Worried about mum - and where will we sleep?

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of Adrienne Jacobs with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

When the War started I was 5, the third of a family of four, with a younger brother and an older brother and sister. My story happened in early 1942 when I was 7. We lived in Mount Street with my mother while my father was away in the War.

We all attended St. John’s School, at the top of St. John’s Road (now Ryde Youth Club Annexe). My younger brother would normally have still been at the little school in Mount Street (where the Job Centre was until recently), but the school closed early in the War because it didn’t have an air raid shelter. I myself remember looking forward to starting school there in 1939, but in the end I was only there from September to December. I still remember the joy of seeing my name above the coat hook!

On this day in 1942, there was a daylight bombing raid on Ryde. When the raid had finished — at about half-past-two — we were sent home early. The first thing we noticed when we emerged from the shelter was that the shop right opposite the school, a paper shop called Holbrook’s, had been damaged by the blast from a bomb, so the bomb had fallen somewhere close! We walked up Green Street and into Mount Street. We lived just beyond Brading’s Coal Merchants, and as we passed their yard, we saw that our house had also been damaged by a blast. The front door (on the side of the house, like many in Ryde) had been blown out and was lying on the stairs. When we went around to the back, we saw a pile of rubble. The back wall had collapsed, as had the back door.

We started crying, thinking that our mother, who we all thought would be at home, must have been hurt, or worse. The old couple who lived next door, very shaken but otherwise unharmed, had heard us return and appeared at the fence. The old lady said, “Don’t worry about your mum — she’s gone to the cinema.” (The Cinema was in the old Theatre Royal by the Town Hall, where the Natwest bank now stands.)

Mum seldom went out — she spent all her time looking after four children — but on that day of all days she had obviously decided to take advantage of our being at school to go and see a film. She couldn’t go at any other time because she’d be looking after us, not to mention the blackout and everything. How lucky she did!

We later discovered that the bomb had actually fallen at the junction of Arthur Street and West Street, where it destroyed a house.

After the bombing, we couldn’t use our own bedrooms. We all slept in my mum’s bed at the front of the house, mum and my big sister at the top, me and two brothers at the bottom — like little pigs in a sty, we used to say. The back of the house was covered with a tarpaulin. There was no gas or electricity, so nothing could be cooked.

It was a big responsibility during the War to look after everyone. Our mother looked after us, we looked after her, and we all looked after each other.

Some time after the raid, a man knocked at the door. He was in army uniform and carrying a rifle. Mum had popped out for 5 minutes to do some urgent shopping. She always told us never to let anyone into the house, so I told the man he couldn’t come in. When mum came back, he was still standing at the door. She saw him and said, “Didn’t you recognise your father!” He had been away so long, and with the uniform, rifle and everything, I didn’t know who he was.

My father, being over thirty, wasn’t called up at the start of the war, they took the younger men first, but it wasn’t long before he went. Before that he worked in Tancock’s Butchers shop. Mother used to say we were better off on army pay, which depended on the number of children a man had and was a regular weekly payment.

When my mother wrote to my father, my sister and I wrote as well, in turn. I still have all the letters and Christmas cards he wrote to me, often from “Somewhere in Belgium”.

There are lots of other things, big and small, I remember about the War. Despite the bombing, we sometimes used to think, “I hope there’s a raid tonight”. It was an adventure sleeping in the cupboard under stairs and if we were up after 2 o’clock in the morning because of the bombing, we were let off school the next day, the very last thing mum wanted!

I also remember the smell of the air raid shelters, with lots of people, old men, old women, even cats and dogs, plus the very uncomfortable slatted seats and only torch light.

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