大象传媒

The next question that Mrs Williamson was asked was, 鈥� Do you remember what happened on VE Day?鈥� She told of all the street parties, her neighbour was in Forest Hill then and they were both the same age, very good friends, they had decided to get a party up their road and they would go an collect money every week, sometime before the actual party, she would do one side of the street and her friend Helen would do the other and in the end they had enough money to hire a hall, as they didn鈥檛 want it in the street just in case it rained.

They had this huge cake, all the fruit was given by different green grocers, sweets given to. They sat and made little bags out of crepe paper and put some sweets in it, so that every child had a bag of sweets, chocolate and a gift. They had to go around a factory to pick up some of their souvenirs. They through a lovely tea party and the Mayor of Lewisham came, and was given a bouquet of flowers for her. They had punch and Judy for the youngsters and they had some singers up on the stage, but of course she tells how they were all singing anyway.

When organising the VE Day celebration party Helen and herself just couldn鈥檛 believe how generous everyone was and she puts in down to the fact that everyone was so relieved the war was over that they would do anything to have a good celebration. After the VE Day celebration there was some food left and one of the cakes hadn鈥檛 been touched, so Mrs Williamson and her friend Helen decided to donate all the food to the children鈥檚 hospital nearby.

During the war Mrs Williamson states that she did do a lot of cooking, such as baking cakes and making dried egg omelettes. She even made some for her own wedding.

The Vicar went to the wedding reception, it was his last marriage he would conduct there as he was being sent to somewhere else. He did marvels for that church, she tells how they had the biggest amount of youngsters than any other church in the south of London, because they had the cubs, the scouts and the rovers, the same with the brownies and guides. Once a month they would have parade they would have flags on sticks, they would stop the number thirty-six buses for about an hour, apparently it was fabulous. Mrs Williamson was the Sunday school teacher. Every Sunday she went down to the church for Sunday school and maybe every now and again she would go down or evening service. She managed to persuade her husband to become both a Sunday school teacher and scoutmaster. In the scouts they were taught how to tie ropes and to cook, believe it or not. By this time she had two sons and they both joined the scouts. Every now and again they would take a train trip with the children to south end for a day out. But didn鈥檛 seem to want to travel too far. When they would get there the children would want to bring something back for their mothers, but due to having little pocket money they could only get a stick of rock really.

Mrs Williamson states that all throughout the war not once did she see a soldier or serviceman, no American or Australians she found this very strange. She did however see Italians when they were evacuated and they worked in the brickfields nearby.

On VJ Day she can recall having a celebration, not as grand as VE Day. They were all dancing and singing in the streets. There was a big bonfire in the middle of the street, which was burning through the tarmac, buses had to be stopped. They had to collect as much as they could, because at this point things were still rationed, but they managed to feed the children tea. Mrs Williamson, organised VE Day but didn鈥檛 take part in the organisation of VJ Day, someone up the side street did. But both occasions seemed to be very memorable.

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