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.

@sashh I had no idea about the exieriences of deaf people during the war. Thank you for sharing.

This is, without doubt the most interesting post I've read on MN. I hope you don't mind but I have nominated it for classics
If anyone is interested there is a book called No time to wave goodbye, which is written by children who were evacuated all around the world. It's both heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal messures
I'm also reading The Bletchley Girls by Tessa Dunlop, it's hard to really comprehend what people were up against until you hear it in their own words

My grandmother grew up in Camden during the blitz. She told me she didn't know what ice cream was until she was 14 🤯

@lozengeoflove

There is a deaf history society, unfortunately their museum is closed at the moment.

www.bdhs.org.uk/

Both my parents are old Eastenders, so both sets of my grandparents lived through "the blitz" and told many tales, some with great humour attached, others with horrifically sad endings. I'd say the "general wartime spirit" never left them, they were all infectious characters with a zest for life and an ever resourceful set of methods .
My maternal grandfather worked in the docks (now Docklands) and my grandmother worked in a starch factory (was bombed flat) and a cigarette factory where she was reportedly the fastest on the line, being rewarded in a bonus carton each week which was split amongst family members. They all smoked heavily but lasted until their mid 80's.
My paternal grandfather worked for the BT exchange and served in many meat battles, travelled extensively and had fascinating stories from his time in Egypt.
My godmother was sent as a young girl to live in the countryside for reasons of safety but was abused by the man of the house she was sent to. She told nobody until her own mother passed away for fear of upset, which I even today find heartbreaking. She never married and I often onset of perhaps this childhood experience was why...
Just incredible times and incredible sacrifices each and every family made, with so much sadness and loss. And yet in a strange way, it "made them" the fierce and industrious folks they remained until death. I miss all of them hugely.

Boom Awam I did yesterday too so hopefully this thread will be preserved!

I do hope so @coldwarenigma. It deserves not to disappear

My mum was born in 1928 and lived in Deptford. The stories she can tell make your hair curl. Some hilariously funny, some devastatingly awful.
Her best friend was killed in an air raid she was found under the table with her arms round her 3 little brothers all dead. I’m named after her.

This is the most fascinating and most moving thread I've ever read on Mumsnet (and I've been around here for 18 years!).

The multitude of real-life stories gives such color to a time that we tend to see fictionalised.

@coldwarenigma and @AWamBamBoom thank you so much. It’s a great idea! I hope it doesn’t disappear. I find myself so drawn to these stories I keep coming back and reading them!

@Tlollj that story made me weep! I lived near Deptford and have a real soft spot for the area.

A couple more stories from my dad's side of the family.

My dad was 2 when his father was called up. After basic training he was due to set sail from Liverpool so my dad and his mother went to see him off, I'm not sure but I think my grandad had leave so they went as a family. They arrived in Liverpool the day before and tried to get a B and B or a guest house but they were full, so they tried more expensive options finally arriving at the steps to the Adelphi which they certainly could not afford.

I'm not clear on the exact happening, maybe they were discussing the price but a chef arrived for his work and overheard and told them he would be working all night so his bed was empty and to go to his mum's address, say he had sent them and she would put them up for the night.

So thank you to that chef and his mother for looking after my grandparents.

While my grandad was in Egypt he bought some metal planes to send home to my dad. Sending metal was illegal so when my my grandad got to the officer's tent he was scared. He found the officers playing dogfights with the planes. Some of the planes had been damaged so he was ordered to a) get them repaired and b) pack them better next time.

My Nana had collected chocolate when the war started (which was probably illegal) and hidden it in a shoe box so my dad could have a bar of chocolate on his birthdays or at Xmas. My dad found the box and played 'shopkeeper' and handed them out to the neighbour's kids.

The neighbours, understandably, did not give them back.

Although the neighbour did, later, give my Nana a handful of dried fruit, sugar, flour to make a cake that she (illegally) sent to my grandad labeled 'soap'.

My grandparents were the most honest people you could meet, and thinking about it breaking the law was so out of character I wonder how many other upstanding members of the community were also breaking laws.

@doubleshotespresso that is terribly sad. Few PPs mentioned the abuse that went on during evacuations. How utterly despicable to do such things, especially to those who were forced out of their homes. It’s enough to break your heart.

@sashh loved reading your stories. Thank you. Also, shoes as a hiding place for chocolates is a brilliant idea.

This is such a moving thread. I’ve only recently read Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life which gives a fictionalised account of life in wartime London, and harrowing accounts of bombing scenes. But there’s always a distance in fiction even when it’s based on real events.
These snippets are so much more painful to read.

@lozengeoflove I keep remembering them so I'm glad you enjoy them.

My mum's dad was in a 'reserved occupation' and my mum was jealous of the kids who had dads 'at war' and got gifts sent.

She used to tell a story of being outside playing, my grandmother heard her chatting to someone and came outside and found her making mud pies with a German POW who was working as a bin man.

She always said it was in the war but I have a feeling it was probably afterwards when POWs were kept for reparation work.

