大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a Patchway Festival volunteer in Patchway Library on behalf of Marjorie Graupner (nee Bowen) and has been added to the site with her permission. Marjorie fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born on 9th. November 1928. When I was nearly ten, during 1938 we packed up, ready to be evacuated. and stayed that way for a year, practically living out of suitcases.

We were on holiday when the build-up started, returning on 30th August 1939, and we were evacuated from London the following day. I never saw my house in Balham again. My twin sister Olive and I, were to be placed together, but when we arrived at this small village near Chichester we weren鈥檛 met by our hostess, who was seeing her husband off to war. The lady was dying of T.B. and I had to sleep in the same bed as her and she kept me awake coughing. Towards the end she moved us both downstairs 鈥� she was on a settee near a roaring fire as she felt so cold, whilst I slept on two chairs that were pushed together. This was in case she needed help during the night. My sister remained upstairs. It was a terrible experience. Our parents and brother came down to visit us when they saw the conditions in which we were living they had us moved as soon as possible. I think that France fell whilst we were there.

We then stayed with a naval captain鈥檚 wife in Selsey and were happy there, but she moved up to Scotland to be near her husband. She found us a wonderful new billet before she left. This was with an elderly couple who looked after us like their own children. We lived next door to Jerome K Jerome鈥檚 daughter. One day when we were coming home from school for dinner we heard the air raid sirens; the headmaster had told us to either go home or to school, whichever was the nearer if this happened so we ran back to the shelter at school. Whilst we were there some stray bombs fell and one hit our house, in the exact spot under the stairs where we would have been sheltering! Fortunately, no one was killed, but we had to move to a new billet.

The lady here was very cheerful and we were very happy. We would help her to knit gloves and scarves for the troops. After a few weeks our parents came down to see if we were alright and on the Saturday a policeman came to the door and said 鈥淵our house in London had had a direct hit鈥�. So my parents had to find another home and second hand furnishings that were bought from auction houses. They rented a condemned cottage in Selsey and father travelled to work in London every day so we went to live with them. Water was running from the ceiling in the bedrooms. Even the outside privy was only a bucket in a shed; still mum made good use of the contents and we had the best cabbages for miles around! We moved from this fairly quickly to a decent but small rented house in Chichester. This was around the winter of 1940-1941 and it was very cold.

Meanwhile, my brother鈥檚 wife, Helen was living in London with their baby Michael who was under a year old. One day after school I found that she鈥檇 turned up on the doorstep in her nightdress, slippers and coat. She was wheeling Michael鈥檚 pram, which was full of clothes, blankets, gas masks, papers, and money, on top of which Michael was perched. She鈥檇 slept nightly in Balham Tube station. She鈥檇 caught the train to Chichester. Olive and I showed her the metal strips that we had collected on the way home from school that had been dropped from German planes in order to confuse the radar equipment. She wasn鈥檛 impressed, her attitude was, 鈥淒on鈥檛 talk to me about the war, we鈥檝e got an unexploded bomb under our house and the police won鈥檛 let us in!鈥� The cottage was tiny, two up; two down and there was barely room to accommodate them. The rooms were approximately seven and a half foot square. The door of the bedroom that Olive and I were sleeping was kept open to accommodate both beds. Even so mum found another horsehair mattress and placed this between our beds for Helen; there was no floor space to walk on and baby Michael had to sleep in a blanket chest in mum and dad鈥檚 bedroom. This had a lid on which was propped open with broomsticks!

When the V1鈥檚 came over Chichester my father said 鈥淭here are lights going across the sky, I don鈥檛 know what they are鈥�. We were all in the street shelter and the grown ups wouldn鈥檛 let the children go out to have a look.

Our brother Charlie was ten years older than us and was fighting in Norway. When Norway fell to the Germans my parents heard nothing from him for a while till a telegraph boy came to the door. My mother opened the telegram with trembling hands and said to the telegram boy, 鈥淣o reply鈥�. The telegram was from my brother and said 鈥滻n Scotland. Broke. Please wire 拢5鈥�. They were so happy that they wired him 拢10! He survived the war and lived many years afterwards.

We visited a friend of our parents in Selsey. She lived by herself in a bungalow. As we were saying good-bye to her at the gate we heard a plane and father said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 one of theirs!鈥� It was coming straight at us! We all ran back into the house, shut the door and then heard the machine gun bullets on the roof and coming through the front door. A marvellous escape!

Early every Saturday morning I was sent to queue at a butcher鈥檚 shop as Saturday was the day that he made the sausages. I waited for what seemed hours. Sometimes he ran out of sausages, and then he sold sausage meat. When he ran out of that as well I would run to the fish market to see if a boat had come in. Occasionally I returned home empty handed!

The next house that we rented in Chichester was Victorian and of a decent size. In the last year of the war there were convoys of tanks, 鈥渄uks鈥� and guns coming past our school, Chichester High, night and day on their way to the coast. This was followed by six weeks of soldiers marching in columns of 6 鈥� 8 across. There must have been thousands of them. We had to close the windows so that we could hear the teacher above the marching. I shall never forget the looks on their faces 鈥� they knew their destination. People from all the coastal villages were not allowed to move away from their village and many couldn鈥檛 attend school; only tradesmen could go in and out. My father knew a baker and he went with him to deliver bread and he said that every hedgerow had tanks, landing gear and guns, two abreast on each side. The marching stopped on July 4th 1944 and they were due to go across to France the next day, but were delayed due to bad weather. A lot of us went to the school music room to hear the news. On the 6th I remember an announcer saying, 鈥淭oday is D-Day鈥�.

Altogether I went to eight different schools, three of which were grammar schools, seven of them before and during the war period 鈥� but I still managed to get through to London University to do a Maths degree.

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