大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Linda Finlay on behalf of Jean Keevill. The story has been added to the site with her permission and Jean fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

For me the war started on 31st August 1939, for my Mum and Dad it was 30th. Dad came home from work and told Mum we were going home to England next day because there was going to be a war. We were only allowed to take one suitcase with us and Mum was up til four in the morning deciding which clothes to take. We were living in Scheveningen, a seaside town in Holland. Dad worked in an office in the Hague. Dad drove us to get a coach in Hague, leaving the car in a garage to be sold with the name and address on an Uncle in London so that the money could be sent on to him. It never arrived. At the Hook of Holland we got the ferry to England. Only the soldiers were allowed to travel on any of the trains.

Arriving in Harich we caught a train to London where at Leyton,in the East End we stopped at Aunty Lily and Uncle Len's house for tea. Then we had to go to Loughton in Essex to stay with Aunty Bertha and Uncle Frank until Dad found a house for us to stay in Walton On Thames, Surrey. Two days after my seventh birthday in November, on
Mum's birthday we moved into our new house number 18 Kings Road.

There were many other people living in the houses nearby who had travelled a long way to be there as people living by the seaside had to move in case an invasion started. Soon after we arrived we were issued with gas masks, made of black rubber that went over our faces with a strap that went rounds the backs of our heads with another strap going over the top to fasten to the first strap. The bit that held whatever it was that stopped the poisonouse gas being breathed in was rather like a pig's snout. Breathing in and out made funny noises and when you talked hardly anyone could understand you. You carried your gasmask in a strong cardboard box with a loop of string over your shoulder or over your head and one shoulder which was the way most children wore them.

We were supposed to take them everywhere with us but Mum wanted us to run back home from school if there was a gas attack. I could run there in less than a minute because the school was only about 10 houses away from our house and Mum kept our gas masks at home, Across the road from the school was a pillar box, painted green on the top. This would change colour if any gas was around. I used to look out of the school window to see if the paint had changed colour.

If we did have a gas attack our ARW would have had to get on his bike wearing his gas mask and ride up our road ringing a bell. Wardens, ladies and men, wore a navy uniform with a shiny black tin hat with ARP on it which stood for Air Raid Precautions. We knew out ARW, Mr Glass, as he was the church caretaker.

Bernanrd, four years older than me, went to a dfferent school further away and had to take his gas mask with him. His school was near some reservoirs. One of them had no water in and when an unexploded bomb could be moved it was driven on a lorry, very carefully and exploded in the empty one by specially trained soldiers who belonged to the Bomb Dospsal Unit. The boys would then see a big flash and hear a big bang.

Holland was invaded in May 1940. The Dutch people used dynamite to blow holes in the banks of the canals and sea walls (the banks are called dykes) and a lot of the country was flooded when the Germans arrived.

Many people in England were afraid we would start getting more bombing raids once the German army had captured Holland, Belgium and France. Dad said 'They'll never bomb Lond - they wouldn't dare. If they bomb London I'll eat my hat' Then they did bomb London but I never saw my Dad eat his hat.

The people of Walton used to call the siren the sireen. It used to give you a frightened feeling in your stomach and you flet better when the 'all clear' sounded.

One evening we saw a huge red glow in the sky over London. It was the docks and hundreds of buildings burning caused the glow in the sky. We didn't have many bombs dropped in Walton but as it was on the way to London some pilots dropped they bombs early so that they could turn round and go back home. We said that others found the search lights and the anti-aircraft guns (we alled them 'ack-ack' guns) too much so they turned away before they'd dropped all their bombs and dropped the last ones on their way to the coast.

Dad was in the Home Guard and one night Edna and I were trying to sleep under the dining room table when he was called out. All the shops had broken windows and they were afraid there would be looters stealing things. Dad cycled into town in his uniform and tin hat, with his rifle. Next day all the shops wer boarded up.

Lord Haw Haw used to broadcast with a terrible posh accent and started each broadcast by saying 'Jarmany calling. Jarmany calling. He tried to make us feel that everything we were doing was a waste of time and we were losing the war. He'd lived in Walton before he went to Germany and tried to make us think we would be raided and that important buildings would be hit. Nearly all of it was untrue but we had a good laugh.

