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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Annie Keane of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ on behalf of Joan Cork and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was the daughter of a Coldstream Guard. I was 11 when war broke out, I had two brothers (6 and 12 years old). In those days their education was seen as more important than mine. We were all evacuated to Shoreham two days before the war. We just went and didn’t know where were were going. There was no signs on the stations.

I loved it there, we were on the river, and there was lovely people there. My brothers lived next door. The younger one went back to our mum and then the oldest one got called up and joined the Lancaster Bombers. He later bombed Hitler’s palace in Germany. Later he was grounded after his hearing was damaged and then he was bringing prisoners back from Italy.

After a year or so Shoreham got bombed so they didn’t want us to stay there. We went to Guildford but my mum didn’t want me to stay there because there were too many American soldiers there.

I came back to London the night they sent docks alight. There was bombing all the time and we spent a lot of time down the Anderson Shelter. We lived in Peckham Rye and I remember seeing landmines hanging on the lamppost.

Later we moved to Dulwich Village. I was working then in the rag trade then so I got to know Soho really well. I worked for Acquascutum as a model. There were lots of soldiers in the West End and my mum told me not to talk not to talk to the Yanks — one said to me ‘Where are you going blondie?’ I said ‘I’m going home chum’ and carried on walking.

Really at that time we just went through the war as normal worked and came home. In those days you weren’t really frightened.

I had two narrow escapes. One time I was walking down the road and a doodlebug followed me down the street. Another time I needed to get a No. 12 bus, I wanted to go and see a friend so I missed the first bus and got on the next one. As we were going down the road the bus in front of us that I could have been on, got a direct hit.

In the early days of the war we had an Anderson Shelter. Later on we had and a Morrison Shelter which was like a big table that you got under, you could also use it as a table the rest of the time.

The war years to us were happy times. Happier than now, people were nicer to each other then.

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