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MEMORIES OF WAR TIME IN SITTINGBOURNE, KENT

The Day War Broke Out
That sounds like Rob Wilton, a comedian of that time - he always started that way! It was a beautiful September day. My Dad and I went for our usual Sunday walk while my Mum cooked the dinner. We were walking along Gore Court Road (in Sittingbourne) when the air raid siren sounded and we met Mr Hubert Thomas, who was an Air Raid Warden. He ticked us off for not carrying our gas masks. Nothing at all happened.

Another Sunday, I don't remember the date, but it must have been in 1940, I was going to Chatham to see my Grandma with my Mum and Dad. I think I'd broken up with my boyfriend by this time. We went to Ufton Lane in Sittingbourne to get the bus. While waiting for the bus I was looking in Miss Ivy Tyler's shop window. She had a shop selling baby linen, knitting wools and embroidery materials. At that time her shop was on the corner of Ufton Lane and London Road. I saw some cushion covers and table runners with cottages on for embroidering and thought `I'm going to buy those`. While in Chatham my Dad used to have a drink at The Rifleman at the bottom of Chatham Hill. On this occasion when he came back to Grandma's he said "It's come through on the bus that Sittingbourne has `caught a packet`" (the driver on the bus from Sittingbourne had relayed the news). I remember that when we got the bus home it went a different route through Sittingbourne - up Rock Road, Epps Road and what was locally known as Collar Factory Hill to Park Road. This was because West Street (down to Ufton Lane) had been bombed.

I did go to get my cushion covers but the one I particularly liked was in the window and had been slashed by glass. I still bought it and sewed up the tear and embroidered a poplar tree over the tear. I still have this cushion cover but it is in a picture frame now.

The people who died that day in West Street were Mrs Fowler at the dairy and Miss Gamble at the wool shop, also someone at Manuells, the delicatessen. Also, Pittock the Butchers and Pullens Garage (both in West Street) and Birketts Oil and Colour Shop on the corner of Dover Street were bombed.

I was working in Thomsetts the fish shop when a bomb dropped in Park Road. It sounded like an express train. I ducked down in my desk in the shop. Mr Holton, the Manager, grabbed a baby from its pram outside the shop and went under the shop front slab with it. After the bomb fell the air was full of feathers, there were feathers everywhere. I thought a chicken run had been hit. This bomb fell at the bottom of Park Road and several in a family and their housemaid were killed.

Early in the war, when the air raid siren sounded, the shops closed and staff went to the shelters. There was a shelter behind Burtons the Tailors. Pearce James' girls used to go there. Pearce James was a drapers and milliners on the corner of Crescent Street, where The Forum now is. We used to quite enjoy ourselves, all singing popular songs like `The Quarter Master's Store`. This had to stop after a while and life had to go on.

We were all issued with Anderson Shelters - a corrugated iron affair that was half buried in the garden. We had to share with our neighbours as there were 2 of them and we were 3 in our family. It was in their garden. Later some people had a Morrison Shelter, which was like a steel cage and it was a table in the middle of the room and you could sleep in it. As we had a cellar in Park Road my Dad shored it up with heavy timbers so we could go down there.

About Christmas 1940 a stray dog came into the shop. It was bitterly cold and the dog was starving. It was a lurcher. I fed him cake from Harms, the bakers and took him to the Police station. They said after a week if he wasn't claimed he'd be put down, so I worked on my Mum and we gave him a home. I called him Bill. We used to walk miles with him. One evening, in early summer, my friend and I and two soldiers from the Queen's Regiment went across the fields to Tunstall. The dog was running free and suddenly we saw him chasing sheep that we hadn't realised were in this orchard. At that time the soldiers had to carry their rifles and gas masks with them so they placed the rifles against a tree trunk while we caught the dog. We'd got right up to Hearts Delight Road before they discovered they hadn't got their rifles. Fortunately for them they were still where they'd left them; a serious offence to lose a rifle!

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