大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Jean Fuller, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was nearly seven in 1939 and I was twelve on VE day. One of my many memories during the war happened on a Friday evening in Oct 1941. My dad had come home for the weekend. He was in the army and stationed at Dover. My mum and dad, my two brothers, my sister Hazel, and an Aunt Mary plus myself were all in the kitchen, when the air raid warning started. Before we could get to a shelter, we were bombed. We had a direct hit on our house. Hazel, 13 months old, auntie Mary 39 years old, were killed out right, mum and dad and my brother Colin, after being rescued, were taken to stoke Mandeville hospital, my brother Reg was taken to another hospital and I was taken to Hammersmith hospital Ducane Road, while I was there, the nurses quarters were bombed, and during the raid the nurses on our ward put all the patients under their beds for safety including me, when we came out of hospital, the Red Cross provided us with clothes to wear. We had lost everything. Dad never returned to the army because of his injuries. He spent two years in a military hospital.
We went to school when we could because of the air raids. We used to have a gas mask practice in class every morning and had a tin of emergency rations always kept in our desk, which consisted of a bar of chocolate and a stick of barley sugar, that was in case we were kept at school during a raid. Our shelter at school was a cloakroom stacked out with sand bags. We tried other shelters apart from our Anderson during the blitz. We tried the underground station but only once, we were packed in like sardines on the platform, and the trains were coming in and out all night. Then we started going to 鈥榃atney鈥檚 Brewery鈥� shelter that was in Harrow Road. N.W.I.O. and underground at least we couldn鈥檛 hear the ack ack or the bombs. All food was rationed. We hardly saw any fruit. On one occasion the local greengrocers had a delivery of bananas. There were huge queues and you could only get them if you had a green ration book. Chances were the bananas would run out, long before your turn came in the queue; and it was two bananas per family. We also received food parcels from I believe Australia and Canada. One parcel we received I remember, mum opened up inside were several tins of food; but not one of the cans were labelled. You just had to guess what food was in them. Nearly every house was issued with a bucket of sand to deal with incendiary bombs should fall near your home. And they did! At 鈥渟crubs lane鈥� white city, there was a prisoner of war camp, I remember going there to have a look. The prisoners were behind a big wire fence in a field on open land, I think that was in 1943. Then there was the doodlebug. One came down one lunchtime very near to our home, we just managed to scramble into our Morrison shelter which was installed in one of our bedrooms. Then came VE day. We had a street party, everyone chipped in with food and rinks. We had party hats and home made streamers. Some of the men had manoeuvred a piano to the middle of the road so the dancing and singing went on into the night.

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