大象传媒

My Mum, Joyce, was 15 when war broke out. Her sister Marie was 13. They were both evacuated to Surrey, which was a huge upheaval for 2 young girls and they found it very hard to deal with. They weren't with the same family and Marie was desperately unhappy in her billet. After a few months their Mum decided to have them home again, so they were living in the East End, with a gas works at the end of the road, all through the Blitz.
Once they were back home life seemed easier. Mum left school and went to work in a vaccuum cleaner factory that had been taken over to produce munitions during the war. The work was hard and dirty but they all know that if they didn't do their job properly a serviceman could die. They managed to have fun, despite the nature of the work.
Mum was young enough to find war exciting - even the bombing. London was full of young men in uniform and dances were always well attended. For a while she sang with a swing band, while she was going out with the sax player! Going to the pictures was an escape from everyday life and she and her sister used to come home and immediately start practising the hairstyles of the stars they'd just seen. One night, when bombing was particularly heavy, the family was in the shelter in the garden. Joyce and Marie were curling up their hair. Their mother asked them how they could be concerned about such things at such a time. With astonishment, Joyce looked at her mum and said, "We don't want straight hair in the morning!"
Their cat, Tiger, used to stay in the shelter until the bombs started falling then go out. He lost his whiskers one night when a bomb landed close enough for him to catch the blast.
Eventually, the whole street had to be evacuated due to an unexploded bomb at the end of the road (the Luftwaffe having missed the target of the gasworks, which is still standing). Mum went back a few days later to try to find their cat. It was a tortuous journey as many roads were impassible, but she eventually made it through. The houses had all gone - just the doorsteps were left. Amazingly, Tiger was sitting on his, waiting to be rescued. He eventually died at a ripe old age in retirement in Epsom, where the family settled until the end of the 1950s.

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