大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from CSV London on behalf of Wanda Clayton and has been added to the site with her permission. Wanda Clayton
fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born on 15 November 1936 at Footscray in Kent. When I was two years old we moved to Penge in South East London. I was the fifth child in the family, having three sisters and one brother olde than me.

My first memory of the war was being taken with my brother George in the Mayor's car to a local school. Our house had been caught in the blast after a bomb hit the gas mains. My mother had already had another daughter the previous year, and now she was being delivered of yet another daughter during the bombing.

I started school on my fifth birthday. We had a raid on this first morning, we were taken to the shelters where we sang as loud as we could. There was a bad raid one Wednesday lunchtime when a school in Catford was hit and a number of pupils and teachers were killed. We didn鈥檛 go to school after that. When the doodlebugs started the schools were closed.

We were evacuated with my mother, as the mothers with young children were being sent away. We went to Wilmslow in Cheshire. We were placed in a big mansion with about eight mothers and their children. We had the time of our lives. There was one story of the boys taking down the chimney of the outhouse, where the coal was locked up. The mothers had to buy the coal by the bucketful, when the billeting lady came round. They soon realised that I was small enough to be put down the space and hand up the coal bit by bit. I often wondered how those women kept a straight face when that old girl unlocked the door and found only coal dust. We still laugh over that incident.

We also had a brush with the American forces. The boys in the house found boxes of silver paper by the camp, as it was near Christmas. They brought it home and the mothers used it to decorate the house. It did look nice, all glittery.

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