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My Wartime Experiences
I was 11 years old when war was declared. At first, we had the ‘phoney’ war, everything was quiet, the bombings by the German aeroplanes began in earnest — The Battle of Britain was on!
I was born in Southfleet, near Gravesend, Kent and the German planes used to follow up the Thames to London. The ack-ack guns around our area tried to prevent the planes from reaching London and very often the planes would turn round to return to Germany. But they would jettison their bombs before doing so; therefore we were in great danger, although of course, being in the country, the majority of the bombs fell on fields and so on. Believe it or not though, we had many evacuee children in our village.
I remember particularly the time spent in the air raid shelter in our garden. We never seemed to be out of it. One had just gone to bed when the air-raid siren would start and it was out of bed, downstairs, into the garden for the air raid shelter. There was my mother and father, myself and two sisters in there; a bit of a crush. I slept in the bunk bed lengthways of the shelter and there was not enough room to stretch out fully; very uncomfortable. The shelter had cork pieces glued to the inside of the shelter to help prevent condensation but, nevertheless, drops of water still formed on the corrugated iron. Even during the height of the Battle of Britain, my mother would dash into the house to cook something for us and bring it out to the shelter. One had to eat!
(When we were indoors, we would hear Vera Lynn singing on the wireless “There’ll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover”. And when listening to it, referring to Peace, I wondered if EVER the words “And Jimmy will go to sleep in his own little room again” would come true. The thoughts of sleeping in one’s cosy bed again instead of the crammed and damp conditions of the air raid shelter, seemed like heaven, but didn’t seem it would ever happen).
Regarding school, the children in the village, including me of course, who were due to go to the Hall Road School, near Gravesend, weren’t allowed to travel there due to the incessant bombings. For two years our education continued in the tin village hut with just the one teacher. I am afraid we learned very little in the two year period, one of the reasons being that, with the constant air raid, we were often rushing off to the Church to shelter from the bombs. It was considered, as the walls of the Norman church were so thick, we were well protected. The girls took to class their knitting bags and during the air raids, we knitted and chatted in the Church.
Of course too, we had gasmasks and had to carry them everywhere. We had gasmask practice at school from time to time and the sight of seeing each other in our masks caused us to burst out laughing, resulting in very peculiar noises which made us laugh even more!!
Rationing was dreadful. Very few sweets, cakes made ‘out of nothing’ very little meat, butter, jam, bread, cheese and other necessities. We were lucky though as we had a large garden where dad kept chickens and rabbits, and grew vegetables and fruit. He also had two allotments. Mum often made jam from the produce on the kitchen range. Being young, I never thought how she managed to do this with sugar being on ration but she did. I know to supplement the sugar ration, there was always a tin of syrup in the pantry, and this was off-ration. Then there were the saccharin tablets. Horrible, they used to froth up in the cup or container and leave a really nasty taste in one’s mouth. So, to this day, I do not take sweetener or sugar in my tea or coffee. Even when the war ended, rationing continued for some time.
However, our spirits were not dull. After school, we used to play skipping, hopscotch, rounders, leapfrog, cycling and so on. We always though kept within easy reach of our homes and air raid shelter.
Clothes of course were on coupons. It was always ‘make do and mend’ and one used to buy, at a reasonable price, parachute silk which made lovely underwear and blouses, though a bit ‘see-through’.
All houses had to have blackout curtains and the policemen used to cycle round towns and villages knocking on people’s doors if there was a chink of light between the curtains. When cycling to and from work, the riders had to guard over their lights leaving just a slit. No street lights were allowed in the towns but our village had none anyway; and still hasn’t.
Incendiary bombs were nasty things. While we were in the shelter, our house had one dropped on it and glass was everywhere. So the war wore on, and towards the end, we had these nasty ‘Doodlebugs’ VI and late on V2 flying bombs. If we thought the Battle of Britain aeroplanes bad, these were really frightening. Different to the time of the German planes during the Battle of Britain when we had a warning that they were approaching our shores, there was either none, or a belated one in the case of the doodlebugs due to the fact that they were so quick. These were un-crewed flying bombs and had a rasping, sort of spluttering sound. When a doodlebug was overhead, we would stand breathless hoping it would pass over and go on, but if the noise stopped, we all dived for cover; the doodlebug would come straight down causing a really ear-splitting explosion on hitting the ground and enormous devastation. I considered them wicked and cowardly weapons as the target of the V1 and V2 (London) was preset in German, but in many cases the rockets’ engines cut out en route. Those that did reach London caused many thousands of deaths and destruction.
But, of course, peace did come and it is difficult to believe now that we lived through those times.

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