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The story of one who did not evacuate

Much attention has rightly been given to the plight of the children of were evacuated during the War. However, there were those who stayed in London with their own family and they have a different tale to tell.

I was born on 4th September 1940 in a back bedroom at Camberwell Green. My mother was from Hoxton, Clerkenwell; her parents still lived in the area at that time. My father’s family were from the Old Kent Road. Had my parents settled north of the Thames, which had been their plan who knows, I might not be here to tell my tale. I have memories of my own and I grew up knowing about events because I was told or they were discussed. When you are brought up in two rooms, not to talk in front of the child is not an option. Dad told of watching a ‘dogfight’ in the skies on the evening I was born and seeing the German pilot parachute down. I believe this to be the plane that was chased up from the coast whose target was Buckingham Place but I cannot be sure. My father died in 1981 after a short illness and mother died two years later in a road accident so we had no time for reminiscences

We did evacuate, for a short while, we lodged in Taunton, Somerset. My mother oft referred to, ‘miles of bleedin nothing’. Dad came to visit us and took us to the seaside at Weston super Mare. The tide was out and my Mother’s reaction was, ‘miles of bleedin mud’. So back we came to our two rooms at the top of a Victorian terraced house in Camberwell. The road we lived in ran behind the police station where the air rain siren was mounted on the roof. Even today after all these years I still shudder and get goose pimples if I hear the warning sound on the radio or TV. We did not use the public shelters, because Mum considered them dirty and smelly. I do remember once using a neighbour’s indoor Morrison shelter. Mum’s theory was, ‘if the whole lot came down we would be on the top of the pile.’ I am told that each night my mother would pack my few toys and clothes in to a sack with my name and address in case I was the only one to survive. My father got old wooden floorboards, which were placed over my high-sided cot to prevent debris from falling on me if we took a direct, hit.

People did die in Camberwell from a direct hit. The house we lived in often suffered blast damage, it was said we took the ‘misses (bombs missing their target) from the docks’. Deptford and Bermondsey were only a short distance away as a bomber flies. I can remember boarded up windows and going to sleep to the sound of rain water dripping through the damaged roof and splashing in to waiting enamel bowls.

I can remember visiting my Grandparents in North London. We went on the bus and then a tram. My Grandparents were part of the terrible fireball that swept through the East End in 1943. Dad was home at that time and took a bus as far as he could, then walked towards ‘The City’ in an attempt to find them. They did survive and were moved out to the country, Enfield! Times change quickly. Enfield was the country then. I can remember walking from the Green Line Bus stop and seeing fields. To reach Enfield we took the bus to Victoria then the Green Line Bus. I think Dad hoped that Mum would move out but we stayed.

If the Battle of Britain marked my arrival in to the world the V2s heralded my fourth birthday. I quite clearly remember the V1s and the V2s. We were walking down our street when my mother took my hand and started running. We took shelter in the corner baker’s shop doorway. As my mother later told my astonished daughter, ’it was alright. I wrapped my coat round your mother’s eyes’! Fortunately the light at the tail of the bomb did not go out and it continued on its path to fall on some other poor devil.

However odd Mother’s attitude, and she was not alone in her philosophy, it did get us through those dark days. We had no means of growing extra vegetables or keeping chickens, we had the bare rations and that was all. I was apparently given a rare banana and banged it on the floor thinking it some kind of toy. I well remember the queues at the butcher’s shop in particular. We were registered at the Home & Colonial for groceries and therein hangs another tale.

So Mother told me she was in the H&C when the air raid warning went off. She hurried home which was very close by. After the all clear was given she left home again to complete her shopping and on the way met a neighbour who, ‘ask where’s the baby’. Mother replied, ‘the baby’! She run to the H&C where the grocer said, ‘Oh was that your baby?’ ‘We wheeled her next door to the police station’. Two policemen had carried me in my pram up the station steps and down to the cells. That was where I spent one air raid or as Mother said, ‘it was only a false alarm, it was one of ours, they often got it wrong’.

We spent many hours in the local cinemas, ‘going to the pictures’, as it was known. The cinema was cheap, warm and comfortable. It was cheaper to buy a cinema ticket than to make a coal fire at home. That is when there was coal available. We would go to the cinema at 3.30pm and stay to mid evening only leaving the comfort of the building during an air raid if the manager insisted. Mum had the radio on constantly, usually the Light Programme. We heard the famous Glen Miller Band when they broadcast live from near London.

Things did come to an end. Next time you see that photograph of the masses of people outside Buckingham Palace waving to the King and the Royal Family in May 1945, look for me. I am somewhere in the crowd sitting on my father’s shoulders. We had a Victory Party in the playground of the school at the top of our road. I remember walking up the road carrying a plate, cup and saucer not really understanding what was going on. Many years later I saw a photograph of that victory party in a magazine at the dentist. I did succeed in getting a copy of the photo. In the early 1990s it was used on a poster to promote an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. I turned a corner of a corridor on the tube and there I was on a poster on the wall.

When the sandbags were removed from public buildings and the searchlights from street corners I asked, ‘Why?’ The noise from the ack-ack guns stopped. The world I knew was changing. I was told.’the war is over’. I knew nothing but ‘the war’. It was normal to me. What of the children today who live for many years in war torn countries? How will they react?

I had contact with a few children during those years. The house we lived in was shared by three families. An elderly couple lived in the basement. A family with a daughter two or three years older than me and a younger daughter lived on the middle floor and we top at the top of the house. A neighbour had a daughter three years younger than me. Her Dad was a GI and when we had no coal her Mum gave us a bucket of coal.

Starting school as I did in September 1945 was a nightmare for me. The school at the end of our road was a private school. I went to a school across a busy road junction on the edge of Brixton. Families came back to London; many schools had suffered bomb damage. The lack of places found us sitting three to a desk designed for two pupils. The boys were rough and rude they bullied each other and the girls.

The older I get the more those early years make sense. I see programmes on TV, which we are told, were restricted information but we knew about it because we lived in London. Biographs and books of other peoples’ reminiscences awaken long forgotten memories.

I believe those early years gave me a resilience that has stood me in good stead. If you know that you and your mother coped with all that, nothing else should daunt you.

I still save string and press slivers of soap together to make a new tablet of soap. At night I fold my clothes in a neat pile. You never know when you may need to dress in the dark and leave the house in a hurry! I had my own family when it was pointed out to me that I need not fill the kettle over night, as bombs were not likely to blow up the water main during the night.

17 March 2005

I have written this for my children and grandchildren, particularly Louise who has long urged me to put my memories on paper. It is their history too.

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