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My name now is Eileen Nelson and it was at that time Eileen Willis. At least it was at the beginning of the war, I got married during the war. What year were you born? 1921. Where were you living? In Beckenham, Kent, which was right on the edge of London. We had the bombing particularly badly there. From one end of Beckenham up to the other end of Penge was just over a mile, and they reckon there wasn’t a whole window in the whole place. They were using the towers of the Crystal Palace — I think there was only one left. They were using that as a guide into London. Sometime during the war our government blew it up to stop them using it like that.

I worked in the Air Ministry at that time, and at the beginning of the war was evacuated to Harrogate but I wasn’t up there all that long. I was ill and I came home, and after that I was stationed in London. But we used to go up and down to town after a night of bombing. You never knew where you were going to be able to get a train. There were four stations within walking distance of where we lived, three different railway lines. One morning my brother and I walked miles from one station to another before we could find one where a line into London was clear. I can’t remember actual dates, but they bombed the viaduct at the Elephant and Castle — did a terrific lot of damage there, couldn’t get the trains up to London through that line for months. We used to go up as far as Herne Hill and then have to get buses. And you’d queue right through the booking office, up the stairs and the whole length of the platform. Used to take probably an hour before you got on a bus to get to London, and then you’d do the same coming home and sometimes you’d go up in the morning and then couldn’t get back on the same line at night.

One time we were going down the Brixton Road and a bomb had dropped just ahead of us on a block of flats and all the services were there, standing round looking fairly helpless and there was a little convent just the other side of the road. I remember the nuns were standing in a line down the path waiting to be of use. Quite a few people and children killed there.

Shopping, of course, was awful. Queue for hours if you knew there was likely to be fish or a rabbit or something like that. You could queue for an hour or more quite easily waiting to get it. I was working up in London and couldn’t get to the shops. We’d often had sprats for our dinner because that’s the only thing it was possible to buy. One occasion I had sprats I’d bought at lunchtime, they were in a string bag. I put the string bag on the rack in the train. During the journey they started coming through and dropping down on the people below.

The Fire Brigade put gas mains out with the hoses and flooded all the pipes and all the meters. For a big area around the water was coming out through the gas taps or the cooker. It was months before we got any gas back. Well it wasn’t funny really, cooking for five of us. She had to do it on an open fire. A neighbour helped her out with a joint occasionally in an electric cooker.

There’s a strip of Beckenham runs up right up alongside the railway — runs as far up as Penge, just over a mile. I don’t know whether they used the railway line, or I know they used the Crystal Palace Tower but we had more flying bombs I think that almost any other part of London. All along the sides of the roads between the road and the pavement there would be piles of rubbish, bricks, broken glass, all sorts of things. And the toilet pans, if there was a bad bombing, they’d break round the base and they’d be put on the top of the rubbish and walking in the blackout you’d got to be very cautious where you put your feet. Thank you very much indeed. That’s fine.

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