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My interview with Nanny

Nanny was in Cornwall with her mummy and sister when war was declared on the radio. The farm they were on was the only one with a radio so everyone came to the farmhouse to hear the news. She can’t remember coming back to London but presumed they must have gone on the train. Her daddy had been called back to London a few days earlier and had driven back to London in the family car. He was a very important man in the Borough of Poplar.
Nanny wasn’t really scared during the war because she grew up with it happening all the time and therefore it was ‘normal’ life for her. The sound of the German bombers going over shook the house and this is a noise she will never forget. There was also an ack-ack gun at the top of her road in Chingford. On the night of either the 28th or 29th of December 1940, Nanny’s daddy took her to the top of the road, which was on top of a hill. She stood with her daddy on the flat roof of the ARP building. At that time you could see right over London, as the only tall building was St Paul’s Cathedral. She was able to see London burning as this was when London was bombed heavily. She can still see the images from that night and believes that her daddy woke her up so that she would be able to tell people what she saw.
Nanny wasn’t evacuated because her daddy didn’t want either her or her sister to be orphans. She could have gone to Canada to stay with her nanny’s sister but her parents wouldn’t allow it. She was sent to Yorkshire in 1944 when her mummy was expecting her third child. She went and stayed with her auntie and Uncle.
Nanny went to school by bus (the number 38). It only cost one old penny. The bus conductor was very kind to nanny and her sister. He always had a Spitfire pin in his lapel. About thirty years later nanny was on another 38 bus with my mummy and my uncles and the conductor was the same man. He even had the Spitfire pin in his lapel. Nanny reminded him of the two little girls who got on his bus during the war and he remembered them.
The school nanny went to was the Dominican Convent. It was the only school in Chingford open, so girls came from Chingford, Loughton and Woodford. School was often disrupted because when the air-raid siren sounded all the girls had to go down to the cellar which the nuns had had reinforced with wooden beams. There were days, particularly when a big night raid had been, when only a few girls turned up. One day only three girls were in school. One girl, called Maureen, was pulled alive from the rubble of her house. She often used to have fits in class, which nowadays would be called shell shock. Some of the girls in the school did die, but because it was war you got used to knowing people that had lost husbands, sons, mothers and daughters.
Nanny still sees her friends from the convent as they have a reunion every two years and she sees a couple of the friends more often.
Also, at home, nanny’s daddy had their hallway lined with steel and also heavy boards that could be lowered at night to block the stairs. If a bomb had landed close by they would have been protected. From the beginning of the war to the middle of 1941 everyone slept downstairs but after Hitler changed to daytime bombing and the bombing of other cities nanny and her sister slept upstairs in their own beds.
Nanny’s mummy and nanny made all their own clothes. One day nanny ripped a dress and her mummy was so angry she made her wear a potato sack for three days. Nanny’s mummy also knitted stockings, vests and pants.
Nanny didn’t see any of the planes that went over London, but she heard them, but one day she did see the vapour trails made by two fighters as they had a dogfight in the air very high up. She saw one plane falling to the ground but was lucky enough not to see it land.
One night her daddy woke her and her sister up to show them a V1, a flying bomb, also known as a doodle bug. She saw it flying over London with a large flame coming from the back of it. Then the flame disappeared and about twenty seconds later she heard the whoomp as it landed, somewhere over Tottenham. The V1’s had a hum as they came over so people knew they were coming. The V2’s were worse because they were flying rockets and very difficult to hear until you heard the whistle as they fell from the skies.
She saw the barrage balloons over London, which were there to stop the German planes. She also had an air-raid siren about five hundred metres from her house.
Nanny’s daddy didn’t go and fight during the war because he was too important to Poplar, one of the old London boroughs. He was the Deputy Borough Engineer of Poplar which was very heavily bombed in the Blitz because it had the great London Docks where most of the food came in by boat for England. Nanny’s daddy used to spend all week at the Town Hall working by day and fire watching on the roof at night. He had camp bed in his office. He used to phone home every evening to say goodnight and phone again in the morning to make sure all was well. Many people died in Poplar and many buildings were destroyed. Many of theses houses were the old Victorian slums and after the war Nanny’s daddy helped have new flats and houses built which were much better.
Nanny never went hungry in the war but food was in short supply as so much came from other countries by boat and they were sunk by the Germans. People had ration books with coupons for meat, butter, sugar etc. and very little of each
was allowed each week people grew lots of food like potatoes, and other vegetables and fruit like themselves. Also chickens were kept for eggs and meat. Space was made in towns for allotments (large rectangles of land which people rented for a few pounds a year) where they could grow extra food. Nanny’s daddy had four allotments (two in Poplar and two in Chingford as well as the garden. So there were always fresh vegetables. Nanny would also pick blackberries in Epping Forest. Sometimes a boat would arrive with oranges and huge queues would appear to try and get this precious fruit. Nanny once had to queue for oranges (with rations books as you were only allowed two oranges per person) but after queuing for four hours the person two places in front had the last two. Just before the war nanny’s mummy stored lots of stuff like currents, sultanas etc. and because of this she was able to make lots of cakes, biscuits and buns. In case people were not getting all the right vitamins and minerals there was cod liver oil (ugh) and a horrible thick syrup called Virol. However even with none of the foods we have today Nanny was never ill except for mumps, measles and chicken pox. She never had the colds and sniffles people have today.
From the start of the war all households had to have blackout curtains on their windows so no light could be seen by German aeroplanes. This also meant all street lamps were not working either and traffic lights had shields so they could not be seen from above and any cars, buses etc. also had to have shields and a cover with just a slit for light on their headlamps. If you went out at night you had to have a torch, which was only allowed to be shone downwards to show you, where the kerbs and other hazards were. Kerbs also had white lines drawn on them to reflect the lights of the torch. As nanny was only a little girl she did not go out much at night but remembers helping her mummy to make sure every window was covered with blackout material. It was lovely when all the lamps came back on at the end of the war. People were very happy and glad the war was over.

By Grace Fuller Aged 8

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