大象传媒

The day the war started I was with my friend. We were out on our bikes in Edmonton on the hill where, at the time the Empire Cinema stood. We didn鈥檛 hear the actual declaration of war on the radio, and the first we heard of it was when a man who was passing us warned us that war had started and that we should go home. We hurried home to get indoors as the sirens were sounding. Being young girls, only seventeen at the time, we thought it was all so exciting and funny. But nothing happened that day. Then life returned to normal, like getting up and going to work. There weren鈥檛 any air raids for quite a while.

A few months later, my sister and I went to the Alcazar Cinema one evening and I remember the film very vividly it was 鈥淪weeney Todd the Barber鈥�. Coming home in the dark, we were looking over our shoulders because we had been so afraid by what we had seen in the film. Little did we know that the first bomb to drop on Edmonton would drop on the Alcazar Cinema later that night. The sirens started sounding, and in our panic to get down to the shelter we all scrambled in and my sister swore she had swallowed her two false teeth, because she had pains in her stomach. We had quite a laugh afterwards because we found them in her bed. We still had our sense of humour despite the serious situation.

My brother went off to war in 1940 aged 19. My sister and I worked at a Jameson鈥檚 chocolate factory in Dysons Road and I also took up first aid. I had to stay behind and help all the others to get down the shelter, which was dug along the side of the factory. I sometimes used to entertain them with my 鈥楬unchback of Notre dam鈥� impersonation and other silly things just to keep people鈥檚 minds off of what was happening. Not that I wasn鈥檛 frightened myself.

Life was a struggle for our parents to feed us all because of the rationing, we didn鈥檛 get much food. Looking back, we now know that we had quite a healthy diet really.

We were living in 鈥楩lorence Road鈥� when the Blitz started, and at the bottom of our road there was a rubber tyre dump and it was set alight by incendiary bombs. We all had to leave our homes because of the smoke and go to the shelters at 鈥楥raig Park鈥� but we were allowed back eventually.

We were bombed out of our house in Florence Road, some time later, never to return. It was a terrible tragedy that night because a whole family we knew were wiped out in a house just behind ours, and there were many other deaths and casualties. We hadn鈥檛 been to our shelter for a week or so because my mother suffered from very bad bronchitis and she couldn鈥檛 be left alone and we couldn鈥檛 go down to the shelter on our own. This turned out to be very lucky for us because the night the bomb dropped near our house our shelter was blown in and we would probably all have been killed. We would all settle together (except dad, who always slept in his own bed) under an iron bedstead frame with a mattress over it and held up by two chairs and a table pushed next to it with a mattress underneath it so that we could lie down and sleep. We thought this would give us some protection if the house was damaged by a bomb.

We believe a German plane had been caught in the searchlights and dropped its bombs. We found out afterwards that the bomb was an aerial torpedo. When we heard the bomb coming down I threw myself over my nephew who was only about two years old. If I hadn鈥檛 done this I would almost certainly have been injured or killed because when the glass blew in behind me there were great big pieces of glass embedded in the wall right where I had been sitting. I thought my foot was hanging off because I could see blood but to everyone鈥檚 amusement afterwards I only had a quarter of inch cut. Someone shouted, 鈥減ut that light out鈥� but nobody could catch it because the gas lamp was swinging backwards and forwards furiously. We had to get out of the house because there was no roof, no windows or doors. Dad who had been asleep in the bedroom, didn鈥檛 want to go down to the shelter, he was quite happy to stay in bed, with all the glass around him. He went back to bed afterwards, but the rest of us went down to our neighbour鈥檚 shelter but it was very crowded and we only had half our bottoms on a seat because there was nowhere to sit. When we wanted to go to the toilet, someone had to hold the lavatory door up because it had been blown off its hinge. It was wintertime and we were all hugging hot water bottles because we were so cold. The next morning we were told we had to get out of the house, but we still had to go out to work and then later that day we were found temporary homes and we were all split up. We lived apart for about a week until they found us a flat in Craig Park Road, and the family were back together again.

As war progressed, the doodlebugs started to come. One night we could see a doodlebug flying very close and knew it was about to drop and we called for dad to come down to the shelter but he called back 鈥淚t鈥檚 alright I鈥檓 in the mint鈥�. I don鈥檛 know what protection he thought that lying in a patch of mint in the garden was going give him. We laughed about it later. This was the Doodlebug that fell on the 鈥楤lue Anchor鈥� pub, in Angel Road. There were quite a few lives lost again that night.

Then a doodlebug landed on my brother鈥檚 house, which killed my brother鈥檚 wife. He鈥檇 just been home on 14 days leave to see my mother who had been very seriously ill. When he was contacted about a death in the family he thought it was his mother that had died, but his commanding officer informed him that it was his wife.

We had quite a lot of bombing at this time, but to young people, I don鈥檛 think we really stopped to think just how serious it was and to some extent found it more exciting than frightening. Mum and dad obviously did find it frightening, they took the brunt of it all but we were young and weren鈥檛 so bothered.

You didn鈥檛 see or hear the V2 rockets at all until they landed and exploded, but the V1鈥檚 were quite fascinating to watch. You could see the flames and you could hear them and you knew once the engine noise cut out that they were going to fall.

We had guns going up and down the railway lines, firing continuously, but they didn鈥檛 really do much damage to the enemy planes, they were only able to keep planes from flying too low.

There was a molotoff cocktail dropped on the big houses near Pymes Park one night and we were in the shelter that night at Craig Park. We experienced the actual blue flash that came right through the shelter because it was such a big explosion.

Looking back it was quite frightening, but we took life in its stride and did what we wanted to do irrespective of how our parents felt. My mother must have been absolutely terrified for us, when we were out late but we were enjoying ourselves in our own way.

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