大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Gillian Turner from Libraries and Heritage on behalf of Eileen Lynch and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the terms and conditions."
My name is Eileen Lynch and I lived in a small village in East Hertfordshire. My mother kept the village pub and forces were reluctant to have me as they intended to billet soldiers there at times. My brother was in the T.A. (Royal Artillery) so was called up in the August. I left my job in the city of London as the office was evacuated to Hampshire, and got a post in the local Food Office and National Registration Office.
When the first air raid siren went off, a few minutes after war was declared, our Air Raid Warden came dashing up the street waving his watchman's rattle-the sign of a gas attack!! We all told him to stop it and go home- we were sure there was no gas. Such was our faith in our air defences- or was it because we knew our warden.
Many evacuees (who evacuated themselves)came into the Food Office to change ration books and Identity cards, a complicated procedure so we were sometimes inundated, and tempers sometimes got frayed.
Then came the "official" (and unofficial) evacuees from London including a school in Battersea, and also children from Hastings - all had to be found homes. Pregnant women (or "unexpected mothers" as one elderly resident called them) arrived and were found homes in the village until going to Brocket Hall, near Hatfield, to have their babies.
The village had a Home Guard (or L.D.V. as they were frist known) which often met in our cellar, as from there they had a clear view down the street - or that was their excuse! They were a bit like "Dad's Army"- there was even a Captain Mainwaring - only he was a sergeant, there was also a "Jonesy". They had a dugout in a bunker next to the village hall.
There were regular collections of metal goods for "Warship Week" or "Spitfire Week". Paper was collected weekly by a lady in a pony and trap - in fact nothing was wasted.
During the Battle of Britain there were many dog fights overhead and spent bullets often rained down. Stray bombs dropped in the area - usuallly being dumped by Germans being chased home.
Our house was usually full of visitors - friends and relations from London needing a night or two's sleep. Some would sleep on the floor, and some in the bed, in fact it was quite interesting to find them all together in our large bedroom.
We survived bombs (none of which actually damaged houses) and rationing. We kept four hens and grew our own vegetables, as did everyone else, and there were always rabbits!
Meanwhile I went to work for NAAFI at a Command Supply Depot run by the RASC) where we supplied troops with their daily rations. So we got to know where the dances were being held, and on most nights we girls would be off on our bikes to villages around. There was a cinema about 5 miles away,and we often went there on a bus, having to walk home in the dark listening to enemy bombers passing overhead to other parts of the country. In the London Blitz, when St Paul's was bombed, we had burnt paper etc. floating down on us (we were 25 miles away) so we knew that London had had a bad bombing.
Soldiers were billeted on us from time to time and I was taken to London on a few occasions to shows - I saw "Maid of the Mountains" and the "Merry Widow" - mainly from under my seat as there was sometimes a red alert on and I was nervous!. After the bombs came the V1's or Doodlebugs as we called them. One could see and hear them coming as they were very noisy and had flames coming from their tails. When the engines stopped, they dived to the ground. On one occasion, a very cloudy morning, I was cycling to work (12 miles away) when I heard, but could not see, a doodlebug coming;the engine cut out and it came whstling down. Into the nearest ditch I went, bike as well, and it landed with a thud about 50 yards away. Then all the windows in nearby houses crashed in in the blast and people started screaming but fortunately no-one was injured. I continued on my way, rather shaken - I walked most of the way ! Then came the V2 rockets which were far worse as they made no noise and the first thing one heard was the decending whistle and then the explosion which shook buildings for miles around. Then you thought - I heard that, so I am still alive, and gave silent thanks, not knowing when it would be your turn.
Meanwhile my brother had been posted missing on Crete and it difficult to describe one's feelings of dread had hope, day after day, adding to the strain of daily living. Fortunately he ended up a P.O.W. in Austria where he stayed until after V.E. day.
During the whole duration of the war we were all busy raising money for various projects, largely the Red Cross in our village. We had a concert party for adults and children and we gave entertainments in our village and surrounding ones -fortunately several people had petrol(legitimately!) and ferried us around - we raised a considerable sum of money.
We sometimes listened to "Lord Haw Haw" as we called him (very disrespectfully) "This is Germany calling....." was followed by stories of local places which we thought very funny, but we meant to be frightened. On one occasion he mentioned that a nearby town clock was 20 minutes slow and he threatened to bomb the "Londoners" out of there. Some of them went home, but the locals ignored this threat as we all knew that the clock had been 20 minutes slow for at least 30 years!
At the end of the war in the Far East, where the local regiment had been stationed, I was asked on several occasions to take wives to the local station to meet their husbands (65 returning P.O.W's)as I had a petrol allowance. I will never forget the sight of those young men coming off the train - after years of imprisonment and ill-treatment - they were old, yellow skinned, almost skeletons with bad teeth (if any left). Most of them I had known since childhood but did not recognize. What joyful, tearful reunions there were, but I can still see their faces, which brought home the hardships they had suffered.
How did we survive those dreadful times? Sheer determination and community spirit I think, and we kept our sense of humour which was important. Of course it was much worse for people in cities that were bombed and suffered so much devastation and loss of life. But the important thing was that we never lost hope.

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