Were you, or someone you know, living in London during WWII?

My MIL was born a few months after her father was shot down in the war. Her mother was widowed & a parent by 19. Her sister age 21 was in exactly the same situation a few months later. Their other sister was the only one whose airman husband came home from the war.

My DGF was born after his father had died of wounds sustained in WW1. They lived in Docklands area. He had several older brothers & sisters, some of whom were old enough to work but they were incredibly poor. When WW2 started he was a fire warden as he was still too young to join up at first, although he did as soon as he could. He met my DGM during an air raid; she had been separated from her family, they were decidedly not poor. She was scared so he told her he would look after her, & he always did. They caused a bit of a scandal apparently because she basically did a Lady Sybil. Despite growing up in absolute luxury, she was very, very careful about money, keeping scraps of food leftover for the next day, & clothes were always carefully mended.

My other GPs, who were about a decade younger, also grew up in greater London area. My DGM was always terrified of lightning. One day she got to school to find out her best friend had been killed in a direct hit on her shelter.

My late father volunteered when he was 14. He was 6 foot tall and while he thought he passed for 18 he was kept here rather than sent over to France. He packed parachutes. He told me that to make sure no one cut corners everyone had to do a parachute jump, selected randomly. He never talked about his experience once he was 18, just made a few comments about takeaways were nothing like the food he ate in India and China. Also one day he was slow to react and his CO grabbed him by his collar and floored him just as a bullet whizzed over his head.

Once, when he was about 70 I was concerned about him being cold and he said he was fine. Then said he could cope with being cold and tired, or wet- as in rain- and cold. He had promised himself that he would never again be cold, wet and tired, any combination of 2 of those but never all 3.

Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley is really worth watching as pp said. It's on iPlayer at the moment. It's pretty horrifying.

You could hear the V1s coming. If you heard it overhead you knew you were safe, because when it cut out the forward motion would continue until it hit the ground. The V2s just arrived with a large explosion.

My great uncle was a conscientious objector in WWII.
He told that that because of his religion (Quaker) that he wasn't prepared to sign up. The court said "likely story, you can take it to the higher court if you like, but they'll almost certainly laugh you out. You need to arrive being ready to either go to jail or be conscripted right away."
So he went to the higher court, and they apparently were fantastic.
They listened to what he had to say, and asked him what he was prepared to do to help the war effort. So he told them he wouldn't do anything with weapons but was keen to help in any way that was saving lives, so he was in the Fire Service in London.

I know they were bombed out-and the only thing that survived the bombing was a tiny crystal vase-dm has it now.
I also know that he met his wife -also a Quaker. She'd been sent over on kindertransport from Germany as her parents had made the "mistake" of saying loudly and publicly that what Hitler was doing was wrong. They were sent to a concentration camp and she was brought over to England.

My DM's first boyfriend was conscripted into the RAF and he was killed in an accident whilst he was loading bombs onto an aircraft. She told me he was blown to smithereens, and there was nothing left of him to find.

Both my parents were young adults living in London during WWII. They both had reserved occupations - my DM was a typist at one of the London railway stations. She said they used to get loads of troop trains passing through.

DF was in the Home Guard and was often out on duty at night (doing stuff like firewatching on factory roofs) and DM said that if the air raid siren went off at night, she used to hide under their big oak dining table with the dog. During the day, apparently the V1 and V2 rockets were the worst, because you'd hear the thing approaching and suddenly its engine would cut out. The worst part was not knowing where it was going to land. She had a near miss one day, she sheltered in a bank doorway and the bomb landed in the road round the corner.

I know it’s only a film but there’s a scene in ‘The Krays’ where an auntie recounts her experience of being in the underground during an air raid and having to deal with a birth going wrong
‘While the men were off playing soldiers’

Even tho that was likely not a true story there must have been many similar real incidents

It was awful for everyone

Fascinating thread.

My grandparents worked at the Vickers factory at Brooklands racing track during the war. It was bombed with about 200 people killed. Apparently, the Germans had been tipped off by an Italian racing driver who had driven there.
I remember my mum telling me Grandad's story of seeing the German bombers flying over the race track towards them. It was a beautiful sunny day and a lot of people were having their break outside (thankfully, otherwise the death toll would have been even higher). Grandad threw himself on top of my Nana to protect her.

Well, that was his story anyway 🙂

My grandparents lived in London (Tottenham I think) and my GM was evacuated during the war because she was pregnant. My Dad was born in mid 1943, in a castle in Derbyshire which had been converted into a maternity hospital! I often think how difficult it must have been for my GM, he was her first child and she was sent miles away from home, family and friends.

My late DM was born in 1930. She was brought up in South Bucks but well within sight & sound of London. She told me the bus she was travelling on going home from school one day was tracked by a bomber who was waiting to pick off passengers as they got off. Tge bus driver refused to stop & insisted on driving everyone home so they didn't have to walk in danger.

She and my DGM were caught out shopping in tge high street when there was a dog fight overhead, and the German plane strafed bullets all down the high street. The manager of Woolworths got everyone in off the street and took them to the back of the shop for safety.

A doodlebug landed in tge next field from their house and took out all the windows in houses around them. My DGD, who I never knew, was blasted from one side of the garden to the other and must have been knocked unconscious.

