My Main Memories: Vauxhall during War

I was eight years old when the 2nd World War started. I lived in Vauxhall, South London. My dad worked near to home and every night, having finished his daytime work, he would then go to carry out duties with the A.R.P.

One night, after coming out of an air raid shelter that was an underground warehouse, we returned home and found lots of sand outside the door. When I went up to my bedroom, we found that a lump of ceiling had fallen onto my bed where I would have been sleeping. We were told that an incendiary bomb had been diffused on the roof… and that really sticks in my mind.

Soon after that incident, we went to live in a house that my aunt had rented and we lived in that house until after the war with my aunt, my Nan and her husband, who we used to call Uncle Tom because he was her second husband. By this time, ALL the men had been called up and gone to war but they all came back.

One of my best memories is that if an air raid sounded when we were at home, we stayed there and didn’t have to go to school. Unfortunately if the air raid sounded when we were at school, we stayed there until it was over. There were a lot of teachers who I suppose were brought back from retirement. Some of the teachers then were very cruel.

I can remember the bombings, the doodlebugs (flying bombs) and the V2s, which were rockets and you had no warning with them. One minute a building was there and the next it was down to the ground. That was frightening but a good job that it didn’t go on for too long.

We had some good times and some bad times but you can never erase an experience like that.

Yes, we had rationing but my mum was the only one in our little family who had children, so we didn’t do so badly for sweets but the other food that was rationed, we had to stretch. Nothing was thrown away and at every street corner, there was a big bin where we put all the wastes so that the animals that were in the country could be fed.

I get angry when I hear the children of today say that all children were evacuated who lived in London. There were quite a lot of us in our school and in our street and some children who were evacuated came home because they had a rough time.

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