大象传媒

Queenie's war memories
By traven

Having recently watched the 大象传媒's series on Dunkirk and noticed the website and request for people's stories of WW2, I asked my Mum if she would like to have her memories posted for the archive. I am please to say that she has given me her permission to recount her story which I will do below in her own words from a letter she sent to me this week. The words in brackets are my own to give the location, or to add details from conversations with my Mum on this subject.

"I was 9 when the war started on the Island of Wight. I lived in a village on the outskirts of Ryde(in Lower Bettersworth Road).
When War was declared they asked my parents if we wanted an air raid shelter in the garden to be used by two families, ours and the next door family. It was built right down the bottom of our long garden, well away from the houses.
Each time the siren went, off we would all go, and our parents would take any valuables they had down with them.
We didn't think we would know much about the War as children from London and different places came to be evacuated with us.
My Father worked on the Railway during this time bringing ammunitions up the pier for all the soldiers that were here.
We had a Search Light Platoon right at the bottom of our garden. They were a lovely bunch of soldiers, and they were so kind to us children, especially the Cook - he would hand over sweets, and even bread pudding and other food, as he knew we did not get much. We were fortunate though as our fathers along the road 'Dug for Victory' planting loads of vegetables and fruits, hence we had quite a few vegetable stews and to this day I still make them.
By now the planes were really coming our way, we had Portsmouth opposite and we had ammunition factories at Cowes, Isle of Wight. One night we just managed to get to the shelter when a plane headed straight for the searchlight, the bullets were hitting the shelter, and going right down the shelter. Quite a few soldiers were injured. The next day they moved away from us, after saying goodbye, to another part of the Island. By this time the evacuees had to be sent away from the Island.

I went to cookery lessons in the middle of Ryde, during one lesson the siren went off and we heard the planes coming over, and heard a terrible whistle coming our way. The teacher called out "Girls! Under the tables" and we all dived under the big wooden tables. The roof came down, but the tables saved us! We all managed to scramble out to safety.
My friend and I were very frightened and literally ran all the way home. Unfortunately, one of the billets with the soldiers in had had a direct hit and we had to run down this road (Ashey Road) to get home. The air raid wardens had no time to block off the road so we passed by as they were bringing out all the injured soldiers (it was very dusty with lots of debris and lots of bright red blood and missing limbs...). This was the first time I experienced injuries and death and for a long time afterwards myself and my friend had flashbacks of this. We had got to know these soldiers very well because we had to produce our security cards each time we passed the billet. The soldiers would say, "Halt. Who goes there?" We thought at the time, it was quite funny, kid-like, but the reality soon set in as we knew quite a lot of them, they were so friendly to all of us, in a nice kind of way, not like today, when our children are told not to speak to strangers. After this, we had a lull for a little while.

When we were at school (Swanmore) and the siren went off, those who lived near, as we did, had to run down the roads to our homes. One day they did not give us enough warning - as we headed down the road the planes came 'hedge hopping' and we threw ourselves into the ditch as they started machine gunning. The planes were so low we could see the pilots. Fortunately they were going quite fast so they did not hurt us. We got up out of the ditch and ran screaming down the lane as our parents were running up to get us, we were all so frightened.

On another occasion, it was a lovely moonlit night and my Father and the other wardens thought because there had been a lull in night bombing for over a month, we might as well stay in our beds. This was the worse thing we did as a plane coming back from Portsmouth was hit and had a landmine on him. All we heard was a terrific noise and the roof came down on top of us, then the walls were blown out. We were all sleeping in the same room and my Father had the presence of mind to grab me and push me under part of the bed. Part of the stairs were also blown away so we had no way of getting out and had to wait for help. The waiting, I remember was awful, because of the darkness and dust and debris, and we did not know how far we had gone down through the ceiling. I remember it was very eerie and so quiet except for my father talking to me as best he could, as he was jammed under part of the bed. When we did get help we had to crawl along and find the part of the stairs that was left and a couple of men carried me out into the road. My Mother and Father were helped out after, as they had to be careful in case the rest of the house came down. Several people in our road were injured in this blast -I remember seeing one of my Father's pals with an eye missing, and several people had broken bones. We were very lucky with cuts and bruises considering how we got out.
We had to spend quite a time at a cinema living as best we could until we were allowed back into our house.
Fortunately, we had quite a quiet time after this, but we did see the planes and doodle bugs going over, it certainly was a very frightening time for all of us."

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