Dad joined the Home Guard when it was called the Local Defence Volunteers and before uniforms were issued they wore their ordinary clothes with an armband with LDV on which some people said stood for Look, Duck and Vanish. Maybe that's why the Government changed its name. When he was issued with a uniform the top part of rather like a blouse it was thick and khaki. However, his trousers had a waistband that came up to his chest and went under his arms. As he didn't have much hair Mum knitted him a skullcap to wear under his tin hat.

They learned to get over barbed wire by putting one man, one of the smallest and lightest, face down on it with arms and legs out to spread his weight evenly and then the barbs wouldn't feel so bad. the rest got over by putting one foot on his back and stepping over. The last tow to go over would then carefully lift the bridge man off on the far side.

There was a bad raid on an aircraft factory called Vickers in Weybridge. Edna and I were playing in the garden when we hear a lot of aircraft engines. They were German because the noise made was alot lower than English planes. I said German bombers and we ran indoors. As we went through the kitchen Mum said "What's the matter?" "German Bombers" I said. "Don't be silly" she said "The sirens haven't gone." then we heard the first bombs fall and Mum came and got under the stairs with us. She asked me how I knew they were German planes. I said "Their engines sound different." I always thought their engines sounded ominous. I suppose Mum had never noticed. Bernard was at school when the rais happened. It was lunchtime when he should have come home for lunch but they were ordered into the shelters.

We had a smaller garden than every9one else in our road because there was a building at the end of it. During the war the Government took the building over and it was turned into a small factory. We got used to the humming noise coming from the building. I never found out what they made but it can only have been small parts which might have had nothing to do with guns, bombs or bullets. When the war finished the factory was closed own.

I remember going to the big public shelters. They were made of concrete with earth over the top. You had to go down steps to get inside. Our teacher, Miss Baxter, used to start a sing song to stop us from feeling frightened. Girls who were several years older than me used to have to take important exams in the shelters.

To try and stop bombers flying low over towns there were Barrage balloons. They were very big and silver in colour so that pilots flying over the towns would find it difficult to see them because silver reflected the sky. They were full of gas and looked like big fat fish with fins near the tail. They were fixed to the machinery on the ground by a very strong cable and the machinery let the cable out as they went up and wound them down again when necessary. They were usually in the sky but any that were down soon went up when the siren sounded.

Once when we were out on our bikes for the day we saw a thunder storm coming towards us and looked for somewhere to shelter. the clouds were coming so fast that one balloon was struick by lightening. It was pulled down burning furiously. Sometimes German planes would fire their guns at balloons to try and set them on fire. It didn't happen often as pilots had to concentrate on avoiding the shells that ack-ack guns were firing at them.

We had a strong room in our church. Some big beams of wood or metal had been put in to give extra support to stop the ceiling collapsing. there were lots of big shelves in there with lots of blankets on them. When Edna and I had to do to choir practice with Mum and Dad we used to play in the strong room with two friends Ruth and Clifford. We spend the evening jumping off one pile of blankets to the next. We weren't supposed to do it but no one knew because they were all singing away in the choir. the blankets were meant for people who had been bombed out of their houses. they could come to the church hall and be made comfortable with the blankets for the rest of the night until they somewhere better to go.

While my Dad's office was still in London before they evacuated to Farnham in Surrey, he used to spend some nights with someone else from his office as a Fire Watcher. they had buckets of water and buckets of sand and small pumps called stirrup pumps to put out small fires caused by the single incendiary bombs, or fire bombs. If there was a bigger fire than they could put out, they had to leave the building as fast as possible and leave it to the firemen who very very busy during the London blitz and in other cities too.

We had a great big water tank in what had been the market end of Church Street, It had letters EWS on its side. It meant Emergency Water Supply and was for the firemen to use if the buildings in the town centre caught fire. sometimes the cormal water supply that the hoses connexted to through fire hydrants was damaged by the bombing and then the EWS tanks were all that were available unless there was a river or a canal nearby.

