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Wartime Memories

My earliest memory of WW2 is walking home when the air-raid warning went. A man came out of the house on my left and told me to go home quickly as the war had started. I looked across the playing field on my right and thought that’s where the trenches will be. My father had served in WW1 and had told me about the trenches.

I was twelve years old. School children had been evacuated during the previous week I had refused to go; my parents agreeing we should all stay together. Schools were closed for quite a while until one was opened a few miles away and I attended it one day a week. My school then re-opened and together with another local school we attended part-time mornings and afternoons alternate weeks. Later we attended full time. Towards the end of 1940 air raids became frequent day and night. Cloakrooms were used as air-raid shelters and lessons were continued. We helped the war effort by knitting articles for the troops and had collections for each armed service. We still sat for our School Certificate in our fifth year and I left in 1943.

During 1940-42 we endured many air raids. One time we were evacuated from our house because three time bombs were dropped in the park at the top of our road. We stayed with friends in the next road but were allowed back to our home when the Royal Engineers had defused the bombs. My mother used to make a large jug of tea for the engineers and I used to deliver it to them. The three bombs were blown up on the Sunday morning and my first instinct was to turn and run. That was the first time I had seen a bomb go off. A further incident was when incendiary bombs were dropped all along our road. My dad noticed a roof on fire down the road and went to help –, as did the neighbours. Meanwhile some incendiaries had fallen in our back garden and the chicken shed was on fire. My mum, sister and I shovelled sand and earth over some of the bombs and managed to open the chicken shed door to let them out. They scattered everywhere and what a noise. My father eventually returned very pleased that the roof fire was out. My mother silently beckoned him out to the back garden to survey his domain. Chicken shed burnt down to the ground, noisy fluttering chickens and a cockerel sitting on the garden fence crowing as loud as he could. I cannot repeat what my father said! In order to be able to keep chickens during the war the family egg ration had to be given up. We had plenty of eggs when they were laying and there was always an egg for a neighbour’s sick child. A chicken was killed at holiday times and the cockerel was saved until Christmas.

We had an air-raid shelter in the garden and it was only used once by us. My mother disliked it and so we slept in our beds all through the war. We had a young mother of two boys living next door; her husband was in the army. She was a very nervous person and when there was an air raid during the day she would climb over our garden wall to use our shelter. One morning she was doing this when a German fighter plane flew over machine gunning. I have never understood why.

It was on my birthday in June 1944 that the first flying bombs came over, ‘the Doodlebug’. I looked out of my bedroom window that evening when I saw what I thought was a plane on fire. It was a few days later we were told what it was. They were frightening to hear but as long as you did they were passing over, but it was when they stopped you ducked for shelter. The rockets were the worst – they couldn’t be heard. My family was lucky, we did not experience any losses but there were plenty of people around us who did.

Joan Mitchell

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