大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People War鈥檚 site by Annie Keane on behalf of Doreen Lamb and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived at the outbreak of war in Deal at Kent. My father was a Royal Marine at Deal in Kent. I remember clearly the day that war broke out as it was my mother鈥檚 birthday. It was a Sunday and we鈥檇 just come home from church service when they sounded the first air raid warning, which was a practice. Being children my friend and I dived straight under the table. It was soon followed by an all clear siren.

A couple of weeks later my father was told that he would be shipped out of Deal as it was an area that was going to be bombed from across the channel and they were advised to move the family out of the area. My mother wanted to be close to her mother and family so we came to London. The day we travelled was just after Dunkirk. I can remember being on the train coming to London with young and old men that had been in the little boats. They looked absolutely exhausted having been part of the flotilla that had rescued people. Despite being exhausted they tried to offer my mother a seat. Her response was 鈥淵ou need it far more than me.鈥�

During the blitz we moved out of London to a family holiday bungalow at Laindon in Essex, now part of Basildon new town. We stayed there until the worst of the blitz was over and then returned to London. Shortly after returning my mother鈥檚 eldest sister and her two children, one a baby, the other aged ten, were evacuated to Morecambe in Lancashire. Soon after arriving there the lady to whom my aunt and family had been allocated encouraged her to bring the rest of the family to safety and helped find accommodation for us all. We stayed there for approximately two years and then returned to London.

When the doodlebugs (V1s) started Mrs Fitton, the lady to whom my aunt had been evacuated sent my aunt a telegram saying 鈥減lease come back, I have accommodation for everyone.鈥� The cottage that she lived in was one of four cottages that belonged to a farm without buildings adjacent. She had spoken to the farmer and with his assistance and that of neighbours and villagers in Torresholme, just outside Morecombe, they had converted outbuildings and knocked through the doorway, built a staircase from her cottage so that we could use the accommodation having installed bunk-beds. We stayed with her for quite some time, but unfortunately she had to go in to hospital and my mother and grandmother thought we ought to leave.

They approached the billeting officer in Morecambe for accommodation, he said he couldn鈥檛 help at that time, come back next week. After leaving his office my mother and grandmother walked along the sea front, turned into a street called Skipton street, saw what they thought was an empty house, went back to the office, reported it and found it listed as available accommodation and we were all moved in. It had previously been a boarding house, the owners were aliens who had been interned during the war. We stayed there until the end of the war in Europe and travelled home the day before VE day.

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