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.

DF was a child living at Middle Wallop in Hampshire as a child. He told stories if lying in the grass watching the Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. DGM worked in the canteen at the camp and was there when it was bombed. A direct hit on one of the hangers blew the doors off and killed some of the WAAF running to the air raid shelter.

DGD was the village butcher so didn't get called up till the very end if the war. They lived in a large house and had both evacuees and American Officers billeted with them.

He always told of the huge mounds of ammunition lining the roads from the camp all the way to Southampton. DF being one of a lot of brothers, woukd go with his siblings and steal live bullets, push them through the knots on a wooden horse through and hit them with a hammer to see how far they would go! How one of them wasn't killed is a miracle.

He also told us of getting up on DDay and the tented camp by the airfield being empty. Everything was left behind. Years later, DGD still had a old Jeep and at the end of the garden DGD's shed was originally one of the cook houses.

@Tlollj

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.

I think it was Sandhurst Road School, I went to Torridon infants & the building was really old (in the 70s) I lived in Bellingham Road & my friend down the road still had a bomb shelter in the back garden (it went under the garden - I was very jealous we didn’t have one!)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Sandhurst_Road_School

My mother and her family were living in Borough (in between London and Tower Bridges). Very working class, and in fact genealogy shows only one generation removed from the workhouse.
Terrible stories of when the docks were bombed, really harrowing.
They would pack up a pram with food and blankets and wheel it to the nearest tube for shelter every evening.
The women in my family were all machinists, so we're working in a local factory on parachutes (so the odd pair of silky bloomers appeared).
My mother and her two little sisters were initially evacuated (including one disabled sis) but unfortunately the people were cruel so my mother ran away back home with the little ones and they stayed in London for the duration. Mum was highly intelligent but her schooling was hugely interrupted and she went into full time work at 14, as a machinist. Such a shame she could not indulge her love of literature and history.

Both of my Nan’s had very basic literacy skills, I never really thought much about it before now. When my Granddad died my Nan was very dependant on my Mum to do basic things like organising paying the phone bill, if she ever got a letter from the bank she’d have a big panic & get my mum to read it straight away.
I guess like a lot of women at that time she went straight from living with her parents to living with her husband

My Grandparents lived in rural Buckinghamshire and had an evacuee called Jeanie, she lived with them for about 6 months until her mum came and took her back to the East End. My grandmother was most put out, I think they had got really attached to her!
Also, living in the country just outside London, they had quite a few bombs just randomly dropped by the Germans on the way back home (there is still a large crater in the field next to their house).
My Grandfather was a volunteer fire warden and one night, when London had a particularly bad night during the Blitz, he said the night sky was orange from the fires. Bearing in mind they lived 40 miles from central London, it must have been awful.
It really stayed with him that memory, he said he felt so helpless and wished he could have done more.

My mum was born in 1941, so only little, but she has clear memories of certain things, during and just after the war.

-playing with a golden syrup tin and a spoon digging in the earth in the garden and the air raids sirens going and her mum coming running down the garden shouting her name.
-the arcs of the searchlights in the sky at night
-the darkness (because of blackout)
-sitting on a chair my the kitchen fire (coal fire) as she had earache. Chronic awful earache for several years. No antibiotics.

• boring food, no sweets. She still spreads her butter and jam SOO thick, as a reaction to wartime rationing of both

-rabbits in the back garden, in cages for food. Her grandfather dispatching a rabbit for dinner. -Her father turned vegetarian, so he got extra milk ration, which he then gave to his kids. (he was a civil servant and not soldier. He was older and had fought in first WW at age 16) -He father ill, in hospital with an ulcer. Due to his job he saw papers that never made the news and he was convinced we would lose the war and was very worried. -Their air raid shelter, like an iron table with a cage round it, they all slept in there. -cold. No heating. Fires upstairs only lit when ill. Her mum went upstairs in coat and gloves to clean. -having tonsilitis aged 3 and being on a medical ward. Seeing lots of soldiers there with serious wounds. No-one believes her now, as why would a small girl have ended up on men's medical, but she must have seen something while in hospital, as she remembers it very well.

@steppemum
I wonder if your mum saw a hospital transport arriving/waiting to be moved to the ward, or if she had to be moved through their ward at one point. Hospitals maintained paeds wards & staff even during WWII (& separate children’s hospitals were more common than they are now) so if there’d been no space for her anywhere bar in with a load of soldiers (& I think there are other patients they’d have shifted first to put a 3yo in a less unsuitable place) she’d have had screens round her bed the whole time. Am not meaning this in a pulling-her-story-apart way, to be clear, absolutely don’t think she’s made it up for some kind of weird reason, nor even imagined it - but do think maybe her brain jumbled together a couple of bits of things, probably when she wasn’t that much bigger than 3, and it’s only made the memory firmer in that form iyswim? She’ll have been on her own, too, poor wee thing, so everything would have been horribly confusing.

