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A Wartime Childhood on the South Coast.

By

Jill Worth

Just before war broke out we moved to Worthing on the South Coast. We took with us our gas masks and twenty pounds of sugar my mother had stock piled against the forthcoming emergency.

The day war broke out I was on the beach playing when I heard the siren go and everyone started running for cover. My mother searched for me in a panic. ‘War has broken out,’ she said. ‘We’re about to have an air raid.’ Actually it was a false alarm but even at the tender age of five I think I understood what it was happening.

We spent the war years living in Worthing, in a road just off the beach. At first a hoard of evacuees from London were billeted on us but when we were threatened with invasion they were rapidly re-located.

Many of the surrounding houses were empty as the occupants fled and were requisitioned by the army for billets. Barbed wire was stretched across the promenade prohibiting us from using the beach, which was mined and an anti-aircraft gun was stationed almost opposite our house.

During the Battle of Britain we would hide in the meter cupboard as the enemy bombers flew overhead London bound. By daylights we would watch Spitfires engaging the enemy in dogfights over the South Downs. Returning German ‘planes often dumped bombs on the town though we were never subject to massive destruction there were visits from reconnaissance aircraft that sprayed machine gun fire as they flew low level over the town. We were once attacked in the school playground and a woman standing in the bus queue next to my mother had a bullet in her lip.

When the Germans launched the buzz bombs we would lie awake waiting for the engine to stop though most of them flew on with cutting out over the town.

We suffered all the usual food shortages. Some times I would go and stand in a queue for my mother and after a couple hours or even longer I might be lucky and come home with a couple of doughnuts or even better some off-ration rather saw-dusty sausages. My mother made sure she kept in with Mrs. Alsop, our local butcher-lady who might produce half a sheep’s head from the under the counter if Mother was lucky. Nowadays folk turn their noses up as such fare but the way my mother prepared it, we were in for a treat.

One night a sea mine washed up onto the beach and exploded blowing out windows and doors for streets around. Neighbours were running up and down the street in the nightwear whilst the glass was still falling. My father, ever a heavy sleeper, wanted to know why mother hadn’t put that damned dustbin lid on properly.

In 1944 a tank regiment was stationed in the street at the back of the house where there was a disused garage. The soldiers who missed their families were happy to talk to us children. My father nearly threw a fit the day he saw me ride along the main road on the front a tank. So did the crew’s senior officer. I believe I got the poor corporal four days CBs. Then one morning we awoke to find they had all gone without so much as a good-bye. The date was June 4th, l944. I still have the autograph book that some them signed. ‘Roses are Red, Charlie will never forget you.’ I wonder what happened to Charlie. We never heard.

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