One of my grandmothers was evacuated as she was pregnant and breastfeeding a 5 month old. I dont think many people know that women in these cirumstances were evacuated too. She hated it and went back soon as possible
My other grandmother lived in a flat with friends and had a job in some offices. She also volunteered as a first aider /auxillary nurse. She had to do a minimum number of hours and it was very full on. She did exams in wound management. They seemed to have a lot of fun out of hours though.

My grandfather was in the Navy and was a gunner on the supply ships that went to South America to transport food back to the uk. I still have all of his Naval records, and lots of photos of him having what looked like a great time in Rio!!
I used to ask him about it a lot, but he told me that all the death was horrific, ships being blown up, shooting down planes, he said they were so close you could see their faces in the cockpit,

My gran lived in Richmond London, they had a factory at the back of their house and near a train line. My mum remembers praying under the stairs when the bombing started... several houses were bombed along her street and the factory! They were the evacuated and my mum said they were absolutely horrible people. So my gran took the children back home and hoped for the best.... 😱😱

It always makes me wonder how people that had terrible things like this happen just got on with life, happy to be alive. Yet today people scream that they have ptsd for the most trivial of things.

I don’t think that’s really fair tbh. Many, many people of that generation were terribly affected in many ways and could have done with a lot more support for their mental health. My great aunt, who was the happiest and most jolly woman you could meet, was diagnosed with anxiety in her 80s after trying to take her own life. It was a direct result of her being evacuated in the war and she struggled to even discuss her experiences that late in her life because it was just expected that people wouldn’t talk about things.

One of my neighbours is in her mid nineties and was at school during the war. She relayed a tale of how her and her friend were pushing their bikes home from school when an enemy plane flew really low over head. They ran and hid in an alleyway, it was so close she could clearly see the markings. She is a lovely woman and I used to pop round for afternoon tea which she served in bona china cups with tiny cakes with little silver cake forks. She is incredibly gracious.

My mum was born in 1925 and lived in SE London. Her father was away at sea (merchant navy) and her 4 older brothers were all in the forces. In September 39, my mum and her younger sister were evacuated to Swanley (not far from where they lived and a major train junction at the time). They lived with a very poor family, with an outside privy and newspaper used as tablecloth. There was also a postman lodger living in the house. My auntie told me that he used to look at her and my mum 'in a funny way'. After a few weeks, my GF came home on leave, went to see his daughters, took one look at the set-up and brought them straight home again. They were not evacuated again.

They lived in a house with cellars, so used to take shelter there during air raids.

My other GPs had a Morrison shelter in their dining room. When this GM died in 1958, my mother found blue bags of wartime sugar still in her pantry, untouched. GM was saving them for 'when they were really needed'. My DM said the sugar had gone brown and lumpy and she had to throw them out.

My MiL was working at a day nursery and remembered vividly watching the Battle of Britain taking place over the skies of Kent.

Mum was born in London in 1937 and lived there during the war. Went to a school five minutes walk away, to this day struggles with air raid siren noises (we were in the Imperial War Museum once when they sounded and it really affected her). Mum has explained about the ration books having dedicated suppliers you went to (so one particular butcher for example).

Granddad went to work on the bus and tube each day, grandma a housewife as would be expected. Mum able to travel to relatives elsewhere in the UK in the summer but not evacuated, memories of train travel with troops on the train.

Two of our neighbours in their late 90's one who sadly passed recently both were in the East end were bombed out both young brides with children and one being Jewish which would've added a extra level of terror, both did a lot of voluntary work during the war both tended to focus on the more positive aspects of the situation and not dwell on the negative which is a generational thing my grandparents were the same despite my grandfather in particular seeing some pretty horrific stuff

My late MIL lived in Beckenham, she and her sister were teenagers during the war. She recalled a machine gun attack as they were crossing a bridge. They had a shelter in the garden and were bombed out by a Doodlebug bomb. Many of her memories seemed to be happy at the way people had pulled together and family gatherings, but I am sure they seemed happier in hindsight.

We spent the night before my third birthday in the Anderson shelter, and
I remember walking up the garden path in the morning in my dressing gown and slippers feeling excited because there would be presents. I suppose the 3rd birthday would be the first one that you are really aware of.
I started school in Jan 1943. One morning in March 1944 I went to school as usual and when I got there we were sent straight home, because incendiary bombs had been dropped on the building and the top floor had been burnt out. Temporary accommodation for the Juniors was found in a nearby church hall. We had to kneel on the wooden floor and use the seats of chairs to work on. It was painful.
Years later, when I was in the Senior school, many of our text-books still bore signs of having been water-logged by the firemens' hoses. A

It's not London, but for a fascinating description of what life was like in Liverpool, you could try Helen Forrester's books - there's a whole series of them, autobiographical, starting with Tuppence to Cross the Mersey, when her family went bankrupt in (mid?) 30s, and relocated from an affluent market town to Liverpool. It continues through her growing up and being a young woman during the war, managing the family home with many children, volunteering with the red cross, working in a variety of jobs, many air raids, dances and social life, etc.

There are also a couple of other books not in the same series, fiction, around the same time.