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Jean Brace: Living through the Blitz

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Viv Foulds of Egerton Telecottage on behalf of Jean Brace and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

Jean Brace was born in 1913 and was a young mother of three children when the Second World War began. Her father was an active trade unionist in the AEU. She and her young family lived at Honor Oak in South London where they had a birds eye view of the bombers and fighters flying over London. She saw the bombers going over which later hit Coventry.

Jean kept her young daughters and baby son with her throughout the war. Because she disliked using the small air raid shelter in the garden Jean usually hid in the cellar or under a table in the house when bombs fell.

The first bombs fell in Forest Hill Road and people came to see the crater left behind. London could be seen alight in the distance. The family had to evacuate their house because of bomb damage and drove through London to stay with her brother in Cheshunt It was a horrific sight. They stayed there a few weeks, sleeping on a mattress downstairs until other friends of her brother arrived, driven out by the bombs.

Jean returned to London to live in Scutari Road while her children went to Birmingham to stay for 3 weeks . She was alone in the house, again sleeping on a mattress, with air raid sirens going off every evening.

One day when two of the children were back at home and going to the local school, Jean was in her back bedroom when she saw a German aircraft with black cross markings go over-there had been no air raid warning. She ran out and dragged her baby son鈥檚 pram out of the garden and went to a neighbour to ask her to look after him while she went to search for her two young daughters, who would be on their way home for lunch. There was no sign of them. Eventually she was passing the gate of a house when a woman came out and asked her if she was looking for two little girls. Jean said that she was and the woman told her that they were under her bed where she had put them when she saw the bombers overhead.

One day her 6-year-old daughter, Ann, was on her way home from school when she was nearly caught in machine gun fire from a plane. Ann shook in fear every night as the bombs fell. One night she remembers being taken in the middle of the night to sit on a dining room chair in the garden and obviously it was felt that she would be safer outside. On this particular night the Germans were dropping incendiary bombs. They never hit the house but white coloured dents in the road could be seen the next day where they had fallen.

When her husband came home off leave, he took Jane to the park one day. Jean stayed at home. While they were out a flying bomb fell nearby -there had been no sound. The iron, which had been sitting on the window -sill, came flying across the kitchen where Jean was working and nearly hit her.

On another day, while Jean was on a bus going shopping in Rye Lane, a large lady got on with a young boy. The air raid sirens suddenly went off and the large lady threw the boy on the floor of the bus and lay upon him. The child was screaming because the large weight on top of him was pressing him into the metal floor of the bus ! Police instructed the passengers to clear the bus and go to the air raid shelter but nobody went!

Another night a bomb blew off the doors of the garage where a pig鈥檚 carcase was hanging. Jean鈥檚 father had obtained the pig illegally from a farmer and it was hanging there ready to be used. Jean was horrified to see an air raid warden outside the house the next day who had come to enquire if she was OK. She had to make sure that he did not come up the drive in case he noticed the pig hanging there!

On another occasion Jean had been to the hairdressers in Forest Hill and was waiting for a bus home when she saw a man and a woman coming towards her carrying a baby. The baby was waving a spoon in his hand. All three were covered in soot. It transpired that they had been sitting in front of the fire eating their tea (the baby having a special treat of a boiled egg) when a bomb fell demolishing one side of their house. When the bomb fell they had been covered in soot from the chimney.

Throughout the war her husband鈥檚 family in America sent regular food parcels to Jean. They continued to do this long after the war had finished as they thought everyone in Britain was short of food.

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