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Memories of wartime childhood by Julie Gale, was Cooksey,
23, Morningside, Dawlish, Devon, EX7 9SL 01626 866487, juliephilip@eurobell.co.uk

My first memory of the second word war was also my first memory at the age of four in. My family lived in Merrow on the outskirts of Guildford, Surrey, in a rented upstairs flat. My parents had decided that I might attend a private nursery school just around the corner and so we were all visiting it to see if it would be suitable. We stood in the large hallway of the school, an old Victorian house, together with the a woman I presume was the owner and head mistress.
‘And I must tell you Mr and Mrs Cooksey, that we are completely prepared to take shelter in the event of any bombing’ said the woman who, to me, appeared to be very tall as she stepped forward, bent to the floor and flung open a large oblong trap door with stairs leading down into a totally dark interior.
I was terrified, no way was I going down there and much to my fathers disgust I screamed and howled the place down. It took several sweeties and being taken to play in a life size dolls house to quieten me down. Of course I now realise that this offered protection was a compelling feature to my parents in 1939 and whether I was ever sent to the school I can’t remember. Life changed so many times from then on as we moved from place to place during the war.
We had moved to Guildford from Tonbridge in Kent. We went back there from time to time to visit relations and it was on one of these visits to my mother’s parents that we happened to be there for Battle of Britain Sunday. Together with my mother’s sister’s family we all heard this low droning. I was only five but remember the adults getting very agitated. The droning got louder and louder and soon the sky was covered from one side to the other with German planes. I got a quick glimpse of this but no more as my French grandmother was in a total panic, pushing us children under a metal table called a Morrison shelter. I remember things being said like ‘London’s had it’ and ‘this is it now’.
Slowly the droning died away but as soon as it stopped it started again along with whines and sounds of gunfire. The planes were returning but harried by our fighters. The men of the family stood out in the garden shouting and pointing. They later said the planes that had been in formation came back in complete disorder. They dropped their bombs any where to lighten the load. By this time all the woman of the family were in a frenzy at the men to come indoors. We heard an explosion nearby but it was not until afterwards we discovered it had hit a house several doors up the road and demolished it. Later a neighbour told us that it had been coming down straight towards our house but turned at the last moment and hit the other house.
After it had finished we found shell cases all over the place in the garden and shrapnel embedded everywhere. Things went on being found for weeks after. I never knew until many years later that I had witnessed, to a small degree, the Battle of Britain.
Somewhere in our wanderings we landed up in Hatfield and father worked at the De Haverland airfield and factory which made Mosquitoes Aircraft. We had a one roomed flat opposite in buildings that I believe were owned by the company. We were subject to continual air raids trying to put the factory out of commission. Sometimes lone planes would try to make surprise attacks before a warning could be sounded. A flag would be flown on the control tower to warn of danger.
One day as I returned from school with other young friends — we walked on our own in those days or with an older child — we were just coming up to the flats when a woman ran out screaming at us.
‘Can’t you see the flag’s flying, quick inside, inside.’
I looked back to see a low flying plane coming towards us. I ran inside and was thrown to the floor by my waiting mother who then lay on top of me. I remember screams and bangs. Later I heard that the plane had machine gunned the flats. The bullets were said to have hit a wooden door on the top floor and made it change colour. It was only in later years that I realised how close I had been to being shot.
Meanwhile the sirens were now sounding and smoke was coming from the factory. My father later told me that it had been a terrible raid and many were killed. He had luckily had business out on the airfield and had spotted the plane making run towards him and the factory behind him. He said he somehow found himself behind sandbags some hundred yards away although he could never remember how he got there. The plane dropped its load and one bomb bounced on the tarmac and through the open hanger door into the factory rather like a dam buster bomb. Inside there were concrete shelters but the bomb burst on top of the shelter and many died inside.
Mother was fraught with all the bombing and father decided that she and I should be sent to Devon. So I was not exactly an evacuee but got treated as one in the local village school. There I remember being taught in one big hall and that paper was in such short supply the exercise books were cut in half. I have never been able to place exactly where this was except it was probably somewhere south of Ottery St Mary. On the first night we got there what used to be called a ‘Stray Jerry’ flew right over us and offloaded his bombs which just missed us, but other than that it was very peaceful. I actually now live in Devon and I have read or seen on TV of the bombing of Plymouth and Exeter. This stray does not seem so odd when one comes to think about it.
Father thought that the bombing did not seem so bad and called for us to return to Hatfield. Mother was horrified when we got back, after the quiet of Devon it was terrible, night and day. About this time my grandmother died and mother, despite my father reluctance, said she wanted to go to the funeral. It meant crossing London and we set out by train. Somehow we were walking in a London street when the siren sounded. Along with everyone else we dashed into the nearest underground station. There I remember seeing lines of bunk beds along the walls which I later saw in films being used by the local people at night to shelter from the bombing. I don’t remember the funeral but I expect I was not allowed to go.
