About the contributor

I was born in 1938 and so I lived through the war as a baby and a schoolchild. My father served in the Royal Artillery and then he was invalided out and directed to essential war work. He worked for Woolwich Borough Council as a plumber but spent most of the time digging people out of ruined houses after the bombings.
I went to a convent school at the age of 4 but after a while my Dad took me out of there. I spent some time in a small village in Yorkshire called Brompton on Swale, me, my mum and my baby brother stayed with a family called Bainbridge, living in the village. I went to the little school there for a while.The school had only three classes, all in the same room.The ages of the children ranged from 5 to 14. I was put in the bottom class with the youngest kids because of my age. I was very bored because as a result of my convent education I was much more advanced than the other children. I was able to read and write properly, and calculate arithmetical problems.
There was one shop there which was a sort of general store, and a barbers operated in there as well. When he cut my hair he always managed to pinch my neck with his clippers. We went back to London because everyone thought the bombing had stopped but the the rockets came so my mum sent me to stay with my Grandmother in Scarborough. My Grandfather was a Battery Commander, the Battery was stationed in Cornelian Bay. I was sent Friargate School in Scarborough but my cousins who lived there with my Nan went to the convent.
My name then was Diane Jones, my grandmother was Mrs Edith Abbott, my cousins were Bonnie and Barbara Grant.
I remember when I was at the convent school and I was a boarder, our dormitory was a semi-basement. Often in the night we would be woken by what I now know to be bombing raids. The nuns would sit us up to say our rosaries and prayers. When we asked what all the bangs were she would say,"it is the Devil and all his works". You can imagine what effect that had on me. I was a highly imaginative chils and convinced the horne one was outside the windows waiting to get me.
Many years later I returned to Scarborough to try to find the place where I had stayed with my grandmother. I could rememberthat it was near the cliff railways, and that my grandmother used to help with the troops canteen in Scarborough. I remembered that my aunt had been widowed because her husband was killed in action in Italy. she had become friendly with a Canadian airman and later had his child although I was not aware of anything like that at the time. Too young and innocent.
I found the house in a road behind the hotel where we were staying, Cliff Bridge Row it is called. Opposite our hotel was the Grand Hotel where the airforce was billeted. Which solved the mystery of my aunt's friend/lover. It seems that she met him whilst working as a waitress at the mess there. As children we did not understand what was going on, but we knew when Auntie had seen her "friend" because the next morning there were sweets for us at breakfast time. I really liked the Lifesavers he left as well as the chocolate. It seems her last child of that era named William was the son of this airman and years later he - the airman- contacted her having searched high and low, and invited her to marry him and live in Canada. She refused and stayed in England, later marrying a thoroughly bad lot and had three more children.
Looking back on the whole war experience I feel it would fill several books to recount all my recollections. Like the time my mum, me and my baby brother went to live on a farm in Yorkshire at a place called Brompton on Swale then went back to London. The Barrage Ballon station on Plumstead near to our house. Listening to the planes and bombs at night, and cowering in fear at the V1 and V2 rockets flying overhead. I used to blame everything that was wrong in my life on the war and was convinced that it would all be much better when the war was over. I remember my father taking me to the cinema and watching the Pathe News with the vivid pictures of what was found when the concentration camps were liberated. I remember the ends my mum went to in the effort to feed us healthily and to keep us from feeling hungry and deprived. Like making cakes with liquid parafin and peppermint sweets with dodgy tins of condensed milk and the tradeoffs she had with people for their sweet coupons. I always felt I must be special to have survived all that to grow up but I haven't set the world on fire yet. I am still proud of all that the ordinary people did to keep going and keep the flame of freedom alive and I guess that's where I learned to survive whatever life throws at me. All hail to the great British reserve and stiff upper lip.