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My parents were both of Romsey and newly married in Romsey Abbey in March 1939, just a few months before war came. My Dad Tom Fryer was in the Territorial Army and was called up fairly quickly. He was captured in France early on and spent the rest of the war as a POW in Poland.

It was a few anxious weeks before my mother knew if he was alive or dead. In the meanwhile she had to continue living, working and trying to make the best of it knowing that if the war kept up two of her brothers would be joining the army and a third later on.

As the quite little town of Romsey is within 10 miles of the port of Southampton which was bombed mercilessly, the town’s people witnessed much airborne enemy action in the night skies. Not least of all my mother who recalled running down the street to the air raid shelter with her dog clutched under her arm and being chased by shrapnel from a dog fight in the sky above.

However she and her girlfriends were determined to lead as normal life as possible. Dispite rationing and clothing coupons. They organised coach parties to local village dances and had fun. The bands were made up of older men from the home guard.

Unfortunately it was while walking near home from one such dance, when all was in wartime darkness, that she was run over by American service men with a motorbike and sidecar. They were extremely mortified, apologetic and helpful. She was taken to Romsey Hospital to recover from a broken leg. In those days patients were wheeled in their beds to take fresh air on the hospital veranda. Whilst Mum was there alone one day another dog fight began overhead. She screamed load and long before the nurses — who had been watching the fight from safety — remembered her! Not such a funny story at the time.

Regularly she and another army wife visited each other by bus, going for tea, moral support and cinema trips in Winchester. However a visit to Bournemouth with her sister-in-law was less of an escape. The beaches ‘for miles and miles’ she recalled where covered in huge reels of barbed wire.

Apart from her day job at the local brewers ‘Strong’s of Romsey’ in the mineral bottling plant she had to do her bit in Air Raid Precaution Duties, extinguishing any incendiary bombs which should fall, on her watch on her employer’s premises. In an interview we did in 1993 she recalled. ‘About six of us used to go on Night Watch in Strong’s offices. It was nerve racking. We used to make our beds there, taking our own sheets and pillow case. We had mattresses on the floor. When the sirens went we had to go to the yard to see there were no incendiaries falling. The gunfire was terrible but that was our own guns. The noise was so loud you thought they were in the yard with you. We had a little bit of training. If any incendiary came down you had to lay on the ground and spray them.’

Portsmouth suffered equal bombardment to Southampton and it was from here she took in 2 mischievous little evacuee boys. Their mothers visited them just once or twice to make sure they were settled in and being looked after.

Not to be underestimated, Mum had an anxious 5 year wait for Dad to return home from POW camp, only able to correspond and send him parcels through the Red Cross post. One parcel included his football boots. Something he always gratefully appreciated.

Mum’s brother Arthur died of pneumonia in Sicily in 1944 and is buried in the Catania War Cemetery there. She said I would have liked my uncle.

I, born a few years later, would have liked the chance to know.

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