大象传媒

I come from a police family and lived in a police property in Marble Arch. Father chief superintendent in the metropolitan police stationed at Bow Street. We were living in Marylebone Road behind Marble Arch when war started. We were all sitting at home on the Sunday morning with my mother and as soon as Churchill finished speaking my mother started to cry, she could remember the First World War. As he finished speaking a German plane went racing across the sky followed by a couple of British plane

I had a brother who has just died he became a pilot in the air force. We lived in a very large blocks of flats and of course when the war started they changed on e of the bottom flats into an air raid shelter. The bombings started about a year later. We went down into the shelter but I was so acutely miserable and did not know how I would stand it. My father came home and said he did not want us to go down there because he had dug so many people out from under the rubble. He said to lie down in the hall and if the building came down we would go down and stand a better chance.

I was in publishing and we had this huge building a Scottish firm that did mostly educational material. We were told this build was perfectly safe it was made of Aberdeen stone and nothing could knock it down. Paternoster Road was very narrow and the 1st January 1941 I got off the train and walked up the hill. I could not move because the water pipes were all over the road I turned the corner and our huge building was raised to the ground. I was more frightened then that any time during the war. St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral was standing and everything else was flat. They moved us to Covent Garden which then as now was a great centre of publishing, we moved to another house that looked out on St Paul鈥檚 Church. It was in the centre of the fruit and vegetable market. I used to fire watch on a literary agents Curtis? The order from the government was you could not store paper but being a literary agent it was stacked from floor to ceiling. When the doodlebugs came I was fire watching that night. We heard this noise and I rang my mother and we did not know what it was. The V2鈥檚 were much worse though as they made no noise.

The Canadian Provo corps had their headquarters opposite, we would hear a noise and the soldiers who had got drunk and had been arrested would be thrown into a van and we would hear their heads hitting the side of the van. We use to go down to the Strand in the evening and the old boy who was head of the fire watching would get cross because we would go back after having a drink and sometimes fall asleep. The man would say 鈥業 don鈥檛 know how you can take your five shillings鈥�, that was what we were paid.

Right opposite the Opera House was Bow Street my father worked next door. Covent Garden opera house cleared out all the seats and turned it into a dance hall. Whenever I hear the music 鈥業n the Mood鈥� it brings back the excitement of dancing there. My father was a martinet and he would come looking for me and my friends would take me to the toilets and sit on me until he had gone. When you used to go to theatre in the early days you would evacuate the theatre but later on when the doodlebugs started they would flash up on the screen if you wanted to go you could, but you didn鈥檛 take notice and stayed where you were. We were able to walk around in the black out and be perfectly safe, I cannot do that now.
There were prostitutes in the blackout that wore little corsages with torches underneath so that they shone up on their faces as they stood in the doorways.

I used to go to the ballet and saw Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann. In those days if you went to the theatre and were in the gallery you would have to queue up early in the evening. There used to be a little lady who had a stack of tiny stool and you paid for a ticket and she put the stool in your place in the queue and you could go off and come back later. The food wasn鈥檛 so good but if you went to a restaurant then Joe Lyon鈥檚 Corner House was the tops. Some dishes had a star by them and meant you could only have one of them. Mostly it was corn beef hash or dried egg omelette.

Towards the end of the war my husband was up in Keswick in Cumbria and it was near the end of the war. He rang up and heard a noise and said 鈥榝or goodness sake what is that鈥� and I said 鈥榓 doodlebug鈥� He said to get some leave and come up to Keswick. We stayed at a lovely hotel and could have what food we liked and I thought that they did not know there was a war on. I remember it was beautiful weather and in the evening we used to put the radio on and every night there was a victory. They used to think the war was going to be over and they were going to have a wonderful party but I had to go back to London.

They had Lyons Tea Shops, Corner Houses and the superior ones called Maison Lyons. Corner Shops were open longest. British Restaurants were in general pretty dire.

I can remember queuing up for hours just for a few potatoes. After the war it was still very hard, very difficult to find anywhere to live and did not want to have any children until I could find some. Eventually we found a flat and ours was up 72 steps. It was close to Rillington Place near where the man who committed all those murders lived.

