大象传媒

I was ten when the war started. We lived in a village in Bedfordshire 40 miles north of London. I remember coming home from church with my father and sister on 3rd September 1939 to find my mother, who had stayed at home with my youngest sister, looking very sad and saying that the war had started, she had heard the Prime Minister, Neville Chamerblain announce it on the "wireless".

Life did not change for us very much to begin with, although brown sticky-paper crosses appeared on the windows, black curtains went up and the street lights went out. The Clyno car my father ran soon went into mothballs and we took to our bicycles. Buses to the nearest town became fewer and were always overcrowded.

My father, who had served in the army at the end of World War 1, was not called up but served as a "Special Constable". The first night the air raid siren sounded he dressed and went out with his steel helmet, arm band, truncheon and notebook. We three sisters crowded into bed with my mother. A few hours later he returned saying that the Air Raid Wardens, the Home Guard and the "Specials" were all falling over one another in the blackout.

The village received a large number of evacuees from London. A whole school came up from the south coast and occupied the whole of the top floor of the school I went to when I was eleven. The only bombs that fell near to us were in the fields, although during the Blitz we could see the glow in the sky over London burning as the result of the ememy's incendiary bombs. We also heard the droning of German heavy bombers on their way to bomb Coventry.

Our biggest scares came with the Dooldlebugs launched near the end of the War, if they overshot their target, London. We listened fearfully to the "rump-rump" of the engine and held our breath when it cut out ---- and then the earth shaking thud when it landed a few seconds later! One Sunday evening we cowered terrified, in the corner of our living room, almost sure that it would land on us.

One of my father's friends was an auxiliary fireman and spent many nights in London fighting the fires started by incendiary bombs.

I remember the landgirls working on the farms near the village and the young women sent down from the north to work in the factories in the nearest town now turned over to making munitions. One factory which had made a famous brand of silk lingerie now made nylon parachutes. We entertained one of these young ladies in our home. My sisters and I were very impressed by her chic and the fact that she wore nylon stockings - unobtainable by us!

We also entertained some of the service men stationed in the camps near us. My mother did wonders in stretching rations. We met most of these people when they came to our little church or when they were convalescing from war wounds at the hospital where my father worked and did fire watching duties several nights a week. I remember the school being told of the D day landings on 6th June 1944. It was such a cold miserable day.

I remember being given days off from school to go potato picking in the autumn. We loved jolting along in the lorry singing the popular war songs such as "Run rabbit run" as we went. The men who were spinning up the potatoes were sometimes conscientious objectors who had to leave office jobs to work on the lands as part of the war effort.

In 1945 I had to "register" I was 16 and could have been directed to war service, but thankfully the war ended. My family had much to thank God for, altough rationing and other restrictions were still in operation when I married seven years later!

This story was added to the website by Juli Kendall, People's War volunteer, on behalf of Carol Lowe who accepts the site's terms and conditions.

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