大象传媒

This story is transcribed by me, Euan Mahy, from a written contribution received from Joyce Bidmead. She is a 大象传媒 Radio Cornwall listener and responded to a radio broadcast request by me to share stories on this site. She has been briefed about the nature of this siteand understands copyright.

I was a young girl on a working holiday picking hops in Kent when my friend ran across the field to tell me war had been declared. I immediately turned to my parents, frightened my dad would be called back to the navy, where he had spent the Great War. I was worried he would be killed.

I was one of seven children and mum and dad insisted we would not be split up. We returned to London, where dad worked in the East India Docks. Mum immediately began making sandbags, sewing the material together using her treadle sewing machine.

The months passed quietly at first, but in Spring 1940 the vicar of our local church, St Anne's, persuaded my parents that their younger children would be safer if they were sent away. Soon we were on a bus heading to Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset. At twelve years old I was considered responsible enough to look after my two younger sisters.

We were met by Miss Standish. She was tall, with brown leathery skin. She had wrinkles that reminded me of the walnuts we ate at Christmas. She was an elderly spinster who lived in Swiss Road. She was kind, but not used to looking after children. I remember having burnt fried bread and dripping for breakfast and spam and lumpy mashed potato for tea. My two sisters were homesick and cried every night. I cried too, but hid under the bedclothes so they would not hear me. We wrote home regularly, telling mum and dad how happy we were. In fact we were miserable.

Three months later mum, dad and my younger sister and brother came to visit. Dad had brought a meat pie for us to share. We ate it on the promenade. A little later the air raid sirens began. We were quite used to this, as planes were often seen over nearby Bristol. But it worried dad enough to persuade him that we would be safer back home in London.

Life there continued as normal. One event I do remember is being in the back garden and looking up and seeing two planes in a dog fight. I was fascinated but mum kept shouting at me to come indoors. Soon, the houses in our area were given Anderson shelters. We used to use ours as a dolls house. It had two benches and a paraffin lamp. Workmen came to dig the hole it sat in, but Dad made it even deeper. He covered the roof with sandbags and then shovelled earth on top. Our Anderson shelter even had geraniums growing from it.

We were in bed one night when my sister Ruth and I heard the sound of aircraft. We told Dad the German planes were coming. He said, "No they're not cock, you're not in Weston now you know, you're safe as houses here." With that the air raid sirens sounded and we started to scramble towards the shelter. It was the 7th of September, the night of the big blitz. Bombs started dropping nearby and the blast from one of them knocked mum flying into dad. She lost a couple of teeth and there was blood everywhere. It was terrifying. The bombs screeched and wailed as they landed close by. Mum said as long as you could still hear them, they were not meant for you. Halfway through the night I remembered it was mum's birthday. I wished her many happy returns. She said "don't wish the return of this lot on us."

That morning rescue teams had to dig us out of our garden refuge. We were alright, apart from mum's injured face. Our next door neighbours had all died in the bombing, and an aerial mine had destroyed the street behind us. My best friend had lived there. My lasting memory is of the strange atmosphere. Even though it was late morning, the air was dark, with what seemed like a vivid sunset burning through. Thick dust was everywhere and the fires in the docks still burned. I remember my parents talking with the vicar, then I ran off to see if I could find my friend. A single tree stood amidst the rubble. Its leaves had been blown off and amongst the branches was a severed head. I believe it was the remains of my friend's brother, home on leave from the army. An elderly man put his arms around me and told me to keep away as the area was still dangerous.

As the bombing intensified, we began to spend more and more nights sleeping in the Anderson shelter. Eventually it happened, our house was hit. We survived, but all our possessions were destroyed. With very little warm clothing, we returned, as a family, to Weston Super Mare. This time we didn't have anywhere to stay and the Police couldn't help. We tried Miss Standish again, but she refused to let us in. Mum was angry at this and said "God pays back debts his own way, without our money." Later we found out Miss Standish had fallen and broken her hip. That first evening in Weston we were cold and stranded without shelter on a street corner. Then a couple came by and took us in for the night. The next day we were allocated accommodation, but mum was sent to a house one street away from us. Dad returned to London. We stayed like that for some time and I remember the lady we lodged with giving us lavender water for our Friday night bath. Eventually we were found a top floor flat where we could all live together. By this time air raids were becoming more frequent and I remember being marched from school to a nearby hotel to take refuge. One day we watched a bombing raid from our apartment. I heard that a German pilot educated at Bristol had dropped his bombs on the mudflats instead of the City and had then landed and presumably surrendered. By this time I was fourteen and in need of a job. I was interviewed by Woolworth's and passed their entrance tests. I was their youngest employee, but these were the days when eighteen year olds were being called up, so rules were often bent. I had to stand on a box to reach the till.

I remember another raid on Weston in June 1942. We had one of those steel Morrison shelters then. It had wire mesh around it and sat in the kitchen, doubling as a table. During a raid you had to cram in beneath it. But my days in the Anderson shelter had made me claustrophobic and I preferred to be outdoors. It seemed as if Londoners were being deliberately targeted by German bombs as an evacuee family a few streets away died in a raid.

Somehow our family survived the war aside from two cousins who were killed whilst hop picking in Kent, which as you will remember, is where world war two began for me.

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