homelife

Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, spoke to the nation at 11 am on the Sunday 3rd Septrember 1939, by radio, to announce that we were at war with Germany. Air raid sirens sounded shortly after, but it was a false alarm, fortunatly. Mabel and I were standing at the front door - a warden passing by informed us we were not being perticuarly brave - a year or so later we were having to do fire-watch duties. People were adviced to make one room reasonably secure in case of gas attacks - we had to put a stripe of sticky paper crisscross on the windows and to hang a damp blanket over the doors and windows. We used the dining room for the purpose - the damp blanket made the room smell horrible. We were supplied with gas masks which we had to carry wherever we went. fortunately we were spared any gas attacks.

In 1940 there was dissatisfaction with Chamberlainas Prime Minister and Churchill took over. Antlee became deputy P.M. as we then had a coalition government.

The first few months of the war were comparatively quiet. There were some sea battles resulting in the sinking of several battle ships, on both sides. Russia invaded Poland and made a pact with Germany which resulted in partition of Poland. Russia later attacked and occuipied Filand. During the early part of 1940 the Germans started their Blitzkrieg on Norway, Denmark, and the Continent. As each country was defeated thier leaders and royalty camew to this country and we became quite familiar withn thier National Anthems which were played regularly on our radios, no doubt for the benifit of the nationals of those countries, as the BBC was widely relide on for information altough listened to it in secret and at some risk by the occupied countries.

In June 1940 France finally surrendered and our troops were evacuated from Dunkerk. It was a very unnerving time. School childern were being evacuated. Annie (my sister) and her triplets were evacuated to a farm near Ongar (not a particularly safe area). However they were not happy there - they had to sleep on the floor and the place was rat infested, so not very hygenic. In addition the owners were naturists and mostly in the nude. So Annie decided they would be safer at home and returned. In August the Germans started bombing our aifeilds and then on September 7th they made the first big daylight raid on London, setting fire to the docks. Mabel and I were at Gates Corner on our way home from shopping when the the sirens went and we saw the waves of bombers coming over. We hurried to get home but were hustled into the shelters in the park, by the wardens. When the all clear went and we came out of the shelter I thought that ther had been a storm as the sky was so black in the east, but soon learned it was smoke from the fires in the east end. From then until the end of may 41 we had raids every night. We didn't have an airaid shelter because we would have never had been able to get Mum and Dad down into one, so they slept downstairs and we slept on the matresses on the kitchen floor. The all clear always seemed to go just about in time for us to get up and go to work. Our journeys to work after the raids were very distressing, seeing the damage everywhere and people carrying the few belongings they had managed to take with them to the shelters but finding their homes either destroyed or uninhabitable. THe shelters did save many lives.

1941 was mainly dominated by land and sea battles. Germany attacked Russia and Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. It was an especially worrying time as there were so many losses on land and sea. food rationing was imposed because of all the shipping lost through U Boat attacks. Parks and other open spaces were turned into allotments and we were all urged to "Dig for victory".

1942- about that stage of the war older men were being called up and women also had to register. As our age groups wre called on we had to go and register and unless we were in reserved occupations, had to join one of the fighting services. Doris, Mable and I each in turn had to register. i was exempt as I was working for a chemical firm doing the payroll for the factory workers. Doris and Mabel were also exepmt as they were working for a firm dealing with food products. My firm suffered quite a lot of damage during the course of the war and Doris's office was badly damaged by fire. She was occupied with keeping staff records which were kept in steel filing cabinets, but as soon as the cabinets were unlocked and the drawers opened the contents immediately burst into flame, so all records were lost. One of the most depressing things at that time was going to work and seeing all the damage from the previous night's raids and people wandering around with the few possessions they had managed to salvage. We often had to make wide detours to get to work because of road closures etc.

Eric (my nephew)who was in the Territorials pre-war was called up from the start. He was with the Eighth Army in the North Africa campaign and then into Italy. He was in the battle for Monte Cassino, so all told he had a pretty tough time. John was in the army, i could 'nt be sure, but i belive he was in the medical corps, and was in Italy.

1944 saw the Allied landing in France-d day. In June we suffered the first Doodle bug attack on the night of the 12th. The following day there was an awful feeling of doom, not helped by Tom (my brother who was a soldier in ww1) who came round with tales of pilotless planes coming over in droves. He was always pessimistic about the conduct of the war. AS it would have been difficult to keep sounding sirens when one was on its way it was decided to set up a system of roof spotters, who would blow whistles when one was sighted and we all had to duck under our desks or other shelter. On one occasion we thought they realy were coming over in waves because they kept blowing the whistels, but it later transpires that one had been slightly damaged by fighters and kept going round in circles until it finally cut out and fell on Hackney Marches. Becuase of the danger from them and the later V2 rockets, Annie and the triplets wnet up to Wrangle for the rest of the war.

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