大象传媒

The Wartime Memories of Violet Hockin (nee Sykes)

This story will be submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Jan Barrett (volunteer) on behalf of Violet Hockin and will be added to the site with her permission. Violet fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The Barmaid and the Butcher

I was 19 when war broke out and living in Cowes, Isle of Wight. My Dad was landlord at the Wheatsheaf Inn and I had a hairdressing business of my own in Cowes High Street. In the evenings I helped out in the pub which was where I met my husband to be Fred Hockin who was working for Jay鈥檚, a local butcher.

One day a German fighter plane came very low along the High Street over my hairdressing business, machine-gunning all the shops. The house of Mr. Lowein, the Dentist, was hit but luckily nobody was injured and it was all over before we had time to get frightened.

There was very little bombing at first, but even so we all had to comply with the blackout. One evening in the winter of 1939 I was coming home from work: it was pitch-black and pouring with rain. I had a flashlight with me which I used to flick on now and again very quickly to see what was ahead: b I had just put it off when I walked into a pillar of a wall that jutted out. It was a heavy blow and I rushed in to the Wheatsheaf thinking that it was rain pouring down my face, but when I got inside the Pub my Dad practically leapt over the bar counter saying 鈥淲ho hit you?鈥� I had cut my brow open and the 鈥渞ain鈥� was actually blood. There was a lot of talk about needing stitches but in the event I just made do with a plaster.

When the bombing of Portsmouth and Southampton started we could see the fires from Cowes and would wonder what people were going through. We also used to hear the German planes going over. They used the Medina River as their guideline because it was easy to see from the air particularly on a bright moonlight night. It was almost like an arrow pointing straight to the mainland.

My mum and I trained as fire wardens; when incendiary bombs were dropped we would run out and try to put them out with stirrup pumps and buckets of water.

One night in the Wheatsheaf bar, Fred Hockin, who had become a regular, asked if he could take me out. He was a butcher, working for Jay鈥檚, and we started courting. So when the war started, my biggest worry was that he would get called up. In the event, he volunteered at the beginning of 1940 at which time he would have been about 26 years old.

Around the time that Fred went into the RASC in 1940, I gave up the hairdressing shop and went to work in a factory at Somerton which made small parts for aeroplanes. It was a sheet metal factory and very noisy. I was on inspection work and had to check that the rivets were set in properly.

In 1941 I was planning my wedding to Fred. I had seen a dress and a going-away coat that I liked in a local shop but on the very day I went to buy them clothing coupons started, but they let me have them anyway. (Later in the war the Red Cross was asking for wedding dresses for Forces brides. I was a bit hard-up then so I sold mine for 拢10). My wedding cake was covered in sugar paper which was an alternative to icing sugar.

Around that time a bomb dropped on Cowes Cemetery in Newport Road. My Dad was convalescing from an operation, and he walked up to the cemetery to see what damage had been done. Graves had been blown open and there was a workman there who was doing his best to clean it all up, Dad stopped to talk to him. Within weeks my father and the workman had died from meningitis.

My marriage took place on July 12th and after the service me and Fred went to the hospital to see my poor Dad and take him my bouquet. Dad died a week later; he was just 49 years old.

Within days of our wedding Fred was back on duty, moving around the UK delivering ammunition to various places. For a while he was stationed near Shropshire., so I moved there to be near him. I found a job out in the heart of the country and each morning I would leave my lodgings in the local pub, cycle five miles to a bus stop, and then catch a bus which would take me another five miles to a little factory where I had to rivet sections of sheet metal together for petrol tanks for aeroplanes (they were either Wellingtons or Stirlings).

One day the workers at this factory said they were going out on strike for more money. I was furious and I refused to join them. I said 鈥淢y husband is serving in the Army, earning very little money, carrying ammunition around everywhere, and you are asking me to go out on strike!鈥� They called me a black-leg, and some of them wouldn鈥檛 speak to me, but I didn鈥檛 care and I still didn鈥檛 join the strike.

While I was in Shropshire news came of a heavy bombing raid in Cowes and East Cowes 鈥� they were aiming for the dockyards there. Fortunately the Free French and Polish Navy were in dock and they turned their guns on the German planes and fought them off. They saved Cowes from a lot more serious damage and we were all glad they were there.

