My Mothers memories

1: The Anderson shelter in the garden during the early stages of the Blitz did not have a toilet. In extremis during a raid on one occasion my mother had to use the tea pot instead! When I was a toddler a tortoise lived in there, the shelter, not the teapot.
2: She worked as a bookkeeper/secretary for British Films in the City and travelled there through the Blitz years by train and underground while my father was in the Western Desert.
3: The propaganda films made where she worked were a powerful part of the war effort. Her boss was knighted and she was offered the OBE for her work, but she considered her effort to be minor compared to my father's in the Middle East.
4: She met a number of the film stars of the day at her work, among them Ronald Coleman.
5: Her father ran away and joined the Navy at 12 in 1905, progressed to Yeoman of Signals and was torpedoed twice in WWl. He served for a time on HMS Iron Duke and was in the battle of Jutland. Later on he was a fireman and worked as a despatcher during the Blitz which contributed to his early death. He got stressed out by the calls and not enough appliances for the fires.
6: Life in London was difficult with 'rationing', the daily bombing of the 'Blitz'and the reduction of imports so there was no imported fruit in the stores.
7: My mother learned how to start a fire using a carefully rolled, folded and wound newspaper and small pieces of coal as wood was hard to get.
8: A 'stick' of bombs straddled the street that the house was in. The rendered wall at the front was cracked by the shaking of the earth.
9. The war in North Africa was reported in detail in the newspapers. The office where my mother worked kept a map on which the progress and battles were plotted, so she knew where my father was all the time.
10. My mother kept all my fathers letters from Libya in a green box all her life, there were several hundred.
11. Her letters to him were a great support to him during his army service. He often read them to his comrades so helped them too when they did not get their own.

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