大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Site by Joan Smith for Three Counties Action on behalf of Linda Greanby, a visitor to the Glen Miller Festival on August 28th 2005, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My mother died having her tenth child and I was taken in by her twin sister Lily and looked after by her and she became my adoptive mother. My earliest memory is of being met by my eldest brother John at Shepherd's Bush Station, and taken from what I remember of the cold and the dark into a house that was full of warmth and light, full of people, like a party. I lived with my mother, brothers and cousins in a big house in Acton. When the bombing started we went into the shelter in the back garden. On many nights we got no sleep. It was often very cold. It was a big Victorian house and the windows got broken and often we had no fuel. When Billy my brother came home he would take me on a long journey to buy fuel. There were difficulties in getting food.
So when I was six years old in 1939 I was living in Acton and we were told that we were going on a long journey. I went with my small case and my gas-mask on the train to Dawlish in Devon. When we arrived we went to a sort of comunity centre and I was collected by Mrs Chaffe. I think the people were farmers though they didn't live on a farm. The house was quite small, with no electricity, no bathroom, an outside toilet, but the people were very nice and looked after me well. I was quite happy, though really I would like to have been in London. I went to school there, and I used to go to church twice on Sundays. I was a bit lonely.

My mother in London was working in munitions, and I think she only came twice in four years to visit me. My sister Ivy married a sailor in 1941, and they visited me. Her husband Jimmy later died on the battleship Neptune. My sister used to say that she felt the explosion in her head the moment he died, and knew he had gone.
Frankie,a cousin died on a submarine in 1943.
When I returned to London I remember the doodle-bugs and I remember German POWs making the roads in Acton Vale.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.