大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Evelyn Tuck and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived and worked in North West London during the war. From the age of fifteen I joined the Red Cross and used to go there once a week. When I was eighteen they let me work at a First Aid post, but by then the bombing had finished. I was there for a year, but then they closed that one down and I went to another one, underneath a synagogue. That was more exciting because they used to let us in to watch the Jewish weddings from the balcony as weren鈥檛 very busy. Then they said that as there were no more air raids they would close the First Aid posts, and I went to work in an aircraft factory. I was living in Harlesden which is part of Willesden and the factory was near my home. I didn鈥檛 like it much, because I don鈥檛 like factory work anyway. I used to do the panels of the aircraft, nailing them down.

I had two brothers who joined up: one went to India and the other to Italy. They got on alright and came home safe. I remember seeing my younger go off from Paddington Station. I used to stand out in the garden and watch the aircraft fighting. One evening I went outside after a raid had finished and my Dad said: 鈥淐ome on we鈥檒l go for a walk鈥�, and we walked all along the main street treading on glass and shrapnel, looking at all the damage. We used to go in the next street where my Gran lived, into the Anderson Shelter. I didn鈥檛 like it much in the Anderson Shelter. We would try and make it comfortable, but they tended to be wet with muddy floors. You just had to make the best of it. In our house we had a Morrison shelter. They were huge things which you had in the house. They were bigger than a double bed, made of steel with all wire round the outside like being in a cage. You could get four or five people into one. My mother had a baby, Richard, and he had one of those gas masks which babies sat in. It was horrible for him.

Before my brothers joined up we would go together into the public shelters. They really smelt horrible but it was good because we would have a sing song. One place we used to go was underground stations where people would be all lying on the platforms where people would stay for the whole night. People didn鈥檛 get demoralised. There was a strong feeling that we would stand up to Hitler. We stuck up for one another, looked out for one another and helped one another.

I think the Doodlebugs were worst. You would sit there listening to them, waiting for them to stop, and then you would hold your breath. We didn鈥檛 have them so much around where we lived, but the East End got it bad. I also remember going to see all the fires when they tried to set London alight with incendiary bombs.

There were lots of jobs to do just to survive, like queuing for food and collecting firewood, but on the whole it wasn鈥檛 too bad. At the end of the war I went to Trafalgar Square with my friend to celebrate. After the war I joined the VAD鈥檚 in the Navy which I really enjoyed, and travelled to Ceylon where I met my husband.

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