'I Suppose They Think I'm Dead!'

May King is ninety-four years old and lives in Annsborough. Her late husband, Reginald King, joined the army at the tender age of fourteen, and toured India and Palestine with the Lincolnshire Regiment before transferring to the Staffordshire Regiment, whereupon he met May in Ireland. They left Ireland for England after their marriage, where they lived in the Aldershot military compound before the start of the war.
‘I shouldn’t be blowing my own trumpet, but I’m sitting here and I haven’t had a pain nor ache and I’m ninety-four years old. I had a hip replacement years ago, and I have arthritis, but it’s been over six years since I’ve seen a doctor. I suppose they think I’m dead!
‘I lived in the married quarters of Aldershot with my husband, Reg, who was a soldier. Aldershot was a military facility about eighty miles south-west of London. Well of course it would have been a target for the German bombers. I remember they started evacuating all of the women and children from the base. Not only those in married quarters, but from all around Aldershot; that’s how serious it was there. I would watch them all going, loads and loads of them everyday, and it put the fear of God into me, I’m telling you.
‘Well, the bands would play in the train station as the evacuees were leaving. But if they hadn’t been there it wouldn’t have been so hard on all the families, because they played all of these sad songs, you see. Songs like ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.’ You can imagine this just made it worse for everybody. So I said to Reg, “They shouldn’t play all of those sad songs.” And he said, “I know, they should play ‘Come Back Paddy Reilly to Bally James Duff.’”
‘My first child, Benedict, was born in Aldershot in 1936. But I wanted to come home to Ireland, because by 1939 I was pregnant again with my second son, Gerald. So I said to Reg, “It’s you that’s in the army, not me. They’re not telling me when I can and can’t go home.”
‘I was expecting and Reg was still serving in the army. I wasn’t forced to leave Aldershot, but I did; they weren’t bossing me! I decided to go home to my mother. I got the boat back, and it was during the blackout, so it was lucky I fell in with two nuns who were a great help to me. They helped me along. I can remember, I came up on deck once, and I said to one of them, “I think I see another ship out there.”
‘“That’s the convoy,” said the nun.’
‘“What do you mean?”’
‘“If anything happens to our ship,” she said, “they’re there to help.”’
‘Well, I’m telling you, this scared the daylights out of me. I was never so glad to get into Belfast in all my life.
‘My sister was in Aldershot too, but she went to Stafford to live with her mother-in-law, and I came home. My sister’s husband was killed in the war. He was an officer in Burma. One day he said to another officer, “Let’s go and see our men and give them a bit of moral support.” It was when they were coming back that a sniper got him; shot in the head. He was thirty-five years old.
‘Reg was stationed somewhere in England, and he wasn’t far from where my sister was. But when the soldiers were stationed, you didn’t know where they were going. You see, when Reg wrote to me, because he was in the army, his letters were censored. But when my sister wrote to me from England, she wasn’t censored, so I knew where he was. During that time, when I wrote to Reg, I had to address it to a number, not a name. I can still remember his number. 44796450.
‘Thankfully Reg wasn’t on the front line during the war. His unit were stationed on the English beaches. They had to stay out all day and all night, guarding the beaches and watching the seas in case any German boats came over. They called themselves ‘beach combers’. Some old woman that Reg knew made him a big woollen thing that he put round his shoulders, because it would have been awful cold. They wore waterproof capes and used hot water bottles as well. But different people gave them different things to help. In England, everybody did what they could.
‘As for me, I came home to my mother and then I got a wee house. Everything was rationed; every bloody thing. I remember, none of my family would take sugar at home. We would have kept a wee bit left for pudding or something, but everybody came to our house for our sugar. I remember them, “Give me your sugar this week, give me your sugar that week.” But I would have got tea off somebody instead. And sweets, they were rationed too; everything was. You had to have coupons for clothes, and the farmers would have brought us good country butter. If there were four of you, you got four eggs. If there were five of you, you got five. But that was only once a week, so you weren’t egg bound!
‘In March of 1944, Reg was invalided out of the military and came home to Ireland. He had contracted malaria whilst on tour in the Middle East before the war, and the army sent him home ten months before his full twenty-one years of service were up. He lost his pension.
‘I can remember the American soldiers that were over here. They were in Ballywillwill, Castlewellan and Newcastle; and there was a big camp up in Ballymaginty. That’s where all the cooking was done and then sent around. My husband got very friendly with a black American. He was very quite. The rest of them were running around, having a good time and going after the women, but he said that he was married. So Reg would bring him over to our house. He was a nice fella; but the funny thing is, and I don’t know why, but now I just couldn’t take to the Americans at all. There was something about the yankies. I said to Reg, “Don’t be bringing any more of them here, I don’t like them.”
‘I do remember VE Day, oh yes. I was one of those people who always had to be working or cleaning, you know, and I had bought all these biscuits and cakes and such. And come VE Day, everybody was all out on the streets. But of course, I had all this ironing to do. So Reg came in, and he says, “May, what are you doing?” And I said, “I’m ironing.” Then he said that everybody was out on the streets, I mean everybody; clapping and dancing and singing. But I said, “Well, I have to get my ironing done.” But sure I was like that all my life.’

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.