Evacuation and the Blitz: Wartime memories from Cirencester and Hackney

This story was submitted to the People’s War web site by Karen Elmes at the Building Exploratory on behalf of Jean Bevis and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

“I was eleven years of age when the Second World War with Germany was declared, and the following year I was evacuated to Cirencester with my Aunt and her two sons. We stayed at a farm cottage with only well water and paraffin lamps. I had to cycle to the village about two miles to go to school and the shops, also to collect food and logs for the fire so we could cook food and for hot water. I used an old pram to carry the coals and logs. At first I wasn’t very happy to live there, I wanted to go home to my mum, but after a while I enjoyed my two and a half years there.

I left school at the age of 14 and started work in the City of London at a mens’ clothes factory. We had to rush to the shelter when the air raids came as the City was being bombed everyday.

One day I was going to meet a friend when the air raid warning sounded, a flying bomb and I was blown through Woolworth’s double doors, I landed on my backside, I wasn’t hurt, only winded. There were quite a lot of bombs dropped close to where I lived in Hackney. It was very scary at times but also had its funny moments like when I dived under the kitchen table when a bomb dropped close by and I sat in our dog’s dinner, who wasn’t very pleased as he was eating it at that moment!

There was another time when a rocket fell and it fell on houses used by the army to billet soldiers. I ran to my elder sister’s house nearby to see if she was alright, there was a soldier lying on his back with a sheet of glass piercing his stomach, I called for help, then ran to find my sister, she was ok, she and her baby were in the air raid shelter. That look on that soldier’s face remains with me to this day, I also wonder if he survived his injuries. There are lots of memories I still have, good and bad, about the war years. My family and I were lucky to go through the war without any serious injuries, but there were so many friends who didn’t come back. Also there were those who had their homes destroyed by air raids, they were moved away so you lost contact with them, this left you very sad.

When the air raids came in the evenings we all went down into the shelter which was the basement of Marks and Spencer’s in Mare Street. They put up bunk beds for us to sleep on and also had a small canteen for hot drinks and sandwiches. This was provided by a local cafÈ for a few pence. We took our own bedding to sleep on, there were toilets and hand basins to have a wash in the mornings. Sometimes we had a sing song when a chap brought his piano accordion to play a few tunes, this would drown out the noise of the planes overhead, and distract you from the bombs that were shaking the building. The air raid warden would come down to the shelter and would tell our parents or older brother and sisters what was happening above us, and also tell them roughly where the bombs had fallen. In the mornings we would then go home, then off to work, that’s if your home or your workplace had not been bombed.

My three brothers were in the services, two in the army and one in the air force, my three sisters were at home, then one got married, the other became a nurse, my other sister worked at the same place as myself. I am the youngest of seven.”

This story was recorded by the Building Exploratory as part of a World War Two reminiscence project called “Memory Blitz”. To find out more please go to http://www.brickfields.org.uk/^{About links}

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