大象传媒

I was born in April 1943, coincidentally on Hitler's birthday. Because this was during the war all expectant mothers had to be evacuated to give birth in a safe place. I was actually born in Bath in Somerset.When I was two weeks old mother brought me home to Lewisham to my grandparents house in Bonfield Road which was a terraced house with four rooms downstairs and three bedrooms up and a bathroom so there was plenty of space. We needed to live with my grandparents because my mother wasn't married. My mother having been dismissed from the WAF for being pregnant. My grandparents had started the war by being bombed out from their original house by the Railway line in Lewisham in 1940 and moving temporarily to Essex near Maldon. Essex was my grandmother's birthplace. They moved back in 1941 and my grandfather, who was a builder, also worked helping the rescue of civilians from bombed buildings. I believe this was called the Heavy Rescue Squad. He has a medal for this service.
In later years grandfather told me that they had been called to a school not far away which had taken a direct hit. All the children and teachers were killed. He told me how they found the pieces of bodies and how upsetting this was.
Having returned to Lewisham my mother went out to work at the Woolworths in the High Street just behind our road. My grandmother looked after me. Lewisham was bombed very badly but our house survived it all. We had three bomb shelters , one was an andersen that my grandfather had erected in the back garden. He grew marrows on top of it because it looked so ugly. The second shelter was a morrison shelter which was in our breakfast room. The third shelter was a public shelter which was out on the road. As far as I know we never used it.One of the worst things about the war was worrying whether everyone would come home from work at the end of the day.
Two doors from our house there was a barrage balloon. When I was old enough to climb up and look out of the window I loved watching it constantly swaying about.
In 1943 my Uncle Ron was called up into the forces and went into the Army and joined the Surrey Regiment. In early 1944 he was sent to Italy where, although the Italians had surrendered, the country was overun with Germans and there was lots of fighting.
My grandmother was frantic with worry and wrote to him regularly. By June 6th 1944 D-Day the Doodle -bugs had started falling and my grandmother wrote to Ron that some nasty new things were falling from the skies but not to worry we were okay. At the end of that letter there are three big crosses and underneath she wrote that Ann ( I was only two)had made them. He never got that letter and it was returned to my grandmother and on the front was written ,in red ink,deceased. He was killed when a German Ammunition dump blew up in a place called Orvieto and he is buried there in the war graves cemetary. My grandmother mourned him for the rest of her life. He died only one week after D-day.
Just after he died we were in the Morrison Shelter because several Doodle-bugs were going over and one landed on the church on the corner of our road and all the windows in the house blew out. My mother and grandmother told me in later years that they were combing tiny bits of glass out of my hair for weeks afterwards but none of us were hurt.
My mother married my step-father in 1945 and continued to live with my grandparents as there was such a shortage of housing.We eventually to Yorkshire.

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