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´óÏó´«Ã½ WORLD WAR 2 WEBSITE STORY

Name: Jenny Mundell (mrs.)

Date: June 2004

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Parish of Nottingham City Libraries and Information Service on behalf of Jenny Mundell and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was born in 1935 in Yorkshire, and I was called Jennifer Twigg. My father was a prison officer at Wakefield Prison and we lived with my Granny not far away from the prison. At the onset of the war I was in Scarborough on holiday with my Granny and we had to come back home. Because of my father’s job he didn’t get called up for the forces. We then moved to Lowdham Grange (Notts) with his job. It was in the country and in the middle of nowhere — what a difference to Wakefield which is a big city. We had a nice house on a hill and we could see a dummy airfield over towards Lambley. Everyone had to have blackout curtains on all windows so that no lights showed anywhere. The prison officers took it in turns to do ARP duty — with their tin hats, gas masks they would be on duty all night. If the air raid sirens went we would sit under the stairs — no one had air raid shelters. I had a Mickey Mouse gas mask. I was taught by a shared governess for a while before going three miles each way in the local village school. It was downhill going but uphill coming back. Sometimes we got a lift on the back of the coal lorry — no one had a car. I remember seeing loads of soldiers in lorry loads going along the Bypass and also trains full of servicemen going towards Lincoln passing Lowdham station. There were no school dinners so we either took sandwiches or got a meal at a friend’s house. Most of the schoolchildren lived nearby. The toilets were in a row outside and they got emptied once a week by a farmer and he then spread the contents on his fields and me and my dad used to pick loads of mushrooms — Ugh!
At Lowdham Grange we were miles away from food shops and a man from Burtons in Nottingham used to come up once a week and get grocery orders from all the houses. It was delivered by a van on the Friday each week. A butcher used to come up from Epperstone as well and a baker came from Gunthorpe, I think. A big basket full of home baked bread — I can remember the smell as I write. We all had allotments so grew our own veg. I can’t remember a milk man coming but at Wakefiled it used to come in churns by pony and cart and you just went out with a jug and got a pint.
My dad was then transferred to Feltham prison in Middlesex — not far from where London airport (Heathrow) is now. We actually lived in a flat attached to the prison and to go to school I had to be let out of the 10 foot high gate and let in when I came back. We had long air raid shelters in the Playgrounds and had lessons down there — boys at one end — girls at the other. There were no men teachers as they had all gone to the war. In the road near the prison was a massive gun and the noise when it got fired was horrendous. We had an outside shelter but if the prison had got hit by the enemy we would have been buried alive. After a while me and my mum went up to Yorkshire to live my Granny. I had to go to the local school and I hated it as I spoke differently to the other children and they made fun of me so I started bunking off school. My mum had to go to work 8 — 6 so I spun my gran a tale that I was ill. This worked till the attendance officer came round and it was send me to school or my mum would have to pay a fine.
My gran had a shelter in the garden and we grew mushrooms down there. I missed my dad and apparently he’d been sent on temporary duty to Dartmoor and couldn’t get to see us very often but when he came he came after I’d gone to bed and went the same way a couple of nights later. Some more Londoners were evacuated to Wakefield and school wasn’t so bad as they talked like me. The war was still on when we went back to Feltham and I restarted the same school again. We now lived outside the prison and could walk to school with other children of all ages from the Prison houses. We had food rationing and on a Saturday it was my job to go and queue for ages at the Butchers for Liver and other meat, but not very much. My dad would fetch the bread and sometimes cakes from another shop while my mum did the housework. We had an allotment and grew all kinds of vegetables, various fruits. I used to help my dad weed! Our house had an outside toilet and the bath was in the kitchen and doubled up as a table when the big wooden lid was down. A big coal fire and oven in the living room heated the water and the house. We still had black out curtains and I got a new gas mask — not a babyish Mickey Mouse one — one just like the adults. We used to test them once a week at school but we were lucky we didn’t have a raid during school time. We were on the main road between Staines and Hounslow and a few buses were running during the day. They all had clippies (bus conductresses) as most of the men were at war. Most of the time we walked everywhere. My dad used to go and see his sister in Surrey on his bike and he used to get followed by doodle bugs. These made on awful noise and did loads of damage when they eventually exploded.
I remember having a huge street party when the war was over. Everyone was so friendly and all the children seemed to get on. One girl I met when I lived at Wakefield (we were both babies and her dad was a prison officer) and then met up with again at Feltham, I talk to her regularly on the phone. I’ve not seen her since she was 8 but I hope to meet up with her soon and she now lives in Kent.
In my life I’ve lived at thirteen different addresses but I’m back in Nottingham now to be near my daughter.

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