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This contribution to WW2 People's War website was received by Paula Lucas, a volunteer story-gatherer for the Action Desk, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Norfolk at an event attended by the Norfolk and Suffolk Pensioners' Association, and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf of Mrs Jean Wilding-Lund.

I was fifteen when the war began. My father worked for Customs and Excise and was evacuated with the Department to Blackpool.

Four days before war was declared I was evacuated to Hampden Park, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, with my school, Balham Central School. My mother was left behind in Tooting, London with my dog, and had to endure the Battle of Britain by herself. We had a marvellous time in Hampden Park as we shared a boys’ school. I was billeted with Mrs Smith, a widow who kept a local sweet shop.

When invasion was expected, some of the pupils went back to London and the rest of the school moved to Llanelly in South Wales. On arrival we were lined up and picked out by local people who billeted us. A friend and I were lucky in being chosen by Mr and Mrs Morgan Jones. Theirs was on old-fashioned house and the toilet and washing facilities were outside adjoining the kitchen. My friend was unhappy as an evacuee and so went back to London. My father wouldn’t let me return at that stage of the war and I stayed on and had a very happy two-and-a-half years. As I’d finished school the teachers let me help out with the younger pupils and I really enjoyed it.

When I was eighteen, my father returned to London and insisted that I did too. I loved Wales so much I immediately ran back to the Joneses, but my father telegrammed and made them send me back.

I then decided to join the WRENS, but my father wouldn’t sign the forms and got a friend to give me a job in the Admiralty. I wouldn’t have that, so I found one myself in the Accounting Department of National Savings, based in Great Smith Street in Westminster.

I used to sketch a lot and make various craft things and the head of my department knew this, and also that I was bored with doing the accounts. He heard of an opening in the Art Department of the Publishing Division and put in a good word for me. I was transferred there on Boxing Day. The same day a young deaf artist, Herbert Lee-Thatcher, started.

The department consisted of about fourteen artists, from cartoonists to portrait painters and letterers, who designed all the posters and leaflets for the various War Savings campaigns. I was an assistant to the person in charge of supplying photos used by the artists. The artwork went to our display department, which supplied silk-screen prints and displays to all the Post Offices and to groups all over the country who were selling National Saving Stamps and Certificates. I had permission to get war photos from the forces and from various photographers including those who took photos that were put up in Trafalgar Square as part of one of the campaigns. I had a wonderful time.

As well as working I became an ARP Warden, and together with my father, who became chief warden for our street, had some narrow escapes during air raids. I also helped in the WVS, serving tea and coffee at Charing Cross and Victoria Stations where I met loads of Americans and Canadians as well as English from all the services.

The young artist and I gradually got to know each other and became an item. He lodged at Croydon, which wasn’t far from where I lived, and he was also a despatch rider in the ARP. One night when the bombing was on he went home and decided not to go into the shelter but sleep in his room. The bomb that fell was two doors from him and the house he was in got most of the blast. When the ARP came and were told he was in the house they went to look for him. His room was a complete mess. The bed was suspended on rafters. A door was lying across the bed with loads of rubble on top, and underneath was my boyfriend, still fast asleep. They said being deaf and asleep saved him. My father knew about the bomb and was afraid to tell me, until he found out Herbert was still alive. My mother said he could have our front room and I went over to bring him back. When I met him at the Railway Station I couldn’t recognise him. He was covered in soot and dirt, he had a holey jumper on and his trousers were all torn. He was really upset that he’d lost a lot of his paintings and clothes.

By this time the Doodlebugs had started. They were like miniature planes but had no pilots. These were frightening because while you could hear one you knew you were OK, but once the noise stopped — beware. You then knew it was going to drop somewhere. We had one bad experience. We were in the Cinema when the alert went and we all had to leave the building. We actually saw it coming, lower and lower, and suddenly it cut out and everyone was running, trying to see where it would drop. It fell about a mile from us and demolished three houses.

Another time my father was on duty during an alert and standing by our gate. I was standing by the front door. A bug sailed silently over our heads and dropped in the next street. The blast came over to us. My father landed in the middle of the hole by the coal cellar where my mother and the dog were, and I landed up against our back door. Two houses level with ours in the next street were demolished. Luckily the people were in the street shelter and the houses either side were intact. When we recovered we saw that the road outside was covered with pieces of shrapnel. I collected some, which I still have.

Herbert, who later became my first husband, came from Huddersfield and as the war went on and we were gradually winning and things began to get back to normal, he took me up for a change of scene and to meet his parents. The funny thing was the first night we were in Huddersfield there was an air raid. The planes were looking for the ICI factory but the bombs luckily missed it and fell on fields. Everyone said we’d brought the bombs with us because it was the first raid they’d had and when we went for a second visit the same thing happened.

Towards the end of the war Sir Harold Mackintosh [who in 1946 had become head of the savings movement and responsible for the publicity for wartime saving] hired the Stoll theatre in Kingsway, London and a show was put on for all the staff and people from all the villages who had taken part in the various War Savings Campaigns.

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