大象传媒

A South London Girl in 1940

I wasn鈥檛 quite eight when war was declared in September 1939. I don鈥檛 remember Mr Chamberlain鈥檚 wireless broadcast announcing the imminence of hostilities. Nor any sense of incipient panic at the prospect of bombing, mutilation or death. 鈥淲ar with Germany鈥� was a concept that had little meaning to an eight year old girl unfamiliar with the map of Europe. In fact, it was some time before I had a mental image of Hitler to give the concept of 鈥渆nemy鈥� form and meaning.

I only became conscious of war as something extraordinary and destabilising when I was evacuated. Together with my elder sisters, Doreen and Violet, I was sent to Bexhill-on-Sea on the Sussex coast in the summer of 1940. With the obligatory gas mask slung over my shoulder, I boarded a bus at Blackheath and Blue Coats School more expectant than alarmed. Evacuation was an awfully big word for a small girl, a word whose meaning wasn鈥檛 quite clear to me. Separation from Mum and Dad, yes, but also an adventure by the sea. For a working class girl from south London, the prospect of a trip to the coast was something to look forward to. None of us had ever set eyes on the sea before.

At first, we moved in with two elderly ladies of whom I confess have scant recollection. After a while, though, we were split up, with myself and Doreen being assigned to a middle-aged couple with a son and daughter our own age. They also had a kitten which we girls took great delight in dressing up and pushing around the streets of Bexhill in a pram. It was my first experience of motherhood. We stayed in a comfortable, terraced house in London Road, an address which intrigued me because I thought if I walked far enough it would take me all the way back to London and my home in Nigeria Road, Charlton. It was a comforting thought and made me think we weren鈥檛 so far away from Mum and Dad after all. Maybe that鈥檚 why I don鈥檛 recall any great sense of homesickness.

Bexhill in 1940 was a place of barbed wire and mined beaches. Signs telling you 鈥淒anger 鈥� keep off the Beach鈥� thwarted my hopes of playing in the sea. In other ways though it wasn鈥檛 so obvious a war was on, not to an eight year old girl at least. The were no air raid shelters, sirens or black-outs that I remember, nor that many soldiers milling around town. The war was still 鈥榩honey鈥� then which was lucky because I later discovered Bexhill was in the front line of Hitler鈥檚 invasion plans. As the summer wore on however bombers began to appear overhead and with them came the sounds that would soon be all too familiar 鈥� the throaty roar of aircraft engines and the shuddering boom of anti-aircraft fire. No bombs dropped on Bexhill that I recall but the message nevertheless got home to Mum and Dad that their daughters were on the flight path of the German Luftwaffe. That, combined with the fact that myself and Doreen went down with impetigo, prompted Mum and Dad to bring us back home after three months away.

Like most of his generation, Dad served in the First World War. He was too old to fight in 1940 but not too old to help the war effort in other important ways. Dad worked at the Woolwich Arsenal, part of the civilian workforce that kept our ships, planes and tanks supplied with shells and bombs. Every evening he would come home stained yellow because of the chemicals they used in making the munitions. He would have to scrub himself down thoroughly before then going out to do duty with the ARP. The Arsenal of course was a prime target for enemy bombers, and an easy one too for planes guided into London by the wide, reflecting highway of the river Thames. Each night as they came overhead searchlights would try to pick them out and every so often a mobile ack-ack battery would fire up at them from the street outside our house. The daylight raids were more spectacular still and when the RAF got involved it brought the crowds out. Neighbours would stare up at the sky offering encouragement to our boys, swearing at Jerry or cheering whenever they thought an enemy plane had been hit. I was fascinated by the aerial dogfights and the sight of parachutes drifting down from the sky. I never thought of human beings bloodied, burnt or mutilated as they quietly drifted down. When the bombing got especially bad we girls, along with Mum, would head for the Anderson shelter, dug deep in the middle of our back garden. Not so Dad and my brothers, George and Bert, who tended to stay indoors, in part I think to deal with any incendiaries that might land on the house. I can鈥檛 say I felt frightened whilst the bombs rained down. We usually passed the time knitting or making things in the candle light until the raids were over. In the morning we would check to see if the house had suffered any damage. We were lucky in that we only ever had shattered windows and broken tiles to deal with, which we repaired with tarpaulins (for the roof) or cardboard and wood for the windows, until permanent repairs could be made. Friends and neighbours were not so fortunate. After one raid a family in nearby Indus Road was killed when a bomb breached a water tank erected directly behind their house. The family, who had taken shelter in their cellar, were drowned as the water flooded the basement. The wife of a local ironmonger near Shooter鈥檚 Hill was killed when a bomb blew up the bus she was travelling on. I remember too seeing a local bus driver severely lacerated by flying glass. My own close encounter with death came not from a bomber but a low flying German fighter which appeared out the blue one afternoon and peppered the road with bullets. It sent me scurrying into a privet hedge for safety.

During the day time I went to school, played in the streets (usually with my good friend Joan) and helped out with whatever chores came my way. Schooling was reduced to a half day鈥檚 attendance once the war got going proper. During the school holidays themselves I would accompany Mum on her house cleaning work, which helped bring some much needed money in. Everything was rationed of course, especially food. We were registered with a shop called Perks near Shooter鈥檚 Hill and from there we got our allowances of tea, sugar, cheese, butter and so on. Meat came from a local butcher. This was supplemented with vegetables grown in our own back garden 鈥� cabbages, runner beans, broad beans, tomatoes, beetroots. We also had chickens from which we got a decent supply of eggs. One of the chickens was sacrificed to provide Christmas dinner that year. In addition to what we got through the ration and from our back garden was the food we got through the black market. Like most families we knew we made frequent trips up the Old Kent Road to where the spivs and barrow-boys sold black market goods, queuing up for whatever was going. Sometimes the buses were so full of people on the way back that they couldn鈥檛 climb Blackheath Hill unless people got off. We would have to walk up the hill carrying whatever we鈥檇 bought and re-board once the bus had climbed its way to the top. Sometimes I would get sweets off the barrow boys though normally it was through the ration. I鈥檇 always opt for 鈥渓ittle sweets鈥� like smarties, hundreds and thousands or a certain kind of toffee I used to like that had banana or orange running through it, because that way you got more and they lasted longer. The latter were four for a penny I recall. Chocolate cost a lot more and wasn鈥檛 such good value for money. I survived the war quite happily without chocolate. Maybe it was because food was in such short supply that it seemed to taste better than it does nowadays. That was certainly the case with powdered egg 鈥�

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