大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Mary Seward, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived in Ashford in Middlesex during the war and had just turned six when it started. I remember it was a Sunday morning and we were about to go for a ride in the car. Just as my Dad was about to turn the radio off at 11am, Mr Chamberlain came on and gave an announcement that we were at war. We still went on our drive as the war hadn鈥檛 really started. We weren鈥檛 prepared for war, and didn鈥檛 have a shelter ready.

When the war really got going we had to go to school with our gas masks and spent a lot of time in the school shelters doing our lessons. Half way through the war I went to live at my Aunts at Harlow. This was because I was claustrophobic and couldn鈥檛 bare being shut up in the shelter. There were fewer air raids in Harlow. In Ashford there had been barracks all around us which they were trying to bomb.

After air raids we used to go and pick up shrapnel. I don鈥檛 think we were really frightened of all that was going on as we were too young to understand.

My Mum had eight children by the end of the war. I was the oldest and had to do all the shopping and queuing up for food from the age of nine. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden, but as the family grew, it became too difficult for my Mum to get all the family down. So we then had a Morrison Shelter in our front room, and all ten of us would get into that! Half the time we didn鈥檛 get undressed for bed, as you didn鈥檛 want to go down to the shelter in your nightgown in winter.

They wouldn鈥檛 let my father into the army as he was a sheet metal worker, making aircraft, which was as useful to them as having him in the Forces. He used to cycle fifteen miles in all weathers from Ashford to Slough to work, because of the petrol rationing. Some nights when my Dad was home, my Mum would go fire watching. Everybody had to do their bit.

The field at the back of us was a huge artichoke field. As it was such a big field they put wooden posts and barrage balloons in it to stop enemy planes landing.

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