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

Yes my nan who is soon to be 101. She remembers seeing St Paul’s on fire, being bombed out, but generally just carrying on going to work until that got bombed too.

New level of tiredness
We have also recently uncovered sexual abuse during a relatives time as an evacuee and she finally feels safe enough to talk about it 80 years later. It's affected her whole life

My grandparents were both children just outside London during the war (Harold Wood/Romford).

My grandad, born in 1932, & his 3 siblings were evacuated but went to 3 different families - the little twins were kept together. He doesn't talk about his experience much but I gather it was not pleasant. He talks of his father, who was a barber, being chased down a street by machine guns & only just managing to avoid being shot by ducking behind trees.

My nan was born in 1930 & was not evacuated. She pretty much didn't go to school once war started as she was a sickly child & in hospital a lot & there wasn't much of a school to go to by that point. Her father didn't go to war as he worked on the railways, so she was lucky in that way. To this day, she is terrified of loud bangs as it reminds her of bombs being dropped.

My mum was born in 1934 so was a child but she says before being evacuated she remembers her dad diving under the kitchen table at the sound of bombs and yelling at everyone to get under. She also remembers returning home after being evacuated for several years. and not recognising her mother at all. She came from a big family but all the siblings were split up and she was sent to live with an older couple. She at least was able to see one or two of her sisters at school.

On the other side of things my grandmother-in-law fled to Dresden near the end of WWII and has a absolute phobia of rats to this day because of her memories of the bodies and rats after the bombings.

My mother's family were bombed out and then travelled around various bomb sites in a caravan whilst my grandfather cleared the rubble. No school for her until she was eight.

My father was at Sandhurst Road school. The pilot knew it was a school. There were kids in the playground.

My nan was evacuated to the South West - she was 10 or 11 at the time, where the family that so graciously took her in basically let their older teenage son abuse her as his own sexual play thing. She felt unwelcome and a problem to them the whole time besides that.

She wished so much she'd been allowed to stay and take her chances with the bombs in London.

She's spoken to many other evacuees who were abused in some way by their host families.

My nan gave me her government issue WW2 cookbook - i hadnt realised that's when crumble topping was invented as it used less ingredients than pastry!

Both my parents and grandparents were in London during WW2. My grandma told stories of helping to deliver neighbours babies inside Anderson shelters during bombing raids (she wasnt a nurse or midwife but had 2 children herself), tying tourniques on neighbours limbs after bombing raids (nan learnt a lot of first aid out of necessity), sleeping in the tube stations (no toilet facilities in there, so built their own shelter in their back garden), evacuating their children to broxbourne but collecting them after a month as the young couple they were staying with didnt look after them or feed them (probably resented the children being billeted with them). Grandad was a firewatcher and saw his parents road get bombed (luckily they were unscathed). Queuing hours for food outside butchers or greengrocers only to find out there was nothing left when you got to the front of the queue.
So they learned to keep chickens and grew some of their own food, learnt to knit, sew and craft, learnt musical instruments to entertain themselves and were a tight knit family with supportive neighbours. They taught me my siblings and my cousins a lot of practical skills and gave us all a love of growing things, baking etc which has been useful in the lock downs with our own DCs

Watch Lucy Worsley Blitz Spirit - eye opening

The Nella Last diaries were dramatised by Victoria Wood as Housewife, 49, which is brilliant and well worth a watch; it’s often on ITV3.

There’s also Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson, which is all about women’s experiences in WW2. Apparently the ATS was horribly rough and a big shock for nice middle class girls like my grandmother. She had a story about some American GI’s trying to impress her and her friend with a dramatic story of war action and they were lapping it up until they realised it was the plot of the film that had been showing at the local cinema the previous month 🤣

It’s odd to think how the war still affects us even now. I live in a post-war flat which is built on the site of bomb damage; I was able to identify the exact bomb on the London blitz map. If not for the conflict and that bomb, I’d be living somewhere completely different

My mother was a young teen in 1939, she was evacuated to Wiltshire but threatened to walk back to London if her mother didn't come and get her. My gran went and got her.
My gran, a widow who had lived through WW1, and my mother spent the war in London, her son was in the forces. They didn't speak much about it but when they did it was funny stories and a lot of laughter, they were lovely people and not remotely bitter about any "enemy" my gran had lived in Germany in the 1920s.
My other grandmother also lived through both world wars in London. She sheltered in the tube station and one night her house was destroyed by a bomb. My dad came home on leave unaware and found a crater where his home had been and had to ask around to find where his mum had moved to.

