大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Iris Brushwood and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in 1933 in London, the same year as the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.

My first memory of the war was the first rai-raid siren. I was standing on a kitchen chair, my mother was helping me to get dressed, putting a Liberty bodice on me. My health was poor as I had recently suffered from Diptheria. When the awful wail began my mother snatched me up and we ran next door to a neighbour's flat. I cannot remember anything further of that day.

My family moved from a flat in London to a house in what was then known as Downham,Bromley, Kent, and alas, I think it is now a part of London. We were not far from Biggin Hill Aerodrome and thus a sure target for the Luftwaffe. We had an air-raid shelter but because of the clay soil it was constantly filling with water. My father, who had served in Ypres, France in the first World War refused to use it and when he was not working on munitions in Woolwich Arsenal, sat on our back step sharpening a large knife which he planned to use on the first German Paratrooper to land!

We children were soon on our way to an unknown destination as evacuees. I can remember our Headmaster making me feel quite embarrassed as he admired the new pyjamas I was taking with me, and other children were no doubt teased in the same manner. This man was to prove his worth, not only in our education but as a dutiful guardian when our parents were not with us. He saw that we were properly fed and well treated in our billets. I must have been a dreadful child as I had lots of billets. My main "crime" was that I was an only child and not robust, no good for farm work in deep, rural Devon. I shared one billet with five boys and when my mother came to visit did not recognise me - I was dressed as a boy!

The change from town to tiny hamlets and remote farms was extreme. No street lights, shops, trams, even other people. Our school was a large wooden hut which housed us all from 5 to 14 years. We had blackboards and chalk and when we graduated to exercise books, had to fill it completely, even the margins. Despite being cold and damp most of the time, and almost without what would have been regarded as essentiial, we knew our three R's before we left the infants class. We chanted our times tables when we were taken out for walks, as well as singing "Rule Britannia" at every opportunity, and rude songs if we could get away with it!

We were stood in a corner or caned if we misbehaved. No parent objected and you might well get another smack from them if they found out you had been naughty at school.

We got used to strange new food. For instance our pet hate was a white slippery stuff, totally without flavour called Junket, of which there seemed to be an endless supply. I loved a cake which one lady made and it was called German cake! We were always hungry and learned to supplement our food with edible things we found int hedges and fields and sometime from the vegetables given to the animals. We also learned scrumping. This as a very dangerous thing to do as any farmer would give you a "threshing" with his stick for stealing, and no questions were asked. Hitting with a riding crop was also known as a punishment.

We also learned to earn pocket money by drying moleskins and selling them for 6d each, we killed rabbits by hitting them with a stick at harvest time and picking blackberries and rose hips.

We had a great sense of adventure. Anyone who could not pronounce a "w" correcty was, of course, a German spy. Anyone we didn't like was likewise a German agent. We met other strangers, foreigners who worked on the land. One called Olaf showed me how to knit, using huge wooden needles and extremely thick cotton yarn. Perhaps he had been a fisherman before arriving in England.

When the Blitz in London ended I returned home, only to experience the terror of the Buzz Bombs. My mother said they were on the end of elastic, so rapidly did they come. They were sinister as they had no pilot. By this time in the war most of us children could identify the sound of an engine in an aircraft and tell whether it was a friendly Spitfire or a dangerous enemy plane. The Spitfire had a lovely deep humming sound but the German ME109 had,if I remember correctly,much harsher and intermittent growl.

Buzz bombs had no "rules" like aircraft. You did not feel like pointing your wooden Tommy gun at them; keeping your head down and praying that it would continue its flight pas you was all that mattered. The dreadful moments when the sound stopped, the rocket tilted downward and the light at the end went out and the explosion followed were terrifying and never to be forgotten.

Our schools were only open for a day or so a week and we did craftwork in shelters. When the V2 came it was much worse, they were even bigger and much more frequent. My young aunt and uncle were killed in a raid by these. I went with my mother to visit what had been their home. All that was left was a road with just tiny pebble-like rubble and a few pathetic belongings. We ran into a nearby house when yet another buzz bomb arrived and shook everything as it it were made of paper. No one survived a direct hit. At school my class grew smaller, some children went away again, but many were killed.

As children we were spared the awful knowledge and responsibilities held by our parents. The grave faces when the news was on the wireless and on at "the pictures" too, told you not to interrupt or ask questions. In any case children then were "seen and not heard" and your opinion was not asked, especially in these times of real danger. The Germans were so very near, we felt we would see them marching around the next corner.

Being taken to the West End for some reason I was amazed and delighted to find so many wonderfully colourful people there. French sailors with red pom-poms on their hats, the Polish had three-cornered hats and the Americans simply glittered with badges everywhere, and most generous with sweets and chewing gum. How proud we were that they had come to help us fight the enemy.

Mostly I can be transported very quickly back to those times by smells. The damp musty smell of the shelter, carbolic soap, tea leaves; the smell of the huge cheeses in the shop where we were registered for our rations, syrup of figs, Zambuk ointment for the endless blisters,corns and chilblains on our feet,Gentian violet ointment for all our sores, and most of all the stink of fires and explosives. The first dizzying scent of an orange or banana! Cocoa powder and lemonade crystals were our treats and gave us yellow or brown tongues.

We grew up expecting nothing to be quite the same the next day. Later we were to realise just how brave the adults in our lives had been and how they hid their terror under a sense of humour.

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