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These are actually my mother's recollections. This is her -

Catherine F Newnham Born 21/10/1918
c/o bernard.newnham@ntlworld.com

During the blitz we lived in Kentish Town, in London. At night we slept in a corridor which ran down the centre of our council flat. My father said we were safest there than in the shelters — I never knew why, but he had been in the trenches in the First World War, so perhaps he had his reasons. I had a job working for Sketchleys the cleaners. In the mornings when I went to work, I often had to deviate from the usual route because of unexploded bombs in the roads or houses.

During one evening we were in the corridor and I could hear rushing water. I thought it was raining hard, but when I looked out of the window I saw that a bomb had fallen in the road about 50 yards away. It hadn't exploded, but had hit a water main and broken it and water was gushing upward. It had also hit a gas main causing a fire as well.

On another evening a shell hit the top of the block of flats we lived in, and shrapnel went everywhere, yet amazingly despite all the damage around us, we didn't have even a broken window, not then or ever. It was strange how blast went.

One day a German plane flew down our street machine gunning, but although there were children playing there, no-one was hurt.

Later in the war we watched V1 buzz-bombs flying over. We knew that if you could hear them you were safe, but if the engine stopped, you had to take cover — you never knew where they would fall. We were lucky, but several fell nearby and our neighbours in the next street weren't so fortunate.
Eventually I became rather stressed by the continual bombing, but then I was transferred in my job to Hinckley in Leicestershire. One day the air raid warning went off. The people I was staying with were very scared and asked why I hadn't really reacted. For them it was a new experience — for me it had happened every day for two years. It turned out the bombers weren't coming to us but to Coventry.

In June 1942 I volunteered for the Land Army — women who replaced farm workers who had joined the forces — to do threshing, harvesting and so on. I worked in a number of places included The Coppins, owned by Marina, Duchess of Kent, soon after her husband George had died in a mysterious plane crash. I was told always to lock the milking shed when she was around — the reason being that we made butter there, and when the princess saw it, she would order that it be taken to the big house. This was illegal, owing to the rationing laws which she had to obey too, so we didn't let her see it.

Later I became a milk recorder, touring farms in Buckinghamshire noting the amounts of milk they produced. I used to watch the British bombers arriving home in the morning as I cycled to work, and the Americans leaving for Germany. Sometimes the returning bombers would be shot up, or with engines on fire. I was a milk recorder for 18 months till the war ended.

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