大象传媒

I have various memories of life during the war:

I lived in London at the time and I was a child when war broke out. I remember that we were told we were going to be evacuated from the school. We all sat there in rows clutching our gas masks, ready to go, when a friend of my Mother鈥檚 who had a large house on the Wentworth Estate offered my family a large cottage on the estate, so instead of being evacuated my family decided it would be better for all of us to move with my Mothers friend in Surrey.

We moved to the estate and I joined the village school with my brother (I was aged ten at the time and he was four). A school from London shared with us so we split the lessons in the day 鈥� we had a lesson in the morning, and they鈥檇 have one in the afternoon.

During the afternoons (which we now had free) we would spend time sewing and gardening in our plots.

It was totally different from the school I had previously attended in London. Natural History walks and amateur dramatics are the only lessons I remember taking.

Although I remember the bombers passing overhead, I knew we were never in any danger; we were out of London so we were safe.

My Brother and I used to take our bikes down to the village to get the rations as our Mother worked.

After finishing school I won a scholarship to the Kingston School of Art, and in order to get there I had to take two trains 鈥� it was rather a long and complicated journey. I remember that Italian prisoners used the get on the trains too. (I thought they smelled of garlic.)

Later on in the war we had the V1鈥檚 and the doodlebugs. They were awful they used to just cut out, and you鈥檇 think 鈥渨hat shall I do? Throw myself in a ditch?鈥� but that鈥檚 what you had to do. There were also the V2 rockets - they were frightening as well as you never knew where they would drop. Because of all the bombs and rockets we spent most of the summer in shelters.

I remember visiting a friend from college in Barnes one day, and the area was bombed that particular night. We spent the night under the stairs, terrified. In the morning the house was still standing but the windows had all been blown in, and the rooms inside were covered with glass and debris. There were no trains that next day so I couldn鈥檛 get home!

The ending of the war passed us by as we lived on an estate in the middle of nowhere, but we were thankful because at least we鈥檇 been safe during the bombings.

This story was collected by Lis Edwards and was submitted to the People's War site by Becky Barugh, both of the 大象传媒 Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Rosa Ford and has been added to the site with her permission. Rosa fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.