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I was born in 1925 and was 14 when war started. We were evacuated from London to Royston, Hertfordshire and we hated it. Mum wrote to Dad and asked him to bring us back. He was in the Home Guard, so we went back to Islington. Nobody stopped us.

Our street was bombed. We had no water so someone put in a standpipe. The bombs on parachutes were the most terrifying.

I remember going to the cinema when a siren started. The air raid warden told us to leave but we didn’t. We still used to go to Covent Garden a lot.

I worked at the British Drug House. We heard Lord Haw Haw on the radio boasting that they had bombed the Drug House, but they hadn’t. Whenever the sirens sounded at work we were told to stay by our desks.

I joined the Girls Training Corps. One day when I was walking down the street an enemy aircraft machine gunned the street where I was walking.

I met my husband when I was 17. He came from the Isle of Wight. We met in March and were married in May. After a year of marriage he was sent to Italy. We wrote to each other every day. I sent him parcels containing cakes and once when he said he had a sore throat I sent him some linctus. My husband came home on our 3rd wedding anniversary and was demobbed soon after.

This story is submitted by Hitchin Museum on behalf of Mrs Ide. Looking at the ‘typical’ week’s ration on a plate in Museum’s WWII display, Mrs Ide said, ‘That’s too much, we didn’t have that much food’.

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