大象传媒

We were living in Dover before the war. I lived with my parents but I was already working as an actress. I sang and acted in musical comedy.

After the 鈥榩honey war鈥�, when the shelling started; Dover was under attack and we had to have a pass to go up into the town just to go shopping.

One day the house opposite was hit and our own house was shaken so badly that the plaster was cracked and flaking. Father and I were in the kitchen, it was a half-basement, making a cup of tea. (Some people used to go and shelter in some caves under the cliff but we weren鈥檛 about to do that.) Mother was worried about the house so she went up to the ground floor to take a look.

She was rather annoyed to see a man peering in through the windows, so she opened the front door and said 鈥淲ell, if you really want to see what鈥檚 going on then you鈥檇 better come and take a look inside!鈥� He came in and they got talking and she realised that she really hadn鈥檛 taken against him. So she asked if he would like to come down to the kitchen and take a cup of tea. My father had the newspaper open on the kitchen table. His eyes went from the paper to the man and back again. Our visitor was Winston Churchill. He was not yet Prime Minister and had come down to the coast to take over from the 1st Lord of the Admiralty. Mother just hadn鈥檛 realised who the visitor was.

There was to be a sequel to this some years later.

This story was collected by Jill Hollands and submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Becky Barugh of the 大象传媒 Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Molly Cresswell and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See another of Molly's stories:

• 鈥淭urn back! You鈥檙e only 2 陆 miles from enemy lines鈥�

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