The ARW would check every night to see if anybody was showing any lights. They would shout "Put out that light". Mum had to get blackout material to line all our curtains so that no light escaped. F you showed any light you gave bombers something to drop bombs on. We were supposed to save elextricity, gas and water. There were posters reminding us 'Is your journey really necessary' or 'Burning lights and dripping taps make happy Huns and joyful Japs'. We never had streetlights during the war. People often went out carrying a torch but it had to have a small weak light. Car, bus and lorry lights were masked so they werent so easy to see from above. Although there were few cars in those days many people wer knocked down and killed during the blackout. Only people like doctors were allowed the coupons to buy petrol so some people ran their cars on gas. We all had bikes and my Dad didn't have another car until after the war.

We had different salvage sacks, one for paper and something i specially remember, for pig food. In that went odd cabbage leaves, potato and carrot peelings and any ibts left on our plates at the end of our meals. If you threw out any good food and it was discovered you had to pay a fine for wasting it.

We were all supposed to grow our own food if we could and Dad got an allotment. There were a lot of them alongside the Recreation Ground. Everyone had a small plot to grow vegetables on. Dad hated gardening but had to do it. the only thing I remember eating that came from the allotment was maize. Mum cooked the seed heads and we ate them with butter or marg smeared on them.

Some people kept chickesn so that they could have eggs to ear. We weren't allowed many on our ration books. in fact we didn't have much of anything not even sweets. Every now and then the sweet shop would have some small bars of chocolate that were off the ration, someone would come into the school playground after dinner and shout "They've got chocolate at the sweet shop!" and lots of children would rush out to buy some. I didn't because I never had any money, but sometimes my friends gave me a piece. My Uncle Len keot chickens. Auntie Lily boiled potato peelings to feed them and once we were there when she was doing it. the smell was absolutely awful and got all over the house. I thoght I'd rather go without eggs.

Uncle Len and Auntie Lily had an Anderson shelter in their garden. Quite a lot of people had one. We didn't because out garden was small. to make one you had to dig a very big hole and line it with concrete. Then you put a corragated iron roof on it that was bow shaped and on top of that yo put all the earth you'd dug out of the hole because that made it safer, all the earth would protect the shelter from smaller pieces of metal or bricks or stones that might be flying about if a bomb fell not too far away. Some people gre grass on top of their shelters, others planted flowers. Uncle George turned his into a rockery after the war and it looked quite pretty.

My Grandma lived with Aunt Lily and Uncle Len and my cousin Pauline. I think that because they had an old lady living with them they had another shelter indoors, a Morrison shelter. It was a great big iron table with very strong iron legs. One night during a heavy raid Grandma only got her top half under the table before she got stuck which caused quite a giggle.

In 1944 we started noticing there were more soldiers around. We didn't know but a lot of men, lorries, tanks etc were coming into South East England to get ready to invade France on D Day in June. The army took over the large houses for the period while all the troops were brought together to prepare for the invasion. The empty house nearest us was used as a canteen and, if we were around at dinnertime we used to see the soldiers arriving, each carrying a knife, fork, spoon and tin mug.

About this time, if we went out on our bikes for day we used to see long convoys of army lorries and tank carriers, which were like small tanks. Each carrier had a Bren gun. Convoys like that were accompanied by army despatch riders on motorbikes and they would make sure they all turned in the right direction.

Once on a day out we went to the part of Surrey between Leatherhead and Dorking and found that the Mickleham bypass which was really a dual carriageway, had been reduced to only one carriageway. the other hald, across a central reservation of grass, bushes and trees, had been taken over by the American army and lots of lorries and jeeps were parked on it with some jeeps driving up and down. It was the first time I had seen the American arm uniform. They looked smarter than the English soldiers. Canadian soldiers built a safety bridge over a small river between the Mickleham bypass and Leatherhead that was still being used when I worked in Leatherhead between 1956 and 1961.

When the end of the war came in May 1945 we put streets lights on again. We had a street party to mark the official end of the war. We lined up tables and chairs, had lovely food and went to bed knowing we wouldn't be woken up by the siren!

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