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An evacuee’s memories of wartime in Bedford Part Three — Life in Bedford and London. Celebrating VE Day in Bedford.

Part three of an oral history interview with Mr. David Bernstein conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

“My parents and my billet parents, Mr. and Mrs. Smith got on very well. They didn’t see each other very often. My parents came up occasionally. Not as often, I mean, both my parents were working so it wasn’t all that easy. My parents chose to give them more money than the Government, in addition to what the Government, which was important and they corresponded from time to time. They weren’t on the phone, there were no e-mails, getting in touch took a little time and of course sometimes the post wasn’t all that reliable because of bombing and things like that. But the relationship was really very good and Mrs. Smith, this is the second Mrs. Smith, my parents still saw her after the war, I know we did. I think in some cases there were faults on both sides and there was jealousy, there was jealousy. One particular friend of both of us, his mother was very jealous of his adopted mother who had, lets face it, this boy’s youth! Six years, that’s a chunk isn’t it? You think from the age of eleven to seventeen, for heaven’s sake! So there was that. I think my mother may have felt that but didn’t express it. And if I went home — and we did go home even in the ‘Blitz’ we were at home when we shouldn’t have been, that was later. There would be a present for Mrs. Smith and when I went home there would be a present for my mum. I never felt any sense of a tug between the two ladies. It was good for me because it could have been very difficult. But you’d be torn in half. I always think I’ve been very, very lucky. Some people didn’t have it as lucky as I did, many people didn’t.

It was at the beginning of the war, we went home and it was just like being, I suppose at boarding school in a way - it was just time to go home, it was vacation. But then of course September the 7th 1940 the ‘Blitz’ began and we were all there. We were contacted and we had to go back to Bedford. Then if you wanted to go home, well say in 1940, 1941 and 1942 you had to have your parents permission and the Headmaster’s permission to go. Then when things got a bit easier I think you still had to get permission but it was more easily given so you did go down. But in the early days, I mean up to September 7th it was easy. But from September 7th to lets say late 1941 early 1942 it was only emergency really that you went or you broke the rules and some people did. Thereafter for a period it wasn’t too bad, you could go without too much effort but then came the V1s and V2s. You know what the difference is between the V1s and the V2s? Then rules got a bit stricter about that but we still managed it. I remember my parents were amazingly relaxed about it, there was this fatalism about it, it’ll get you if it’s going to get you. But the V1 - at least you had a chance to get to a shelter, you heard it cut off and then you just knew pretty soon there would be an explosion. But the V2 of course you heard the bang after it had fallen so there was no way you could prepare for a V2. But during the period of the V2s I used to go the pictures in London and I’d go to the theatre in the West End. That was life! I think there are some of us who look at what is going on at the moment with all the danger, etc., (referring to the Underground suicide bombings of July 2005) and saying, ‘Well, you know in our day we just carried on. People talk about the ‘Blitz’ spirit there was such a thing, it’s not a myth. And there was a sort of — I won’t say it was indifference it wasn’t that and there certainly was no indifference to people being killed but there was a feeling that you just had to carry on … what else could you do? And I think with the terrorists of course what people say is if you give in you let them win and it was virtually the same thing. Of course people had experiences, I was never lucky or unfortunate enough to be strafed, some of our people were by low flying enemy aircraft or being near where bombs actually landed particularly near airfields and things like that. Some of us were at farming camps and bombs came down and things like that and planes flew low. But quite a few people did have nasty experiences of bombing in London. There wasn’t much bombing here in Bedford but it was serious when it happened. There was one guy and the book talks about it, who was bombed, who’d left London and was bombed on the first day in Bedford.* That was bizarre.

‘D’ Day was if you like the beginning of the end because once we’d landed we felt that it was going to be sooner rather than later. Although in fact it was later rather than sooner because the Ardennes and all that took much longer than people had thought. But there was a great feeling of optimism and that the days could be numbered, count down. We kept abreast of the situation on the radio, the wireless. In York Street (Bedford) there was no problem in having the radio on anytime, Mrs. Smith encouraged it. So there was that and the newspapers, small as they were and of course we used to talk about it at school. I think we were all to a greater or lesser extent aware of the ‘Fronts’. You’d get a map from one of the papers and you’d stick pins and you’d see where it was going. It was largely the radio - because of course there was no television - to a lesser extent the cinema because then the Newsreels were very, very important. But chiefly it was the radio. Occasionally the teachers would talk about the progress of the war but chiefly it was the radio. I think we listened avidly, those who listened, listened avidly. There were the newsreaders. They suddenly became stars because they had to give their name. And the reason they had to give their name - that started in 1940 because we thought we were going to be invaded and so this is ‘Frank Phillips’ — you recognised Frank Phillips, or ‘this is Frank Phillips’ he was telling you, he was there - Frank Phillips was telling you - that was recognition so if a German person came in you would recognise it and think that doesn’t sound right. That started in 1940 and went right through the war and so a by-product of that was that these people became stars. They had to have was called R.P. ‘Received Pronunciation’, a proper voice. And then suddenly ITMA and all that came in and a man called Wilfred Pickles who was northern and that was all very odd, very odd that we had a northern accent on the 91Èȱ¬. Eventually they found other work for him, it was very strange, eventually he did quizzes and entertainment shows.

We listened to ITMA and after it had been going some time, they had a competition. They invited the audience to write a sketch using the characters and this man, Alan Locke, he and I wrote a sketch. We fell about, we thought it was hilarious, they didn’t! It didn’t get anywhere. The radio was a fantastic bond. There were all those American radio programmes, the Bob Hope show, Fred Allen show. Once the Americans were in the war we got a lot of high power radio shows. Bob Hope made broadcasts from Bedford at times and we think he stayed at ‘The Swan’ Hotel.

We were still in Bedford for VE Day, some of us went to London, most of us stayed here. We had something like, I don’t know, a 30 hour VE Day. I mean we were off school for VE Day and we marched down the High Street and one or two of us climbed on Bunyan’s Statue and there are pictures of that. The statue finished up with a school cap on its head and a quart beer bottle on the bible! That was us! We had a great time. It was joyous. I mean it was relief. I think we had every bit as good a time as the people who were doing it in London. So we celebrated and we weren’t the only people celebrating, it wasn’t just the people in our school, everybody was celebrating! The friends we’d made and there were one particular family called the ‘Hopes’ and they’d come from London. Mr. Hope was in the Air Force in the Far East but it was ‘open house’ at the Hopes and some of us went there. We used to spend probably about a couple of nights a week with Mrs. Hope and the two daughters and the son and it was like a club for a lot of us and I remember celebrating the end of the war there and we are still in touch. We just met them in Russell Park, the girls, Jean and Mary Hope whom we still see. I went and stayed with Mary not long ago. Mr. Hope had been posted to Bedford as manager of Lilley and Skinners. That’s why he was in Bedford and then he got called up. Mrs. Hope looked after us and we looked after her. We did things for the house and all things like that. After VE Day we finished school on the afternoon of the Visitation Day, Prizegiving. We didn’t go home as a school we just went home. It was easy. We were told and that was the end and so we just went home.�

*’Well Remembered Fields — the story of one school’s evacuation 1939-1945’, edited by Mr. Martin Mitchell and Mr. David Bernstein, Park Russell, 2003. ISBN 0-9545687-0-2

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