´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Plymouth Library Services on behalf of Mrs H. Olive Dickinson. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the website.

It wasn't usual for the caretaker to come into church on a Sunday morning, but that day he did and walked straight up to the pulpit and spoke to the preacher. At the end of the hymn the preacher announced we were "at war".

It was the 3rd September 1939 and I was just thirteen years old. There was a sense of excitement and a reason for the gas masks we had been provided with. But apart from that, for a year or two those and the blackout were all it seemed to mean to us children. True, occasionally we had to interrupt our lessons and go to the air raid shelter in the school playground — but that was welcome respite from work!

However, by the end of 1940 there were more alerts and it was necessary to go to the air raid shelter at the top of the street. There I managed to get talking to a young man who had come up to Plymouth from Penzance and whom I'd seen in our church once or twice.

But then, in April 1941, Jerry came with a vengeance. On two consecutive nights the centre of Plymouth was almost completely mutilated.

Walking to school next morning, there didn't appear to be any buses. I met up with some of the other girls from my class and we walked on down into town to see what had happened. We were completely shocked. All our favourite shops (especially "Woolies") were destroyed, and over the smoking St Andrews Church was a rough piece of wood with the word "Resurgam" — "we shall rise again".

This typified the spirit of the Blitz.

It was almost a month later when the blitz returned — this time to the area where I lived. Our house was approximately half-a-mile from the dockyard and every house was badly damaged. We were minus roof and windows and a hole in the wall made the lounge and dining room walk though!

My mother, in view of the talk of compulsory evacuation, decided my sister and I should go to our grandparents in Pembroke, South Wales. However, an aunt had gone there with her four-year-old son a month before and we felt we were not exactly welcome. My sister - who was always classed as "delicate" - cried to go home and, as we did not seem to get enough to eat, I wrote home for our fares.

In July my mother had a letter from my father's sister in Doncaster, Yorkshire, for one of Mum's girls to go up for company for her at nights when uncle was night work. I was all but fifteen, but having been told to go, I was sent up on the train, accompanied by my brother, to stay there and finish my schooling. So I became an evacuee!

There was no comparable school to Public Central in Plymouth, so I had to do an IQ test for entry into the Commercial College at the Technical school. I was accepted and found myself with thirty ex-grammar school children in their second year of the course. This proved quite satisfactory — except for French which I had dropped three years previously!

The local Methodist Church proved very welcoming and I made a lot of friends, six boys and girls, and we were a very happy and caring group — I'm still friendly with a few of them today and regularly talk to each other.

I took an exam and had a job in the railway offices, which I did for a further two years or so before returning home to Plymouth where the raids had stopped.

Oh, yes - and a year later again I had a letter from Anzio beachhead — that young man was in the Navy. And, reader, I married him and we shared forty-three years of happy married life.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.