I was ten years old when World War II began. I remember my mother and I were visiting her older sister, Lilian Windibanks, in Devon, just before the war. It was when Chamberlain, who was Prime Minister then, visited Hitler. I can hardly bear to write his name in this. Maybe I will take it out. But, anyway, it was thought then there would be a war, and on September 3rd, 1939, war was actually declared between England and Germany when the Germans marched into Poland. I was already on my way to my cousin’s who lived in the country, where it was thought to be free from bombing attacks. Their house was located near Salisbury, in a little village called Enfield. I went to school in a small one-room school house. The older kids faced one end and the younger ones the other. Coming from London, I was very amused by this arrangement.
My cousin’s husband was called up and went into the army but was quickly made a prisoner of war when Singapore fell. Before he left for the army, he knew I was afraid of the dark and would say, “Here’s that ghost coming up the stairs.” Because of this, I made my mother come and get me, and we arrived back in London to air raids every night. We lived eight miles from London Bridge near the Thames, and the German planes used to follow the Thames to get to their destination.
We had an Anderson air raid shelter (pictured below with unknown occupants) in the back yard. The condensation from our breath used to run down the wall and make our bedclothes all wet, plus all the spiders ran over us. We would be down there from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. when the all-clear would sound.
An Anderson air raid shelter
There was a man on the radio called Lord Haw Haw. He would say “Now all you rats can come out of your holes.” He broadcast from Germany, and tried to break the morale of the people. Lots of houses were bombed down. You would get out each morning to see more houses missing and more people killed and injured. I was not a Christian then, but I knew there was a God, and I prayed three little prayers every night. The prayers were The Lord’s Prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep…”, and I can’t remember the third.
My mother was taken ill with an ulcer and my grandparents came to look after me. My father worked in the munitions factory at Woolwich Arsenal. So, while my mother was in the hospital they stayed with us. I think it was early 1942. My grandfather and I went to the shops. It always was without air raids between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., so we had four hours to shop. But this particular morning, hundreds of planes came over. Well, to me it looked like hundreds. The Germans planned to do this around the clock, and it was called The Battle of Britain. My grandfather rushed me into an old sawmill and I think I was more scared of the big saws than the raid. Another time my grandfather, who was a big man, said “I can’t stay down in this shelter another minute.” He went into the house to bed. The Germans used to drop land mines by parachute and one got caught on a tree. It gradually slipped down and blew up. We all rushed into the house after the all-clear to find granddad covered in plaster from the ceiling and glass and window frames, but he was all right.