The Second World War, as I lived it

My first memory of the Second World War as hearing the siren. It was September 6th 1939 and I was six years old. My friends and I were playing on an old apple tree in the community garden belonging to the flats where my mother, father and I were living in Twickenham, Middlesex. Having assimilated little pieces of information from that spoken about by the adults, I must have understood enough to be very frightened when I heard it and I remember rushing home to tell my mother. My fatherwas a motorcycle policeman in the Metropolitan Police at that time and I can remember that there was a poison gas scare in the area when he was called out to help the local police forces. My mother and I together with some neighbours sat in our gas masks for three and one half hours until my father came home and said that the scare had been caused by a petrol spillage in the road. It seemed that the siren was always sounding, and one day, on my way to school, a Stuka dive bomber appeared out of the sky and machinegunned us as we went along the road. After this, my father deicded it would be better for my mother and I to move in with my grandfather and grandmother in Seaford, Sussex and we went to stay there in early 1940. My father, meantime, although being in a reserved occupation, decided that he wanted to do something more active to help with the War effort and he joined the Royal Air Force as a volunteer reservist, against my mother's wishes.

He was then 31 years old, so older than most of those who were joining up. He was sent for training to Hamilton, Canada and was there for nine months. On his return he joined Coastal Command as a Sergeant Observer/Navigator and carried out several sorties. However, during a sortie in bad weather over the Irish Sea in 1942 his plane ended up in the sea and he was killed. Only the pilot and my father's bodies were found by local Irish fishermen and they were buried in a military grave in Cork Cemetary. The other members of the crew were never found.

This news really devastated my mother and I was almost inconsolable - my father having always meant so much to me and I was the only child. I don't really think my mother quite understood how I felt, or perhaps she thought, as a child of eight, I would probably get over his loss before she did. I have always missed him and found it difficult to grow up without his gentle guidance.

When we were living in Seaford we were certainly not as safe as we had thought we would be as the enemy bombers which passed over (we were directly on their flight path) on their way to London would often offload their bombs, if they had been unsuccessful in reaching their original target, before leaving English soil and we had one bomb which landed in the back garden of my grandmother's house. Luckily it had been raining for nearly 10 days and when it landed it entered quite a long way before it exploded and didn't even break a window. Had it been a little nearer, however, it would have hit the concrete path and it would have been a different matter. The house had a big cellar and I can remember spending many nights "in the coal-hole" which always seemed quite damp and cheerless despite being made as comfortable as possible.

Whenever my mother and I went out for a walk, if I heard even the sound of a plane I would run quickly home with my mother calling after me, "It's all right; it's one of ours" but it didn't make any difference, I couldn't stop trembling and ran as fast as my legs would carry me home to the "coal hole".

We had many different nationalities stationed all over our town; Polish, Canadian, American, English soldiers from "The Buffs" (the only ones I can recall) but with all those varied peoples we never once had any cause to be worried about the problems which face the children today. We were always running about and playing in the road and our gardens with no adult supervision but the dangers which faced us were from the Germans alone.

The Americans and Canadians were particularly kind to the local children. I was at school at the local Convent and they came and gave us wonderful parties and candies (O'Henry's, I remember, were a favourite). We were so grateful to them because it was a pretty austere time with rationing, etc. but they always seemed to be so cheerful and generous. Those days were full of tension and fear but had their lighter side, too, and nearly all the people co-operated and helped each other with compassion and love.

Unfortunately, in 1943, my mother's brother who was in the Royal Navy, having survived being torpedoed and spending 28 days in an open lifeboat with 30 others, was killed in a motor-cycle accident so our last serving family member, my uncle by marriage to my aunt, who was also in the Royal Navy, in HMS Erebus was the only person who returned at the end of the War.

There were so many, many sacrifices made by so many people.

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