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When is Daddy Coming Home?
Anne Vine (nee Graham)©

PART 1

FAMILY LIFE IN LEATHERHEAD, SURREY;
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR
We lived at 30 Albany Park Road, In September 1939 I was three years and five months old and I can remember the broadcast by Mr Chamberlain, not because of what he said but because my mother suddenly started crying. I felt very frightened and angry with the man on the wireless for making my mummy cry.
The next thing I remember is walking to Leatherhead Station to see my father off on a train. I do not recall knowing where he was going, just that he was going away and he was not taking my mother or me with him. He had been called up into the Royal Artillery and was going to Scotland for his basic training. My father was 31 years old. A few days later I saw my mother winding the clock and she was crying. This had always been my father’s job, and the clock had stopped because he was not there to wind it.
The first air raid warning I can remember was during the day. My cousins, Fred Thomas and Ted Noble, had taken me over the bridge to Anderson’s, a grocers shop on the roundabout, to buy a packet of tea. We also went into Weller’s, the sweet shop next door, where they bought me a toy army camp bed. I was carrying the shopping, the tea in one hand and the toy bed in the other. We had just started up the bridge, right opposite the gas works (now Ashtead Plant Hire), when the siren went off. The siren was fixed to the tall chimney of the gas works. Fred grabbed one of my hands and Ted the other and they ran. I swear that my feet did not touch the ground until we reached home but I know that my legs were going like pistons! When we got home there was one very squashed packet of tea and one slightly bent toy camp bed.
Every night during the Battle of Britain, the German bombers and fighter planes overflew us. In fact the route became known as Bomb Alley, if they had not unloaded all their bombs on London they dropped them on the way back to the coast. (When I later worked for Dorking Urban Council I found out that there had been 144 bombs dropped on the Dorking area during the war). In Leatherhead, the nearest house to us to be bombed and totally demolished was one at the top end of Copthorne Road, almost opposite the Catholic Church. A bomb also fell on the Golf Club House which stood behind what is now B & Q, in Kingston Road. In those days the site was used as a car service company and people used shelters dug into the banks behind the works.
During this time my aunt and uncle lived with my mother and me. My father was still in Scotland. Uncle Tom had been seconded into munitions and working the night shift at an engineering factory in Ashtead. The house had been turned upside down — the living rooms had become our bedrooms and vice-versa. Every window had to be blacked out at night and most people made curtains of blackout material. My uncle, however, had made wooden shutters, which were put over the downstairs windows every evening. If this was not done properly a visit from the Air Raid Warden was a very quick result. Our local warden was Mr Hutchins who lived three doors along from us.
With my uncle at work every night there were just my mother, my aunt and me in the house. My Auntie Margaret was terribly frightened and to try to keep her calm my mother persuaded her to knit. It did not always help, when she was scared she chewed her nails and they were invariably bitten down to the quick and very painful. The result of all the knitting though, was that I had numerous beautifully knitted dresses and I remember a lovely pair of purple gloves with wide embroidered cuffs which went over my coat sleeves halfway up to my elbows — I was so proud of them.
I vividly remember one night when my father was home on leave and Uncle Tom was there too, I was in my cot, knitting! Well, I called it knitting — I was casting stitch after stitch onto a needle until I could get no more on but as far as I was concerned I was knitting.
The air raid warning had gone off and suddenly there was a terribly loud whistling noise. My mother and aunt dived to the floor and my father and my uncle flung themselves right over me in my cot. There was the most almighty thump and all the windows rattled but luckily did not break. When everyone picked themselves up my mother tells me that I smiled very sweetly at everybody and said ‘That made you all move, didn’t it?’ The bomb had fallen where now the CEGB have their pylons at the back of their offices. Then, of course, it was open fields. In the years following, that crater became one of our favourite playgrounds.
My mother received only £1.10s.0d a week allotment from my father’s army pay (£1.50). She had still to pay the mortgage on our house and feed and clothe the two of us, so she had to go out to work. She worked at The Red House Hotel at the top of Bull Hill, Four of my aunts and a cousin also worked there in various capacities; they were chambermaids, waitresses, the linen maid and chef’s assistant.(The Red House Hotel later became part of the Council Offices before it was pulled down and offices were built on the site.)
It was during this period that I caught Whooping Cough which developed into Bronchial Pneumonia. Although my mother still had to go to work, she and her sisters made sure that I was well looked after whilst I was ill. (just one of the benefits of an extended family). Even so, what with working full time, looking after me and disturbed nights because of the nightly air raids, my mother and my Aunt Margaret became more and more tired. They took turns to sit with me whilst the other slept during the night. The night the pneumonia reached its climax they were both sitting with me but they were exhausted and fell asleep, to wake up to find that the fever had broken and that I, happily, was much better. One good thing to come from that bout of pneumonia was that my father was given compassionate leave, although he was not able to get home until I was on the road to recovery
