A Selection of Memories from Young at Heart Club, Loughton

The day war broke out I was 9 years old my family and I sat around the radio to listen to the announcement made by a man in a very solemn voice saying 'As from today this country is at war with Germany'. I did not realise how serious this was as I was safe and comfortable with my family, mum, dad and three brothers who were much older than me. Two of my brothers went into the forces, one into the R.A.F. and one into the army. My other brother did not pass his medical as he had a stiff leg and hip due to an accident on his bicycle when he was 12 years old. I spent the war years at school, in the shelters, getting to know boys, learning ball room dancing and generally enjoying myself. Although I do remember feeling a few times being frightened by bombs dropping near my home but luckily not on mine. The most terrifying were the doodlebugs. I can still hear the distinctive noise they made, then the noise stopped suddenly which meant it was coming down to explode nearby. We would cover our ears with our hands. I left school when I was 13 years old and never went back again. I stayed at home with mum and dad until I started work at the age of 15 at the end of World War II. My brothers came home safely. Yvonne Fitzgerald.

I was 10 years old in 1939. My mother's orders were if the warning goes get my sister's children into the dugout and leave the street door open so she could run in when she came back from the shops. The siren did go and I did what I was told. While in the shelter I heard a rustling sound and then a foreign voice calling out. My thoughts were that it was a parachute coming down. I grabbed the spanner from the back of the shelter ready to protect my two nephews and myself. But the person ran when he saw me with the spanner. I learnt afterwards that the person was a Jewish rent collector and the rustling sound was a barrage balloon going up in the next road. The Airforce men were stationed at the local pub in Wager St. , Bow. I don't think they saw that man for a while but the neighbours suggested I should have hit him anyway as he was a rent collector.
Most of the local children were evacuated but there were about six children left but no schools. The local barber decided to let us have a room at the back of his shop to use as a classroom. A lady came to teach us and the barber gave us each a pencil and notebook in which to do our work.
This went on for a while until they arranged something else for us. Thanks to Mr. Lewis the barber, who lived in Bow Common Lane, we had some education. Ethel Carter.

It was the height of the Blitz. My mother-in-law had already had the top of her house blown down. A tarpaulin cover was her roof so they had to live downstairs in cramped conditions. It was essential to spend all the air raid warnings in her Anderson shelter. It was about 3 a.m. when she had to go to the toilet which was located near the shelter when she ran screaming back into the shelter shouting 'It's a ghost, It's a ghost'. Immediately she woke everyone up. They all went outside and started to laugh because caught up in a rose bush was a white sheet flapping in the wind and making ghostly noises. But the best bit was gaining a white sheet which was a bonus because of coupon rationing. She lived in Acton Green Chiswick and a land mine had blown her roof off. Joyce Duer.

I remember one cold winter morning I was playing in Mum and Dad's garden with my dog Bessie. We lived near Victoria Park in Hackney which in those days was a lovely area. Anyway out in the garden that winter morning there was a loud plane approaching which was a doodlebug. The air raid warning started and my mum shouted from the house 'Go down the shelter' which was in the garden. As I ran towards the door of the shelter the doodlebug exploded in the nearby street and I was thrown by the blast down the steps into the shelter. My dog was on my back pushing me into the shelter and may have saved my life. Apart from cuts and bruises I was fine and mum and dad helped me out of the shelter. Needless to say our dog Bessie got lots of cuddles and a big bone as a treat. Audrey Lewis.

I am now aged 95. I received my call up papers to work in a munitions factory and we first had to go through a very strict eye test under very bright lights. I passed this test A1. My first day started very early 6.16 a.m. catching the train at Southfields Station to Wimbledon where I had to catch the bus to Wimbledon Chase where the munitions factory was located. We worked underground that was approached by a long downward slope. I started work at 7 a.m. sharp at long lines of benches where trays of bullets and shells which I had to examine under very strong lights to see if they had any cracks in them. The perfect ones were packed into ammo boxes to be sent to the Navy for use on the ships. The rejects were returned to the factory. My shift finished at l p.m. after which I returned home. Amelia Woods.

A mobile gun was parked each night in the unmade road beside our house next to a balloon barrage and four gun emplacements and soldiers. It was very loud and we had our windows blown out twice despite being taped. In the field below the Molotov Cocktail incendary bombs were a wonderful display. In our Anderson air raid shelter which was damp we had a sheet of asbestos for a door. Also the cottage's high brick wall would have collapsed on our heads if a bomb had hit. One night feeling a damp movement on my thigh I ran up the garden minus slippers only to be told off for getting my feet dirty and for frightening the toad which was sharing my bunk bed. A landmine fell on the greenhouse opposite grandma's house and killed the ginger kitten twins, and finished my uncle Fred who was gassed in the last war and had shrapnel in his brain. The fine bone china looked complete but on being picked up just crumbled through out fingers, blasted by the explosion. Daphne Shaw.

March 6th 1945: on the evening of this day our house was demolished by one of the last rockets Hitler sent over. It made no sound and the only sign that sometnhing was wrong was that all the lights went out and it was pitch dark. I was getting ready for work next day and could not see what had happened but by instinct I knelt down and covered my head with my hands. My mother was in the other room and I tried to find her scrambling over bricks and rubble, she had been hit by something and I was cut in the face by flying glass. We were taken to a first aid dressing station where a doctor gave treatment to both of us. After a week we left the station but had no where to go but wandered around for three months, friends taking us in now and then. I went back to work but mum had to wander around having meals in cafes. After three months we were given a flat in a converted house. We were not allowed to go back to the site of our bombed house because it was too dangerous so that for part of this time all we had to wear were our dirty and stained clothes. Just before this bombing of our house we were machine gunned by a German plane and had to shelter in someone's porch.
Lillian Fisher.

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