大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Jas from Global Information Centre Eastbourne and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs Last with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

This was the time of the phoney War, and I was evacuated with my Sister, to St Ives and Penzance in Cornwall, before we boarded the train we were labeled as per the actual label shewn. Initially we were sent via a train which normally would have gone straight west instead of which there was some kind of detour over the Bristol Channel but we did not know why the route was changed, and we stayed on the train for hours, and this was quite frightening..

Upon arrival we stayed at first with one of the keepers of the Eddystone Lighthouse but we subsequently moved on. I know we stayed in a house in Bridge Street in St Ives. It was rather a foolish move as a bomb dropped at the back of us, so we had gone from bombs in London to bombs at the back of us in Cornwall. I remember that we possibly stayed there for about a year, perhaps a little less.

We had a very, very bad winter and we only had candlelight, and there was an out-side toilet. I recall that the name of the people we stayed with was 鈥楥racknell鈥�, the son of the family who was a little older than me would insist on spying on me when I was in the toilet, as he had pushed a knot of wood out of the door and would peer through it.

After about a year we went back to London and that鈥檚 when it all started. We lived partly in the house and partly in the Morrison Shelter, which was a shelter for inside the premises, whereas the Anderson Shelter was for the outside. The Morrison Shelter was very big but not very tall, it had a flat top in solid metal with meshed metal sides with iron struts in each corner, and could possibly sleep four sleeping top and toe as it was quite wide. We had the Morrison allotted to us as my Mother unfortunately had asthma badly.

At that time because of Mother鈥檚 condition, we had to have oxygen brought to the house, in large cylinders in case she had a severe attack, I remember the Doctor coming to the house late one night to give my Mother an injection. He threw the cotton wool on the fire that he had used on my Mother prior to giving her the injection, I can remember that the fireplace was full of sparks, which in turn set the chimney alight, and the local air raid warden was shouting outside the house 鈥減ut that light out鈥�, which was very difficult to do and the air raid warden did not know the cause of the bright light.

Sometimes we also went outside into the Anderson Shelter to sleep when the raids were very bad and prolonged. Ultimately we became very blas茅 and just went to bed
and stayed there raid or no raid.

During the day time when we went to school, we would collect pieces of shrapnel which were pieces of bombs which had exploded and other items associated with air raids, The person who collected the most shrapnel was the hero, I remember the silver and black slivers of anti-radar tape the enemy aircraft dropped, that was intended to cause atmospheric disturbance to radar equipment such as existed at that time. We also used to count the number of incendiary bomb holes, which had been made in the pavement. There were barrage balloons and searchlights. I can remember the awful noise made by the Ack-Ack guns that were used when the enemy was overhead. That sound seemed to be continual to us.

We soon learnt to know the difference between the British and German aircraft both by sight and sound, we were quite clever considering how young we were.

We were always told to stay together my sister and I, and often we could not go to school because of the bombing, so lessons were held in the front rooms of peoples houses, the teachers would come out from school or from where ever and we did not like that very much. We used to pray for air-raids so that we could go out into the street and play cricket, as there were very few cars around in those days; until the bombing or aircraft came too close, then we would run to the shelter.

I remember going see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, at the Alcazar Cinema, then the cinema was bombed and completely demolished. Also the Edmonton Empire was bombed and completely wrecked, this was where we went for Saturday morning cinema until the sessions were stopped as it was too dangerous to have so many children under one roof.

Food was very short, we had rationing and it seemed to me that I was always hungry. We had something like a quarter of a pound of meat a week and no more, we did have sweet coupons and we had an allocation of roughly perhaps half a pound a month something like that. The highlight of the month was when ice-cream was delivered, we used to queue up, at the little corner shop and there was a little round of ice cream with paper on it that you peeled off and the ice cream was placed in a cornet. The amount of ice cream was approximately 陆鈥� deep perhaps 戮鈥� and maybe 2鈥� in circumference, or if you were very lucky and had the extra pennies for it you could have a wafer, which was approximately twice the size and oblong with ice cream set between two wafers like a sandwich. There was also the鈥� stop me and buy one鈥� man who had a bicycle with an integral refrigerated box in which he had ice creams of all kinds.

1941/42 things started to hot up and we were sent away again to St Ives In Huntingdonshire, strange that it should be St Ives again. I felt that this was a rather foolish move, as we were in the same area as some aerodromes and military encampments. They were placed in the eastern side of Britain because the terrain was so flat.

We lived over a photographers shop in Bridge Street, and we had the old bridge
right at the side of us, and at night we could hear the soldiers stamping their feet and demanding 鈥渉alt, who goes there鈥� they were very attentive to their duty as the German鈥檚 were known to be dropping people into the countryside and infiltrating amongst the population.

I went to the local school and I remember having my sixth Birthday there, the person we stayed with was an Aunty Kit, who I think was related to us, but she was a nasty person, she had two children, and we were given our food at one end of the table on newspaper and the other end of the table where her children sat there was a proper tablecloth. My Father would come and see us periodically and buy us new shoes for school. When my Father had gone our shoes disappeared and Aunty Kit had sold them, so we only had our plimpsoles to wear.

The school I attended was a good school we used to swim in a backwater of the River Ouse, which was really quite dangerous. We hated the house because it was full of bugs and you could smell them as you opened the front door. We were so lonely that if we found a button we would take it to the local police station the policeman there was so kind to us and would give us a sweet each and just be nice, so we would hunt for things that we could take there simply to speak to him.

About a year and half later we went home and stayed in North London for the duration of the war. The buzz bombs started and then of course this included again sleeping in the shelters, which was rather frightening, but after a while we became blas茅 about it all. The V1 started at about this time and when they came over we heard the noise it made but then the sound stopped and we rushed to the shelter,
and afterwards we would look out to see if our house was still standing.

