大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jeffrey Calvert, a volunteer from Three Counties Action, at the John Lewis Headquarters, Stevenage on 24 August 2005 on behalf of Margaret Pryer (nee Howell) and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Pryer fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born in 1940. We lived at 31 Northwood Road, Highgate. I suppose my first recollection is trying on a gas mask and breathing.

My mother was evacuated with my brother (who was born in 1942) and me to a large country house in Staffordshire. It didn鈥檛 work out. Mum wasn鈥檛 happy for two reasons.

First, Dad was not allowed to stay overnight when he came up from London to visit us.
Second, when people spoke about us, say at the pub, we were called the refugees, not the evacuees.

So Mum phoned Dad and he collected us and brought us back to London.

I do have one memory of the evacuation. I had hurt my knee, and a nurse put me on a desk or trolley to dress it. I remember screaming my head off.

I was very young during the war, but I knew about the doodlebugs. One Sunday lunchtime, probably 1944, one dropped on a block of flats on the corner of Archway Road and Shepherds Hill Gardens. I went to the window to see out, with a roast potato at the end of my fork. Isn鈥檛 it funny how I can recall such a small detail so vividly 鈥� I can picture myself standing there, at the window, holding my fork with the roast potato on the end of it. The next day we walked up to the damaged site and it was all rubble. This was the nearest that a bomb came to dropping near me.

My dad was unfit for service as he had chronic asthma. He became a fire warden in the City.

We lived in a shared tenement. There was an Anderson shelter in the garden but we didn鈥檛 use it. The house had four floors. We slept under the kitchen table on the second floor. When it was time for bed, I was put into a 鈥渟iren suit鈥�. This was a one-piece suit with a zip, not buttons, down the front. It was made of a wooly material that kept us warm. Winston Churchill used to appear wearing one.

After the war, me and my friends played in the bombed out houses. There were usually pots and pans and bits of curtains left around in bombed out houses and we used them to play mothers and fathers. I was too young to associate this with any horror. I was thankful I was just that bit too young, whereas my husband, who is three years older, even now cannot stand the sound of sirens.

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