Vera's War Memories

I was fifteen years old when the war broke out — I can remember, vividly, listening to the radio which was run, in those days, with a battery and an accumulator — the latter we had to take to a shop every week to be “topped up”. My mother, my grandmother and I had listened to Neville Chamberlain on the radio whilst he was telling the country that war on Germany had been declared. Within minutes, the sirens were sounded but, although everyone was scared, nothing happened. Neighbours were in the road all talking to one another.

Within the next two days, the evacuation of children was commenced. My mother got my belongings together and we had to go to Selhurst Grammar School the next morning — we had no idea where we were going but, for us, this was a grand adventure.

My sister, Valerie, had just started at Gonville Road School and she was four and a half years old. That evening, when my father got home from work, he went up to the school and asked if she could be evacuated with me — the answer was “no”. We were all sad but nothing could be done about this.

When all of us girls, who were treating this day as the beginning of a great adventure got on the train, said tearful “goodbyes” to our family and wondered what we would find when we arrived at our secret destination. When we were nearly there and we could see the sea — we were overjoyed. However when we arrived at a church hall where our billets were allocated, we ended up as the last four girls to be chosen — this being because the four of us wanted to stay together. A mother and daughter finally took us in but this is another story. We shared the Hove Grammar School on a half-a-day tuition for each school.

I had to go home fairly soon, because my mother had died. When we came back from the funeral at Croydon cemetery, we heard unusual noises outside — my Nana rushed out in the garden and called “they’re dropping leaflets”. However, they were, in fact dropping bombs and had “hits“ on the Bourjois Factory near Croydon Aerodrome and many of the girls who worked there were killed.

I managed to get a job in the John Lewis Store in Oxford Street. I had a second-hand bicycle and I used to ride (amongst the tramlines) from Croydon to the centre of London. Then, one morning, after a dreadful night with bombs dropping everywhere, we were stopped by the Police who told us that the John Lewis store had been seriously bombed and we were sent to a large building in Sloane Square called “Clearings” where we carried on with our normal working day’s work. I had made a friend called Dorothy who also had a bike and we would cycle to Clapham Common (where she lived) with all the shrapnel dropping all around us.

When the bombing got too heavy, I used to go to London by bus and train and when I got off at my destination at Sloane Square, a station on London Underground, the whole of the platforms were being used by people who had been sleeping there every night for safety.

For a while, I went to live with an Aunt and Uncle in Ealing and my Aunt got me a job where she worked and each evening before it was dark, we got our pillows and blankets and slept in the bomb shelter at our Works. One morning we got up and trudged home to find that our house had been bombed but we managed to live in it for a while.

During this time, I lost three of my Uncles — two on the battleship “The Prince of Wales” and one who was a prisoner of War in Changi.

I moved to stay with another Aunt who lived in East Ham with her family. I had been there for a few weeks and was there when the Docks were bombed — the flames were so strong that it was like daylight in the middle of the night.

I then moved back to Ealing and got a job at the Engineering factory and met my husband Ralph, he was eventually “called-up” — joined the Royal Army Medical Corps — sent to Canterbury, Colchester, then eventually to the Middle East and worked in two of the large hospitals in Cairo.

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