大象传媒

Bombs going over whilst living in Blackfriars, London and have to go down into the shelters with planes flying over.

In the morning the bombs would explode like crackers when living in Eaton.

Talking about Great Yarmouth 鈥� Great Yarmouth Herrings. Small houses in rows which were very narrow, so narrow that people would lean out of their windows and shake hands with their opposite neighbours. They were called rows because there were no road names and the rows were numbered. These were off the market place, but have now been condemned and pulled. There is only the odd one or two left and are now classed as curiosity.

3 people from London. Harold was born locally, in Purewell, Christchurch. Where the gypsies used to live. Gypsies from Westbourne, Kalif, one of the hierarchies used to live off Livingstone Road in Christchurch.

It turns out the Harold is related to one of the ladies in the group as her daughter is married to his nephew, she knows his sister Elsie and brother Bill. Her daughter has been into the group. Harold went to war with her husband from Christchurch train station together with their friends. They were in the TA and were all going to get properly signed up to go into war.

This lady would travel from Christchurch to Southampton that would sometimes have to go through to Ringwood and up to Southampton. When she reached Southampton she would take a bus to Freemantle to visit her grand parents. Her father got a motorbike and she thought her family was very posh! It had a sidecar and the whole family used to travel on it, all at once! She preferred it to using the train, as she didn鈥檛 have to walk at the other end!

Some people only had 18 shillings a week to live on.

One lady was a hairdresser; she started when she was 14 years old, in the West End for a long time. She used to do house to house, but mostly she worked from a shop. She used to do only ladies hair, as no one really thought of mens hair dressing back then, using rollers etc before hairspray and mouse was invented.

Harold was a gardener in Christchurch when he left school. One lady was a child carer, her parents were quite well off so she didn鈥檛 have to work but she liked it. The wealth didn鈥檛 rub off on her!! Another lady from Uxbridge, whose father was in the RAF at Uxbridge, worked in the only flower nursery in Britain and she would have to cut and pack the flowers and send them all over the place. It was a nice job; the scent from the flowers was lovely.

One lady鈥檚 first job was in the West End of London where most of the bombs fell. She had a shelter in the house, in the garden and where she worked. Many people died as they were out looking at the bombers as they flew over and dropped bombs. There were Morrison shelters that went under tables like a cage; they weren鈥檛 very big but large enough for a bed mattress. The Anderson shelters were the ones that went in the gardens and when the sirens sounded the dog was the first one in!

One lady worked in the Ambulance services so had to know first aid, 24 hours on duty and then 24 hours off duty! When people got called up, if the job they were doing was of no great importance to the Government you had to go into Civil Defence, Hospitals or Ambulances etc, but safe jobs were things like civil engineers (they know how to blow things up properly so the Germans couldn鈥檛 land on things!), farmers or miners.

One man was a coal miner in Wales and was down the mine of 2 years hauling coal. He thought the job was all right. All his family were miners

We were called out for air raids that were 24 hr call outs. So people had to learn how to bandage and stretcher people out. They were paramedics needed. We were all at the entrance to stations in London or other places where people had been bombed. There was a heavy gang service which would dig people out, it got gruesome at times, but on the whole there were no objections because you were doing your duty. We would go home and have a good bath and something to eat to make us feel better, but then we might get called out again later in the evening. We would always try to pop and see our family to make sure that everyone was ok. It was really quite tough. But when we heard the sirens we鈥檇 know to get ready. You could hear which direction they were going in. It was gross, and they is no way we could do it again. I had a sister who was a sergeant in the group. I still have a picture of me sitting in my ambulance wearing my uniform 鈥� mum liked that picture.

The night the bomb fell near my mum鈥檚 house, it was a doodle bug, me and my sister were getting ready to go to work, and my eldest son (he was 3 at the time) was upstairs in bed. The bomb burst and the whole house shook and things started flying abut the place the breakfast things were all that were all laid out on the table were all completely covered in dust. I could hear my mum shouting鈥� come and get my Billy 鈥� my son 鈥� so I got him and bathed him and wrapped him up in a blanket. He wasn鈥檛 injured but I was frightened for him.

I had 5 years in the services, in the RAF and I had my 21st birthday in the forces and I had iced cakes, I don鈥檛 know where the icing sugar came from, it was unheard of at that time. The girl that I was on the camp with said that she hated getting up in the night (were we out in the country so there were no lights anyway). I said I get to sleep quickly so I told her to wake me if she needed to get up to go to the loo. We got up one night and I was talking to her and I turned round and couldn鈥檛 see her, I asked where she was and she had fallen and cut herself badly on her leg. She got the water from the hot water bottle to wash it and then went up to the camp to see the duty doctor. He asked how she had done it, and I told him she had fallen down a manhole. The cut was split right across her leg, and that story is in a book that she鈥檚 written. It鈥檚 just been printed with that story and all our photographs. She must have sent all her photos she still had left of when we went into Bournemouth for the day on our day off. We were all in uniform, us with our other friends.

I had young children to look after by myself as my husband was in the army. He got stationed all over the place. We lived in Kent and we used to stand at the back door and watch the Germans come over. They would come over to bomb our fellas or where we lived. I was only young and had 3 little girls to bring up. There were a nice couple near where I lived who used to help me as my mum lived in London and was scared to leave the house. In the First World War she would lock herself in the coal cupboard. Rationing wasn鈥檛 great, I used to get sugar and I would give it to my daughters and wouldn鈥檛 have any. My husband has died now and we were married 73 years, I鈥檒l never get over it, he was a wonderful man.

