大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Sandra Beckett on behalf of Marjorie Pascoe, the author, and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and condition.
It had been a lovely summer. My mother and I lived with my grandparents and three uncles in Plaistow, East London. She had taken me to Gorleston near Great Yarmouth to stay with a Mrs Mulliver who had been a neighbour of my grandparents. Mrs Mulliver was of German origin, a very large lady dressed in black who ran a small guest house. I remember her sheets were always very crisp and white and memories come flooding back if I hear a Westminster chime clock 鈥� it was so melodious.
We returned to London to a very gloomy household. I heard the grown-ups saying they hoped it wouldn鈥檛 come to war and I hadn鈥檛 a clue what war meant. However, I was not happy the day we had to attend my school to try on gas masks. I saw babies being slipped in to a rubbery contraption and when it came to my turn to have this evil smelling thing put over my face, I acted very badly and put my fingers under the webbing and threw it off. Anyway, we were all sent home with a gas mask in a cardboard box.
As the war went on people made all sorts of decorative covers for their gas masks and we had to carry them all the time.
The Munich crisis came and the grown-ups became more agitated. My school was being evacuated to Chipping Norton ad my mother was not happy to let her only child leave home. More agitated conversations and suddenly suitcases were being packed. Hurrah 鈥� another holiday! On 2nd September, 1939, a London taxi arrived at the door. Inside was my father鈥檚 sister, Aunt Doll with her son Derek, and her sister-in-law with a baby. The three women and baby sat on the seat and Derek and I had the two flip down seats 鈥� what fun. However, as the miles flashed by I found I was not a good traveller and I remember frequent stops for me to be sick. I hadn鈥檛 a clue where we were going. It was explained to me that my father had been born in Penryn and had been taken to London when a baby as his father was in the granite trade; he went to work in the East End of London as a lot of granite was used in the construction of the docks. My father was killed at work when I was 2陆, hence the reason we lived with my grandparents. We were now on our way to Penryn in Cornwall to stay with my father鈥檚 relatives.
On September 3rd, 1939, my Aunt Nell was up early and baked a batch of pasties. One was given to the London taxi driver to sustain him on his trip home. My cousin Jean and I were given ours wrapped in greaseproof, and we were allowed to sit on the front step to eat them 鈥� this was a real treat as my grandfather was a stickler for good table manners and we always had to sit at the table with clean hands. On Sundays he always sat at the head of the table and carved the joint. The radio had been on all morning and whilst chatting to my cousin Jean, I heard the gloomy news that we were now at war with Germany. At the age of 8戮 it didn鈥檛 mean a great deal to me, I was just happy to be in the country rather than London.
Arrangements were made for me to attend the local Church of England school. Much is made today of bullying in schools. Well, I cam in for my share because, although I didn鈥檛 have a real cockney accent, I spoke with a harder London accent. I used to sit in the lavatory and say 鈥渆s you鈥� and 鈥済is along with ee鈥� etc. Nowadays no-one believes I鈥檓 a Londoner by birth 鈥� when in Rome!
Although my aunt welcomed us and put us up, we were rather cramped. She lived in the end house of a terrace of four and I remember getting very constipated as I hated going to the toilet. They were situated ion a row at the end of a very long garden of the first house, so it meant going up this very long garden path, then across the top of the middle two gardens to reach it. Then you had to fill a bucket with water at an outside top and tip it down the lavatory. On a wet windy day or dark night it was awful. Hence the use of camber pots and slop buckets. I had a right tantrum when my aunt thought my mother too lenient with me, and was determined to get Syrup of Figs down my throat. She sat me in a corner and the table leg must have got damaged as I kicked so much. My grandparent鈥檚 toilet was outside but just around from the back door and it had an overhead cistern with a chain to pull. To me Syrup of Figs meant more trips up the garden path to that awful toilet.
After a few weeks arrangements were made for us to live with a Mrs Thomas who owned a fish and chip shop. People who had a spare room had to register to take evacuees and Mrs Thomas was pleased to take in relatives of someone she knew in Penryn. Mrs Thomas had been born in London but came down to Enys House, just outside of Penryn, as cook. She married the butler and they ran a caf茅 at one time (I seem to remember it was the Coffee Pot in Redruth, but I may be wrong.)
Eventually her husband decided to seek his fortune in America where English butlers were the 鈥渋n- thing鈥�. She remained in Penryn with their two children and worked in a fish and chip shop and by dint of hard work eventually owned her own.
Because she had been in 鈥渟ervice鈥� she ran her house on the same lines. There were set days for certain tasks. Mondays the washing was put in the boiler then put through a big wringer before being pegged on the line. Rugs were put on the line and beaten with a wicker beater whilst the linoleum which covered the floor and up the stairs had to be washed and polished. The range had to be blackleaded and the handles polished with Brasso. Likewise the knob and letter box on the front door and the step scrubbed. The back yard was regularly hosed down and the windows were squirted with water from what looked like a big bicycle pump in brass- you sucked the water up and squirted it out.
