Childhood memories of the war.

My father, an ever cautious Civil Servant, seemed to know more about Hitler's intentions than Chamberlain! He, therefore, sent my mother, brother and me away in April, 1939. We stayed in a cottage in Haddenham belonging to a relative. However there was no running water and no electricity. After two months my mother decided she would rather die in her own home if war was declared than risk typhoid from drinking the well water and a conflagation should a candle be knocked over and subsequently set the thatched roof of that idyllic country cottage alight. Thus we returned to Chingford in August, 1939. When the war started in the September my father then sent us to stay with his Aunt Maud in Sandy, Bedfordshire. She had a farm and had taken in, as soon as she could, numbers of evacuees from the East End of London. She set them to work in the barns. Even my mother, not well known for her compassion, was enraged because the children were continually crying, hungry and bewildered. She had furious arguments with her husband's aunt who maintained that the children were only crying because she had set some of them the task of peeling onions in order to fill jars into which she would then pour vinegar to pickle them. Since it was the period of the phoney war, once again my mother decided she could endure the situation no longer and we returned home.
My father was in a reserved occupation and always told my brother and me that he was engaged on secret war work - so secret that he wrote with invisible ink and wore dark glasses! As well as working during the day on this 'secret work', father, once the blitz started, would remain at work and fire watch during the night. Beds were moved into the offices. There was a roster for days and nights spent within the epi-centre of the blitz and then a couple of days back home. At the height of the bombing he was on the roof of the Custom House extinguishing incendries as soon as they dropped. As transport became disrupted he started to cycle to the City in order to arrive at work more reliably, frequently lifting his bicycle over rubble or taking massive de-tours when the roads were totally blocked.
Regardless of whether our father was home at nights or not, as soon as the air raid warning went, we would go down the garden and encamp in the shelter. We had a large garden and half-way down was a sunken, paved rose garden. Father had an enormous, pre-stressed structure built deep into the furthest rose bed. The journey down to the shelter in the pitch black was extraordinarily hazardous. There were steps down through the rockery, then a lawn had to be transversed and then later more steps into the rose garden. My mother, who never told us until we were older, was frightened of the dark and combined with a complete lack of any sense of direction, night after night she ended up in one of the rose beds where her clothing got caught on thorns and she would spend ages trying to extricate herself. My brother and I got well used to waking and putting our siren suits on over our pyjamas. I remember being so jealous that my brother had a zip on his whilst I only had buttons. My mother would gather up our survival kit for the night which included a primus stove, a kettle and a large chamber pot. My brother would irritate my parents as he always insisted on putting his tie on and would stand tying it as if he had all the time in the world.
Early in November, 1940 after 57 nights of continuous bombing there was a lull. My father must have been fire watching and on the evening of 15th November when the siren went my mother decided we would not go down the shelter but risk it and remain in the house. Father would never have sanctioned such a decision if it had been one of his days off duty. Our home had suffered a lot of bomb damage and some rooms were uninhabitable. I was sleeping down stairs and as the siren went, I decided that I desperately wanted to go to the lavatory. Mother hurried me into the dining room and produced the chamber pot. As I sat there suddenly the french windows blew out and landed in enormous splinters of wood and glass on the terrace. Apparently a parachute mine had fallen in the Crescent which ran behind our Avenue. My brother came running into the dining room. He saw me sitting on the chamber pot and the gaping wall beyond where the windows had been. Ever a wit, he exclaimed 'My goodness, what ever did she eat!'
