大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by a volunteer from Three Counties Action at the Stevenage Renaissance Club on behalf of Mrs Grant and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Grant fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My first recollection of the war was on the second day. My friends and I were 11 years old and we were at Hitchin swimming pool as we were having a gathering at the pool before we went back to school. Then low and behold in the middle of the afternoon we heard zoom, zoom, zoom overhead and 5 to 10 minutes later we then heard thud, thud, thud, thus. We were all told to get out of the pool so we all got dressed and went home. It wasn鈥檛 until we heard on the 6 o鈥檆lock news that we found out Luton had been bombed. They had hit the Vauxhall works where they made the tanks so we were all scared to death.

During the war I stayed in Hitchin and we had to go about our daily business. We went to school and Eastbourne Grammar school was evacuated to our school so we shared the school with the evacuees.

We didn鈥檛 get badly bombed in Hitchin but bombs were dropped in fields near by when they there unloading their planes. We did still hear the zoom. Zoom, zoom a lot though.

On VE and VJ day I was working at the Lister hospital in the administration department (I was 17 at the time) and that鈥檚 where I met my husband. I felt jubilation as we had the military recovering in the hospital during the war and we took in patients from RAF Henlow. So on VE and VJ day the men who could walk were encouraged to go into town. On both days we had a big bonfire in the town to enjoy the celebrations.

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