大象传媒

September1st.1939 was my 5th. Birthday and my earliest memories take me back to two days after my birthday when a German pilot flew so low over the roof of our house it brought all the neighbors out to see what was happening as aeroplanes were seldom seen in those days and never that low, apparently it was a German being rather cheeky and showing off; probably trying to give us all a scare.

Within a year my beloved father was called up and joined the Royal Navy the outstanding memory of that occasion was going with my mother to Grove Park station in Chiswick where we lived to wave goodbye to my father as he went off to do his training in Portsmouth and not understanding why my mother was crying and so upset and of course not realizing that it would be 6years before we would be back to a normal family life again.

My early days at school were very interrupted as the infants school had to close down for a while and a small group of children would have lessons at home taking it in turn to visit each others homes and a teacher from the school would come to us. Once we were back at school again the lessons were very often interrupted because of air raids and we were then taken into a school cloakroom which had been reinforced with sandbags around the walls to make a shelter. We would then sit on the benches around the walls underneath the coats which were hanging on pegs above our heads and then we would recite our times tables until the all-clear went and then we would return to our classrooms.

There were the very odd occasions when my father was allowed a 48hour leave pass I think it was just before he was drafted off on some maneuvers or somewhere I know we were so excited to see him but I didn鈥檛 realize at the time it was usually a more worrying time for my mother as there was a chance of greater danger at those times. I would watch from the window when we knew he had leave as I could see him marching from the station with his kitbag on his shoulder, he always managed to bring a small gift sometimes a crunchy bar which I thought was delicious and another occasion I remember a silk hankie embroidered with a union jack flag in the corner and a Royal Naval ship brooch for my mother.
After these brief spells of leave my mother became pregnant and by 1943 I had a brother and a sister.

The air raids disturbed our sleep most nights and my mother would come into the bedroom and wake me up to get dressed and help her get the two little ones ready for the trek down a steep flight of back stairs and down quite a long dark garden to the Anderson shelter which was at the bottom of the garden. I felt like it was always either wet or there was snow on the ground but I suppose sometimes it was in the summer as well. My mother would carry my brother who was about 15months old and I would carry my sister who was a very young baby she was wrapped up in a blanket. On one occasion never to be forgotten I handed the baby down into the shelter only to give us both an awful shock as I had carried her all the way upside down; of course I myself was only 9 years old at the time and still half-asleep.

One night there was a bad air raid and we heard footsteps crunching in the snow and we thought we had been invaded by the Germans luckily it turned out to be the local policeman walking up and down outside our house to keep warm as there was an air raid siren and a policebox situated there. My mother and the other neighbors would take turns to take a hot mug of tea out to the policeman that was on duty those cold days and nights to help him keep warm.

Later in 1943 my fathers ship was in dock in Plymouth for repairs so he rented a room so we could have a few days near him and to get away from London for a while. However my poor mother had 3 young children and a bassinet pram and a large suitcase to get on the train at Grove Park station which then would take us to Waterloo main line station to get the train to Plymouth. The train pulled out of Grove Park station to begin its journey and within a few minutes an air raid began and the train had to stop and all the passengers had to lay on the floor as the planes flew overhead with the local ak ak guns firing at them. Very scary.

We eventually arrived at Waterloo station only to find the roads covered in fire hoses and all the local buildings ablaze including St Thomas鈥檚 hospital I shall never forget the sight of the flames coming out of the windows and smuts and burnt paper flying about in the air.
However we made it to Plymouth after a 7-hour journey the train was packed with troops and I had to sit on a sailors lap. Once off the train my mother had to find her way to the rented rooms, which as I remember was a very long walk and Plymouth is hilly. Thinking back my mother must have been at her wits end especially as I had looked out of the train window as we approached the final station and got a hot smut of coal in my eye from the track this was extremely painful and my eye soon closed with the swelling.

Fate is strange it seems that we had only just left our home in Chiswick when a bomb was dropped in Chiswick House grounds which was opposite where we lived and the blast blew all our windows and doors in ruining all the furniture and could well have harmed us .luckily by now the awful air raids that Plymouth had suffered had come to an end so we spent the next two years living there. The war came to an end while we were still there and shortly after we moved back to Chiswick in London and stayed with my grandparents until my father was demobbed. By 1949 two more brothers had arrived so now there 5 children in the family. Although those war years had been traumatic we had a happy childhood not a lot of money but well looked after thanks to two loving parents.

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