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

[lozengeoflove]

I’m really interested in what experiences women had of living in London during WWII. I’ve read so much about the male experience of fighting but I’d like to hear how women found the domestic life in London during this time.

Currently re-reading Sarah Waters ‘The Night Watch’ and would really love to hear about first hand experiences.

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.

Yes, I can imagine @Tickledtrout. Thank you for sharing. I was reading about an awful school bombing in Catford. It must have been hard for parents of children not evacuated out of London to continue to send them to school.

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 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.

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 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!

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

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.

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 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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.

My mother was born in 1930 and lived in Wimbledon - she was evacuated to Yeovil along with her mother and sister (father was in the RAF). She has pretty fond memories of the time they spent living on a farm, even though worried about her father.

After the war they ended up in Norwich, where there was a German prisoner of war camp. My mother married a German from the camp in 1952, who was relieved to have been captured and to be allowed to stay in the UK. Her family were ok with it - his were not and never forgave him.

A now late aunt lived off the Tottenham court road during ww2.
She used to make us roar when telling us stories of waiting for her husband and all the other women giving her daggers. What she meant was she somehow was standing where all the prostitutes used to ply their trade and didn't like strange women on their patch.
Another story -which must have been terrifying was when she had her son during the war and was pushing him in the pram. Somehow an enemy plane came overhead and started machine gunning, aiming for her. She said she just ran with the pram into the nearest shop but could hear bullets hitting the pavement behind her. 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.

These are all so fascinating. Thank you for sharing everyone.
I can’t imagine how it must feel to emerge from an Anderson shelter and see a massive rubble where your house stood. And the poor cats!
@3CCC that’s a lovely story!

That’s so interesting Hunting.
I didn’t realise POW’s were still in camps that long after the war.

Sounds like you might love to read Nella Lady’s war diaries, which are the real diaries kept by a woman in Barrow in Furness during WW2. They are absolutely fascinating, a real insight into domestic life during the war.

@JanFebAnyMonth here’s the link:

www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2018/01/20/75th-anniversary-of-the-sandhurst-road-school-bomb/

*Nella Last, not Lady

@Wigeon I was just looking at those on Amazon last night. @skeggycaggy I also saw the book you mention. I did buy a few WWII books so looking forward to having those arrive.

@chocolateorangeinhaler totally agree. How those women lived through such terrifying ordeals and then just picked themselves up and carried on, is really beyond me.

This is why what you’re all sharing fascinates me. Men who fought on the war fields expected the blood and gory to a certain degree. It’s the life of the soldier. But what the women had to endure, in their own home towns is even more disturbing to me. They had to survive the terror of the Blitz, and later doodlebugs and deal with rationing, losses of loved ones, homes. It’s just all so tough.

Yet they all just managed to get on with it. It’s certainly a hardy generation.