大象传媒

This story was submitted to the people war Website by a volunteer from Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on behalf of Valerie Pocock.

VALERIE POCOCK (NEE THOMPSON)

I was born in 1941 at home in Wanstead. My earliest recollection is when the windows of our house were shattered. My mother and I were in the air raid shelter in our front room at the time. This prompted my mother and I to evacuate to Didcot where my Aunty Nell lived.

My sister was born in 1944 by which time we were back in Wanstead. I remember her being born and I was taken upstairs while my mother had the baby downstairs. I was carried on an eiderdown by my father and grandmother.

When the doodlebugs started my mother decided to take me and my baby sister to live in Nailsworth with my godmother who was a land girl there. We lived on a farm. This move was just after, and because, my grandmother and uncle were killed when a bomb crashed into their house. My father was a lot older than my mother and was too old to be called up. He stayed in Wanstead and was a volunteer fire warden.

We came back to Wanstead from Nailsworth at the end of the war and I remember the street parties.

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