Letter detailing eventful day trip to London June 1944

Note to the editor

This is the full text of a letter found amongst the belongings of a relative. I found it a very interesting account of life in London in the early days of the V1 offensive. The writer is still alive and has given permission for its publication here. She has much more to contribute but as we have only just contacted her it will not make the deadline.

Gillingham
Kent
July 5th 1944

Dear Peggy

Thank you very much for the other two exam papers. It is with great pleasure that I return your notes to you; thank you very much for lending them to me, and I hope I never have to borrow them again. I’m sorry to hear that your mother hasn’t been well and I hope she is able to sleep better now. You seem to be getting the raids rather badly round your way.
Flying bombs come over here and there is a warning on most of the night, but none have dropped very near us and it is nothing like it is in London. My mother has got a bad back, she thinks it is lumbago; it is terribly stiff and sore and she finds great difficulty in moving about. However it seems a little easier today.

I had a hectic day on June 30th. To begin with owing to the state of my finances I went up by the Workman’s Train which necessitated my getting up at 5:30am. I had breakfast at the Corner House, and as I was walking down the Strand a Flying Bomb fell just off the Strand. Wrenn had not made it very clear exactly when and where the exam would be; I waited until 11:30 am and nobody seemed to think he was coming up to London that day, so I began to have awful suspicions that I might have mistaken the date. I rang up his home, and his wife said she knew he was in Oxford but had no idea that he was coming up to London. By this time I was really frantic so I tore across Russell Square to the School of Oriental and African Studies to see Mr Firth, the other examiner. While I was waiting to see him, the room I was sitting in was rocked violently as another robot plane fell nearby. The windows on the ground floor were out but those on the top floor where I was were all right. When Mr Firth appeared he reassured me that the exam was to be held that afternoon at 2:30 pm at King’s. I had no sooner got back to King’s than another plane fell fairly close, probably the other side of the river. I had lunch at the Corner House, and then went to a short service at St Martins in the Fields. Amongst other things I thought it would help to calm me down. After the service I went back to King’s and had just got to the end of the Aldwych before crossing the road, when I heard a deafening roar and several people round me threw themselves to the ground as a plane exploded somewhere near Bush House. It all happened so suddenly that I just stood in the middle of the road and gazed dumbly up at the sky. It was a stroke of Providence that I was not hurt, as I was surrounded by broken glass and several people near me were cut, and there were trails of blood all over the pavement. An elderly gentleman, also unhurt, picked himself up near me, and together we walked on a few paces; there was dense smoke everywhere, and after falling over a few pieces of aeroplane and encountering one or two fatal casualties which did not present a pleasant sight, I was escorted back to King’s by the same gentleman who informed me he was a barrister in the Law Courts.

The exam was to have been held in the Skeat and Furnivall Library but one of the windows had just been blow out, so we moved down into the basement. There were three other candidates, two from Exeter and one from Birkbeck. The exam wasn’t at all bad, Firth and Wrenn were quite jovial. After the exam I went straight to Victoria where I was met by another flying bomb which fell just behind the station. I was glad to reach home again after an intolerably slow journey.

Thank you very much for your very kind invitation; I should very much like to come to Woking, but I’m afraid there is no prospect of me leaving home unless it is absolutely necessary as long as the raids last, as mother is so nervous about me while I am away. I am hoping that by next summer the ban will be lifted and you will be able to come to Chatham. Please excuse my writing ; I have sent my fountain pen to be mended and the one I am using seems designed to make writing a difficult and messy operation.

If the raids should stop before the end of the vac, and I am going up to London I will let you know.

Cheerio for now
Love
Beatrice

PS I’m sorry I have rambled on so much about the 30th June but it is all still fresh in my mind.

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