大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jane Cave for Three Counties Action on behalf of Norma Hockley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I can remember the day war broke out - I was standing at the front gate waiting for my father to come back from work at the Tottenham Gas Company when the sirens went.

My mother decided not to let us be evacuated with her as her place was with my father (like the Queen and Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret). As we lived very near the dock we saw what seemed to be the whole of London alight. Every night we heard the heavy bombers overhead and later on there were incendiary bombs and land mines whch came down by parachute. I lived my childhood in an Anderson shelter and the cloakroom shelters at school. I didn't learn much as there were 3 classes combined and we did community singing and I learnt to play cards very well. So I missed out on swimming and holidays.

We had some chicks in '44 under light bulbs and were bombed out on 5th January just as they were about to lay and the chicks were running about all over the place. They were finally caught and put into sacks in the coal bunker where they laid a lot of eggs. But they had to be killed. I couldn't manage to eat "Biddy" and my siser felt the same.

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