大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Betty Kennedy and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

At the beginning of the war I was 12. On the day war was declared I remember a neighbour playing a recording of 鈥淩ule Britannia鈥� all day, and it really getting to me. Two to three weeks into the war we moved to Teddington in Middlesex and very little happened for the next year.

Just before I was 14 there was an air raid. The school opposite our house was bombed, and the blast sent a huge tree right through the front of our house, so that the house had to be supported to stay standing afterwards.

I left school before I was 14 and went to work. I started off in a jam factory which I didn鈥檛 like very much. I then went to work in a munitions factory which was shift work.

Clothing rationing really sticks out in my mind. I used to paint seams up the back of my legs 鈥� I鈥檇 stand on the kitchen table and my Dad would do it for me. Because he was an artist I always felt my seams were a bit better than anyone else鈥檚.

At the munitions factory there were three shifts and when I was on night duty my mother used to send me up the road to queue for food in the daytime. I queued at the fishmongers for whale meat, horse meat and duck鈥檚 eggs. If you saw a queue you just joined the end of it because it usually meant there was something worth waiting for.

The house we lived in was a large Victorian house, divided into two flats. We were in the top flat. There was a dispute between my mother and the woman downstairs because army pay was related to what you had been earning before joining up and my Dad was getting more than the man downstairs. Dad had been working as an artist in the film studios in Shepherd鈥檚 Bush.

I was good friends with a young girl living in the house next door, who was also called Betty. One day she told me she was going to the air raid shelter in Bushy Park as she thought there would be entertainment there. My Mum wouldn鈥檛 let me go. A bomb fell on the air raid shelter and Betty was killed.

I went to a cinema with another friend and we noticed two men sitting at the back of us 鈥� they were Americans. They really stood out to us because they smelt nice 鈥� and Englishmen didn鈥檛 in those days! They seemed so different and it was quite a shock to see them.

When I was almost 18 I joined the RAF as a WAAF. I was stationed in Reading and was there when the war in Europe finished. I had a friend in the Air Force who was married to a Belgian. She went AWOL for a week to be with him when he got some leave, and got one week bread and water in Holloway for doing that. We used to go out at night when I was in Reading, drinking in pubs, and then would come back late and crawl under a broken piece of fence.

Once when I was on leave, my cousin who was in the Navy came to visit us. We decided to go to the cinema, but he left a cigarette burning, and the settee caught on fire. The fire brigade came and soaked our flat with water, ruining everything. They then sent my Dad a bill for 拢50. After the fire we both thought it wise to cut our leave short!

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