大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the Peoples War site by Alan Jeffery for Kent Libraries & Archives and Canterbury City Council Museums on behalf of Rosemary Wood and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in 1935 in Mottingham SE9 (Kent) into a family called Phillips, a happy extended family with grandparents just down the road By 1939 the family comprised of father Philip a cargo superintendent in the city of London, mother Olivia, an artist but full time Mum, sister Hazel and brother Richard and a young woman called Dorothy Utteridge.
By the time war was declared the family were on holiday at West Runton in Norfolk, I remember an atmosphere of disturbance and we came home immediately. My Father, not wanting children of seven, four and three to be sent away to the country, spoke to shipping friends at the Baltic exchange and two of them offered accommodation at once.
We went first to Onslow village near Guildford to a family called Turgell, the father called Rene, was of Russian/ Egyptian extraction and his wife was an artist and both were extremely fond of children. They had a son Philip, who was in the RAF and was eventually killed to the huge distress of everyone, particularly his sister Barbara, who eventually committed suicide. It was an ordinary three-bedroom house and I think we children slept in the attic.
I remember sitting there being examined for nits which was common in those days. My mother and Mrs Turgell went to art classes and mother made mats out of pewter and cork and we used them for years, and we children went to nursery school and I made a Christmas tree out of coloured paper.
After Christmas 1939 we moved to other friends called Edwards who lived on the North Downs between Caterham and Bletchingly, nearby was Kenley aerodrome and across the downs to the east, Biggin Hill. This elderly couple welcomed us into their cottage, all six of us. I remember a very cold and snowy winter and the joy of sliding down slippery slopes. By the spring we had found a house just down the hill called Dome Hill, before the war, a Norwegian called Dome designed houses in the Tudor style which included beams of ships timbers and oak floors, central heating and large gardens backing onto fields and woods. A hidden valley in the North Downs. Because of an unfinished tennis court in our garden, which was a sea of white chalk an uncle (in the RAF) warned us that from the air it would be a target, so it was covered with chicken houses, runs and chickens, a wonderful source of food. My parents dug a large kitchen garden and I can picture my Mother now digging potatoes.
The Battle of Britain gave us our first sight of many aeroplanes. The fighters in formation vapour trails making patterns in the sky, and the cheerful British roundel on the underside of the wings. One fine Sunday on a picnic at Viewpoint, we had to shelter in the woods because of dogfights going on above us. Then came the Blitz, when we often had to sleep down stairs and one night our mother led to a north facing window to show us London on fire, a red glow in the sky.
One day a neighbour, Marie Wood, ran up the road crying "the woods are on fire", German bombers would release their spare bombs on the way home and I remember cycling past craters on the way to school. During all this disruption we went to school everyday, walking two miles up the hill and through the woods to our little convent at the end of a long road. My father travelled to the city everyday by train, he joined the ARP and did duties at night, and Mother joined the WVS and helped to run a canteen on Caterham on the Hill. Many families left our area and we enjoyed great freedom and ran wild in these abandoned, neglected gardens. These empty houses became accommodation for, first of all, the Carlton York regiment from Canada. Army lorries arrived one day piled high with wooden planks and two huts were built in the field opposite, one was to be the cookhouse and the other was for stores. The officers' mess was in the house next door and my parents entertained these men so far from home. These included Major Waterson, Captain Bud Stein and Lieutenant Thornton. We children used to sit on the stairs, listening to the piano music and singing. My mother was a wonderful pianist and my Father had a beautiful base baritone voice and he sang ballads and songs from musicals.
We children were fascinated by the sight of the soldiers drilling outside in the road and thrilled when our cat, Sooty, ran up the sergeant's back during a parade. The soldiers were amazed at this small cat who fought a large weasel and won, I can see them even now, standing and watching this episode in the field behind our house. Soldiers used to do tank manoeuvres in the fields and in their spare time, pole vaulting. The cook made us cookies and my Mother used to send my brother and I to the cookhouse to collect scraps for the chickens.
After the Canadians left for North Africa, the East Surrey regiment arrived. For some reason the officers had to come to our house for baths. One of the officers wrote to my mother that Dorothy was being wooed by a soldier who was already married, this was a very difficult situation for Mother, but she and Dorothy were great friends and it was resolved, although Dorothy had to leave us in 1942 to go into munitions. We missed her, as we all loved her very much. She eventually married Bill, her first soldier boyfriend, but sadly died in childbirth.
Food rationing affected us, but my Mother did occasionally get hold of under the counter meat and we grew all our own vegetables. We were able to pick fruit in a large garden owned by Lady McRoberts, her three sons were all killed in service with the RAF and she wrote a book called "I had three sons". How I relate to her now, I have three sons of my own and am so grateful they have not had to go to war. My Mother bottled the fruit and made jam, and eggs from our chickens were preserved in isingglass (a jelly like liquid that preserved eggs for a long time). We had pretty awful food at school, Mother sometimes sent us to the British Restaurant, a government organisation, where I remember a huge roll of suet with pieces of ham, one about every twelve inches, horribly lumpy custard and soapy mock cream in the buns, but I do love spam fritters still, and of course no sugar in tea or coffee.
In summer 1943 I was continually unwell, the doctor advised a seaside holiday, so we went off by train to Torquay. To the Osborne Hotel in one of the bays. On the whole, we were rather an indulged generation, parents not strict, I suppose they thought we had enough to contend with, so compared to Europe and Far East we were very fortunate. My Mother gave me a book describing in pictures the happy life of a child in Poland before the war and I remember my shock upon turning the page to find a small girl alone in the burned out forest.
Even children could sense the impending invasion and the buzz and excitement around, we were also having to contend with the new weapon, the flying bomb and the day after the congregational church in Caterham was destroyed by one of these things, my mother, taking a detour on her bicycle, was run into by an American motorcyclist, her badly cut leg was stitched up by an American MO (Medical Officer), my sister, aged twelve ran the house, whilst my Mother was in bed downstairs, and did all the cooking.
These doodlebugs were horrible, as the tomboy of the family I was put to sleep at night in the reinforced cupboard under the stairs while to rest of the family slept under the piano and dining room table. I think they thought I would not be afraid, but I was and I lay there listening to this awful menacing sound, waiting for the noise to stop and thinking I would be the only one saved and not wanting to left alone without my lovely family.
After a few weeks of this my Father sent us to the West Country. We first went to a farm in Somerset, where we helped with the harvest and put on theatrical shows for the village. We were quite a theatrical family and had continued doing shows since early in the war. We then shared a house with another family at Exmouth in Devon where my father taught me to swim beyond the sea defences in the sea, even now I am not afraid of a cold English sea.
We came home for school in September, I think by then even the rockets had stopped as well as the V2s, so during that winter we followed the progress of our armies across Europe in the newspapers, Picture Post and radio and newsreels, we were avid cinema goers and lapped up all the romantic films and one in particular I remember,"The way to the Stars", a real tearjerker. It was a very dramatic time and I remember on VE day, cycling to Caterham to buy a small Union jack and thinking life is going to very dull as we had reached the end of the European war, but we had a new threat to contend with after dropping the first of the atomic bombs.
I have always felt strongly that this wartime generation gave their lives and well being in the cause of freedom and I am everlastingly grateful for such a full life, and I hope I have inspired my three sons to carry on this tradition. We must always have hope even in the situations that we face today.
The sight of uniforms as a child left a resounding impact upon me; even when I see soldiers now I exclaim to myself,"There they are again".

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