大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from 大象传媒 Radio Berkshire on behalf of Margaret Simmons and has been added to the site with her permission. Margaret Simmons fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

During the early years of the war, our family lived in the top storey of flats in Kennington. I had one sister. As the bombing got worse, the Borough decided to open the underground cellar below the flats as a shelter. Beds and bunks were provided. As we surfaced one morning, my father noticed a big hole in the roof of our flat. An incendiary bomb had gone through into our kitchen and landed on the copper boiler used to heat the water for every day. It had fizzled out due to my mother, in her wisdom, who had filled it with cold water in case the water supply was cut off due to damage by bombs overnight.

My mother, sister and I were evacuated to Chudleigh, Devon from Kennington in 1943. I was not happy to be living in the countryside after London, but I was soon settled and grew to love the joy of catching tiddlers and picking wild flowers. We had been evacuated twice before, but returned home. I was about nine or ten years old when we went to Chudleigh, and my sister and I went to the village school, where I acquired a love of books. Just before the summer holidays, the top classes put on a school concert, which included some pretty and talented girls. I envied them very much. School holidays arrived and so did Diptheria, and gloom fell over the village. Families lost one or two members, so we were lucky to be inoculated. One day we went to the local rail station, where mothers and children were crying. Two small coffins were put on to the train, containing the bodies of the young girls I had admired. I will never forget that day.

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