My brother trained in Canada, he was four years younger than me he was 19/20 when he started. He went out to India and Burma and then were people in Burma who had been badly treated in the camps and he would pick these people up and said it was awful the men would be lying down screaming to take them and he was unable to take all of them, it gave him nightmares and he never forgot it.

My husband did not go overseas until the war was nearly over, my husband went out when others husband were coming home. London was so miserable and he would write home with lovely tales of the life over there and when he comes home in 1946 it was the coldest winter ever and he felt the contrast. He was in the police force and made Chief Inspector. He died just after he retired. He had wanted us to move to East Africa and we were on the list to go. This scheme did not take off, a few people went but after reading about what happened out there it was just as well we didn鈥檛.

We were married in 1943 we got married in Caxton Hall. Clothes rationing was hard and I asked people at work if they had any clothing coupons they could spare. Food was difficult but harder after the war, it really was grim. We had some friends in Norfolk who were farmers and they used to send us some things.

My father was the head of the police force of that area he had a big Humber.

My husband鈥檚 family used to go to Lowestoft and we used to go there by train and it took forever. We had to go at night and we got down to Plymouth at dawn and we pulled the blinds up and they had just been bombed and the whole area had been devastated. My husband had got a couple of police officers to come in and save some seats until my friend and I had got there. We came to Bournemouth for our honeymoon and we just got out the train as the siren went off. We went to the Chatfield hotel. It has just been pulled down. There used to be some little old ladies that were staying there, one of them used to put patterns on her piece of butter so that she knew if anyone had touched. We wandered around Bournemouth in the blackout and found it hard to find our way back to our hotel.

Just after the war, in 47 we used to have the most awful fogs 鈥榩eashooters鈥� used to come up, they were very cold and yellow, the curtains used to have black stripes down them. Being cold was what I remember more than anything.

During the war my husband and my friend鈥檚 husband were commissioned in Rhyll, and we went up to see them. We spent a lovely time and the landlady was lovely. We went back there after the war and it had completely changed and the landlady too. She padlocked the bathroom and the food was dire.

I remember the Rosebay Willow Herb use to grow in the bombsites and this plant always reminds me of them.

We were right in the middle by Marble Arch and yet the bombs managed to miss us. My father got the MBE he rescued lots of people from the rubble, a shard of glass fell and stuck in his back.

Charing Cross Railway Station at the end of the Strand, one night a landmine fell and was suspended on the signals. My father had to clear the whole area and then they got the bomb disposal out. They had to climb up on this signal and untangle the lines to diffuse the mine. My father brought home a huge great chord in 鈥榚au de nil鈥� colour that had been wound round it. If that mine had fallen it would have devastated that area. They (landmines) were the worst things of all.

Ivor Novello was a great star during the war, the Friday before the war started he was in a play The Dancing Years. My mother and I went to see it. After the first scene Ivor said after tonight we will be closing and we do not know when we will be together again so will all the people come down into the stalls and we will have a night to remember. ~Afterwards it was the first night of the blackout and we walked home. We saw the sandbags piling up and wondering what was going to happen.

Later on in the war theatres opened again and The Dancing Years was on again. The day we were going to see it was the day Ivor Novello was taken to prison. This woman was besotted with Ivor Novello and she loaned her car to him but he had used up too much petrol and someone who did not like him reported him so he was arrested and put in prison. All the cast was crying so again it was not a happy experience.

Vera Lynn the men in the army thought the world of her, she used to talk to the men and tell them she would write to their parents and she did not forget. She was very popular.

The smell down the underground in the morning was terrible where the people had slept down their overnight. I used to wonder how they could stand it. The East End was so badly bombed that they had no choice.

My husband was down on the coast shooting them down and used to worry that if they missed it would go on to London and get me. We were right next to Seymour Hall that was a function centre, at the beginning of the war the moon would shine on the roof that was glass and light up. We used to worries that it was very visual to the bombers flying over. Eventually they painted it black.

One night I came out of the cinema and I thought 鈥淭he sun did not set over there why was the sky red鈥�. It was the docks going up.

When the Americans came, it was so exciting. They had plenty of money, people used to look at your legs and if you had nylons on they thought you were going out with an American. I did have nylons but my brother sent them from Canada.

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