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“This story was submitted to the People’s War site by volunteer Anita Howard from the Essex Action Desk CSV on behalf of Peggy Ivory (nee Oats) and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site’s terms and conditions”

PEGGY IVORY REMEMBERS WAR TIME IN CHADWELL HEATH

At the age of 11 years I attended the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art. It was 1938, the year of the Munich crisis. We did not know if war would break out against Germany so preparations were made to evacuate children to the country, away from the likelihood of bombing. My parents gave me the choice of staying with them and the risks involved or being evacuated to Somerset with the school. I preferred to stay.

The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, visited Hitler and returned with a peace treaty, so for a year, education continued as normal. On Sunday September 3rd 1939, the war really began. For a time things were quiet although we had to carry our gas masks everywhere and identity cards were issued. For six months our school was closed and we had no education at all. Then for another six months we shared Dagenham County High School with their pupils so only had half day lessons.

The bombing really got going in 1940 and we had the “BLITZ”. At this time we returned to our school. As we had engineering workshops, these were taken over by the military and we had Norwegian sailors, Canadian air men etc. being trained on the premises. As a result of this we were not allowed to use the swimming pool — that was reserved for the military personell.
We had many lessons in the air raid shelters and I did most of my exams there. The outdoor shelters were brick buildings at ground level and were cold and clammy and the only seating was wooden forms around the walls. Our indoor shelter was in the corridor outside the Headmaster’s study. It had been reinforced with sand bags and sometimes when we were in the shelters our teachers would give us a “gas drill” when lessons would be continued with us all wearing our gas masks. These were made from rubber and were smelly and uncomfortable but we had to wear them.

One day, out of school at lunch time, the air raid warning sounded and immediately bombers were over head. My friend and I couldn’t get back to school soon enough so a lady took us into her house where we sat under her table. On another occasion when I was returning from a Girls Naval Training Corps I sheltered under a porch of a house whilst waiting for the bus. The next morning the house was in ruins.
All during this time we had to carry all our school books so we could do our homework which I did in the air raid shelter in the garden. This was built into the ground and was made of corrugated iron sheets, then covered with earth and sandbags full of soil. The only light we had was an oil lamp and there was no heating so we slept in our clothes and hoped the raids would be over early enough in the morning to go into the house and get changed.
After the Blitz which lasted forty days and nights there was another quiet spell — some raids but not continually.

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In 1943 I left school to work for The John Lewis Partnership in London. The office I worked in was on the first floor of a big old house in Cavendish Square where there was no shelter at all so we had to get under our desks when the sirens went.
During this time I had to travel by steam train from my home in Chadwell Heath and if there was a raid on the way home at night, the train would stop and the firemen would close down the fire so the enemy planes would not be able to see us. Railway lines were always a target because a broken line could prevent trains from running.
One evening just as our train was pulling into a station a bomb dropped on the line ahead. Our driver managed to stop practically on the edge of the crater and we were all thrown about. No-one was hurt because we were all standing, packed in so tightly that we could not move any way.
The next thing we knew we were told to get off the train. We had to stand beside the line whilst the train was backed up and shunted over to the fast line and then we all had to climb back again. This was not so easy especially as one elderly lady from our carriage got stuck in the doorway and had to be pushed and pulled by several gentlemen. Having arrived home with the raid still on it was down to the shelter once again.

On another occasion, after my office had moved to Wigmore Street in central London, we arrived to find that the front of the building which housed our Architect’s Office, opposite our building, had been blown away and all the drawings and plans were fluttering in the road. What a mess that was! We never knew whether we would arrive in London at Liverpool Station or somewhere else — one day we had to clamber over a bomb site all piled up with bricks to get to the road and walk the rest of the way to work.

“Doodle bugs” were flying bombs with flames spurting out of the back. They made a noise when travelling but it stopped when they came down to earth. Sometimes they changed direction so you never knew which way they were coming. Often you would see people flinging themselves down on the pavement, covering their heads with their hands. These doodle bugs finally gave way to the rockets which gave no warning at all.

Food and clothing were rationed and household items like furniture and sheets required coupons or “dockets” and travel to holiday places, etc. was not allowed because the trains were required for transporting troops and supplies.
Coal was difficult to get. We had little or no heating in our homes and there were frequent occasions when gas, water and electricity were cut off due to the bombing so candles and tiny oil lamps were used for lighting and sometimes oil stoves for cooking.

Another incident occurred. My bed had been put downstairs in the front room because my parents thought it would be safer. One morning I was just getting up when a German fighter plane machine gunned the houses in the street so it was time to get down on the floor again. Our house was near the Goods Yard on the railway and a land mine was dropped by parachute on the yard.. Fortunately it was caught in a tree but the force of the blast blew our front door open and shattered the windows (all over
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my bed!) These land mines were very powerful and made a huge crater when they landed.
Then there were incendiary bombs which set fire to everything and people had buckets of sand and “stirrup pumps” with a bucket of water so that they could put out the incendiaries before they set houses alight.
It was the delivering of thousands of incendiaries one night which set London alight and it was so bad that the firemen ran out of water and even the River Thames could not provide enough water to gain control of the fires. The big hospital called “The London” was bombed and the streets were blocked with falling buildings. My father, who drove an ambulance helped to get the patients out and drive them to safety.

My father was a bus driver for the London Transport Green Line single decker busses which were converted to ambulances. My father volunteered to drive them. He was trained to give basic medical aid and gas training for emergencies. He didn’t have an ordinary gas mask but civilian duty gas mask with a long “snouty pipe!”
Nurses put patients under the beds who could not be moved from the hospitals and would not leave them. Those nurses had a strong moral backbone.
My mother made uniforms for the services as she was a trained machinist and tailoress.

Food rationing got worse until even bread was rationed and it wasn’t nice white bread any more but an unpleasant grey which didn’t taste very nice either. There was little fruit or nice things to eat. People would queue up at the shops for hours when a greengrocer had a supply of oranges arrive but these were reserved for children and expectant mothers. By this time most people who had gardens had dug up the flowers and lawn and were growing as many vegetables as they could. My parents built a run and had some chickens to lay eggs for us. We also kept rabbits — not as pets but to eat for dinner.

New clothes meant giving up coupons and we never had enough of these so we used to make new thing s out of the good parts of other garments that we had grown out of or that we had finished with. Everybody knitted jumpers etc. by unpicking old jumpers, washing the wool and re-knitting it.

I was married in 1947 and we were still rationed and needed coupons. All the family produced different food. My husband’s cousin was a confectioner and he made a three tiered cake. My wedding dress was borrowed from my sister-in-law’s sister -in- law
and my bridesmaid’s dresses were made so they could be used as dance dresses after wards.

This rationing was in force until 1951 by which time I had married and had my first child which reminds me of a day when I had been fortunate to buy some sausages. I put my shopping in the pram and went into a grocery store, leaving the pram outside (you could do that in those days). It wasn’t until I came out of the store that I saw my little son happily feeding the raw sausages to a dog who was thoroughly enjoying his unexpected meal — our dinner!

Peggy Ivory (nee Oats) 2005

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