Several of our friends were killed in the bombing, and we would wake up one morning and a row of houses were gone, I remember one particular time when a friend called Donald O鈥機onnor had been killed, there was no counseling in those days.

I also remembered coming home from school one day with my Brother, and some German aircraft came and were machine- gunning the streets, so we laid in the gutter and I remember being really scared.

My Grandmother鈥檚 house had a land mine drop outside of it and it half-demolished her house, she saved my Grandfather by pushing him out of the way, before a doorframe fell on him.

Another time I came home from school, and there was a scare that everyone was going to be gassed, we always carried our gas masks as we had been told to. My Mother had a huge gas-mask because she had asthma, which went right over her head in rather a box shape and then right down to her waist, with a long concertina at the front looking like an elephant鈥檚 trunk and that would have to be pumped.

On this particular day we came home and we all had to go and sit in one room,
with our masks on and I remember Mum had filled the fireplace and the windows which already had tape across them to prevent them from shattering and splintering in case there was an explosion. Fortunately there was not a gas attack.

One morning I remember getting up and because of the blast from bombs which had fallen in the night, every single house in our road had had the locks on their front doors blown away, and all the front doors were wide open.

I recall eating a lot of porridge, and dried egg, which I loved, and suet puddings, which I can鈥檛 stand to this day. When Xmas came we all went to my Grandmother鈥檚 she had quite a good size house and we all took what we could, perhaps a rabbit, or a scrawny chicken, whatever one was able to take, and it was all cooked together for one big meal.

We did not have any Xmas trees in those days, but we did have an enormous Christmas cracker that was about 5ft. long, and we all had our presents from it, there was a hole in the middle and we would pull our our present from the cracker,
the items of course were small and simple, and my collection would fit into a shoe box and might include a pair of knitted gloves, a John Bull printing outfit, a book, those kind of things.

After that we would all stand round the piano, as my Mother played the piano very well, and we would sing carols and some pop songs of the time and songs related to the war.

The end of the war came near, and I remember many, many Americans being in London, and all kinds of military personel, as they were billeted there the Americans in particular were kind to us, and we used to say 鈥済ot any gum chum鈥� this became a stock phrase when the Americans were around, and they would give us chewing gum or bubble gum, whatever they happened to have with them.

When it was announced that the war was over we went straight to London and I remember being hoisted onto the shoulders of an American, and we watched a royal parade of the King and Queen and two princesses going down the river on a barge, we were all cheering and people were dancing.

But there was a sad part to all this; apart from the wonderful parties that were held in the street, and a piano was wheeled into the street which my Mother usually played; but I can still see now the prisoners of war, who had come home, especially those who had been down the salt mines, and when these men came home they were like skeletons with red rimmed eyes, this was a common sight.

Some people and friends of ours in particular, would keep their decorations up all year, so that if their sons or loved ones came home there would be a festive greeting for them and they would celebrate Christmas with them again as of course the returning ones had missed it.

I do remember that clothes were at a premium for some time after the war, my Brother got married in his de-mob鈥� suit at the end of the war and everyone collected their clothing coupons and dockets. The dockets were to buy furniture and sheets
I remember everything had a utility mark on it which was symbolic of the war stating that it was permitted to sell that item providing the appropriate dockets or coupons had been surrendered.

I can remember that we all had to dress in clothes that we had had all through the war, some people took their curtains down and converted them into clothes, but we did not do that, what my Mother did was take down every curtain, cover and bedspread down and dye everything, and one year all these things would be pink, the next year they would be green, and the next year another colour so that we would pretend that we had new things each year.

All my clothing coupons went to my new Sister 鈥攊n-law to buy her clothes for the wedding. All our relatives put their food coupons together to make the wedding cake, the bottom tier was made of cardboard, and the top tiers were real cake.

I remember Mum saying that she had kept a tin of cream and a tin of pineapple slices and that when the war ended we would have it, which we did but as there were 6 of us we did not get very much.

I also remember the Canadians sending apples for the schoolchildren, which were really big about 5鈥� across and I wanted to cut a section of mine and have some every day, but could not do that as it would have gone brown, and mouldy probably.

My eldest Brother at the age of 17 went into the RASC but he wasn鈥檛 allowed to tell us when he was going overseas, however his convoy passed very close to our road and he called out to someone and said 鈥榟ere mate鈥� and sent a note to my Mother so that Mum knew that he was going to Germany. He was in fact one of the first Army personnel to enter Berlin ,after the war, since he was a driver in the Service Corps.

My Father didn鈥檛 go into the services, he was 38 when the war started, by trade he was a French polisher and any wood company had to make ammunition boxes, which was a trade that was treated as a reserved occupation, was essential and therefore protected. So Dad went into the ARP and he also did fire-watching, so he was around. Unfortunately my parents separated when I was twelve shortly after the war.

Going into London on various occasions was often a frightening experience as for instance I would see St Paul鈥檚 Cathederal, isolated and surrounded by rubble, these sights and others of demolished buildings made me feel that the end of the world had come. At night I would lay with my fingers in my ears so that I would not hear the bombs falling, and say prayers that it would all be finished quickly.

One of the worst parts was when the V2 came over because it was the silent bomb, when we looked up and saw it in the sky we knew that someone was going to be hit and probably killed. It was extremely frightening..

During these times I belonged to the Brownies and then to the Guides, then I became a senior Guider at the end of the war, and commencement of peace I also took over the cubs, because my younger Brother was a Cub Master, and I took his place when he went to do his National service.

These are some of my wartime memories.

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