My War - A Memoir by Monnica Stevens Part Two

PART TWO

I was enrolled as a pupil at St Paul’s Girls’ School, Brook Green, Hammersmith (the equivalent of the Boys’ School)September 1942. Attending this school meant that I had to travel by two buses across the west of London (which took 40 minutes), but the buses were regular and the journey was not too taxing. On our return home life was better, we were sleeping in our bedrooms which was much more pleasant that the wine cellar, but the rationing was very severe. People were allowed to sleep in the deep tube stations, there were bunk beds supplied, and for people who could not get them there was a white line on the platform showing the limit to where people could lie down on anything they carried down with them. Both tube trains and buses had their windows protected with heavy netting glued on, there was just a small diamond-shaped space in the middle through which people could try to see where they were — not easy in the blackout on a moonless night.

One school holiday my sister and I joined our Aunt Kathleen at her school at Totnes, on the Devon coast. The beach, like the whole coast of southern and eastern England, was enclosed with barbed wire and steel anti-invasion obstacles. We spent our time walking in the country whilst looking at the sea from a distance.

December 1941 came and with it the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and the whole atmosphere seemed to change — we were not alone when the Americans declared war. There were soldiers based all round the houses again, this time it was the Norfolk Regiment, and they were in residence for nearly three years. There was news on the wireless at 8 a.m., 1 p.m., 6 p.m. and the main bulletin of the day at 9 p.m., nothing like we have today. On the way home I used to stand up to see the newspaper placards to read what they said and I can remember seeing “Tragic Loss of Two Warships” and finding out later that it was the sinking of the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales.

We relied on the wireless for much of our entertainment, we were able to use my father’s study, which was small and could be heated more easily, as a sitting room, blacked out efficiently and made comfortable. My father loved Tommy Handley and Saturday Night Music Hall, we all enjoyed them too. Bombing was sporadic, about every three months there would be a week of alerts, but we did not go down to the cellars. We could hear the planes circling overhead and the enormous gun on Wimbledon Common would fire and shake all the houses, some on the side of the Common had their windows broken by it.

The exception to the quiet time came when we were sleeping and there were several thuds very close by. It turned out later that six bombs had been dropped, five on Wimbledon Common by the Horse Pond and one on the house at the corner of the road. I got dressed and went and told my parents that I was going out to see what had happened and they did not try to stop me. The house on the corner had received a direct hit and was on fire. I did not know it, but my sister’s schoolmate had been killed with her nurse. When I got home and reported my findings my parents did not believe me, which I found very annoying!

I carried on with my schooling at St Paul’s; the hours were arranged so that all pupils could be home by 4.30 p.m. to avoid travelling in the blackout as much as possible. I left home at 8.20 a.m. and returned to the house at 4.20 p.m. This lifestyle continued throughout 1942 and into 1943, one blessing was that because of the rubber shortage we no longer had to carry gas masks. The only variation in our routine came with the formation of a college nearby for the training of Captains, Majors, Senior Police and Fire Officers for what was called first of all “Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories” i.e. AMGOT, the story was that Amgot was a rude word in Greek and the name was changed to “Civil Affairs”. The Captain in charge came round to the vicarage and said that we were to have one person from the college billeted with us. In all I think we had six officers: Fire Officer first, then a Canadian Major named Homer Robinson who became one of the family, another Canadian with a Dutch surname who developed pneumonia and left the course, then a stuffy English Major who was very aloof and we hardly made contact with him, then an American Doctor followed by an American Major. The course lasted about two months. The only person we heard from again was Homer Robinson who visited us and told of his experiences in a town in Italy.

In August 1943 I joined two teacher friends of my parents at their temporary home in Teignmouth, Devon. Again, we three spent our time walking in the hills behind the town. One of my hostesses was the gymnastics teacher who made me change the way I walked. I had to learn to place my feet straightforward and not at “ten to two”; as a result, for the rest of my life I have been knock-kneed. I was supposed to stay for two weeks and was enjoying myself very much. On the tenth day, whilst I was in my bedroom preparing to go out after lunch, there were German planes flying at roof-top height — below the Radar. Bombs were dropped all round the town, so the next day I was sent back to London, upset at missing part of my holiday.

In April and May 1944 our roads and pavements were lined with army vehicles and guns, there were overhanging trees there and no German spotter planes could have seen them, even supposing that any German pilot was foolhardy enough to venture across the Channel at a time when the RAF and American forces had command of the skies. There were army sentries and if one went out at night you were challenged, “Who goes there?” One morning, without a sound having been heard during the night, everything had gone. Suddenly there were no more lorries, guns or soldier and we realised the invasion of Europe was imminent.

D-Day came on 6th June and our spirits lifted. I was about to take my School Certificate examinations to give me exemption from Matriculation in two week’s time and then a new terror came upon Southern England on 12th/13th June and on London on 14th/15th June — the first of the flying bombs. The High Mistress appealed to the Minister of Education for deferment, but this was not allowed.

Once again the beds were moved to the cellar and my parents and sister slept there for the next six or eight weeks. I slept there for one night and felt so unwell the next day that I said I could not continue down there (remember that this was mid-summer). I returned to my bedroom and when the bombs were coming over, you could not miss them as they sounded like a motorcycle in the sky, I rolled out of bed and under it — the windows and door were propped open to avoid blast damage. The vicarage was on the flight path to London at first, until the sites in northern France were captured, the noise was bad enough, but when the engine cut out one knew the bomb was about to fall and the explosion would follow shortly after.

The School Certificate Examinations took place in the air raid basement of St Paul’s School. When the flying bombs were overhead the High Mistress would come down from her office and stand in the doorway beside the invigilator, a great confidence booster to us all. How I did it I do not know, but I achieved seven A’s, one C and one D.

With the flying bombs falling round us and passing over us my sister became very upset. She was 9 years old and after the first couple of days she was crying out repeatedly “I am too young to die!” Very quickly my parents organised a boarding school place for her at Chagford in central Devon. My constant fear at this time was that I would return from school to find the house destroyed. As I got off the bus and turned the far corner I knew that I could see the green spire of the church then all was well. One flying bomb came down during daylight very close to the vicarage and a piece came bouncing down the roof, I picked it up and it was burning hot. It was a solid piece of the tail with a serial number on it, we kept it for several years.

The second V weapons — the rockets — first fell on Chiswick, West London on 8th September, these unmanned terror bombs continued to fall until March 1945 and one that fell on Smithfield Meat Market killed nearly 20 people. There was no defence against these weapons.

In October 1944 I had to register for war service, because I had reached 17 years of age but as I was still at school and a member of the Junior Red Cross I was not required to do any other “war work”.

In May 1945 came the German surrender, at 17 years old I was not allowed to go to London to see the jollifications as there was no responsible person to take me I have regretted it ever since.

In early July 1945 I joined the Admiralty as a Grade 3 Temporary Clerk at £2 per week, the department was manned day and night, seven days a week and we were called “watch keepers” in true Navy style. I did not go “on watch” until September when I was 18 and the war had been over for a month. There had been Admirals’ wives and daughters working in the office during the war and when I joined I was told that the very worst day of all was when the news of the sinking of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales was received.

As the end of the war in the Far East fell in August and I was working I was not able to see the celebrations, but gather that they were nothing like the days in May when Germany surrendered.

The fabric of the vicarage survived very well, one chimney fell and one plate glass window broke. Several tiles were smashed when the piece of the flying bomb came down on the roof. The main loss was the glass in the Victoria conservatory. In the 1940 blitz a great number of incendiary bombs fell in the garden and the fire fighters put these out. We were very fortunate and so was the church, which did not suffer any damage.

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