.

The day after a raid we used to collect pieces of aluminium foil which had been dropped by German bombers to try to deflect detection.

Possibly because of the damp conditions of the air raid shelters, I developed juvenile arthritis and in the middle of the war was sent to a London hospital for 6 weeks treatment. It was a very frightening experience for an 8 year old and I could hear the bombing both night and day.

My father, who had been invalided out of the army, was working for the War Agricultural Committee. He thought up the idea for volunteer labour at weekends to work any spare time on the land. His slogan for this became famous 鈥淟end a hand on the land鈥�. For this work he was awarded the OBE. I remember spending weekends at our caravan at Laleham near Staines helping to organise the volunteers. My job was to hand out blankets. On one occasion I had worked so hard that I actually fell asleep on the straw mattresses and could not be found.

When we went home we were given an emergency ration card to be able to get the basic necessities allowed. Once I was sent shopping with my card and to keep it safe I hid it in my sock. The trouble was that I could not remember where I had put it and since it was absolutely vital that I did not loose it I was terribly upset. Of course it turned up in the sock that night.

Being young we wanted to do what we could to help so I hired a donkey with my friend Teresa and we tried to go shopping with it towing a trap. It was rather reluctant so we had to try to ride it using a piece of old carpet as a saddle. This unsuccessful attempt only lasted a week and then Teresa acquired a pony. Despite the bombing we were allowed to get a train to London to go shopping for horse paraphernalia.
Looking back this time was a funny mixture of freedom and anxiety. We did our best to live normally and ignore the bombing despite the signs of devastation nearby.

The agricultural camps took up a great deal of my parents鈥� time. My brother Adrian joined the army when he was 18. He started off in the East Surrey and soon went to Sandhurst to do officer training. He spent most of his war in the desert where he was wounded near the spine. I was not aware of his injuries until he was over them. After he recovered he was sent to Italy where he was the first British officer into Florence.

Communication was very difficult. We wrote letters on unlined foolscap, which was then reduced in size and censored by the War Office before being sent on. It was even worse for the soldiers because they could give even less news and we would often receive letters with thick black lines where the writing had been censored.

Life changed enormously for my family after the start of the war. The maids and nanny went off to work in factories, my brother and sisters soon joined them and I was sent away to boarding school. We did not live near public transport so petrol rationing was a real problem. One of our two cars was put away for the duration of the war and the little car was kept for limited use only.

Food rationing was unpleasant but because we lived in the country we had our own chickens and grew our own vegetables and fruit. We used to use the air raid shelter to store apples. I don鈥檛 remember spending more than one night in it because we hated it so much. My main sense of loss was bananas!
I remember going to London for dinner with my parents. We used to travel by Underground and see all the people who regularly slept on the platforms as a security measure.

I remember exactly when the war ended because my parents came to collect me on VE day and took me to Piccadilly. The streets were buzzing with an amazing atmosphere. It was a wonderful feeling.鈥�

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