When Nanna was nine — for Laura and Kate

I wrote this for my grandchildren when they became nine - the age I was when the war began

No one in England had experienced war here before and had not seen pictures as we do today. There was no TV.

I lived in a city right in the middle of England called Coventry.

When I was nine, I was in the junior school. I had a lovely teacher called Miss Carter. Another interesting point is that before the war all lady teachers were not married. If they got married they had to leave teaching! This changed when the war came because so many men had to join the Services (army, navy or air force) that it was necessary for women teachers to stay on, and, of course, this has never changed!

Probably the first thing that we children really noticed about preparations for war was when we were all given gas masks which we had to practise putting on quickly in school. They came in a plain cardboard box roughly 20cm x 15cm x 15cm.
The gas mask itself was made of rubber which smelt horrible and had thick straps which went over the head. There was a window at eye level — if the straps were adjusted properly. At the bottom end was a greeny, bluey cylinder which had a sort of mesh at the bottom end which was supposed to filter out any poisonous gas if the enemy planes dropped any poisonous gas bombs. They never did anywhere at all.
There were different kinds of gas mask for babies, toddlers and members of the Services.

It was arranged that if war did break out, children in cities like Coventry and many others should be evacuated.
Before the war Coventry was probably the best known place in Britain for the manufacture of cars. When it became likely that there would be a war, all car manufacture stopped and the factories all began making bombs, guns etc. which would be needed by our Forces. We didn’t know what the various factories were making because they didn’t want any German spies to find out.
Still, they expected that these factories would be bombed ( bombing wasn’t accurate in those days, there were no computers etc. as we have today) and it was obvious that many homes were likely to be bombed, so it was decided that children should be evacuated to stay in the country which was not so likely to be attacked.

It was arranged that our school would go on the afternoon of Sunday 3rd. September.
As it happened, it was at 11 o’clock that morning that the Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain announced over the radio (there was no television) that Britain was at war with Germany.

We went to school with our parents and there were double-decker buses with their windows painted black waiting for us.
Every evening there was a Blackout. This meant that no lights must be visible after dark in case enemy planes were overhead and would be more easily able to see where they were. All house curtains had to be thick enough to prevent any light showing through, no street lights were allowed and car lights had special pieces fitted over them to deflect headlights down. Anyway, not many people would drive at night because petrol was rationed because it came from overseas and many ships were torpedoed (a kind of bomb which sank them)

So, that is why the buses’ windows were painted black, but it also meant that you couldn’t see much out of them even in the daytime.
I don’t remember very clearly, but I expect we were all crying. Our parents didn’t know where we were going except that we were with our teachers and they would get to know when a family in the country had taken us into their homes. Remember, my class were only nine years old. We must have been very scared.
We got onto the bus with a bag with our clothes and of course our gas masks.
In some ways, I suppose it was a kind of adventure. We were going with our friends and I don’t think we would have realised that the war might last (as it did) for years.
Hardly any ordinary family had a car in those days, neither did they go on holiday much. I never went on holiday in all my childhood except to stay with an auntie and uncle in the country.
So, the buses set off and eventually arrived at Napton-on-the-Hill. We were taken to the village school and there were lots of people from the village waiting for us. I think we were all in a bit of a daze by this time!

The village people had to take an evacuee if they had a spare room, more than one if they had the space.
I was taken to the Manor Farm with two other girls who had been in a different class from me so I didn’t know them very well.
The farmer and his wife were called Mr. and Mrs. Truslove. A married daughter and her husband and another man called Clarkie who worked on the farm lived with them.
I remember a big farm kitchen with a huge kitchen range which heated the room and was used for all the cooking. There was no gas or electric cooker.
The thing I remember most about the food was Sunday dinner when we had lovely roast beef, but it was cooked over a large Yorkshire pudding, so that the juices from the meat ran into the pudding. I have never had it like that since, but it was lovely!

We shared the school with the village children. I don’t remember ever being in a classroom. There was a hall which had dividing doors half way down, and these were closed and we had one end and the village children the other.

There were lots of cows on our farm and we children soon learned to go off over a couple of fields to round them up and bring them in to be milked.
We loved helping on the farm.

There was no bus between Napton and Coventry and, as I said, no one had a car, so my mother bought a second hand bike, my father already had one
which he used to get him to work, and on alternate Sundays they would cycle
to visit me. It was about 18 miles.

Meanwhile, no bombing had taken place, and apart from food being rationed, which meant that everyone was only allowed a small amount of most foods per week, things seemed normal. (Everyone had a Ration Book and the shop keepers had to cross off or cut out coupons when you bought butter, sugar etc. so that you couldn’t get any more that week. Sweets were rationed too!)

Because there seemed no danger, and many of the adults were saying “It’ll be over by Christmas.”, many of the children began to return home. The two who were staying with me went home, but I was quite happy until Miss Carter became ill and went home to Coventry to get better, then I heard that because so many children had gone home, she was to stay there to teach them. This made me want to go home too, so, just before Christmas I went back to Coventry.

