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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Rob Illingworth of Kent Libraries & Archives on behalf of Barbara Hughes and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

September 1939: I was nearly 6½ but not yet at school, owing to prolonged ill health. My mother, like most women then, was a stay-at-home housewife of 31. Father, five years older, was a regular sailor in the Royal Navy: a Chief Petty Officer, based in Devonport — HMS Drake, a shore establishment — training other younger cooks.

Mother’s mother, Ellen (widowed now) lived in Surrey but many of her brothers and sisters still lived in and around Plymouth. Two of my Great Aunts (Ivy and Gladys) lived across the road from us in Peverell. Uncle Tom and Aunty Hilda lived in a flat in the city where Uncle Tom worked for Sellicks, making Cornish pasties. Ivy and Gladys were also married to sailors: Ivy to Charlie Kenny — Dad’s friend — with two children Sylvia and Ivor; Gladys to Bernard Butcher, with two sons, Bill and Ken. Gma’s other siblings included Albert, Lena and Violet who, with their families, were scattered across the city.

For the time being, nothing seemed to change much. Demonstrations in the backlane on how to extinguish bombs, distribution of gas masks. After Dunkirk, however, when many of the wounded arrived and were laid out on the Hoe and then a large contingent of French sailors turned up in the city, things were obviously going wrong. And, once the Germans arrived in Cherbourg — well, we guessed we were ‘for it’. A barrage balloon, like a huge silver pig, now floated over the Hoe and Anderson shelters started sprouting in back gardens across the city. One was firmly entrenched in ours, it’s corrugated iron sides banked with earth and planted with quick-growing nasturtiums.

The blitz, once it started, occurred during both the day and the night. I went to Montpellier School and, as we had no shelter there as yet, mothers were instructed to run to the school gates on hearing the siren, collect us and get us back home as quickly as they could. Later, after the S-shaped shelter under the playground had been built, we were told to bring something ‘to do’ every day — knitting, reading — anything to keep our minds off the scary noises of whistling bombs, explosions and blasts that rocked the shelter.

November 1940: Bad raids. Nights spent in the shelter. One morning, making our bleary-eyed way down the back lane to school, we were met at the bottom by Father Ford, our priest, booming ‘still all in one piece, are we?’ Behind him, the black smoke billowed up into the sky as the oil tanks at Mount Batten — hit the previous night — belched smoke, which was to continue for a further week.
As usual, we walked to the little tin-roofed temporary church (now the Holy Family, near the new(ish) Barrett Homes development). After Instruction (we were being prepared for First Communion) our group would walk on to Montpellier, often as not to find Mr Chum, the Headmaster, and the boys collecting shrapnel into buckets. The harvest from the previous night raid.

Day raids: low-lying planes machine gunning civilians. I overhead mother saying how sad it was to see groups of children flinging themselves to the ground, only to get up and continue chattering among themselves as if it was all part of a normal day. Some of the pilots were so low-flying you could see the delighted grins on their faces. It should be remembered that this was long before Dresden and Cologne.

Father meanwhile had joined a new ship. Standing by, as she was being completed and then Commissioned. HMS Prince of Wales. The biggest, fastest, most up-to-date ship in the Fleet. He — and we — were very proud of her. And him. There’d been a waiting list of some 500 men hoping to join her and Dad had been chosen! She was commissioned in January ’41 and he came home on leave just in time to experience what we had been getting used to.

The siren would wail and we would jump out of bed and pound down the stairs to reach the hall, just as the whistling bombs were falling. I remember vividly Dad flinging me to the ground and then the sudden weight of his body — pushing all the breath out of me — protecting me as massive explosions shook the house. Terrible noise. Everything shaking. Plaster falling. Scrambling up and pelting out through the back door to the shelter during a pause to find the dark lit up with flashes — searchlights sweeping back and forth across the sky — above all the noise — everything shaking — the strange throbbing sound of German planes — more bombs screaming down — my grown ups silent, counting the crashes — the ‘Chicago Piano’, the nickname for the Bofors (I think) gun on the Prince of Wales, our protector, in the dock: boom — boom — boom: rhythmic, relentless. Protective.

Us down in the shelter by now — and yet Dad, still outside, silhouetted — transfixed — in the doorway of the shelter. Staring up as if he can’t believe what he’s witnessing. ‘This is worse than being at sea’ he shouts down to us, then is brought back to earth by our shrieks: 'Get in - for God's sake, Gordon, get in.' He skitters down the little ladder, the special 'gas proof' door is jammed shut and we wait: play card games till the grown ups settle me down in the top bunk. Reassuring. Can't go on for much longer. Try and set some sleep. School tomorrow. All this with that noise going on.

