War Time London - in the Eyes of a Child

WAR TIME LONDON — IN THE EYES OF A CHILD

Diana Wilkinson (nee Chambers)

[Personal details removed by moderator]

I was fourteen months old when World War II broke out in September 1939 and almost seven when Victory in Europe was declared in May 1945. Looking back, I now realise that although I was in the middle of London throughout the war I never felt insecure.

My parents had married in 1936 and had a small flat near Clapham Common. When war was declared they gave it up and moved in with my mother's parents near Wandsworth Common. As they explained years later, nobody expected the war to last very long and they would be able to find another place when it was over. Of course, that never happened and I spent my childhood with my parents and grandmother in my grandmother's house.

My grandfather was alive during the war, a kindly man and I was the apple of his eye. He always had time to play with me and rock me on his knee. When I came home from school for lunch he had my food ready and during air raids he made scrambled egg out of dried egg powder on top of a Primus stove in a shelter in the back yard. Sadly he died a month before the war ended. I can still remember him saying that two old men in our road had just died and he would be third, and gone before the war was over.

He was only in hospital for five days. His coffin was brought to the house for a couple of days before the funeral. My grandmother was very superstitious and covered all the mirrors and kept the curtains drawn — very sombre when you are only six and your beloved grandfather is lying in a coffin on trestles in the front room. I was heart broken and cried every day when I arrived at my primary school, for what seemed like weeks, and my teacher, Mrs. Jewel, was not very sympathetic. Eventually my grandmother took me to Hastings for a week, probably in an attempt to alleviate her grief as well as mine.

I didn't like the barrage balloons overhead, they were intimidating. I remember playing on swings in the local playground and asking my mother about them. She explained what they were for and I felt a bit happier. She also told me time and again not to pick up any bits of metal lying in the streets.

On a happier note, there was great excitement at home when a box wrapped in brown paper arrived from Uncle Ernie, who was in the army in Africa. It was teatime, in winter (the light was on and the curtains were drawn), and mum wondered whatever the parcel could be. Her delight knew no bounds when she took out three hands of very small bananas! They were the first bananas I had ever seen and I can still remember the taste — nothing at all like the large bananas we have today.

My father was a volunteer fireman and had not been called up at the outbreak of war, but when I was three he volunteered. We were having tea — plaice, which was very special — when he came in and announced that he had volunteered and I didn't know what he meant. He wanted to join the Paratroops regiment, but was refused because he had false teeth, so went to Aldershot instead for training in the military police. In 1943 his skull was badly fractured in a motorcycle accident whilst on active service in Algiers. He remembered regaining consciousness to find a chaplain by his bedside, but he rallied and was repatriated to London where he spent months recovering in hospital.

I remember my mother receiving a telegram and being very upset. Later on she received another, which made her happy. Then suddenly, one afternoon, there was a knock at the front door and my mother and grandmother told me to answer it. There was my dad. He had come home.

When dad joined the army, it had seemed sensible that, like hundreds of other children, I should be evacuated, away from London. As I was only three, I went with my mother to Worcester where we stayed with Mrs. Drew. I have two vivid memories of our short stay in Worcester. Mrs. Drew had a very red face and strong red arms. Every week she used to fill a zinc tub with hot water from boiling kettles, in front of the fire in her kitchen, so I could have a bath. Being only three, I was a little afraid of such a forceful lady.

My other memory is of the only time during the war when I was really frightened. With my mum, I was feeding bread to swans on the River Severn, below the cathedral, when one reared up, flapped its' wings and pecked my little finger. As mum was a London girl through and through, it was not surprising that after a month away she decided to face the rest of the war in London and returned to her parents.

Towards the end of the war the doodlebug rocket attacks started. We all dreaded hearing the dreadful noise suddenly stop because we knew that the doodlebug would then crash to the ground, into a playground, a hospital, or a house. I had whooping cough and had been in bed, which was by a window. Dad thought I was well enough to get up and took me downstairs to the kitchen. Ten minutes later a doodlebug hit houses in the next street. The force of the impact brought a ceiling down and shattered a window in our house — the one by my bed, where I had been only a few minutes before. My bed was covered with shattered glass.

I don't have any siblings, but I don't recall being lonely during the war, only being well cared for and, unwittingly, in an environment which would shape my thinking in adulthood. I was too little to understand what the grown ups meant when they talked about the Prince of Wales and said that The Abdication was the best thing for the country, and the Duke of Windsor would never have been a good king if he had stayed on the throne. Now, of course, I know exactly what they were talking about and realise that my parents were very patriotic and had great faith in King George VI and Winston Churchill.

Other conversations were about Monty and The Desert Rats (not surprising as dad served in North Africa); the Aussies and the Kiwis; the Rhine and the Resistance. All very puzzling for a child, but nonetheless had a profound effect. My dad was very proud of the British Army and had a high regard for the part played in the war by troops from Australia and New Zealand who, he told me, had the same king. The River Rhine kept cropping up at the end of the war because another uncle had been on one of the first tanks to cross the Rhine as Nazi Germany crumbled.

For many years after the war, dad took me to the Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London. There he would explain what was happening and always said, year after year, that there was nobody better than the Royal Marines — the best servicemen in the world! Without realising it, he gave me an awareness of history, duty, loyalty and patriotism, for which I am in his debt. To this day I have a tear in my eye whenever I hear the Royal Marines playing Sunset or sounding the Last Post.

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