War time experiences in Queen's Park, Bedford

War time experiences in Queen’s Park, Bedford

Mrs. Nora Seamer

Coventry Road, Queen’s Park, Bedford.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jenny Ford on behalf of Mrs. Nora Seamer and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Well, I remember the evacuees arriving in Bedford because I got married in August and I had only been married three weeks and I had a family! I had two little girls, one of three and one of 11 from London. But their mother, she missed the little girl so much so she had them back.

Well then I had another girl, Doreen and she was 11, right from when the war started until it ended. She went to the Plumstead High School in London and they were evacuated to the Bedford High School for Girls. We lived in Queen’s Park and we bought her a proper bed in her own bedroom. She used to go out and play with all the children in the street where we lived. She used to play with another young boy, he wasn’t an evacuee, that lived across the road. Her mother said, “You’ve got to help your Aunty.” And from that day, I had her at 11 and I had her until the war ended and I still get letters, cards from her at the moment, now.

My husband, he didn’t leave W. H. Allen’s, they wouldn’t let him, he was a Home Guard and they used to go out every night guarding and I know one of the Guards came round once and they were knocking on our windows, “You’ve got a light showing!” We’d got blackout things up with the slats that my husband made and all that. And then we had things, bricks to put near the windows, because I know my husband afterwards made a path of them. They had got the little holes in them, they went up at your windows.

We either used the shelter and if not we were under the tables! Yes we were. That was the night they bombed Cox’s Pit it was called and if it had hit the road there’d have been none of Queen’s Park left. Because there was one or two came round afterwards saying, “Are your windows out?” “What do you mean are your windows out?” They all were, it broke a lot of our windows all round and everywhere, that was terrible that night. I lived in Coventry Road so I wasn’t far from Cox’s Pit. If it hadn’t of gone in and sunk in there and that to stop the blast.

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