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This is the story of my mother as a child and her family at the begining of WW2

My father was born 28 june 1905 and was enlisted in March 1924 (age 18) and joined the KRRC 19 Dec 1924. He then served in India, returning to England some time in 1928, when he met my mother, married and left the army. However he signed on the reservists, largely because he received a quarterly sum (£5 I think). I think he signed up for 10 years as I recall him saying if the second war had been a bit later he would have missed it .

He was recalled the summer of 1939 to Winchester. I remember it well, standing on the station platform saying goodbye, I was just 10 years old with my mother, sister Betty 6 and my youngest sister 8 months. Betty was crying bitterly, the baby oblivious, my mother and I struggling to look cheerful. Dad gave Betty and I a shilling and a big grin and lots of kisses as he got on the train, we bought a boxed set of dolls for our dolls house, mother, father, 2 children and a baby and nursemaid with the money. I don’t remember much until we were woken up one Sunday morning very early my mum telling us we had to go to the country, we then went to the town hall where, it seemed to me, there were hundreds of people milling about, all very animated, mother talking to complete strangers everyone excited. All the children were issued labels and put onto buses with another bus for the mothers, (if you had a child under 2 you were evacuated too) and off we went. Halfway into the journey the bus stopped at a pub and all the adults listened to a radio as war was declared, many cried and the whole atmosphere changed.. We wound up in Saffron Waldon and my mother, sisters and I were very lucky as we ended up in a large beautiful house. We had the former nursery, the whole top floor. The people who owed it were a very kindly elderly couple, the husband a doctor of music. They did there best to make us welcome. That was 3rd September 1939 the day the war started.

In the mean time dad had a 24hour pass (we hadn’t seen him since he was recalled) as they were going to France with the BEF. He had arrived back home to find us gone and the neighbours had told him we had been evacuated so he made his way to the town hall, found out we were in Saffron Walden and hitched a lift there. He must have had a great deal of difficulty as he arrived in the middle of the night. The old gentleman, the doctor of music suggested that he had better not wake us up and made a makeshift bed in the study. Can you imagine the joy we felt to be told in the morning that father was downstairs? It was short-lived however as he had to leave almost immediately as he only had a 24-hour pass. So we had another tearful goodbye at another platform. That must have been about the 5th of September and he was in France by the next day or so.

That was the start of the so called phoney war, no blitz, no death and destruction as far as we at home were concerned, my mother felt she had been premature in moving us to the country so we went back to London at the beginning of November to live with our great aunt in Wimbledon. It was a large, noisy, happy household — my mothers aunt and uncle, her grandfather, her 5 cousins ranging in age from 19 to 28 and our little family, How did we all fit in? My father came home on leave in early 1940 bearing gifts. Betty and I had the most fabulous French dolls we had ever seen elegant with golden high heels and silk dresses.

The months went by and the papers were full of bad news of the fighting in France, then the word ‘Dunkirk’ was heard more and more, now my birthday is in April so I would be just 11 than so I can only tell you how it seemed to me at the time but I remember hearing about and seeing newsreels of our soldiers coming home but our dad didn’t. One afternoon that summer my mother was going round to her aunt (we had our own flat round the corner by then) as they had a telephone, very unusual in those days, I still recall the number Liberty 5923, to see if there was any news of our father. We were given a halfpenny each to buy some sweets and we went off on our trike (I peddled and my sister stood on the back) with her hands on my shoulders. Imagine a child of 11 riding a trike today! They would die of embarrassment. We were a long time choosing as it was our custom to choose different sweets but ones we both liked, for example, I would choose a halfpenny worth of lemon sherbets and betty a halfpenny worth of raspberry crèmes then we would carefully divide them equally so we both had a mixture of both. We were so engrossed I n this that we were half way home before realising we had left the trike outside the shop. We ran back to the shop and just as we were getting on the trike I heard someone call my name. I turned and there was dad the other side of Merton road, was I overjoyed? No, my chief emotion was of awful embarrassment. You see our father was always very smart very ‘well turned out’ and there he stood on the pavement in a ragged red shirt plimsolls, no socks, and a pair of shorts!! His legs all scratched and cut. In those days men very rarely wore shorts, even tennis players wore long white flannels and on the beach many men wore collar and tie so to see our father of all people, dressed like that on the street in broad daylight was unbelievable. I remember I didn’t know what to say to him, I think he thought I was shy but I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

I ran ahead to tell my mother dad was home, she raced home, followed by aunt, uncle, and various cousins and everyone was talking at once laughing kissing, teasing and joking. Now, I cant remember my father talking about this again but that afternoon I sat listening to the adults, they were too excited and happy to notice us and send us off to play, and as far as I can remember my dad said his lot were holding the Germans up at Calais while our troops got off the beaches at Dunkirk then he, unfortunately contracted quinsy’s, there were no antibiotics available then so the MO lanced his throat and dad was taken to a farmhouse with men who had been wounded. The y go back to England in a Dutch boat I think he said and when they landed they were promptly locked up in a former lunatic asylum in Southend for questioning in case they were enemies. He realised that mum would be worrying about him so he decided to climb the wall and ‘pop home’ to let us know he was ok. It was a common feature then of many intuitions to have the boundary walls topped with broken glass, hence his scratched and cut legs. He went back that evening, I don’t know if he was punished for his escapade or not but he was soon reunited with his old mates

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