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

My relative was living with her family in the west end and working as a secretary.

Her parents were really stressed by the bombing and they moved house several times to get away from it, often sharing with others. There was quite a bit of sleeping on other people’s floors. She often had great difficulty getting to work, with all the transport disrupted, but she carried on going. It was expected that she would continue to live at home, work and keep her parents company while her older siblings joined up. She waited til she was 21 and then joined the WAAF, as she didn’t want to be conscripted to work in a munitions factory. Her parents were heartbroken.

She got to use her secretarial skills in the WAAF but had to fend off unwanted advances from men A LOT.

She met and married her husband in the forces, and moved to his northern town for most of the rest of her life.

The war was an utterly life changing experience for her generation.

I know you're after primarily female experiences of ww2 but my dgf was in London during the war. Working in hospitals -were me met my dgm- during the day and was on the roofs on incendiary duty putting out fires at night

Whenever I'm in London I look up to the roofs and imagine him up there.

My late mother, born 1925, she was at work when a bomb hit. She said the worst thing was seeing empty shoes among the rubble on the street.

Another time an air raid siren went off and my grandparents tried to rouse my aunt. She said - the house can burn down, I’m staying here.

They were evacuated after their home was bombed and my grandmother sent my mum and aunt back to find the cats. Apparently the poor things had “gone mad” and clawed them to pieces. They were probably traumatised.

My late DM told me quite a lot about her experiences during WWll. She was 12 when it started,and a couple of months off 18 when it ended. She was evacuated to Herefordshire in September 1939,and she absolutely hated it as she was so terribly homesick. After a few weeks,she wrote to her mum,begging to go back to East London. Her mum came to collect her a week later,reasoning that no bombs had been dropped yet on London,so it was quite safe. My DM and her mum set off for the mile or so walk along country lanes to the train station. They'd gone about half a mile,when the headmaster of the local school came running up behind them,shouting 'You wicked woman! Bring that child back here immediately!'. My DM and her DM broke into a run,only for the headmaster to chase them, suddenly producing an air rifle,with which he proceeded to take pot shots at DM and her mum! Thankfully he didn't hit them,and they got to the station unscathed and returned to East London.

My DM said she could remember spending many nights in the Anderson shelter at the end of their garden,during the blitz. One night,a bomb scored a direct hit on their house,and they emerged from the airraid shelter in the early hours of the morning to find their house completely destroyed. My poor DM was heartbroken as she lost her favourite doll,called Miriam,in the wreckage. After that they,had to go and stay with relatives in North London until they could be re-housed.

One thing I always remember my mum telling me was that as she wasn't quite 18 when the war ended,she very narrowly avoided being called up for work in a munitions factory or as a landgirl. She was eternally grateful for that!

My grandmother lived in London throughout the war, working as office admin / accounts etc in a large building company. She met my grandfather there who was a quantity surveyor and therefore in a protected occupation. They worked very hard trying to clear, repair and rebuild as the bombing caused so much damage.
Despite all, she seemed to have good memories, obviously around courting and getting married. She talked of sleeping in the tube station during air raids, make do and mend, VE Day etc. Sadly my grandfather had a terminal illness and died in 1945 when my mother was a baby.

My granny worked in and around London in the war, she wasn't from London she was from a farming area. I'm not quite sure how she ended up there, but I'm sure if it wasn't for the war that she would never have got to work in London. She died a number of years ago, I wish I knew more about her experiences. I remember as a child her telling me about the v2s and how you listened out for the sound, so long as you could hear them you knew you would be ok, when they stopped making a sound it was because they were falling to the ground.

My mum was evacuated from
East London to Oxfordshire. They didn't know what was happening. They thought it was some sort of school trip. She said she couldn't understand why her mum was crying

The Catford school bombing was awful. I taught in Deptford and it was part of a local ww2 history project. There's a memorial to the children and teachers who died in Hither Green Cemetery, if I recall correctly.

My mum who was Scottish was a nurse in dartford during the Blitz she told stories of running for shelter when the buzz bombs stopped behind her and sheltering in the underground. My favourite story is of her getting on a train to go home to Scotland in her nurses uniform ,falling asleep and on waking finding that the soldiers sat opposite had laid her across their laps so she was more comfortable.

Bombers and Mash is a collection of eye witness accounts IIRC.

My grandmother was in London at university from 1944 onwards. Tbh she never really talked about that aspect of the war - and I can’t ask her now. Her stories of the war were about being at boarding school in Salisbury & all a bit jolly holly sticks. I agree about class Tickledtrout, my gran’s family were well off, large house in the country, evacuees billeted on them, father did important things in the Air Force but not active service, it was organised for my gran to take her leaving exams (school certificate?) a year early so she could go up to uni before she was call up age & therefore avoid national service. Which apart from anything else is a real shame because it would have been eye opening for her!

Have a look at the Persephone books catalogue - the majority of their books were written by women, with a particular focus on ordinary lives during WWII. I find it incredible that people had to live through that experience - it really puts our lockdown experience into perspective!

My mum spent part of the war (- spent most of it evacuated in Wales, think they just came back for a few months when it was the ‘phoney war’ and the first family they got billeted with weren’t very nice) - where did you read about the bombing please, OP? She used to talk about the sound of the bombs and how you knew to worry when the noise stopped.

I remember helping her access the adult literacy campaign of the early 1970s - On The Move written by Barry Took and starring familiar faces of the day. I was at ( higher end of) primary school at the time. She obviously wasn't alone in experiencing disrupted education during or just after the war.
You've got me thinking now, OP.

I think experience very much depended on class. A friend's mother had a "fantastic war" working in Whitehall. Hated being shoved our when the men returned.

My mum was born in 1934.So she was five at the start of the war and 11 when it ended. She really never learnt to read and talked of spending her childhood in an air raid shelter. She rarely went to school. She was raised by her mum and aunty - men in Navy/ disappeared. She talked of rationing and tasteless, bread and lard/ dripping heavy meals. The poverty stayed with them for the rest of their lives tbh.