ARP (Air Raid Precaution) man鈥檚 tin, not sure what was kept in it, may be medical supplies.

When I was 7 in the First World War my dad took me to the top of our road and I could see London burning. It was all red and horrible.

There were bombs that would come over and make no sound and then suddenly there would be an explosion when they hit their targets. I was in the WAF and one hit one of our huts and killed some our girls, it may have been a V1 or V2 bomb.

I was in the war the whole way through, started in Old Sarum in Salisbury and was demobbed in the centre in Stafford. It seems unreal now when you look back.

I started in the administration section and then became and MT driver and drove trucks and then I was demobbed to administration again. When the bombs came over we would run along the hedgerows, thinking we were protected, as fast as we could to try and get back. I was 25 when I joined.

The MT vehicles were staff cars and trucks for carrying troops and equipment from the huts. I went to Southampton to enrol, there were quite a lot of women waiting to enrol and it got to the end of the day and they were closing up for the day so I told they that if they didn鈥檛 take me there and then they would loose my services completely. They asked me in and enrolled my then. I was cheeky back then!

I was due to go abroad driving, but I was living with my mum who was ill so I had to cancel that. I would drive the staff cars with officers, not the little squirts! There was one WAF Flight officers who had an affair with a male officer and they had a daughter, which was quite scandalous back then. Her name was Flight Officer Golden and his was a Squadron Officer.

I remember one WAF officer, she was recently married, and who said that when she got demobbed they were going on holiday. She was called into the office one day, and a few moments later there was an awful shriek, she had just been told that her husband had been killed in an air raid. He was a RAF pilot.

If we were on night duty and we would go round to the cookhouse and we would get a lovely supper, off the record!

I still get RAF information and meeting dates now.

I looked after my children throughout the war and I lived in Jumpers in Christchurch. I didn鈥檛 know too much about what was going on, until I moved to my aunt鈥檚 in Enfield where they made the small arms, and I stayed with her. My husband came to Hertford. My aunt was killed when she was out at the front door saying good-bye to her husband when he was leaving and a bomb got dropped which killed her. She was holding her baby, but fortunately the baby didn鈥檛 get injured but it made my cousin turn white.

I don鈥檛 think it was so bad in this area. But we still had black outs down here, I think they were more worried about it down here than they were in London.

Canterbury was bombed and set on fire, we stood on the hill near where my aunt lived and watched the fire and saw Canterbury Cathedral burn.

I had an old English sheep dog that would run around in the shelter and then minutes later you could hear the planes yourself. If we saw her go into the shelter we knew we had to get in. We had out own early warning system.

Southampton and Portsmouth both got badly bombed, but I wasn鈥檛 old enough to take it all in. Nothing good came from it though. The regiment that my husband was in, had been posted with the Dutch, kept up a social group when they disbanded and went to Holland and visited the cemeteries. Young lads names on the stones, it鈥檚 awful, until you see it you don鈥檛 realise how bad it was. We spent a whole day and picked out names of people I went to school with.

I lived at Druitt Road in Somerford. I joined up when I was at Burton and was there quite a long time, and then moved to Fairmile Road when the was started. I went into the Navy and went to Portsmouth and trained up there and got my first ship that was called the Corvette and from there I went into action in the Atlantic. When I came back I went on leave and then I had to go on another ship called the Destroyed and went into action in the Adriatic, and then onto Malta to help the Maltese out, and then from there we went to Gibraltar which was a home base and we stayed there for a few days. We went into action with the German U-boats after that, and then went onto submarines. I was on the gun at the front and I had to fire at the U-boats and try o sink them. This was in 1943 and at the beginning of 1944 we went to Portsmouth again and the ship had to go into dry dock to be repaired. I was called up to leave the subs to join the HMS Belfast, which was a good ship, and Eisenhower who was in charge of the place for the invasion of Normandy and we all line dup in our ships and sailed right to mouth of where the Germans were all ported up, and then we lined up and waited for the order to through to fire at the Germans. This lasted for about half an hour or more and then we were told to stop. Then we saw the landing craft coming in to onto the beach and that鈥檚 where we lost a lot of men on the beach. Then we were told to go back to where we were stationed in Malta and then on home to Portsmouth. Then we were asked in we would volunteer to go out in little ships to rescue the men from the beaches and lots of these little boats went because the big ships weren鈥檛 allowed in. There were Stooker? dive bombers that were being blasted away so no big ships were allowed in. The little boats picked up a lot of men, and then found out that lots of soldiers were wounded, but we were Navy so couldn鈥檛 do a lot, just keep the soldiers low and get out. Shortly after that the war ended and then I went back onto submarines and that was it. We would go out on patrol to see if there was any U-boats about and then were sent out to follow the German Battleship (Sharnhorst?). We went out there and we got him from 3 sides and used all our ammunition and sank it in a Norwegian Fjord. Then we went back to base and that was it then really. We went on leave for a bit and then joined a another ship for a while, other than that it was the same as any other Naval Base where American and Canadian ships would come in a moor up. After Pearl Harbour they came in and helped us, it was quite something to fight with the American and Canadians.

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