September 1940: Phoney Sunsets, Falling Bombs and Appendicitis

I was sixteen. The docks in the East End of London had been seriously bombed. And at the beginning of September 1940, the Nazi's followed up the bombing in the East End and started to bomb Central London. They'd lit their fires, they were ready to follow them and go up the river, and the fires meant that they could see in the dark. It was a Saturday in September, and Central London hadn't had a bomb. My boyfriend came to take me out that afternoon and we went to Richmond Park. I had packed up a picnic and it was a beautiful day.

We had a lovely time, and then he said "I think we'd better move off because I have to get back to my lodgings". And I looked up at the sky, and said, "What a wonderful sunset!" And in retrospect it was stupid thing to say. You don't have sunsets at six o'clock on a September afternoon. And again, I realised that we were looking toward the East, which wasn't where you have a sunset.

We went to the station and immediately realised that there was something wrong as there were crowds of people on the platform and nobody seemed to realise when the next train was going to come. And eventually we got back to Shaftesbury Avenue, where my father was caretaker of the chapel there. Once again, my mother was on the doorstep. "Thank God you're back. Where have you been?"
"Whatever's wrong Mum?" I said.
She replied: "Well, bombs have been dropping and I've just had a message delivered to me (because we didn't have a telephone) to say that your brother, (who had been evacuated to Reading), has been taken into hospital with appendicitis." Because the hospital had not been able to contact my mother they had proceeded with the operation.

The evening wore on. My boyfriend didn't go back to his lodgings, because the bombs started to fall, and we spent the night in the cellar. From about eight o'clock in the evening, to seven in the morning, when finally the All Clear went I swear you could hear the bombs dropping out of the aircraft. The whole world seemed to shudder. Daylight. All Clear.

My mother was worried, so my sister and I said we would go to Reading and see my brother in hospital who was only twelve. So we left. We went to Paddington on the underground. When we got there, there were no trains. What would we do? "Well you can try Waterloo, you can get to Reading from there" was the response. Back on to the underground to Waterloo where we eventually got a train to Reading. Bombs hadn't affected them at all. We found the hospital. We went into the ward to see him, and there he was, sitting up as large as life, as if nothing had happened at all. And he was smiling, winning everybody's hearts, as he could the little devil. And that was that, we went back to London.

And the second night of bombing, which was equally bad. From then on, life changed. I think I grew up that night. My sister went back to work, out of London, and I was left with my mother. My father was a full time Air Raid Warden, working his socks off. He saw things that night nobody would ever dream that they would see.
He was very concerned for us, he didn't like us being on our own. It was suggested we went to spend the nights with good friends. It was a bus ride away in Pimlico. For the next week or so, this is what we did. We went before dark, and came home as soon as the All Clear sounded.

It must have been about a week later. We were there with our friends, who had invited other people in, because their homes had been blasted. And we were all in the semi-basement room. There was nothing we could do. We had candles and torches, we had lights if they worked. The man of the house kept his eye on things that were going on outside. And he went up to a window which was onto a little flat roof. And he came down to us all, and said: "I think you'd better get your shoes on. There's a man coming down on a parachute". And the whole place exploded. The ceiling came down, the lights went out and the candles were blown out.

We felt our way to the staircase. And followed each one up to where the front door had been. One of the ladies said, "well you'd better come to my place, its only my windows that are blown out". We picked our way across the dark streets which were lit by fires. Across hosepipes, around ambulances, fire engines, Air Raid Wardens, ambulance men, only a matter of a couple of hundered yards, and we were at her house, which was still there. And she took us in, we couldn't have anything to drink. There was no electricity, no gas. We stayed there, huddled together, terrified out of our wits. The sky lightened, the All Clear went, and mum and I left them, found our way and surprisingly, there was a bus. We got on, we had to go upstairs as it was full. And from the top of that bus, we could see the devastation. The driver had to go down streets he'd probably never driven down in his life. The last thing I saw on that bus, before I got home, was the fire station which had been demolished. Dad wasn't at home, he was still on duty. There was a little tiny bit of gas, we had water. I had a little breaskfast, I had a wash. I got on my bicycle, about half past seven in the morning, and went to work.

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