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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Three Counties Action on behalf of Amelia Tribe and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I got married in September 1939. My husband worked for the air ministry. I was working for the Government British Film Company in the Chemistry department. In march 1940 I found I was pregnant. I was evacuated as a pregnant mother, we were buying our own house, but because of the war we never had a chance. My wedding presents were in a cupboard under the stairs and a firebomb (incendiary) came through the roof to the ground floor and we lost the lot.
The same night my father in law’s church was bombed — raised to the ground. They evacuated me and I went to a cousin’s at Kenilworth, Warwickshire. I’d only been there two weeks when they bombed Coventry. Devastated that was, I packed my bag and came home to West Ham. I went to Maidstone and gave birth to my son who is 65 this December. They were having a lot of bombs at West Ham but I wanted to be home. So I went to Barkin (Essex) to stay with my mother and she got bombed. I went to my mother in law in Waltham Abbey and that house was bombed from top to bottom, it was just a shell.
You’ve got to see it to believe it.

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