And Not a Man Amongst Us

We had a big house in London, just off Wandsworth Common and the people that owned the house had a flat upstairs. She left the house every afternoon, at four o’clock, to go up to his workplace in central London to shelter in the cellars underneath.

This left me and my sister and her friend and my best friend Lil on our own. All our husbands were away in the forces. I worked as a telephone engineer, my friend was at Battersea Town Hall and my sister and her friend were clippies (bus conductors). They were two of the first female bus conductors in the war, their picture was in the paper.

It was usual about six o’clock every night that Hitler started bombarding Clapham Junction, one the largest train junctions in the world. The four of us used to get our food ready and take our food down into the cellar every evening. We would stop down in the cellar until six or seven next morning. Lily had a fur coat bought for her and she got married in this fur coat. The last thing at night she would take the coat put it round her shoulders and say ‘Let’s get ready for the sod’s opera’. And when we went upstairs in the morning we would find the front door always off its hinges and a couple of windows blasted. And not a man amongst us and then we would all get ready to go to work.

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