大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Joan Smith for three Counties Action on behalf of David Winnick and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was six years old in 1939. Once the bombing raids started in September 1940 everyone would in the early evening make their way to an Underground station. I and my parents and my sister went to Manor Park Underground station. I recall that it was as to be expected very full on the platform. The trains had stopped running. We went every evening, like everyone else we didn't wait for the siren. We would leave in the morning once the All Clear signal went and there wwould be air-raid wardens saying it was safe now to leave. I was seven years old and my sister was eighteen months younger. A family would bring bedding, food, tea, and make themselves as comfortable as possible. We had a general feeling that we were safe.

This experience didn't last for long because we were evacuated like so many others from London. A place was found for us just outside Oxford and the whole family went there. My paternal grandparents who had a housee in Stamford Hill separate from the flat we occupied returned one morning after leaving the Underground station to find that the house had been severely damaged during the night by bombing. They were evacuated to Stoney Stratford and then to New Bradwell both adjoining Wolverton in Bucks, now all part of Milton Keynes. I don't recall any bombing in these places. I can't remember going to school at all during the time when we sheltered in the Underground station.

I remember hearing the name Hess when I was queuing for bread for my grandmother on a visit to New Bradwell. I heard people talking about someone called Hess arriving in Britain out of the blue. Clearly this was May 1941.

When my parents separated, which was not to do with the war, I went with my father to stay with his parents in New Bradwell. This was either the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942, and it was felt by my father and grandparents that it would be best for my overall welfare for me to go to a hostel or home for evacuees and refugees from Nazi occupied areas - or what became Nazi occupied areas. The home was in Northampton aand was run my a Mr Marx who had run a children's home in Frankfurt and who had left when the Nazis took over. One particular incident I very well recall at the home is that Mr Marx was greatly excited by what he had heard on the radio in June 1944 and said that prayers would be said before breakfast which was most unusual, for the success and safety of the British and Allied troops. D-Day had come.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.