Another move and we were back in Surrey. Father worked for the AID (Aircraft Inspection Dept.) which is what he had been doing at Hatfield. He’d had an accident on the day war broke out and suffered concussion, not so well treated or understood as today. At the age of forty, plus the accident, he could not join up although he had tried. So he was posted to various places. This time it was RFD’s in Godalming. Another flat and another school for me. RFD made barrage balloons which were seen flying everywhere to deter the German planes. I never heard if they did any good. Anyway Father had to inspect the balloons.
At this time father always carried a large knife in a sheath on his belt. As far as I know it was not illegal at that time. In the factory he had to climb in between the double skins of the inflated balloon within large hangers. He then had to walk the balloons rolling them around the floor of the hanger testing the seams. One day someone left a lighted blow torch on the floor and he rolled the balloon onto it and it caught fire. When he realised what was happening he used his knife to cut himself out of the outer skin and escaped death once more.
Another move and we were back in Guildford again. There I was sent to a private school which was so awful I will not name it. Two women were making money out of the fact that so many parents were either in the forces or doing war work that they had to find somewhere to leave the children. It took mostly boarders but I was a day girl at this time and they kept them both term and holiday time. We were all badly treated, ill fed and beaten. I had my thumb dislocated but a beating with a steel ruler. Boys were beaten with a dog whip.
At first life was quite good for me as a day girl. Mother was very good at making the food rations go round. I remember mother and father going to what would now be called a health store. We bought a packet mix called Nut Rissole which was then mixed with potato and made into a sausage shape. I made the house smell from top to bottom twice a week but it certainly helped eke out the rations. I was a pampered only child and we lived in a nice part of Guildford in a rented house. Most houses and flats were rented then. At my eighth birthday party I had ten children from the school present and some local friends. Two of these and myself put on a show in the garage. This was interesting because it was mainly put together by a young 16 year old by the name of Tom Lingwood who was mad about the stage and in later life he became a president of the Arts Council.
Mother and father seemed to live well. They had parties which at one of them a guest put her handbag on a window sill and lifted the blackout blinds. We were fined for showing a light. Mother was working for a local photographer in Guildford who mostly took photos of service men stationed nearby to send to wives and sweethearts before being sent to fight. The lady she worked for was a brilliant photographer and was the personal private photographer of Lloyd George. The trouble was she was a German Jewess who had escaped to England before the war. Trust us to have a German friend, for that is what she became, during a war when anything German was loathed and detested.
Mother and father had always tried to do any voluntary war work they could. One time they worked all night adding on an extra piece to every ones gas masks because it was discovered that they would not protect against some certain gas, I don’t know which. I was put to sleep under the work bench and they worked until they had blistered hands and then went to their ordinary work in the morning. Father joined the Home Guard now called ‘Dads Army’ and he served up on Stag Hill where Guildford Cathedral now stands. At that time there were only the foundations and crypt in which they sat when on duty. (See notes)
They always tried to make overseas troops welcome in their home and all sorts went through our house. I particularly remember the Canadians who later called by as they were passing, in their tank! I was woken up, in bed by 6.30 in those days, to be given chocolate, what a treat. We never heard from them again because although we did not realise it at the time, I now think they were on their way to Dieppe.
Somewhere about this time father was accepted by the Fleet Air Arm. He went in on the lower decks but later was commissioned. I remember meeting him at Guildford station as he came home on leave. He was dressed in bell bottoms uniform and carried his kit bag and his hammock bound with seven turns for the seven seas. I think he was stationed at Plymouth but it was certainly there that he got his commission. He later told me that he was suddenly called for an interview and he hadn’t shaved that morning. He stood in the ablutions trying to burn off his beard with matches!
Mother, being of French parents and speaking a little French, offered to take in Free French Forces who needed recuperation. Several came to stay including some very brave men. This touches some very personal things which I do not wish to describe here except to say my father had become very difficult to live with due to terrible headaches and very bad temper, probably a legacy of the concussion. Enough to say that mother became more than friends with one of these Frenchmen and as they put it in those days ‘ran off with him’. She lived with him in France after the war until his death in the seventies.
Father rushed home on compassionate leave after receiving a letter from mother saying she was going and taking me with her. Once home he refused to allow her to take me as he could do in those days. Mother went alone and I only saw her very rarely until I was an adult. My lovely life disappeared over night. I was sent to board at the awful school and father went back to the navy. This was Doodlebug time and although Guildford had been very lucky regarding bombs (See notes) these horrible things dropped anywhere. I was taken to see the remains of one once. At the school we were continually hungry while we watched the headmistress and her friend eat well at the head table. We were looked after by Irish teenaged girls who took delight in bullying us and we slept in dormitories that had mice running round every night. There were no shelters and we were told to get out of bed if we heard a siren and get underneath it — with the mice!! One time I was so tired getting in and out of bed all night long that I took a blanket and pillow and just slept the whole night under the bed. We were never taught anything and I have suffered all my life from those dreadful years. At eleven I could read because my mother had taught me while in Devon, but not write and could not add two and two. I have more or less caught up now and had two books published. How many children’s education suffered during the war. It left me with a father who regarded me as stupid and, I think, I’m dyslectic. I still can’t spell properly, thank goodness for computers and spell checks.
