´óÏó´«Ã½

Margaret Harrison lived in Sheperds Bush, London when the Second World War broke out. My first memory is when we slept on the underground where we played board games and card games. We always kept our gas masks with us. My father could drive and so he worked for the demolition services for the military. Wherever dad went I was evacuated along with my mother. I was evacuated to Eastbourne, Portsmouth, Buxton, Crewe, Chelmsford and Atherston.

At Eastbourne I stayed with a Mr and Mrs Thomas. The beach was surrounded with barbed wire to stop people from going on them. Sometimes the dog walkers cut the wire to let their dogs have a good run on the beach. I got through one day and got caught up in barbed wire which cut the back of my leg. Mrs Thomas made me go in the sea everyday to heal it.

During air raids there wasn’t a siren it was a cuckoo sound. When it went Ivan the son of Mr and Mrs Thomas and myself went under the steel table in the lounge and played board games and jigsaw puzzles.

The museum at Eastbourne was bombed and dad went to remove dangerous brickwork there and found some stuffed birds which he put on a wall and put a sign underneath saying ‘Register here for eggs!’

[This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wolverhampton Libraries on behalf of Margaret Jackson and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions]

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