大象传媒

I was thirteen years old when World War 2 broke out, living in Stanmore, Middlesex. We had an Anderson Air raid shelter put in our back garden, which was part submerged, the rest covered with earth in which we grew marrows.

At first life went on as usual with a few false air-raid alarms going off, then, suddenly the war began in earnest. We were on our houseboat at Leigh-on-Sea when war was declared but our summer holiday was cut short as all the coast was declared out-of-bounds, so home we went. When the blitz on London started my mother went off to Buckinghamshire. On her return she said she had rented the corner of a field from Mr Ford, a farmer, along with two (new) chicken houses and an estate agent鈥檚 site office, which became known as The Huts.

Bentley Priory, in Stanmore, was taken over by the RAF, all very hush hush and when there was an air-raid they had a huge mobile gun 鈥� we called it 鈥淏IG BERTHA鈥� 鈥� which used to fire at enemy planes. At night, when my mother and younger sister were at The Huts, there was this thin scream like sound and my father hustled us quickly into the shelter. When morning came we ventured out to find the globes of the belisha beacons in our apple trees 鈥� no back door and not a sound anywhere. In the house all the glass in the windows was broken and on the pillow, where Mum鈥檚 head would have been, was the base of a big bertha shell. After seeing that we didn鈥檛 grumble about having to leave our nice warm beds to go to the shelter. An irate air-raid warden demanded to know when we were doing there, as the whole area was evacuated as there was an unexploded bomb under our house! I grabbed my case from under my bed and just as we were in our nightclothes, we were taken to Pinner, where my eldest sister lived. To my despair, when I opened my case I had got a Tyrolean outfit and a brown knitted circular skating skirt. This latter I had to go to school in. I had got the wrong case.

Sometimes when there was an air-raid in progress people would come in off the street and crawl under our dining room table. Food was rationed and the slogan 鈥楧ig for victory鈥� set everyone growing vegetables and keeping chickens. The Huts in Bucks became a refuge for many relatives and friends who were just wanting a good night's sleep.

When I sat my school certificate I did so in an air-raid shelter! As all my schoolmates grew up, the young men went into the forces and young women took on their jobs. One of my sisters joined the land army and was given the task of lumber jacking, or should I say jilling! When I became 17 I went to teacher training college, which had been evacuated from Southampton to Cheltenham. My first teaching post was at a primary school in Pinner, which had been built by the RAF as they had spoilt the old one.

Memories from Pearl Bray

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