大象传媒

The war began just as I was starting school at Nonsuch Grammar School in Cheam - aged 10. I was one of the youngest in the school, we had to wait a month for shelters to be built at the school. When the Germans began to comb London we had to troop down to the shelters which were like tunnels with benches on each side - no light or heat. We had hurricane lamps and played cats cradles with string and sang songs. Later when electricity was installed we had light and teachers tried to teach us - but by then the Battle of Britain was over and bombing was more at night.

My father joined the army - I was a Girl Guide and we had to do war work collecting aluminium for pig food, helping with evacuees from central London. At home we kept chickens whch meant we had eggs and exchanged our ration for chicken feed. We grew vegetables - school was normal most of the time - we had 'doodle bugs' at the end of the war after D-Day by which time my brother was in the army pushing to Berlin but putting V1 bases out of action which pleased us. We had several fall close by - getting under a table and once in church the vicar got us all crouching in the pews when we heard a V1 engine cut out.

As a child I accepted life but now realise I missed my father and later my brother. We never had lemons, bananas, oranges - rations were adequate - no obesity! I had dinners at school - meals out in restaurants were off ration as were occassional sausages, offal, fish, whale meat - kid. Children had 1/3 milk bottles at school mid morning - issued by our milk monitor. There were no circuses - seaside had barbed wire so no holidays. I went to two harvest camps which was fun and we cycled, played tennis, helped serve tea and biscuits in a mobile canteen to builders on bomb sites in 1945.

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