While we were away, the Junior school, which was downstairs in a two story building, with the senior girls above, had been turned into air raid shelters by having lots of extra walls built inside to lessen the blast if a bomb dropped nearby.
The junior school had now combined with the Senior girls’ and we went to school for 2 hours a day. This was so that if a bomb fell on the school there would not be hundreds of children there at any one time. We had to do homework and this was before anyone ever thought of juniors having to do homework!
Bombing almost always took place at night, but often the sirens would sound in the daytime. Air raid sirens were very loud hooters, rather like some big factories use today which were to warn everyone that German planes had been seen coming. The warning siren had a wobbly sound. Everyone had then to go and sit in the shelter. There were big shelters dug underground in parks and some people had Anderson shelters dug into their gardens. (We didn’t, our garden wasn’t big enough).
When it was safe to come out, a different siren sounded, all on the same note.

So this was school when I went back in January 1940 — a few trips to the shelter at school when the sirens sounded, but no bombing. By the end of the year it would be very different!

About the summer time, German bombers began to raid England.
In November Coventry suffered so much bombing that it will always be remembered in history books.
Every night, as soon as it became dark, the sirens would sound, and we had learnt by now that it really did mean that German bombers were coming.
The Council had begun to build air raid shelters in the streets, up against the gutter for people (like us) who could not have one in their garden. They looked rather like a garage which isn’t attached to a house. There was only a small entrance and a brick wall was built about 45cm. away from the entrance. There were wooden benches down the sides and I suppose they would hold a dozen or so people. Two or three families would use the same one. Unfortunately, ours was never finished.

Every evening about six o’clock the sirens would sound. My dad, who was head porter at one of the two big hospitals in the city would get back on his bike, although he hadn’t been home long, and go back to work. He didn’t have to, but his hospital was next to a very large factory which used to make Morris cars. My father knew that this factory was a very likely target for the bombers so he knew that if any bombs fell in the area, everyone possible would be needed to help to move the patients to safety.
This left my mother and me at home. We used to go into the ‘bogey hole.’ This was an enclosed space under the stairs where the electricity and gas meters were. It was very dark and had just about enough room to lie down.
On the night of 14th. November more bombs than ever seemed to be dropping. We could hear the whistling sound as they came down. Suddenly there was a loud knock at the front door. An air raid warden, whose job it was to help people during bombing raids said that the factory a little way further down the street had been hit by an incendiary bomb (one which, when it explodes causes a fire). The factory made elastic which meant that a lot of the material which they used would burn very easily. He said that we must leave our house and go into one of the street shelters which had been finished.

We all sat in the shelter listening to the bombs dropping. When we sensed that one was nearer than usual, we all put our heads down. I can remember saying many times, “Can I come up now, mum?”
The ‘All Clear’ siren sounded about seven am.

When we came out of the shelter that morning, the street was covered in broken glass, roof tiles; and shrapnel (pieces of exploded bombs.) We, like many of our neighbours, had no roof left and all the windows had been blown out. The Council sent men to fix tarpaulins ( rather like thick groundsheets) over the roof and to nail a sort of waterproof canvas over the windows until, many weeks later, someone could come to repair them properly.
When we got inside the house there was no water, gas or electricity, and it was about three months before they were all restored. Tankers came round with water and we had to fill buckets and all water had to be boiled, (there were no plastic water carriers in those days.) As for the gas and electricity, we had to manage with candles for light (it was winter, remember). Some of the people in the street had had modern fireplaces put into their houses instead of the old range, which had a raised up fire with a hook above it to hold a kettle. Saucepans could stand at the side of the fire and heat there, and on the other side, there was an oven. We were lucky, my mother was a bit old fashioned, and we still had ours so at least we could still have hot meals.

Later in the morning we found out that three or four families had asked permission from the factory to be able to use the air raid shelter under the factory which was for the workers in the day time but was not used at night.
They thought it would be safer than those in the street. They were in the factory shelter that night, and all died, including children I had been playing with the day before.

Inside our house there was dirt and glass all over the floor. A quite heavy china cabinet which had been fixed to the wall had fallen down and lots of china ornaments which my mother treasured were all broken.
In the bedroom a piece of shrapnel had gone through the wardrobe door and burnt a hole in a new dress which my mother had bought with her clothing coupons to wear at my brother’s wedding on the following Saturday. We didn’t get to the wedding which was in Birmingham, about 18 miles away because all roads out of Coventry had large craters (holes) in them so no buses were running. In fact my brother got married not knowing whether we were still alive. Telephones were not working either. Hardly anyone had them in the house, but there were public ones.

I remember, in the days following the blitz, playing in the street with the materials which were supposed to be for building the shelters. There was an arched frame to make a rounded roof, but turned up the other way we made a super swing boat from it. We weren’t naughty children and I think no one told us off because it meant that we were amusing ourselves while the adults had so much to worry about.

The raids continued for a long time and my parents decided that since our house was not really habitable (my parents had to sleep downstairs) it would be better fore me to go to live with my brother and new sister-in-law in Birmingham for a few months.

We children didn’t understand what it was all about. We hated the Germans, although I doubt if any of us had any idea where Germany was, or France, for that matter. None of us had ever been abroad and we didn’t learn any foreign Geography in junior schools in those days.

Years later, when I was a teacher in Darlington and was asked to take a choir to Germany I learned how very kind and friendly the German people are and I still go to visit many friends there. The war was caused by a very wicked man called Adolph Hitler, and I’m sure most of the German people didn’t want to fight any more than our services, but he made them.

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