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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Shelagh on behalf of Dawn Atlee and has been added to the site with her permission. Dawn fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Dawn’s Story

I married Joseph William Atlee when I was sixteen and he was twenty-one. We had been offered the chance of buying a bungalow in Porchester at £350, £25 down and 10 shillings a week. But sadly, we couldn’t afford it. We lived at 52 Lyndhurst Road, North End, Portsmouth. We had two rooms for 8shillings a week and a budget of £3 10s a week to live on. This dropped to £1 4s when Joe was called up.

I remember clearly the day War was declared. We had moved to 327, Queen’s Road, Copnor. I was hanging washing out in the garden when Joe called me in to listen to Neville Chamberlain’s announcement of War on the radio. After Chamberlain’s speech we sat in silence. I asked Joe if he would have to go to war.
‘No’, he said, ‘it won’t last long, only a few months.’
What an understatement!
Half an hour later the sirens were sounded and we grabbed our gas masks and dashed round to my dad’s. Dad had been expecting war to be declared and had spent the week digging a trench in the garden that we could all stand in. He had to go quite deep to accommodate Joe! When we got there we stood in the trench and dad pulled a corrugated piece of iron over us to cover our heads. There we stood until the all clear went.

Joe was called up and joined the Hampshire regiment. He was at Dunkirk and fought a rearguard action until finally he was brought back. He was part of the last groups to be returned home safely. We went to Portsmouth station to meet him. The soldiers returning were a sorry sight. They were dirty, some barefooted and their clothes were torn and ripped. Mum went to one end of the platform and I to the other end. It was difficult to tell who these bearded, unkempt men were. As I searched, I heard a voice saying ‘Hello Cariad.’
I looked and there was my Joe, hardly recognisable with his busy, dark beard but I recognised the voice and curly hair.

Joe went on to join the newly formed parachute regiment and served in N. Africa and Italy before being parchuted down to fight at Arnhem. He had hurt his ankle in Italy and was brought back for special training for six weeks. I didn’t see him, although he was able to let me know he was in the country. I remember seeing the planes and gliders going across the channel and thinking that Joe was with them. I prayed for his safe return. He was at fighting at Arnhem for nine days and was pushed back to the Rhine. There they either swam or found boats to get accross the Rhine to the Allies lines. Joe swam across and was picked up by the Army.

I joined the Wrens in March, 1940 when I was eighteen. I trained at Pendragon, Southsea and, as the boat crews had no places, was assigned to become an officer’s stewardess. I looked after six officers. We had to valet their uniforms and serve them in the wardroom. We served breakfast and then sorted out their cabins. I remember one wren in tears because she had made the officer’s bed with the anchor the wrong way round! The ‘at homes’ when they entertained other officers were lovely. The Marine band played the music of the day and we were all dressed in our best.

People living in Portsmouth had to cope with frequent air raids but unlike other cities, our air raids did not seem to be so frequently reported. When the sirens went, people went to the nearest shelter. You didn’t lean against the sides as they vibrated with the sounds of the gunfire and bombs. The men sometimes had to stand with their hand pressing against the sides of the shelter to hold it steady. People worried about their pets as they were banned from the shelters. One of our neighbours had a small dog which she hid under a blanket. It never made a sound so no one knew that it was there.

The navy was a great help. Sailors helped the fire brigade dig people out. People who had lost their homes in a raid would push their belongings in prams and carts. Vans would come round with cold food and hot drinks for people. I remember a mass funeral at Kingston Cemetery.

On September 17,1941 the Battle of Britain was really bad. The sirens went and people ran for the nearest shelter. I was off duty and my mother had come home from night duty as a sister at St. Mary’s hospital. I heard the ‘zum zum’ of a German plane.
‘There’s a Jerry up there,’ I told my mother.
‘There is,’ she replied and we went out into the sunny afternoon and looked up. I heard a ‘sss’ sound and saw a sliver glint that landed on St. Alban’s church in Copnor Road. The bomb completely demolished the church. I was lifted up by the force of the bomb and thrown in the Anderson Shelter and my mother was thrown across the kitchen. The fire station was opposite and firemen came dashing over to see if we were alright. The chaos and noise was terrible.

The anti aircraft battery brought down the plane and the wounded pilot was taken to hospital. The vicar visited him and asked him why he had bombed the church. He told him that he had been aiming at the train passing by at the time. It had been a munitions train and if he had hit it, the death and carnage would have been terrible. The pilot who was only a young man, died in hospital.

The doodlebugs were awful. I hated those. The first ones landed at Langstone Harbour. They sounded like motorbikes. As soon as the noise stopped people dropped flat or ran for shelter. The bombs just dropped out of the sky, they were terrible.

Generally, people’s morale was very good. People helped each other and Portsmouth was full of colonial troops, Ghurkhas, the Free French and later the American with their candy and dances. People had a ‘what will be will be’ attitude. The Germans were in the air and we were on the ground and we just had to cope. When Joe was on leave we would go out and pretend that there wasn’t a war. We would close our eyes and imagine there was no war; it was good to forget the war for a while and just be happy together.

When the war ended, I went to celebrate. My friend called for me in her car and by the time we got to Guildhall Square there were about ten people riding on the car with us. People took the seats from Victoria Park and burnt them in the square. Everyone went mad. There was such a feeling of relief: no more bombing, going in air raid shelters that were knee deep in water. We lived so differently then, times were hard with rationing, bombing raids and the constant worry about loved ones.

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