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This story has been written to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of Jean Elizabeth James. The story has been added to the site with her permission and Jean fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I had a Cornish father from St Mawgan — Pydar, Cornwall, and a mother from Cheriton Bishop near Exeter, Devon. Because of the lack of jobs in the late 20’s and early 30’s, my father went to London to seek work. He was born in 1906, the second of 5 children. His mother died in 1918 of cancer of the breast, and my grandfather employed a housekeeper to care for himself and his 5 children. Eventually he married the housekeeper, but she stipulated ‘no children’ as she felt it wasn’t in the 5 children’s interest to have a half-brother or sister.

Dad went to the local school in St Mawgan, leaving at 13 years, and was apprenticed to his father and uncle. He was trained as a carpenter, joiner, wheelwright and undertaker, the undertaking service only between Newquay and Padstow. He came to London in 1928, when his youngest brother joined the firm as an apprentice. The business couldn’t stand having three trained persons and an apprentice, so Dad moved on.

He married my mother, 7 years older than himself, in 1932 and I was born in 1934. He worked spasmodically between 1932 and 1939, due to poor working conditions and bad weather in the winter. Without Mother’s ‘marriage gratuity’ from the Civil Service they would have been very poorly off, with no Unemployment Benefit etc. In 1939, when war was declared, Dad was called in, but after 3 medicals, 2 in Harley Street, he was graded ‘C3’, as he was almost totally deaf. Some thought he was malingering in order to get out of being called up, and he received several ‘gifts’ of white feathers, which upset him very much.

He was sent into ‘directed labour’ because of his craft work. He cycled to Elstree from Friern-Barnet to ‘disguise’ the Marconi factory. He made wooden fir tree shapes and painted them green, then installed them on the roof of the factory to try and fool the German bombers that it was only a forest below them and not a munitions factory. When this job was completed, he was sent to the Dulwich factory of Marconi to do the same ‘disguise’ work. Once again, he cycled to and from Dulwich with all his tools on the bike each way. This was so as not to lose his tools if the factory was bombed overnight. Whilst still in London, during the Battle of Britain, he also served as a night fire-watcher, wakened by my mother, as he never heard the siren, and only felt the vibration through his bike when he was en-route to either Elstree or Dulwich.

My mother was recalled to the Civil Service, to the National Savings division at Manor Gardens, Holloway Road, as the men were called up. I started primary school two days after the war began. We had surface shelters, which if directly hit would have been totally destroyed. We spent more time in the shelters than in the classrooms, and had to go into the nearest house for shelter if the siren went on our way to school. I was taken to school by neighbours, with their children, as my mother was already back to work.

When I was six and a half, my father decided London was an unsafe place for me to stay, and asked his sister and brother-in-law, Min and Alf Steer of Lymington Road, Torquay, to have me as a ‘voluntary evacuee’, my cousin Doreen being 5 years older than me. She went to Torquay Grammar School for Girls and I went to St James Church of England Upton School. There were 190 pupils in my year and my teacher was Miss Young. The group was divided in half and we went for 5 sessions per week; 3 mornings and 2 afternoons, or 2 mornings and 3 afternoons. In the autumn, we also went into the fields to pick rose-hips. With such a large class to control, we did oral spellings, mental arithmetic, poetry, country dancing, and story readings for a good deal of the time. The problem was not having enough books, paper, slates, pencils and chalks to go round, so they were used very sparingly.

Unfortunately, once I’d arrived in Torquay, Hitler then turned his attention to other cities, and for me, namely Plymouth. Any bombs not dropped over Plymouth were dropped over Torquay and district on their way back to Germany. During this time Auntie Min had 3 evacuees billeted on her. I shared the little room with my cousins, sleeping top and bottom in a single bed, and she and Uncle slept in the parlour. A brother and sister, Beatrice and Frankie Botwright from Hackney, were the first to arrive, plus an older girl called Barbara, but I can’t remember her surname.

When Beatrice and Frankie arrived, they were lousy with nits, and even though I had long ringlets I never got any nits. Every night we children sat round the kitchen table whilst Auntie Min cleaned our hair, cracking lice, on the America cloth on the table with her nails. She treated the evacuees’ hair with ‘flowers of sulphur’ and, using a nit comb, cleared their hair quite quickly. An unforgettable experience for all of us!

I loved my time in Torquay, as I had a sister figure and my auntie who was an earth mother, whereas my mother was a Civil Servant, my father being my caring parent always. Because my maternal grandmother, who lived in Friern-Barnet with my parents, told them that if they didn’t bring me back from Torquay she’d never see me again, in late 1942 I went home to London. The Americans had arrived in the South West and were all over the place, and were causing a real upheaval in many people’s lives. I went home and my grandmother actually died in April 1944.

Hitler then decided to fire V1 and V2 rockets, initially over the London area. My father was actually standing on Bounds Green underground station platform, a deep station, when the 1st V1 in our area fell in Tewkesbury Terrace. Although only 5-6 houses were destroyed, 14,000 houses were affected, even if only a slate or tile came off the roof, or a window-pane was broken. Our neighbour was a Special Police constable and told us this. When the train drew into the station, Dad told us it was covered in dust and dirt from the tunnel, as a result of the bombing up on the surface about 500 yards from the Tube station.

Mum and I used to hide under the stairs when we heard the awful sound of the engines of the rockets. We listened for them to cut out and knew that they would then glide down before landing. What we worried about were those rockets that had their engines cut out up to a mile away from us and which, till the rocket landed and exploded, we’d be totally unaware of. Although the 149 nights of continual bombing of London was dreadful, we were warned and heard the planes overhead, but the V1’s and V2’s — buzz bombs and doodlebug bombs - were the more frightening, as often we didn’t get a siren warning till it was too late.

My war was 5 years long and all of my primary school days. I shall never ever forget it, but it also shaped my life too.

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