大象传媒

When WW11 started I was just two weeks short of my second birthday, and at the time, the family had just moved to a new address in Battersea, London SW11. Clapham Junction railway and and goods yard was at the end of the road, a five minute walk away. Clapham Junction was, and still is, the busiest rail junction in the world.

My earliest memory was being taken to the street shelter, directly opposite our front door, during raids, and sleeping on the top bunk along with my sister who is a year younger then me. If a raid took place on a Sunday, Mum would often leave us with neighbours in the shelter while she went back in the house to finish cooking the Sunday meal. At least once a month Mum would take us to visit an Aunt in Isleworth, Middlesex. She would take the family ration of sugar, and we would come home with pots of jam of the fruit that grew in our Aunt's garden.

One weekend Dad came home on leave from the RAF, and apparently that was the weekend that a doodlebug, aimed for Clapham Junction goods yard and sidings, hit the cinema at the end of the road. By the weekend the family were evacuated to Culham, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The film that was showing was Snow White, and we had been promised to go and see it. Even to this day I have never seen the Snow White film.

We stayed with 'Granny Tutti' in her little cottage, and Dad used to come 'home' each night as he was stationed nearby. The cottage was small, with a long garden. Toilets were a bucket in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Each time I ran there I was chased by the dog from next door, who caught and bit me on one occasion. We went to the local village school, and often rode on the horse and cart across the fields while the farm work was being done. There were some good parties when my older cousin, in the Land Army, came up from Wiltshire.

Mum used to make a really good bread pudding as a treat for us. Whenever we used to ask when we could have bread pudding, Mum used to tell us 'When the flypaper is full, you can have some.....' It always happened that when the very sticky strip of flypaper was full, we had pudding. We were too young to realise the food shortages that were in place at the time. Whenever I have bread pudding now, my mind always goes back to those times.

Another memory was the sight of Parachutists landing in and around the village and fields. On hindsight I can only assume that they were rehearsing for the D-Day landings.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wendy Adams and has been added to the website on behalf of Tom Seakins and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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