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I was three years old at the beginning of the war and lived with my father, mother and baby brother in a top flat overlooking Waterloo Station. A barrage balloon broke loose and dragged its heavy hawser across the roof causing great damage. My father was in the London police force and they helped to evacuate us and our furniture to my grandparents living on a farm in Shamley Green, Guildford, Surrey. They lived a mile and a half outside the village in a narrow lane with a Canadian unit in a mansion below and a big camp on the heath above. Because of the black out and the speed of the army vehicles there were constant accidents and my mother (Grace) was given a first aid post. She, who had been known to faint at the sight of blood, was now dealing with broken legs, arms and other unspeakables. We had chickens, rabbits and all our own veg., even our Doctor Tom Yoxall was paid in eggs. I do remember a Canadian soldier bringing us a very rich sickly cake which had been sent to him in his food parcel from home. Near one of the barns on the road side was a Home Guard trench and they used to practise their shooting in a sand pit up a steep hill so we played there and searched for live ammunition. Large pine trees were cut down for the ‘war effort’ and we then went ‘chipping’, picking up the chips of wood left, putting them in sacks, wheeling them home in a wheelbarrow to help with the fuel. We had no electric or gas! Sent drawings of us doing this to my father who was now in the Navy. I remember getting halfway home from school, heard a doodlebug then its engine cut out, I sobbed all the way home. My father’s experiences of the war were horrendous. Once an incendiary bomb fell down the area of a doss house for homeless men and the horrific consequences of the ensuing fire were hard for him to describe. A bomb fell on a graveyard and blew bones across the Thames. Later on in the war he joined the Navy on the H.M.S. Birmingham, a cruiser, and cut all the personals hair as well, making a bit more money for his family which had grown to four children. Also can remember my father bringing me a pretty doll home and the first bananas we had ever seen. He never went back to city life but became a gardener and also worked on the farm.

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