大象传媒

I was nearly two years old when the war started in September 1939. I was born in the old Charing Cross Hospital, minutes away from Trafalgar Square, and I lived in Chelsea. My father was in his forties and had served in WW1, and was therefore not called up. My parents did not want my brother and me being evacuated, so my dad changed his job and we moved to the country. My realisation of the significance and horror of war came to me very slowly.

Country life

Where was this place? I thought it was miles away in the country, but in fact it was in a place called West Hyde near Harefield, and is now within the M25 orbital motorway; a place that most folk today would call London.

We lived in a 'two up two down' cottage with a chemical loo, fields for our playground, home grown vegetables, chicken and rabbits to eat and a wonderful family life. Dad, together with a neighbour, built an Anderson shelter, and made cats' whisker radios. Mum and Dad were always there to play 'paper and pencil' games, snap, read to us and listen to the radio.

I was aware that some of the adults were concerned about something called war, and Germans, and about the noises we could sometimes hear in the middle of the night, forcing us to go down the garden to the shelter. What fun! We normally had a good sing-song before dropping off to sleep. Dad had a tin hat with ARP written on it that we sometimes played with. Yes, he was an Air Raid Precautions warden.

Our windows had big 'kisses' across them so they would not shatter. I started school and I do remember this big bang and a huge hole in the road outside our school. An incendiary bomb had fallen! Some American GIs came along the top road and threw oranges to us and some of the kids said, 'Give us some gum, chum.'

There were parties with sing-songs and knees-ups. Victory parties. VJ, VE - what did these mean to me? Another party!

After the war

In 1945, at the end of the war, we moved back to central London because most of my mother's family were there. To begin with, life seemed very different. The war was over. Cousins got married to soldiers and airmen and, together with a cousin who was the same age as me, I was a bridesmaid several times over, wearing dresses made of parachute silk.

The roofs leaked, windows rattled and I could hear people complaining about deficiencies in their homes. 'Can't do anything about it,' they grumbled, 'bomb damage, that's what it is!' We no longer had fields to play in, food was scarce and there was a lot of sadness. Young men had not come home and sometimes those who came home looked the same but behaved strangely - they had been in PoW camps. Others wore their uniforms with red ties. Some had de-mob suits.

Fuel was short but what fun it was to go for a ride in an old pram to the local gas works to collect some coke. Trouble was I had to walk back! I heard about neighbours who had found somewhere better to live in a flat in 'requisitioned property', new homes were being built, prefabs as well. Beautiful little homes with all 'mod cons': people lived in them for years longer than was intended!

Playing in bombed houses

So where did we play if we no longer had the fields? One of my favourite playgrounds, where my friends and I played with our dolls, was the cleared site of a block of flats that had been bombed killing 92 people in one raid. These former homes were like life-size plans, with rooms and doorways, where we played 'mothers and fathers'. We could push our dolls' prams along the passages to visit our dolly-friends.

Another memory is actually playing on the bombed sites. This was usually when I tagged along behind my older brother. We went to the 'beach' by Battersea Bridge and some of the big boys even jumped into the Thames from it. There were also constructions standing up like a triangular packet of sandwiches. There was a door at one end, about six foot high, blocked off, and the diagonal of the triangle was covered with black pitch. They were wartime shelters, but we clambered onto it and slid down it; it became our slide.

Barrage balloons hovered over us, we took it all in our stride. Holidays were often spent staying with friends and relatives. If blankets were in short supply then an army great coat came in handy and there were normally several of these to be had! Beds were often shared and I can remember being knocked out of bed with the pot leg that an older cousin had, she had been injured and was on leave.

Christmases were family occasions. No big presents but the orange, nut, knob of coal and a three-penny bit in a sock that was usual for our generation. But one year I did have a very nice present. It must have been when I lived in the 'country', because in the picture I can only be about four or five years old. An ATS uniform; wasn't I smart? My dad had managed to get it when he did fire watch in Holborn from a shop called Gamages. Many will remember that shop, sadly no longer here.

Yes, the war years were sad for many, but for me, because of my stable family life and good fortune, it was not until many years later that I realised what a terrible thing it had been.

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