The last thing about this school. We all suffered from head lice, nits as we called them. They tried every cure to get rid of them but none worked. By this time father had been invalided out of the navy, due to the headaches, and was working somewhere near Guildford. He would come to take me away some weekends and we would spend the night in some very cheap, hotel. The school said my nits came from my father as they got worse after every visit. Of course they had just multiplied when not taken out every night by the Irish ‘nurses’. Father raged insulted by this so he got hold of some raw DDT, a grey powder and on one of these visits he rubbed it straight into my hair overnight. I had nightmares all night long but in the morning all the nits were in the bed, dead! I never had another nit or head louse. Heaven knows what the raw DDT did to me, impregnated my head I should think.
The end of the war was in sight and father promised that the day it ended he would come and get me from the school and true to his word he did. We went up to the famous cobbled Guildford High Street and stood opposite the town hall and the hanging clock. There we heard Churchill’s speech relayed to the crowds with all the town dignitaries standing on the balcony. (See notes) When it had finished the mayor made a speech and at the end he pointed with a flourish to the hill called the Hoggs Back which overlooks Guildford and cried ‘There will be a bonfire on the hill tonight, bring everything we can burn’. The crowd cheered and cheered.
As it grew dark we all made our way up the Hoggs Back hill to a fire that had already been started. I remember people staggering up the hill with complete black out blinds on wooden frames which they cast into the fire. There was lots of singing and dancing and we joined in long chains of people that did a sort of Conga dance round and round the fire, hundreds and hundreds of people. Later that night I was taken back to the awful school and left there for another six months. I later heard that as soon as school inspectors came in after the war it was immediately closed down.
So ended my war but the effects continue on down the years. Although I found my mother after the war we never really got on. She is now in her nineties and lives in France, more French than English. My father and I lived a real gypsy life until I was 15 when I went to live in a YWCA hostel and went to Guildford Art School for a year. No more money as father was always out of work and I had to find a job. At 16 I joined the Observer Corp and was one of the few women Observers on a post. At 18 I joined the WRAF to be free of parental control. I did four years service and when I came out I was over 22 and my own person. I have found out that I am far from stupid and have done many things in my life, but always, until the last twenty years, been unable to settle. Father died in 1980.
Notes

1/ As mentioned father served in the Home Guard which was almost as ridiculous as the TV series. They patrolled up and down Stag Hill with one rifle passed on to the next man on duty with nothing up the spout! I was mentioning this to a man I met in the 60s plus the fact of being outside the Guildford town hall on VE day when he told me he had been one of the officers on the balcony of the town hall that day. He also told me that during the war the powers that be wondered how the Germans seemed to find London unerringly going via Guildford. Knowing the area well, he had been sent up in a plane at night to see if he could work it out. He did. Passing over Stag Hill in the moonlight the white concrete foundations were a clear directional cross pointing east. He said the foundations were painted out in black but I don’t knew the truth of this story.
2/ Also concerning Stag Hill. Sometime after the war father was reading a newspaper when his hair stood on end. It was all about operation Sea Lion which was the German plans to invade England. The part which really got to him was that German paratroopers were going to land on Stag Hill and take Guildford as a head quarters to make for London. Stag Hill, that’s where he had been patrolling up and down with one rifle and no bullets!
It also answered why Guildford was not very badly bombed, the Germans had wanted it intact. Had we known, it was one of the safest places to be.
3/ The Frenchman that became my mother partner was a very brave resistance fighter. Captured by the Germans and forced work on an airfield he stole a German aircraft and flew it whole to England. He fought with the Free French Forces for the rest of the war but I don’t know any details.
4/ Three sounds throw me back into wartime, a siren sounding — I still can catch the very first low deep growl on start up — Piston aircraft droning, recently a Lancaster bomber flew low over our house when I didn’t know it was in the district and I froze — and explosions. My husband was born after the war and once when we lived in Sutton, Surrey, there was a loud bang late at night. ‘That’s an explosion’ I told my husband. ‘Nonsense’ says he but the next day we heard on the news a bomb had been set off in Wimbledon behind some politicians house. I had recognised the ‘whoof-whoof’ of the blast but he had never heard it before. You don’t forget.
5/ A tale told by father. Once commissioned in the Fleet Air Arm he was sent to RAF Cosford to do a conversion course to Aero engines. Of course he knew all about them but still had to go. It was very boring to all of them and they spent most of their time learning all about betting from one of them that was an expert. It was also very cold and father became staunch Church of England because it was the only hut with a fire all the time. Later I was stationed there myself and it was still very cold.
The classes were held at the end of a large hanger and run by an old flight sergeant with a sense of humour. One day they arrived to find chalked up on the board ‘Dicing with Death’. The lecture was about starting up an engine by swinging the propeller. He started
“This has to be done very carefully or the prop may catch you up and throw you right over the boundary fence of the airfield.. This will lead to various charges.
1. Flying without a licence.
2. Breaking out of camp
3. And if you try to come back, Breaking into camp.
4. Being Absent without leave.
There were others but I regret I have forgotten them now but it was good to think that even in those dark times somebody bother to make cold, fed up, Fleet Air Arm men laugh.

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