´óÏó´«Ã½

LIVING THROUGH THE WAR

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by John Hughes of Three Counties Action on behalf of Lillian Ricketts (nee Stamp) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was about 20 years old when war was declared, working as a dressmaker in Newgate Street in the City of London.

On the Sunday, I was helping my brother on his milk round and waiting for him to join me. I heard the National Anthem being played and the air raid warning went off. On Sundays, the local street market was mostly for men, with tools and hardware, those sorts of interests. I saw the men running to be with their families, but it was a false alarm. A friend happened to mention a sailor had just come home to Walworth after 30 months service on HMS Shropshire. When she said his name, I realised it was a boy I’d gone to school with, so we met up. He was stationed at Chatham and had some leave. We fell in love. His very first ship was HMS Primula, a Flower Class corvette.

The London Blitz was dreadful. Saturday nights always seemed the worst. There would be raids in the afternoon and they’d come back at night. Trying to sleep in an Anderson shelter in the backyard with six other people was no joke, especially when you had to go to work the next day. It was hard to get any sleep, what with the noise of explosions and the shaking of the ground. I also still helped my brother on his milk round at weekends. Going round the streets, I saw terrible destruction, but people still carried on and got on with their lives. We would sit all night, being bombed, not knowing what we’d find in the morning. We never thought of losing the war. Ours was the greatest country in the world, at least, we were brought up to believe that — and we still do.

When the City was bombed, it broke my heart.

I got married at a church that had been bombed and the vicar made a small altar for us. My husband had three days’ leave, so it was short and sweet. He came home again three months later and we were still being bombed, but we were young and we stood up to the life. He then joined a ship being refitted at Falmouth. It was an old First World War decoy ship renamed PC (Patrol Craft) 74 and for four years he was on the Atlantic Patrol, based in Scotland. I visited him when I could. Our first son was born in Torquay in 1943, as my sister and her children had been evacuated to Denbury, near Newton Abbott, and I stayed there sometimes. Later, we were lucky to get a little house at New Addington, near Croydon. Life there was far from quiet as it was on the flight path for the buzz bombs on their way to London. Hundreds flew overhead, many fell around us and although we were blasted, we carried on.

When peace came at last in Europe, my husband was sent to Palestine, based in Haifa, for two years. It was a long war for me.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.