The house that Mum was living in after they left eh Wheatsheaf, was in Newport Road in Cowes, and during an air raid it suffered some damage and she couldn鈥檛 live there any more. So Mum decided to move back to London, where we had all originally come from, and I went to live with her in Halstead Gardens, Winchmore Hill.

Fred got stationed in Enfield about this time (1943), which was really good because we could see more of each other. I was expecting my first baby by then and when Janice (Jan) was born he was able to come and see her the very next day. Shortly after this he got moved again to Croydon which was known as buzz-bomb alley. I used to worry a lot about him then. Sometimes he could get home for the night; but if there was a bombing raid he would refuse to leave his bed and go down to the bomb shelter 鈥� so I was torn about what to do 鈥� but I would go to the shelter with baby Jan in my arms.

The bombing had calmed down a bit in London by 1943, but I remember one incident very well and often chuckle about it now. I鈥檝e mentioned the buzz bombs; well, what happened with them was that when they came over you could hear a particular throbbing noise 鈥� it was bad news if this noise stopped because it meant they were about to be dropped. One day I had just put baby Jan in her highchair for lunch, when I heard the throbbing noise 鈥� suddenly it stopped 鈥� I grabbed the baby but I couldn鈥檛 get her out of the chair so I pulled her and the chair and dived with it under the kitchen table waiting for the explosion. Silence. Nothing. I went on waiting. After a while I crept out just in time to hear the noise start up again 鈥� but actually it was only a coal lorry with a very noisy engine which had just happened to stop outside the house!

Fred wasn鈥檛 happy about me living in London so I went to live with his mother in Gosport. One morning in 1944 a dispatch rider arrived there to say that Fred鈥檚 unit was in Gosport and they were embarking for France that day. Me, Jan and his Mum and Dad quickly caught the bus and went down to the harbour. We saw all the lorries being loaded on to the landing craft. We were stood talking to Fred when around the corner came his commanding officer. 鈥淗ockin, he barked, 鈥渨hat are you doing?鈥� 鈥淭hese are my family, Sir鈥� Fred replied. 鈥淎lright鈥� said the officer 鈥淵ou can take your vehicle on last so you can spend more time with them鈥�.

So we chatted for a while, they sat the baby on the back of his transporter, she wee-ed and everyone laughed and said it would bring them luck. But too soon he had to go on board and I hugged him and waved him goodbye, wondering if I would ever see him again.

By the time VE Day came I had moved back to the Island to a little house in Pelham Road. It was owned by Mr Jay the butcher that Fred had worked for, and he charged us thirteen shillings a week. We all knew by then that the war was coming to an end, and Mr. Jay was keen to get Fred back working for him when it ended.

On VE Day, 8th May, 1945, which also happened to be Fred鈥檚 32nd birthday, he was home on leave. I remember there were street parties, but the main thing I remember was having him home with me. Then too soon he had to return to his unit in Germany expecting to be demobbed. But he wrote to me saying that the Army was asking for volunteers to go on to Japan and Borneo where the war was still on. In his letter he said 鈥淚 would like to volunteer, what do you think?鈥� I wrote back to say I thought he had done his duty and now he should come home to his wife and baby.

In the event, he didn鈥檛 get home very quickly because his army service had left him with some serious problems in his legs, and his knees were terribly swollen with arthritis, something he was to suffer with all his life. He had spent his war service ferrying ammunition around, taking tanks on his transporter up to the front line and bringing back the damaged ones. Often he was hungry, cold and wet, sleeping rough in damp fields. He was in the hospital in Germany for some time but eventually he came before the Demobilisation Board. But by then he had contracted Yellow Jaundice and had to go to a hospital in Cheshire to convalesce. Evenutally he came home in 1946 in his demob suit (everyone had a choice of striped or plain) and with his army severance payment of 拢100.

He was one of the lucky ones; he had a wife, a baby, a house and a job waiting for him and we settled down to married life which was to last for 63 years until he died on 16th September 2004.

Violet Hockin
16th September 2005.

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