My grandmother was evacuated to Dorset and went to the local school, and then worked on the land as a Land Girl. She loved it so much she never went back to London. She married the farmers son when he got back from Germany and spent the rest of her life there. I went to live with my grandparents from the age of 14 and they were the most loving , happy and hardworking couple. My granddad told me every day was a gift from God after he got back. He landed on a Normandy beach and fought all the way to Northern Germany. He had nightmares every night of his life, even in his 80’s. My gran was always there for him. It fell to an awful lot of women to help and support their menfolk through years of PTSD. They kept it together and raised a family. Different breed of people. People complain today about the privations of lockdown. They don’t know what it means.

My Grandmother was 12 when the war started and lived in a flat in Bethnal Green. She had a lot of stories to tell. She woke one night to find half her ceiling had collapsed on her because of a bomb. After that, she was evacuated with 2 of her brothers, initially to the West Country. They stayed there for a few months, then returned home, before being evacuated again, this time to East Anglia. Her mother visited there and liked it so much that she actually managed to rent a small cottage there for a time.

She returned to London about age 14 and worked in a shop. She had various tails of near misses - she didn't catch her usual bus back from work one day and it was flattened by a bomb; she saw a doodlebug stop right overhead and the door to the air raid shelter was stuck. Mostly she talked about the fun she had as a teenage girl. At one point she was dating a soldier, sailor and airman simultaneously, until two came home on leave at the same time.

Her flat was next to Bethnal Green tube station at the time of the Bethnal Green station disaster. She wasn't home at the time but her father was called out to help remove all the bodies. She said he never fully recovered from what he saw.

My granny was evacuated from London with her children as they were so young. She hated it so much she took herself and the two boys back home saying she would rather die in London than live in the West Midlands. The street next to them was bombed after that so it wasn't a safe place to be at all. The graveyard where my granny's father was buried was bombed and apparently her mother went the next day demanding to be let in. I don't know how my granny felt about that; I heard about it from another relative. There was no way to identify the remains of course and they were all re-buried in a mass grave. My granny was in an unusual position in that my granddad was exempted from military service since he worked for an aircraft company, so he was home despite being in his 20s. Granny said that when she always took my dad with her when she went to get rations because the grocer would often give her a little bit extra if he was charmed by my dad.

Nanna told me many tales and my aunt dated an American stationed in London (who sadly died in 1944) I should write them down for my kids

My grandmother (and uncle) stayed throughout and my grandad was stationed at Biggin Hill so came home

I've just read the link about Catford school bombing. It says there is some debate about whether he knew it was a school or just a public building. Grandma swears he flew so low that she made eye contact with him.

Wow HuntingoftheSnark that's a claim to fame!

There are a few mass observation books that are worth a read. We are at war is a good one.

A woman in Berlin is a diary from the other side. The woman documents the fall of Berlin.

My grandma (now passed) witnessed the Catford school bombings as she lived close by, it was horrifying. Lots of stories, mainly about rationing and being constantly hungry, people you didn't know trying to get into your Anderson shelter at night. It was quite a desperate, scary time rather than the jolly, "all in this together" attitude that we associate with it now. Aspects of daily life were frightening.

American GIs used to call out to her when she was in the park, offering nylons and chocolate for her to talk to them. Before having children, they refused to leave their bed when the bombs dropped and stayed up all night, listening to the sounds. There was a story about them running up a hill dodging bombs, but I'm not sure about that.

Her best friend gave birth on a crowded tube platform, it was being used as an air raid shelter at night. Her mother and another woman helped deliver the baby and they all got up in the morning and walked home with a baby.

The effects of the war and rationing went on for years afterwards.

My other gf was an auxiliary fireman from the South Coast who was posted to London during the Blitz.

Dm lived in what was Kent but now outer London. Her father was a stationmaster and they got bombed out from their flat above the station in March 1945 when a v2 rocket landed near the railway. My gf was out on fire-watch at the time but she and my gm were asleep in bed and got showered with glass and shrapnel.

DM was born in 1928 and lived in west London during WW2. She said the teachers used to let the kids sleep at their desks if there had been air raids during the night.

She has dementia now, and for a while thought that she was living through it again, and taught me that you can tell the difference between our planes and enemy planes by listening to their engines - one is constant and one is intermittent. Hellish time to relive for her mind.

DM used to either go in the cupboard under the stairs or under the kitchen table. Her mother used to take the sofa. One day she woke up with a start thinking the intermittent sound she could hear was a enemy plane overhead - but it was the cat sitting on her chest and purring!