My mother and I slept in a big feather bed. The curtains had to be lined with black material and drawn before you switched on a light. The lampshades had black card fixed around them. Air raid wardens patrolled the streets and knocked on the door if they saw a chink of light.
We had been in Penryn a year and the West Country saw more air raids than London. My father鈥檚 youngest brother was getting married so we returned to the City. I don鈥檛 remember the wedding but during the reception, which was held in a school hall, the siren went off and we were ushered into the cloakrooms which were lined with reinforced mesh. My uncle, the groom, sat with cousin Derek on one knee and me on the other. When the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� came there was a dash for the bus stop to get home. It was the first really big incendiary raid. We went so far on this bus and then we had to get off as the road ahead of us was like a towering inferno (a reminder of Gone with the Wind) with fire engines and ambulances everywhere. An A.R.P. warden was directing us down other streets to get on another bus route.
My mother almost pulled my arm out of its socket pulling me along down strange streets, while I wanted to see what was going on. I was particularly intrigued by an airman wafting down on a parachute 鈥� I was sure he was going to land on a barrage balloon. I suppose he was a German whose plane had been destroyed by ack-ack fire. When we eventually got home my mother left me with my grandmother and went a couple of streets away to ascertain that my other grandmother had got home safely but she no sooner rang the bell than the siren went again and she had to rush home. It was later in the war that my father鈥檚 mother was killed. Her garden backed on to a garage in the next road and it took a direct hit. My grandparents were in their Anderson shelter and the blast made the sides cave in and her stomach was badly cut.
The raids mainly started around tea-time so meals were got early to be ready to rush to the shelter. They were equipped with food and quite comfortable bunks. I would go off to sleep but if the bombs dropped fairly close I would be awoken by my mother flinging herself on top of me. I remember once putting on my uncle鈥檚 A.R.P. helmet and looking out of the Anderson shelter to watch a dog fight between one of our planes and a German. The sky was ablaze with tracer bullets.
After five weeks in London the raids became more frequent and heavier, so we returned to Cornwall. On the way to catch the train there was another air raid alert and we had to rush to the nearest shelter. I was particularly upset as I was clutching my favourite baby doll and as my mother pulled me along the doll鈥檚 head fell off and broke in smithereens in the gutter. I was far more upset about that than the air raid. We arrived at Truro station in the pitch dark and had to be bussed to Penryn.
There were more evacuees in Penryn 鈥� a whole school had come down and had lessons in the chapel schoolroom. Because it didn鈥檛 have the facilities of a real school, they used one Church of England school a couple of times a week and we were taken out on nature walks which I really enjoyed.
On 13th May, 1941, I spent the evening playing with my cousin Rosemary on the green (now Penryn Bowling Club). She lived just opposite and I had gone up to see her Dad to ask him to splice the ends of a piece of rope to make a skipping rope. He was a crane driver at the docks. We went over on the green to play and when it was time to go home we waved to a little boy called David Boxall. He was in his pyjamas ready for bed. Little did I know I would never see either of them again. That night the bombers came over. On moonlit nights they used to get their bearings by following the reflection of the moonlight on the Penryn River. They would follow it up to Penryn and turn to bomb Falmouth Docks. That night for some reason the bombs fell on the green. The houses all around were flattened. David was killed. My cousin across the road had given up her bedroom to her uncle, aunt and cousin who had been bombed out of Plymouth. Rosemary was sleeping in her parent鈥檚 room on a camp bed and the blast knocked over the wardrobe on top of her and the glass mirror on the front shattered and badly cut her. She died in hospital aged 10. My uncle was quite a stern sort of man but I later saw him sobbing his heart out.
This same raid destroyed Mrs Thomas鈥� fish and chip shop. She had only been able to open three days a week due to the dripping for frying being rationed. I used to like her fritters 鈥� slices of large potatoes dipped in batter and fried for 1d. Also a bottle of Jolly鈥檚 pop. She had a button jutting out under the counter and you jabbed the beck of the bottle against it and the marble would pop back into the bottle. Mrs Thomas was most concerned about her cats, Billy and Ginger. They were kept in the back store to keep the mice away from the bags of potatoes. Happily she found them, after they ran off during the raid and they lived the rest of the war with us. Ginger used to let me dress him up in doll鈥檚 clothes!
Mrs Thomas used to employ a boy after school to do the potatoes for her. They put the potatoes in a big drum which took off most of the skin, then the boy would trim off the rest and position them on a grid on the bench, pull a handle and the chips would drop into a bucket underneath.
Continued.....

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