大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War with by Christine Gibbons for Kent Libraries & Archives and Canterbury City Council Museums on behalf of Hannah Runacres and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully undersands the site's terms and contditions.

I remember when Chamberlain told us we were at war with Germany, it nocked us for 6. I was 20, and been married 2 years and I thought the world was my oyster. Shortly after the announcement the air raid warning went. We grabbed our masks and run round in circles. Shortly afterwards the all clear went and nothing happened.
Then we thought we was all being told things that were'nt true as the months went past and nothing happened. The French had the Maginot Line so we thought we was safe. But they came through Belgium and Holland and got into France that way. My husband was working around Liverpool (Kirby) building an ordnance factory, working 6 weeks and coming home for 1 week. After doing a couple of sessions of that he asked me to go back with him, so I went to Kirby. While I was up there it was a good life until some bombs were dropped near us, so we came back to London, thinking they were going to have it bad up there. Then we got home in time to see the bombing of the London docks starting on saturday afternoon, a horrific site. The news was terrible. From then on our lives were completely changed. We slept in the Anderson shelter and eating between air raid warnings. Then friends of ours got killed in their Anderson (I think smothered and gassed in Peckham) so we went to the underground to sleep. There was my mother, father, husband (who was building air raid shelters. He was a brick layer and in a reserved occupation)brother and his girlfriend. My 2 sisters, 14 and 15 would not come with us. I had 2 brothers evacuated to Devon. Every evening I used to collect everyone's belongings and get ready to go to the tube. I also found out that I had conceived my child at Liverpool, but thought it was the shock of the war that had stopped my periods. In October 1940 the tube (Balham) got a direct hit, but it went through on the other side of the platform killing everyone on that side. Our side was on complete darkness with flashes of blue light from the electricity. We heard a crashing cascade of water and screams. My husband told us all to get to the wall of the tube and edge towards the door which was shut and only opened for a short while to let people through as the water was rushing throug it. It came our turn and the 6 of us went very dirty, very discheveled. The firemen were opening the door. When we got through we got to the escalator, which we could'nt see it because it was covered in debris. We had to climb up it like climbing up a rough hill in darkness and a lot of noise. The Salvation Army came along to help us and told us which way to go. They took us to a big shop, shrapnal was bouncing off the pavements, we covered our heads. We got to the basement of the shop and they gave us some very sweet tea which I could'nt drink (I don't take sugar). We stayed till the morning with some of the other people who had been brough in, so thankful to be alive. In the morning we looked at the crater to the underground. There was a bus on top of a taxi down the crater and so we made our way home, all rags and dirty. When we arrived home my sisters were there waiting for us. They worked at the Sun Pat factory in the Old Kent Road. My mother told them they were'nt to go to work that day as she was going to get us billets at Reading to get us out of London. That morning the Sun Pat got bombed and a number of girls got killed. That made up their mind to be evacuated with us. My husband did building shelters at Reading so he stayed with me at the billet. I stayed there until I had my baby at Emma Green in a big house that had been turned into a hospital. This was on the 3rd April. My husband used to go to London each week to see our home. But on May 10th, one of the last big bombings in London my flat got bombed so we had no home. The owner of the house we rented it from asked me to go with them to Lee Green in London with them. We stayed there for a while. My husband was then called up and I went to stay with my mother in Peckham. Sleeping in the brick street shelter at night and I kept house for my mother in the day. I looked after my sisters, mother and father while they worked and looked after the baby. I kept having to dash back and forward to the shelter between raids. Then a quiet spell with nuisance raids followed and one day in the middle of the day my little girl was in the front garden of the house and a plane came over machine gunning a school in Catford. As it came along we heard the shells pinging on the pavement. All my family ran to get my little girl, and ran up into the hallway and fell on top of her.
Then the doodlebugs started dropping and i though how wonderful that we were shooting all those planes down. We talked the next day about the numbers until someone told us that when they stopped they were falling down. So everyone held their breath when it went quiet. I think one went down on the stays factory in Peckham Rye and the girls who lived on the other side of the road died there. Another near miss was when we were in the shelter one eveing and a V2 dropped in the high street killing 12 people. It sounded as if it had dropped outside the shelter, but it had come down Peckham road taking all the shops. They've since build new flats the bus station the post office on the site. I was very thankful Churchill gave us the guts to carry on. I think without him we could have easily given in. His speaches gave us the will to put up with it. This kind of life carried on all through the war. Then the tide turned and things were looking our way. We were glad we had carried on. We could see the end. When it did come and my husband came home released early to build up what they had knocked down I heard such tales of what had gone on. My husband drove supplies to the front and also he emptied the POW camps and he said his eyes had seen things noone should have to see. He was shocked by what had gone on. They had it a lot worse than us. Thank goodness it's all behind us.

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