Just A Few Memories...

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Jenna Benson, for Three Counties Action, on behalf of Iris Price, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

When my husband was called up he had 7 days leave and the siren went off and we went to the dugout in the garden, he’d got in the dugout and I was standing outside waiting to get in and all of sudden there was a whistling sound, a whistling bomb and I was lying on the floor in the dugout and my husband said “You clumsy thing!”, and I said “It was the blast that blew me in”. I had cut all my legs on the way in.

On the way out of the dugout you’d always look to see if your house was still standing as it was so near. When you come home from work you’d have to queue up for a bucket of water that had to last you all day because the water supply had been bombed, they would drop bombs any where on the road, it didn’t have to be a building.

You used to have trams in those days, you’d try to get on and people were trying to get to the underground to sleep as it was safer, once I went to see my husband in Aldershot and I got stuck in the underground and a soldier gave me his coat, they (the soldiers) were trapped as well they weren’t allowed out. I sat there on the stairs all night.

My husbands brother was walking home with his wife and a landmine exploded and the shrapnel hit her in the chest and killed her outright. Her husband was pitted with shrapnel and he had a special ticket to go into any hospital just in case a piece of the shrapnel moved and went into his brain.

My own brother was abroad at the time and my brother’s wife was collecting insurance money on the doorstep in London with a lady and a V2 rocket hit and they were buried alive. The husband of the lady tried to save their little boy and he took the blast himself and was blinded

My oldest brother was missing until VE day when they found him in a POW camp

The rationing was very tiresome but everyone was so friendly and helpful but if their was a party everybody would share and give you things, they would lend you butter to make a cake. You used to queue up for anything for the top of the cauliflower just to get a bit of green in your diet.

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