It cost my mother 7s.6d.(35p) every time our doctor, Elizabeth Blair, a tiny Scottish lady, walked through our door. If one went to the surgery it was 5s.0d.(25p).With all the usual childhood complaints, and the stomach condition with which I suffered, my poor mother was never without a doctor’s bill. I suppose these charges seem little enough nowadays, but then it was a very great worry. I do remember having a terrible fight with Dr. Blair! It was over a dose of milk of magnesia — she wanted me to take it and I didn’t! It ended up with me, in my cot, with my mother
holding my head, my aunt holding one arm and my grandmother holding the other arm, while Dr.Blair tried to spoon the medicine into my mouth. The problem was that they had forgotten my legs and I kicked out. I can still see Dr. Blair with milk of magnesia running down her face and dripping onto her fur coat. My poor mother was mortified!
SCHOOL
My first day at school! Walking down Albany Park and Dilston Roads, across the Kingston Road to All Saints School (The North Leatherhead Community Association), a shoe bag and my Mickey Mouse gas mask in a square box bouncing on my bottom. At the door there was this very tall, thin lady in a blue tweed suit, scant grey hair in a tight bun at the back of her head. She said ‘Are you starting school?’ Her bony hand grasped mine and she let me, terrified, into the school, leaving my mother on the doorstep. This was Miss Booth. My first teacher was Mrs Dodman — she was lovely!
There were four air raid shelters at the back of the school. Long trenches had been dug out, the reinforced shelters built in the trenches and all the earth piled back on top. There were several steps down and a very solid door. Inside, along both sides of what seemed to be a very long tunnel, were slatted wooden seats. There were lights along the middle of the roof but they were not very bright. If we were in class when the air raid siren sounded we all had to stand up, put on our gas masks and march, two by two, out into the playground, down the steps and into our shelter. Once seated and still wearing our gas masks, we sang!
It must have sounded terrible. The Mickey Mouse gas masks were bright red with a nose piece which was like an almost triangular flattened tube and if one got it just right one could make the most wonderful ‘rude’ noises by blowing. It was like when one blows up a balloon and then stretches the nozzle and forces out the air. Needless to day it didn’t take us long to learn that particular trick.
I recall we did not use the shelters for very long for, because of the design, they were prone to flooding and there cannot have been any pumps installed and they eventually became a perfect home for tadpoles and frogs. Good for nature study! After the war the shelters were removed and each class had a garden to look after where they had been.
We had our school lunches at the All Saints Church Hall (The Gardeners Benevolent Association). Every day at 12 o’clock we had to walk, in a long crocodile, across the main road and along to the hall. It seems to me, looking back, that we had corned beef, mashed potatoes and cabbage every day, with sago and jam to follow. I know this isn’t so but I cannot remember any other meals except for a sickly sweet pink pudding. It was years after the war before I could eat corned beef again!
Miss Booth’s class was held in a room at the back of the Church Hall. We were completely separate from the rest of the school there — but we didn’t have so far to go for lunch!! We had our own separate little assembly each morning and Miss Booth’s favourite hymn was Holy, Holy, Holy, which we had to sing every day. It is not hard to guess which is my least favourite hymn these days. Of course there were no shelters at the Church Hall so when there was an air raid we had to sit on the floor under our desks. The hall was quite near the railway line and there was an anti aircraft gun, mounted on a railway wagon which used to trundle up and down the line and which used to come into its own whenever there was an air raid.
The mother of one of the girls in our class worked as a porter at Leatherhead Station and, because of the anti aircraft gun, Sylvia was convinced that the station was going to be bombed. She spent every air raid crying that the Germans were going to kill her mummy. Mrs Sharp taught us to knit - boys and girls alike - and we spent several lessons a week knitting socks for soldiers and gloves and balaclavas. I do not ever remember finishing anything but I suppose we must have done.
School life carried on as normally as possible, all the usual lessons and exams. We had all the usual celebrations and ceremonies. On Empire Day - now Commonwealth Day - we all paraded in the playground, saluted the flag and sang ‘God save the King’. In those days All Saints catered for children from five to eleven years old, at which age the children went up to the Central School (Woodville Middle School now). Boys and girls were not allowed to play together in those days; the boys used the playground at the back of the school and the girls the one in the front of the building. This was slightly unfair; the boys had grass and playground whereas the girls just had tarmac playground!

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