Life went on - my brother and I were sent to the country again, by ourselves, but our uncle's small holding in Kent was really no safer than living near London. I hated it there as we were put to work picking soft fruit and vegetables - I had thought it would be a holiday from school which had shut for a period and so was most put out that I had to work so hard. Back home by June 1944 the V1's were dropping. With these there was a few minutes warning. On 25th June we had been to my mother's brother's 50th birthday party and were walking home. The siren went and almost immediately we saw a V1 which instantly cut out above us. My father shouted that we must lay flat on the pavement but that the bomb would dive away from us. It landed near the centre of what we called the village and caused the first V1 fatalities in the district. By 1945 the V2's started to drop. There was no warning with these bombs and they caused much more devastation. On 15th January, 1945 as I was walking to school up the Lane, the siren went and there was a huge explosion. On arriving in the playground it was full of debris and pieces of the long range rocket still hot. Our Headmaster, a veteran of the First World War, was yelling at the children to get the playground cleared before we went into Assembly. We filled the wire waste baskets, attached to the walls, with shrapnel and pushed the debris into heaps. We got filthy and then suddenly a number of mothers came running into the school. My mother amongst them, they had run full pelt about a mile when it was realised that the bomb had landed near the school At registration we were soon aware that one of our class was absent. We later found out that he had been killed by the bomb as he approached the school. All that was found was his identity disc and some of the fabric of his little trousers which was a distinctive cloth that his mother had managed to buy at Walthemstow market. We all were interested that he had been killed but it was war-time and that's what happened. No fuss, no counselling - I don't think anyone perceived it as a trauma.
The following month our house just avoided a direct hit. Six houses in the road behind us were totally flattened and in all 750 houses in the area were badly damaged - ours included. Our house was by this time already so battered that the whole family were sleeping downstairs. My brother slept on the sofa in the lounge and mother had pushed together two huge arm-chairs to make a bed for me. My brother, for some reason, awoke before the siren and, he never knew why, got up and pushed me underneath the bedclothes. After a shattering explosion mother rushed into the room. (I think we had abandoned the shelter that winter because it became flooded) Half a window pane had fallen onto my make-shift bed and the jagged glass had sliced my pillow in two. I was safe under the bed clothes curled up in a ball. Later my mother got us up and in spite of the house being a wreck got us ready for school - my brother was at the Grammar school by then - and she told me to walk round the corner en route for school and what ever I saw, I must not dawdle but get hurriedly on my way. As if it was yesterday, I remember walking into the devastated street behind ours and seeing the flattened houses. There was much activity as they were still trying to locate bodies and people who were yet buried in the rubble. As I walked up what remained of the road, I saw a woman with her arm around another who was crying. On the road in front of her was a large jam tart in a tin dish just distinguishable underneath filth and shattered bits of brick, glass and wood. The woman sobbed 'That was all my fat ration, jam and flour I had saved for weeks - look at it, it's ruined'. Behind her were the remains of what had been her home but her inedible cooking seemed to concern her far more.... This impressed me so much - I know I stood gaping. Soon I remembered I had to hurry to school.
Later that day at lunch time, whilst they were having their meal, my brother's school was bombed. Within a few days my brother was at death's door with pneumonia. The doctor said it had been caused by shock from the two incidents in under twenty four hours. I was sent to stay with my mother's old school friend near Sheffield because it was impossible to nurse my brother as well as accommodate me in our shell of a house. My father put me on a train in London (King's Cross?) and asked someone to see me off at Sheffield. During the journey the train stopped dead and the siren blared because there was an imminent air raid. I remember the eerie silence; then the sound of a V2 exploding. My 'carer' promptly disappeared. However I eventually arrived safely many, many hours late.
My mother's friend had married a very wealthy man and I just loved being a 'rich kid'. In spite of the war I had a lovely old Nanny in a stiff starched uniform and there was also a decrepid gardener in the grounds of their huge mansion-like home who shared his sandwiches with me. I certainly didn't miss my parents and only got upset when I overheard my 'aunt' and 'uncle' discussing plans for my return. It was all so peaceful in the area of Yorkshire where I was staying. I attended the village school. There were 92 in just one class, a single teacher and one helper.
However by May, 1945, the war ended, I returned home. There was a fabulous street party with - oh, joy - jelly and ice- cream. There were races including a Mother's race which my mother won. Her prize was a small packet of Persil and she was so thrilled that she held it up to show the neighbours and they clapped and cheered and shouted 'Lucky thing' - it was such a wonderful fun time and we were all so excited that we had beaten old Hitler. Whenever I had had a cold, which was very often during the war, my mother would encourage me to blow my nose hard by saying 'Blow the germs to Hitler'. I was confident that I had truly contributed to this evil man's downfall!
(N.B. Dates and information about damage etc. taken from 'Chingford at War - a Record of the Civil Defence & Allied Services and Incidents which occurred in the Borough, 1939-1945)

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