大象传媒

My father worked in Chatham Dockyard just before the war. He joined the Nore Reserve of Royal Navy during the 1938 crisis and was recalled into the Navy. He was sent to Malta to accompany a ship back to the UK which developed a leak. My father identified the problem and the way to repair it to make the ship sea-worthy. He was awarded the British Empire medal for this. I attended Barnsole Road school. We were evacuated during the week before the declaration of war. Sunday 3rd September 1939. I can remember assembling at Gillingham Railway Station with a small suitcase and gas mask in its cardboard box with the other girls from school. I can remember feeling excited at the adventure and was not nervous at all. We were evacuated to Herne Bay on the North Kent Coast which seems bizarre now as the Channel is so narrow there. But at least it was away from Chatham Dockyard. I remember waiting to be chosen by someone, as was lonely until I was taken to live at a boarding house with some of the teachers and another girl with whom I got into mischief! We had no school to attend, so our lessons were taken in the shelters on the promenade. I learned to roller skate there. I can remember my Mum and Dad, in uniform, visiting me on the 3rd September and hearing the broadcast from Mr Chamberlain, declaring outbreak of war. I was brought home by the first Christmas. An Anderson shelter was built at the bottom of the garden to which we scuttled when the Air Raid warnings sounded, with my golden cocker spaniel chum, leading the way. My Mum and much older sister Hazel must have been anxious but they made it a light hearted time for me, bless them. Dad was away at sea but in 1940 he was sent to HMS Cyclops, a submarine depot ship. Cyclops was moored in Rothesay Bay, Isle of Bute, Scotland, and our submarines, which were fighting the war of the Atlantic, came in for repairs and respite. Dad was a diver - all the old fashioned gear - and used to go beneath the vessels to repair the damage below the waterline. My mother and I went to Rothesay for some time, Dad went "native" as the saying went, coming ashore on the liberty boat to join us in various "digs". We had one large room in a house with beds in the wall. I played with children of other families, watching the mothers comb out the nits in their hair! So we were off to another lodging! I attended school at Rothesay academy in the Junior School, although I had passed the 11+ exam at home, to attend Chatham Grammar School. I was so unhappy because my male teacher hated the English and never lost a chance to single me out for sarcasm. The one advantage having a male teacher was that he would forbear to use the tawse, strap, on the girls. His son was in the class and he strapped him unmercifully, this was a shock to me, I had never seen a strap or the cane used in my school. We returned home to Gillingham, my Grammar school had been evacuated to Wales, so I had part-time schooling at Fort Pitt Technical School, Chatham, where we used tunnels built by the 18th Century French prisoners of war as Air Raid shelters and continued lessons there. Our teachers were elderly, recalled after retirement; worried ladies, whose temper was short and their treatment of us harsh. Board rubbers were thrown at us by the impatient French teacher! Eventually, the Grammar school was re-opened as people adjusted to life at war, and full time education began. My mother went to work in the office of a factory and I would return from school, a long walk or cycle ride, cold and often wet, to light the fire. My sister was working in London. She failed to be a WRN becausre of poor hearing. Dad would come home on occasional leave, to our delight. I was a Girl Guide and we had many marches for Empire Day, the Kings Birthday and any excuse. We were all so proud of being British and certain to defeat Germany. I loved carrying the Union Flag. I remember my mother waking my sister and me with the news of the fall of the Netherlands and then Dunkirk. We lived close to the main London/Kent coast railway and we saw the trains pass packed with waving soldiers. Rationing was awful. Living in a town we had no extras that country folk managed to get. We did not keep chickens or grow food on an allotment. I used to be sent shopping and got used to queues and going for 'Pease Pudding and Faggots' from a tiny terraed house, it was delicious too! Dried egg omelette - you even got used to that! We had few sweets and would have hard tigernuts, spanish root, sherbet founbtain and licquorice laces. We kids made up for it by scrumping fruit from the orchards or by buying bags of cherry plums and victoria plums. I was always hungry! Dad used to bring some precious tinned fruit home from the canteens when he came home on leave, which was a great treat. The family became used to the Air raids and we stopped using the Shelter. One night my sister and I were watching from the bedroom window when we saw a plane with flames at its rear; thinking it was a damaged German plane we were pleased, but the next day we heard a news flash that v.1 Rockets or Doodlebugs were being used against us. We had seen one of the first of these. Later in the war theses were incendiary bombs - I walked home from the cinema once through such a raid! It is amazing how casually people came to view these hazards. Can you imaging that happening now? Being close to a dockyard Town, Chatham, we were surrounded by Naval families. Our neighbours, the Cox's, had five children and Mr Cox was in the Navy. One day I came home from school to find a crowd around their porch. Mary Cox had had the dreaded telegram tellling her that her husband was missing, presumed killed. No counselling or visits from welfare people in those days. Folk just coped and helped each other. My own Uncle Ted, my mothers adored younger brother, was also lost. No one ever knew what happened to him. My grandmother never recovered. Wonderful celebrations at the end of the war - street parties - dances and fireworks, at least there were lights in the streets and the awful strips of paper could be washed off the windows and the black-out curtains taken down. It was years before rationing ended though. I was a young married woman by the time this happened!

What a long time ago - but it seems like yesterday.

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