大象传媒

At the commencement of the war I was living in Harrow, and had recently got married. My husband was a carpenter/shipbuilder and he had to go to Kingston-upon-Hull/Grimsby to work in the shipyards.
I worked as an accountant for John England for 7 years prior to and during the war; also I worked as a school caterer for approximately 60 children, giving them breakfasts and teas.
At the time when my son was born was 1941, Easter Sunday as it happened, I started going into labour at l am in the morning, and had to be transported to Edgware General Hospital in an ARP van as there was no other transport available. He was born 20 minutes after my arrival at the hospital, I think he was afraid he was going to miss something exciting!
Whilst I worked at the school I had to take my son to work with me, on my school duties, of course he was rather spoilt by the other people working with me.
There was a railway track alongside the maternity ward and I remember seeing very many guns being transported on the track all the time during my 10 days of confinement and recovery.
On Sunday 20 April the fire of London occurred and suddenly all the nurses disappeared- they were called out to attend to those injured in the fire.
Before we had the Morrison shelter, my baby son slept under the stairs in the meter cupboard and I slept on the hall floor.
We were allocated bottles or orange juice for the babies at the baby clinic, but my son didn鈥檛 like it.
The area near to the hospital attracted a lot of attention from the Luftwaffe, and there were many barrage balloons in the sky all around.
The reason the enemy found the area so interesting, was because there was the railway, which of course was being used for moving munitions, there was also the RAF camp, and the De Havilland aircraft factory and several other factories, some of which at one time made men鈥檚 toiletries, but converted to making dope to paint the fuselage of the Aircraft. This dope was used to make firm and hard the outer skin of the aircraft which was very thin, so much so that if you were not careful, you could push a finger through the fuselage it was so delicate.
Therefore you can imagine how dreadfully cold the flyers were without the benefit of the insulation and heating methods of today鈥檚 aircraft.
The factories and indeed the whole area were targeted for land mines in particular, and many landed, but also, many fell harmlessly on a sewage farm on the opposite side of the track and the enemy did not achieve the damage they anticipated.
During an air-raid our front and back and middle doors were blown out. and many windows were smashed, but apart from that we were very lucky as this was the only damage we experienced.
My friend鈥檚 husband was killed in enemy action in Europe, and of course this fact brought home to us how dreadful and cruel wars are.
The effect of blast can be quite bizarre, as locally when bombs fell it was the area between the houses which were affected by the blast rather more than the houses on some occasions.
When my husband came home on leave his comment was that the raids were far more intensive where I was living than where he was in Kingston upon Hull at the shipyards. He also told me that sometimes their work was so secret that they were not allowed to get off the ships they were working on and had to stay on board for days at a time, sometimes longer, till the work was completed.
We were all encouraged to grow as much food as possible and then to preserve it so that we had food in the winter months, bearing in mind that there was no frozen food available then, and you could only buy seasonal food-stuff, and there was very little fruit, for instance bananas were only available in dried form and not very many of those, as the cargo ships were all given over to military purposes. We were not so aware then of the importance of these benefits from our food... We used Kilner jars which had a rubber sealing ring inside the lid which hopefully preserved the contents for a period of time, but if the seal wasn鈥檛 perfect, the contents soon began to show signs of going off and had to be thrown away. Which was really frustrating, quite apart from the waste, it was a labour intensive job to prepare?
I remember there used to be a red light at the top of the steeple of the church on Harrow on the Hill, as it was very high, but I can鈥檛 remember if it was alight during the war or not.
I have always had a keen interest in guiding and at that time I ran a brownie pack for the Stanmore Orthopaedic Hospital, many of the children were seriously disabled but they really enjoyed the activities I arranged for them despite their disablement.
I belonged to the Trefoil Guild, which is a group set up for mature and retired guiders, and I still am a member, and in the time of the war I enlisted my brownies and others to help make up parcels for the 鈥渟oldiers at the front鈥�
My brother was an observer in the RAF.
My Aunt鈥檚 in Canada used to send me food parcels, which were most welcome, as they contained items which were classed as luxuries to us at the time.

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