大象传媒

In 1939 I was a happy little girl of 7, then along came the war and took all of that away from me. My Dad was called up at the start of the war and I didn鈥檛 see much of him for the next 6 years.

Then the air raids started and my younger sister, Mum and I, used to go into our neighbour鈥檚 house because she had a big oak table where she made my sister, her two grandsons and me go and she would then cover it with thick blankets.

As the bombing got worse we went to Witney. I can't say that we were made very welcome and the person we stayed with only allowed my Mum one armchair and my sister and I had to sit behind her on the arms. Our toilet was a dustbin with a seat on. One morning our Mum looked out of the window and saw the contents of the bin being tipped onto the cabbages - we went home the next day!

Back home a shop at the bottom of our street had turned its cellar into a shelter which held about 20 people. We slept on the floor with one dustbin toilet between us. One time we couldn鈥檛 get out because of the raids but the bakers opposite cooked rolls which we lived on for three days (the rolls were dry).

One day I asked my Mum if I could go to the pictures with my friend Eileen. After some pleading she agreed as long as we promised to come home if the sirens sounded. We were watching the film when the sirens went off and we left the cinema. As we crossed a big road this German plane came from nowhere and started machine-gunning the road, two men ran and picked us up and threw us into a shop which left us bruised but almost certainly saved our lives.

Another time my friend, Jill, asked me to go to her house after school. Even though I begged and pleaded for my Mum to let me go she said a firm NO! Jill went off with a 鈥淪ee you tomorrow鈥�. As she got home the sirens went. There was a terrible explosion and Jill and her entire family were killed by a direct hit to their house. I couldn鈥檛 stop thinking that if my Mum had let me go I would have been killed.

After that, I went to my grandmother鈥檚 in Barry, South Wales. Life was much better there but my education was severely affected - firstly by the air raids in London and then because I had great difficulty in understanding the language in Wales.

So it was back to London to be greeted by what we called buzz bombs, a flying bomb with an engine that suddenly cut out - you didn鈥檛 know where it was going to land so you just waited for it to drop and blow you to pieces. Then came the V2 rockets, you couldn鈥檛 even hear them coming, you just heard the explosions.

Everything was rationed and we went without most things as everything was in short supply. The only thing that we got fun out of was picking up the shrapnel the next day.

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