大象传媒

I lived in Peterborough as a child and I was ten when war broke out. Really my story is only that we originally built an underground shelter like this one here at St. John's (St. John's Primary School, Earlsfield) in the garden but unfortunately it filled up with water. The council then decided they would build brick shelters for us and for six houses you could have a lovely brick shelter, with bunks, built in the garden. Although Peterborough didn't have a great deal of bombing, we always had the air raid warnings when the planes were over London, so we'd go down the shelters. We got a little bit blase, shall I say, because we weren't getting the bombings so we tried not to go down the shelters. Unfortunately, we had an elderly couple living next door to us, and every time the warnings went, Mr. and Mrs. Lamb would be knocking on the door saying, 'Come along, come along. The warning's gone, down to the shelter!'. My mother got fed up with this so she decided that we would sleep in the shelter. The bunks were all made up with beds and for the rest of the war we all slept down there. We had a radio down there, and as children, it was exciting. There was nothing frightening for us, although I'm sure there was for the adults!
Just outside Peterborough there is an aerodrome, and we used to see the planes going over. My brothers did actually used to go out and watch the dogfights when the 'stragglers', as they called them, would come back from the London bombings. I wasn't allowed to watch but they were that bit older so were allowed to go out. My oldest brother was head of the fire wardens. They had to go around the streets and if an incendiary bomb dropped, they had methods of putting them out.
These shelter that they built were on top of the ground and when you look back, you think how on earth were they going to withstand real, hard bombing anymore than the house would?! They did have quite a thick concrete layer of about 6-12 inches on the top though. It was really just a small building. We thought it was great - it was playhouse to us as children. We played in it during the day. We weren't allowed to leave school without a parent or someone much older and I had a friend who lived too far away from the school to be collected at lunch-time, so my mother said she could come back to our houseinstead. We used to play down in the shelter and it was lovely fun. But then we didn't feel the fear that our parents did. We thought it was just a great adventure! I remember we were issued with a Morrison shelter as well, which was like a big steel table, and you slept underneath it. It was used as a table as well, but during the raids you went underneath it.
I remember the end of the war, VE day, quite well. I remember when it was actually announced ,everyone was so excited that we were all going in and out of each other's houses to celebrate. We were in and out of people's houses that we didn't even know! It didn't matter who it was -just the euphoria of it all that we had won. We were just celebrating and we had street parties.
I remember another very sad part though. Another family living near us was a Jewish family. She was a very lovely dressmaker - she made me several dresses and things - and they just disappeared overnight. That is one sad thing - not to know what happened to that family. We heard they went to America but don't quote me on that! I remember having a winter coat made by her out of a grey blanket because then of course, clothing was scarce. I don't really know who the blanket belonged to, whether it was one of ours, or one my mother bought specially to make into a coat. The Jewish lady made a lovely coat though.
When I started working though at about 14,1 had to go into what they called 'essential working'. You couldn't just go into any job. I wanted to go into fashion, in a dress shop, and I did have the job, but I couldn't go into it as it wasn't classed as essential work. After the war I never moved into fashion. I stayed in shorthand and typing as that seemed to be the thing that women did!
On the whole though, I had a happy childhood during wartime, although I'm sorry to say that many of course didn't. For me, this was because Peterborough wasn't bombed. I think they did try to bomb the main railway line from King's Cross but I can't say I saw any bombing. I suppose I was very lucky.

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