My maternal grandmother was a teacher - she was responsible for evacuating children from London; & spent a lot of time removing children from unsuitable placements. She also volunteered to work in the munitions factory a local biscuit factory was repurposed into - WRENS felt she was NQOSD, as a grammar school girl (a CATHOLIC one, at that, the horror...) from Plumstead who’d “only” been to teacher training college She was one of the many Londoners to have a beloved pet put down at the start of the war, which a couple of years ago was presented as some kind of secret & also evidence of Heartless Evil British Actually Hate Animals. Massively lacking the context of London already being a multicultural city of migrants & the fact these people who’d seen what poison gas does to people absolutely believed it was about to be used on them & they’d no way to protect their pets from what would almost certainly be worse weapons than the ones from the last war. Feck-all point saying “oh, but the Nazis didn’t use gas!” - it wasn’t a decision where people felt they could Wait & See. There probably were some people for whom it was a relatively easy decision, Because Humans. There were a lot who kept it together publicly, Because Social Norms. But a lot of people, including my granny, never owned a pet [of that type] again. She only ended up with a cat after my uncle, when at university, rescued a kitten from an oil drum where the rest of the litter & their mother had been drowned, and wished the tiny bundle onto her.

My paternal grandmother worked for the Post Office in central London. To be honest none of my grandparents really talked about the war (lots of what I know about my other granny comes from aunt) but I know she was on a bus when St Paul’s was being bombed & the driver basically just went careering off trying to keep ahead of the raid; and she and the 3 of her sisters who also lived in London were outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day to hear the King.

With the Catford school bombing (not v far from me) as others have said, the pilot absolutely knew it was a school: he flew low over a playground full of children. The same raid saw children at other schools machine-gunned. Reporting the building destroyed as a block of flats gave him plausible deniability - massively unlikely they actually had permission to step things up like that. Bit of indiscriminate strafing civilians is one thing, but destroying a school full of children is another, because it makes their schools fair game. Given immediacy of reports from multiple sources who’d not time to confer it’s massively unlikely that “pilot flew low & must have known” is a collective memory issue. The “public building” explanation makes even less sense when you consider they were (for a plane) practically on top of Lewisham Town Hall & they’d also Catford Bus Garage so close, plus the station - or even Lewisham Hospital... Basically, there were plenty of far better targets in very easy reach to fulfil usual aims of a (WWII) bombing raid, but they went the Mass Slaughter Of Children route instead.

Not london but my father was a telegram boy in ww2.
He used to take messages from the admiralty to the ships in the docks. I asked him how he coped delivering the telegrams informing of a death. He said you knew which was which because of the envelope and you dropped and ran basically.

He was 14. Imagine that? Riding your bike round the docks , and delivering such awful news

Having watched the programme suggested up thread, Blitz Spirit, I think those pilots who targeted schools were part of the Nazi plan to turn the British public against the establishment. In their minds the Blitz should have resulted in a surrender.

@AdoraBell

On a lighter note I worked with a woman who was about 20/21 during WW11 and she once visited her boyfriend at his RAF barracks, or rather the nearby town. Anyway, she approached the gate guard and said “I’m looking for an airman” then thinking that sounded wrong she blurted out

But I know which one I want. 🤣🤣

My nan was in the Auxiliary Fire Service in London, and left diaries. They're more blank than filled in - 1941 has barely anything in it. What she has written is mostly mundane as if she was trying to only remember the better bits - nice days out with my grandad (before they were married - he was an Air Force mechanic working on Lancasters etc) and stuff like that generally. And then the odd entry about "terrific blaze at the docks" or a couple of entries about the Coronation Avenue bombing disaster - two days after that she went to the doctor and "went sick with nervous debility".

@Tlollj

My mum was born in 1928 and lived in Deptford. The stories she can tell make your hair curl. Some hilariously funny, some devastatingly awful. Her best friend was killed in an air raid she was found under the table with her arms round her 3 little brothers all dead. I’m named after her.

So many people in that area suffered, when I was little my Nan used to take me to Deptford market on a Saturday, walking there she’d say that used to be x before it was bombed, x lived there but they were bombed out, I used to be fascinated by the prefabs that were only meant to be up for 10 years - some of them are still there now. After reading this last night I was thinking about my Nan & how she never threw anything away. When she died & we emptied her house we found a box of unopened American tan tights - they must have dated from the 50s (she died in 2004) the feeling of you never know when you might not be able to get things never left her.

Re evacuees, some were lucky. An older friend of ours (no longer with us) was evacuated at 5 from London to a N Devon farmhouse where he was the sole evacuee and was thoroughly spoilt by the farmers’ 5 daughters, and used to fall asleep in front of the fire with one of their dogs for a pillow.
He was left with a lifelong love of both dogs and N Devon, and moved there after retirement.

He used to give talks about his experiences at local primary schools.

My DM was in London in a flatshare all through the Blitz, and often spent the night in tube stations. My DF was in the Royal Navy so when his ship was occasionally in Liverpool for a night or two she’d take a couple of days off - nobody minded - zoom up there and stay with him at the Adelphi.

A favourite story of hers was when a maid put her head round the door very early, after DF had returned to his ship, and said, ‘Has the gentleman gone, Miss?’

She never told me whether she replied, ‘Yes, but it’s Mrs!’ They had married 2 months before war was declared, since DF had already volunteered for the RN.

She said they used to lie in bed and talk about all the lovely food they’d have once rationing was over.

The school that was targeted was in Torridon Road I believe. Churchill said some thing like ‘ I hope the ribbons on his medal remind him of the ribbons in the little girls hair’
Absolutely targeted a school people reported being able to see his face.

This fascinating but sad reading

This is