大象传媒

Doris West told her story to Helen Kemp (CSV Volunteer for Thanet Libraries) at the Summerlands Nursing Home in Westgate-on-Sea, Kent.

I was 21 when war broke out. I was working in the City at the time as a shorthand typist for Legal and General. We had to be evacuated.

I was taken to a boarding school in Kingswood, Surrey, where I both lived and worked. I worked from Monday to Friday but had weekends free. I lived in the school house until huts were built for the staff to work and live in. I gave up my ration book most of the time. I sat at a table for eight people and often didn鈥檛 get anything to eat if I was last on the 鈥減ass round鈥�. There was a suffragette living with us. There were plenty of cockroaches and rats in and around the huts. One night when I was working late I heard a noise 鈥� it was a rat that had jumped on the table next to me. We grew some of our own food in the gardens around the school but the rats often got to the produce before we did.

Most nights I went to the pictures as transport was quite good, so long as the tramlines were okay. Sometimes the trams were taken off the road.

Planes used to come over us on their way to bomb London. They sometimes jettisoned their bombs if their fuel was getting low. Canadians stationed near us would hold dances and take us to them by truck. One time a Canadian gave me a joint of beef and when I went home to see my mother I carried it in my suitcase.

I remember once six of us walking to Walton on the Hill. We heard some bombers coming so we split up. We got down low behind the walls of the bridge. We heard the bombs going off. When they had passed over we argued as to where the bombs had fallen. We were amazed to learn that two had landed either side of the bridge on which we were walking.

My home was on a hill and the end of our garden was at the top. One weekend when I had gone home my mother and I, along with the lady who lived downstairs from us, were in our air raid shelter on the Friday night. On this particular night there was an air raid and we were shelled causing the shelter to rock. My dad had decided to stay in bed so, when it was all clear, I came out of the shelter and climbed through the rubble to see if dad was okay. When I got to the bedroom, dad was pinned down by a wardrobe that had fallen on him. I pushed the wardrobe off and thankfully he was okay just a little bruised. The wardens came to check that we were all okay and we learned that dad had been the only slight casualty. The house unfortunately was not fit to live in any more, there was soot and rubble everywhere, it was filthy.

We had to be re-housed and I found a nice place in Camberwell for my parents. One weekend mum decided to go away and dad went off down to the library. I decided to go to the cinema. Whilst we were all out the house we were bombed again, this time by a V2 rocket, taking down all the back of the house. The film I saw that evening was called 鈥淎 Quiet Weekend鈥�.

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