Living in a small village in Surrey

I am putting this story online as my mother told it to me (she is the I in the story).

Throughout the Second World War, I lived in the small village of Shamley Green, just south-east of Guildford. I was nine, when the war started and had just passed 15 when it ended.

In 1938, when we went on holiday to the Dorset coast, there was a daily discussion about whether we would have to return home before the end of the week in the event that the “phoney war” became a real one.

In September 1939, war did break out. We listened intently to the radio, as it crackled with the news and then we heard that we were at war. At school, we would open our atlases and the teacher would point out the main events on the Continent. Communication and news was by radio and newspaper with just very occasional visits to the cinema and every day the news seemed to get worse than the day before. I didn’t want to be invaded, especially as we were not that far from the coast.

Evacuees from London began to arrive in the village, so we went to School Lane to watch the buses arrive. Some of the children looked very poorly dressed and rather lost in their new surroundings. My mother remarked that they had not seen the sky before — which seemed rather strange to me, as I had always had a clear view in the country. A teacher arrived on one bus — she was rather tall and scary — she joined the staff of the village school and was rather strict.

Food was rationed, which posed a real headache for every mother. It was however easier for us in the countryside. My grandfather had a very large garden and grew lots of vegetables. Many families also kept a few chicken. There was a large village common nearby and at the far end lived a man with only one eye, who grazed a cow on the common. When he had surplus milk, he would bring us the great treat of rich creamy — and yellow — milk. An elderly man in the village went rabbiting in the nearby woods and often sold some that he caught. We have plenty of apple trees and on School Lane lived a man called Jacob, who threw apples from his garden to he passing children.

The war came much closer in the sunny summer of 1940. During the school holidays, I would often be with a small group of playmates, sailing our small paper boats along the stream, which meandered through this Surrey ribbon-style village, or looking for wild flowers. As German planes approached, a nearby siren would wail and the first thing we would hear was the throbbing sound of the aircraft engines. To us, it sounded like “We are coming to get you, we are coming to get you”. Then as we looked into the sky, we would see the British fighters engage he German aircraft. We would watch them chasing each other around the skies and would yell at each other about whichever aircraft we were championing — then we would run around in circles with arms outstretched copying what was happening above us. There was great excitement when a trail of smoke appeared, followed by a parachute opening. We all became very excited and would want to go off in search of the parachutist. Two in our group had bicycles and the rest of us would clamber on to the carriers for a ride. We would not get far before we got a bit bored and turned back. This was almost a daily occurrence that summer, but we never did find an airman!

The Air Raid Warden would usually appear, shouting at us to take cover. He was a fearsome fellow wearing his white tin hat and riding his bike, while blowing his whistle furiously and shouting at us to “get inside” during the day and “put that light out” by night. When we saw him, our little group would break up and go home, waiting for the all clear to sound.

My aunt, Muriel, was a in her late teens and was required to perform “Fire Watching” duty. This she did with the manager of the local shop. His wife did not like staying alone, so she would come round to my grandmother’s house and they would usually have a sing-song of old World War 1 songs. I would often find a reason to go there and join in, so I soon got to know these songs. My granddad would go to bed — he refused to sleep downstairs as the Government advised saying “no German is going to stop me going to bed”.

The local large houses had been requisitioned by the Army — my aunt and her friends were just the right age to be invited to the dances held there. (She would later meet and marry a Canadian soldier). When I called at my grandparents’ house, there would often be a different soldier there and so, I would join in as she played “In the Mood” and other Glenn Miller tunes on the piano.

By late summer 1944, D-Day had happened and we would anxiously wait each day for news on the radio. There was a general feeling of anticipation that the invasion of France would bring a rapid victory and end to the war. The heavy bombing had stopped, but there was a new menace — unmanned rockets (V1s), which we nicknamed “doddlebugs”. Although several were intercepted before reaching their target, some did go astray and explode. One day, I was asked by my mother to run an errand to my aunt at my grandparents’ house, which was only a short distance away in the village. It usually took about a quarter of an hour to walk there, so unconcerned I set off along the road on a quiet day with hardly anyone about. Suddenly, a siren started wailing some distance away. I didn’t know what to do as I was about halfway to my destination — should I go home, carry on or hide behind the very large tree at the top of School Lane, just opposite me. I heard a strange sound — a phut, phut — so, I looked up across the field and the trees. There it was — a large black rocket, spewing flames from its tail, silhouetted against the sky. For a moment, I stood rooted to the spot, unsure of what to do. I knew what happened with these rockets and muttering “don’t cut out”, I started to run quickly towards my aunt’s cottage. I reached the cottage gate, my heart pounding so hard that I was not sure what I was hearing. Then, the rocket engine stopped. I knew there would only be a short time between the engine stopping and the rocket exploding on the ground. I ran to the cottage back door, where my aunt was — she grabbed me by the arm and together we took shelter under the large old kitchen table, just as in the distance, there was a dull thud as the rocket exploded on impacting the ground. We waited for a few moments and then crawled out from under the table. I tried to stand up, but I was suffering considerable pain in my knees. I looked down and they were grazed and bleeding — under the table was a piece of coarse coconut matting on which I had scraped my knees in the rush to take shelter. My aunt attended to my knees, while outside it was all quiet again.

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