大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Clare from Swavesey Village College on behalf of Mrs Lelenlow and has been added to the site with her permission . Mrs Lelenlow fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was at the age of nine when war broke out. My family and I lived around London so we were close to the bombings. My mother had just had my baby sister 6 months ago and was stressed with the war and raising 6 children. At home we were living in an Anderson shelter in our garden since there were so many bombs. We had two or three fire bombs go off near us but they weren't close enough to affect us. Soon after the war started my father felt that our family needed a break, a fresh start for the family so we got on a steam train at Paddington Station and were on our way to the countryside for a two week holiday. Before we boarded on the train, my parents left me, the oldest, in charge of my two brothers and 3 sisters so they could go to the pub and have a drink. While they were out though, the air raid siren went off and we didn't know what to do, we were terrified. Luckily my mother and father rushed back to us when the alarm sounded. At 7 o'clock at night we finally arrived after a long journey in Beckford, where we stayed in a hotel opposite the station. I remember when we arrived; my father walked in first and asked if they could fit us in. The hotel owner asked how many of us there were and where we were from. "Let me take a look at them," the hotel owner replied, worried about what we children might be like from London. We were allowed to stay in the hotel and what a wonderful hotel it was. We only had two rooms in the attic and that night the children were looked after and given warm milk which we had never had before, while my parents had a lovely meal in the restaurant downstairs. In the morning we had rice crispies for breakfast.

We carried on going to school like normal on our holiday. The first school that I attended, my mother was not very pleased about. The teacher didn't know what to teach us and I was teaching some of the younger children, so my mother moved us to another school where we caught the bus to go to and from school. Most children had to walk about 3 miles to school and had to walk home again to have lunch because everyone was on rations. Our school, however, had a cafe where we could have lunch so we would not have to walk 7 miles to get home. Rations were very strict in the time of the war. After our stay in the hotel, my father and a friend of his in Beckford tried to find accommodation for us to live. Many places could only take two or three of us in though and we didn't really want to be split up. My father and his friend then visited a lady who owned a grange. Here house was like a mansion and she had some farmyard animals. The lady had 7 children of her own but they were all at boarding school. I still keep in touch with them today. At this grange the lady decided to kill one of the sheep for us to eat, but in war time you could not kill an animal that you owned for food without the Government's permission, so somehow the police found out and she was given quite a big fine.

Near the grange was an American camp full of soldiers that were ready to fight in the war. They would come over and teach us games and dances like films and the Jitterbug and gave us food we had never heard of like ice-cream and chewing gum. All the kids would follow the Americans around, asking for chewing gum.

For fun, my brothers would go out into the field and catch rabbits. They had pieces of scrap wood that had a nail in it and would kill the rabbit and bring it home where my mother would skin and cook it. It was all right to eat rabbits without Government permission because rabbits could be kept as pets. During our time at the grange, my mother became a cook and made wonderful food.

When the war ended we moved back to London. We couldn't part with our pet rabbits so we had to hide it from my father on the train in a bag. When we got home my father found out about our little secret but he let us keep him anyway. And that was the end of our two week vacation that turned out to last for six years.

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