大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Doreen Bennett on behalf of Yvonne Fuller, the author and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

CHILDHOOD WARTIME MEMORIES

As I was born during the war my memories are childhood fragments.

My parents were married on 1 July 1939 and, unaware of the imminent danger of war had their honeymoon in St Malo, Brittany (France). I was a 鈥渉oneymoon baby鈥� born on 22 March 1940 in Sidcup, Kent.

My mother had been a secretary at the Conservative Central Office in the 1930鈥檃nd had frequently seen Winston Churchill. She said he was a great showman 鈥渁lways making an entrance鈥� as he came into a room, pulling off his coat and nobody then, took him seriously. She was also present at a meeting shortly after Munich when Neville Chamberlain said 鈥淕entlemen, I was playing for time鈥�.

Not long after I was born the bombing raids began and my mother Margaret Fuller took me to stay with my grandmother Hannah Booth to the old family home in Bowdon Cheshire where we stayed with my grandmother鈥檚 sister, Auntie Nell. I remember the coalmen delivering sacks of coal by horse-drawn cart and the milk coming on a cart in churns which was then poured into our smaller metal churn.

During the war when there was a lull in the bombing we came back to Sidcup. There was an Anderson shelter in the garden made of corrugated iron with earth heaped on top and later on, and much more comfortable a Morrison shelter was put inside the house. This was an iron structure about the size of a double bed with a sheet of iron, about 1cm. thick, on top and supported on iron corners with a grill all round the sides. Gran put a mattress inside it and padded all the sides with pillows. I slept in the middle between my mother and grandmother and felt very safe. They said that the shelter could withstand a house collapsing on top of it. I remember a hot 4inch saucer shaped piece of metal coming though the roof of our house and I will never forget the throbbing noise of the doodle-bugs, but thankfully we never suffered a serious hit.

My father鈥檚 house was badly damaged and luckily his mother survived because she was sitting in front of a bookcase when the blast came; the doors flew open and the books tumbled all over her and protected her. For years afterwards bits of glass had to be picked out of the books. The road opposite just disappeared.

I remember going for lunch to an old school in Bowdon where we were able to get a simple lunch 鈥� Shepherds Pie 鈥� without using up our rations, I think. It was called a 鈥淏ritish Restaurant鈥�.

I remember train journeys from London to Cheshire in trains without corridors and having to take a 鈥減o鈥�! We had one thermos and Gran made a padded cotton cover for it.

At the end of the war we came south again and there was an outdoor party at a local school which was decorated with flags and bunting.

There was no television then but we all loved to listen to ITMA and Tommy Handley programmes on the radio鈥檚 Home Service.

I saw very little of my father who stayed south throughout the war. He was in a reserved occupation, being a surveyor and had to travel from SE London to North London every day to inspect damage to the Underground. He never spoke about his work but I believe that some of the sights he saw were horrific. He was in the Home Guard and taught map reading. My Uncle Reg was a regular soldier. I remember he took me to a Zoo at New Brighton near Liverpool. I had a ride on the back of an elephant on a row of little fixed seats and later a giraffe bent over the wire of its cage and took off his army forage cap with its mouth.

I think the day to day life in the North was much more 鈥渘ormal鈥� compared to Kent and London.

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