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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of Josephine Fuller and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

From September 1940 to September 1945 I lived in Gerrards Cross Bucks, 18 miles from Central London having left before bombing started in our Portsmouth hometown. My father was an officer in the RNVR and served abroad most of the war. My school, St.James C of E was next to a large wooded Common; on the opposite side of the Common was a school for East End of London evacuees housed in a chapel. Both sets of school children fought at every opportunity. The Common was a battle area; sticks, stones, arrows flew as well as punches and kicks. It ended after a daylong fight when both schools were deserted. Not long after, the evacuees were sent to St. James and peace ruled at once; but not in the wider world.

Night after night German bombers flew over, guns fired, searchlights lit the sky, lazy columns of red and white bullets gave a firework display. Several times the sky glowed red as London burned. In the morning the air was thick with the smell of burning as if thousands of haystacks had been turned to ashes, but it was the smell of people and their homes.
Everyday the children collected bits of bombs, shells, aircraft and parachutes — this was forbidden by the adults and universally destroyed. Many of us practiced with our homemade bows and arrows for when we became Resistance Fighters, using the Common (1 x 3 miles) as our base. We would attack the Germans if they captured the Oxford-London road. The Home Guard planned to block it with a huge tree trunk if invasion came. In fact, we children spent hours trying to cross that road as huge army convoys passed by. Two children were run over by an army lorry. One real danger was caused by deserters hanging about the Common. They mugged my friend for her 2½d milk money.

All homes had either evacuees or war workers boarded with them. We had a Wren working at DENHAM FILM STUDIOS on film taken by the RAF on bombing raids.

The village was bombed several times and a plane machine-gunned the road about 100 feet away from me. I was never afraid in the early years. Sitting in an air raid shelter was exciting. Then came 1944/45 and V1’s and V2’s. I was older and knew when a VI engine stopped overhead. Death was hovering. The rockets V2 were not scary, if you heard them explode you were still alive.

VE Day was joyful. Everyone in the village went to church and a huge bonfire was lit on the Common. VJ Day was celebrated just as well.

The men came home and my family returned to Portsmouth where you could walk for a mile without passing any sturdy buildings and where hundreds had died.

And, at the age of 72 I can still do well at archery with a homemade bow after all that practising.

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