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My Mum Millicent Olive Phillips died in March 2004 and in her personal effects I found her hand-written account of some of her experiences during the 2nd World War. This is the text of her account. It must have been written in about 1990 before my Dad died and before the birth of their 4 great grand daughters.

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My first recollection of the second world war, 1939 — 1945, was in the year of my marriage in Southampton Hampshire, the beautiful parks were being destroyed by the digging of trenches and rumours were of the coming war. The big liners were turned into troop ships and my husband was at that time assembling the fighter Spitfire at Vickers Armstrongs which was the factory situated on the Southampton water near the floating bridge as it was then called. Shelters were also built in various places and an air (raid) warning was a hooter, which was named the ‘siren’. It had an ear splitting wail, which we dreaded. When the German planes retreated we then had the ‘all clear’ hooter which still was a wail but a welcome one.
These sirens had to be load as everyone had to be alerted of the danger of falling bombs. Then appeared the huge balloons, they were kept on the ground but if enemy aircraft were approaching the area they would rise up in the air thus hopefully would keep the aircraft from diving near the ground. In many of the parks and green field areas, were the machine guns and ‘ack ack’ placements which were manned by the RAF. When we heard the warning ‘Action Stations’ we donned our steel helmets and gas masks and took shelter at the bottom of the garden where the family stayed until the ‘All Clear’ sounded.
As time went on and France was overpowered, it was thought that it was time to evacuate the children to safer parts of England. I was lucky as I am Cornish and could come home to my parents who still lived in Truro where my son was born in February 1942. By this time Southampton was bombed many times and the Vickers Supermarine works was destroyed. This meant my husband being transferred to Salisbury were they continued to make parts as fast as they could for the Spitfire. We then joined my husband and lived in a prefab home. We had one bomb dropped in Truro Cornwall which unfortunately was a direct hit on the hospital killing a dear friend of my husband’s sister who were both nurses there. I had been in Salisbury for the day and was on my way to change my address and ration book, which we were given for food also identity cards, when the warning siren sounded and a low flying German bomber dropped a bomb on a house just opposite where my baby son and I were lying in the garden hedge. Luckily we were alright apart from shock and no one was in the house.
One of the first things we had to teach our children was their name and address and identity number. We also had coupons for clothing and sweets. There were no toys in the shops. Nearly all the young men and women were in uniform of some sort and the older men were volunteering to form a ‘Home Guard’ to guard our shores and important buildings. There were people who trained to be ‘fire watchers’ and we were taught how to deal with incendiary bombs. Later on came the ‘doodle bugs’ which were mostly over London and principle cities. These were very frightening and we lost quite a few boats with the dreaded submarines the Germans had called U Boats. Our first house at Southampton was bombed and we lost all our wedding presents. So we had to start making our home again but we were very lucky as we are still alive and have now two daughters and two granddaughters also three grandsons beside our son who was born during that dreadful time. A time we shall never forget.

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