What with Dunkirk and the Blitz, mother was all for the government making some kind of negotiated settlement with Germany but father would have none of this. 'If they do' I remember him saying, in our tiny kitchen, 'I'd go to Canada and fight from there.' At the time, he wrote in mother's autograph album: 'Do your duty and be thankful' - a quotation, I believe, of Nelson's. Mother was furious. 'What have I got to be thankful for?' she demanded angrily. Father now insisted we leave Plymouth. At first mother argued: 'This is your home - your family's home - somewhere for you to return to - ' but he was adamant. 'I'm on an unsinkable ship' he said. 'I want some family to come home to.' Indeed, so impregnable was the Prince of Wales thought to be that her crew were being encouraged to bring all their items of value (e.g. house deeds, jewellery etc.,) to be housed in the ship's safe.

So we packed a few things, said goodbye to Aunty Ivy, Aunty Glad and my own Aunty Jones (so much more like a grandmother to me than the real thing.) We had a farewell tea to say goodbye to Father Ford, who had just given me my first Communion. To mark the occasion, he gave me a present: a framed print of da Vinci's Last Supper with, underneath, the dates of my First Communion and a space for my Confirmation, whenever that might be.

Early one dark morning after breakfast, we drove by taxi to North Road Station and boarded a train Farnham. Everything changed.

Grandma Chandler was 60 years old. A soldier's widow: my grandmother (Major Will Chandler, MC (Retd)) had died suddenly some three years earlier. Left with little or no money (£1 a week pension from the Army) she lived now next to her elder daughter, Nell, and son-in-law, Bert, in a small house - a 'Villa' - in Lower Bourne. A village just outside Farnham with our Lower section technically in the parish of Frensham.

Mother's two younger brothers, Bill and Jack, were now in the RAF so there was just room for us in the little semi which consisted of two living rooms and a scullery and upstairs two double bedrooms and a small box room, which became mine. All around were the Surrey pinelands and opposite an area known as 'the woods' - a natural playground for children.

Mother's sister Nell (Aunty Nini) and her husband, Bert, had one son, David, eight months older than me, a highly prized boy. He and I were to attend the local school, up the hill in the village, together. There was also living with them a Cockney evacuee, Bill Burls, who remained only for a short while till his mother arrived and took him back to London.

Uncle Bert was in a 'Reserved Occupation' working at a local firm which made 'special' equipment for planes.

Though our Surrey relatives thought mother was exaggerating what was happening in Plymouth, the blitz was obviously continuing fiercely. A week or so later, cousin Slyvia arrived on the Royal Blue coach. As she was a few years older than me, she attended the Girls Grammar School in town.

One wonderful day (I think this must have been in October '41) I returned home from school carrying two large pieces of coal that had fallen off the coalman's delivery lorry. In those days everything was rationed and coal was as precious as gold dust. Once through the back door and in the scullery, I called out:

'I found some coal in the road. Shall I take it to the shed or bring it in there?'

'Bring it in here' replied an unmistakable voice. I flung everything down: blazer, coal, satchel - and rushed inside to jump up at my father, home on leave. A hero - for this was just after the sinking of the Bismarck, in which the Prince of Wales had been involved, hitting Germany's fastest, biggest, unsinkable ship, before being damaged herself and having to break off the action. It was also just after the Prince had taken Churchill over to Newfoundland to meet with the President of the USA: Franklin D Roosevelt. These events had been given due publicity on the Gaumont British Newsreels, shown at the Regal Cinema in town. The Prince was the prize of the Fleet and Mum and I, of course, were tremendously proud of our sailor and deliriously happy at having him back.

His leave, however, was not to last long, as he was recalled by telegram. The Prince was off to Singapore to counter the threat of Japanese invasion.

Referring to any ship as unsinkable seems to be some kind of challenge to the Gods. The day the Prince was sunk is as clear in my memory as if it were yesterday. After lunch, I had left mother getting ready to go to town with Aunty Nini, to the pictures. David and I were on our way up the hill to school when we were stopped by two of the older girl Cockneys coming down. One of them yelled:

'Your Dad's on the Prince of Wales - ' there was a pause. 'well it's been sunk' she jeered. I turned, ran straight back home, burst through the back door and found a scene I have never forgotten. Mother sat staring into space. Tears - unheard of in our family - running down her cheeks. Grandma standing behind here, holding her shoulders. On seeing me, Gma rushed forward to turn me round and quickly push me out of the room, through to the back of the house and the tiny connecting door to Aunty Nini next door. To my horror, I saw that she had been crying too. I was sent straight into the front room, where I remained all that dreadful afternoon. Frightened, not just because Dad's 'unsinkable ship' had been lost and he might be killed but because mother and the rest of my grown ups were breaking the family commandment: 'sailors/soldiers wives/daughters, never ever cry.'

A day or two later, to our immense relief, a telegram arrived. Dad was safe - a survivor - in Singapore. Some weeks later, another telegram: he was in Batavia (now Jakarta) in Java. Then, nothing, till - finally - a telegram from the Admiralty informing mother that her husband, my father, was 'Missing, presumed killed.' But 'we won't believe that' mum said. 'He'll turn up - you see - lots of little islands out there. That's where he'll be - '

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