My grandmother, moved to the suburbs just after it started as she was newly married.
She spoke really fondly of it . Her husband was useful at home still so he wasn’t sent away, they had a black market contact and everyone looked out for everyone where she lived.
Her babies were sent away, but she got them back after a week.

There was bombing locally which was obviously terrible. There was a municipal shelter, but she hated that so grandad built one in the garden, although I think she still refused to use it until the kitchen table broke with near by bombing.
Her view I think, it was incredibly scary but they quickly made the best of it and pulled together and just got on with it.

My inlaws ( now dead) lived in South London during the war. One of them was evacuated to not far from where we now live in Leicestershire.

[quote MarieVanGoethem]@steppemum
I wonder if your mum saw a hospital transport arriving/waiting to be moved to the ward, or if she had to be moved through their ward at one point. Hospitals maintained paeds wards & staff even during WWII (& separate children’s hospitals were more common than they are now) so if there’d been no space for her anywhere bar in with a load of soldiers (& I think there are other patients they’d have shifted first to put a 3yo in a less unsuitable place) she’d have had screens round her bed the whole time. Am not meaning this in a pulling-her-story-apart way, to be clear, absolutely don’t think she’s made it up for some kind of weird reason, nor even imagined it - but do think maybe her brain jumbled together a couple of bits of things, probably when she wasn’t that much bigger than 3, and it’s only made the memory firmer in that form iyswim? She’ll have been on her own, too, poor wee thing, so everything would have been horribly confusing.[/quote]
well yes I know, that is the response she always gets.

But she remembers it as she was put in the mens medical ward as everywhere else was full.

She is not the sort of person to imagine things, and this has been her memory since she was little, not looking back 20 years later.

I think either, as you said, that she saw something traumatic (she remembers the wounds and the crying of the soldiers) and has mixed in her mind. Or it was something she saw when half anaesthetised, so again a mixed memory, or else she really was on htat ward, they thought she was so tiny she wouldn't notice, and popped her in the corner.
No way or proving any of it, she is adamant that she hasn;t made it up, but it is highly unlikely.
Yes she was alone, mum couldn't visit because she had the baby sister who wasn;t allowed in. So completely alone, no visitors.

My DH does the same with butter and jam, he was born in 1956. He gets through a jar of marmalade in about 10 days, also this week I opened a fresh pack of butter on Tuesday and that’s almost gone. It actually drives me nuts, but I do understand why he does it.

@steppemum
It must be really frustrating for her - and like I said, with the age she was, I can completely understand two (or more) bits of memory blending into one, especially given the whole thing would be traumatic to varying degrees, so instead of little jagged shards of what happened she had a memory she could pick up & look at (as it were) even if it doesn’t seem to make sense. It seems awful now to think of children being alone in hospital for any length of time doesn’t it? Even in the 1960s (clearly not recent, but a good 20 years on...) my father had a year in hospital only getting to see his parents in the very strict few hours allotted for visiting at the weekend; & didn’t get to see his sister as children weren’t allowed to visit. This was the Evelina, too! (Mind you, at that time a nurse’s role in taking bloods was to act as the tourniquet...)

A few more stories. My gran was one of six children and, as I said in my earlier post, she was evacuated a few times with her brothers - her sisters were too young to be separated from their mum. During one of the evacuations she was billeted without her brothers but with some other girls from her school in the home of a lovely woman who treated them really well, they all called her gran. Unfortunately, 'gran' was drunk, often paralytic, most days. The girls loved her though and they actually looked after her and covered up her alcoholism. When there was an inspection done by the nuns from their school they cleaned 'gran' up, put her make-up on and made sure the house was spick and span so she passed muster.

On another occasion my gran and two of her brothers were evacuated to Sussex. Her younger brother struck gold and was chosen by a dentist and his wife. My gran and her other brother weren't so lucky and were billeted somewhere a lot less salubrious and where they had to trudge miles to school. What didn't help was that their brother used to sail past in the dentist's car 'done up to the nines' and waving out the window on his way to school! They eventually got fed up of this and decided to run away back to London. They knew that if they followed the railway tracks they'd eventually get there so they did that. At one point there was a sign saying 'whistle for a mile' so they did, though they weren't sure how far a mile was. Eventually, after getting tired and fed up of whistling they turned back.

Another evacuation was to Suffolk but this time my great gran and the younger children went too. My gran said her mum hated it. Being dirt poor in London was one thing but rural poverty was the pits. There was no tap water where they were living and my great gran had to get water from a pond and boil it. Next door to them lived two elderly gentlemen who were brothers and whose house was wallpapered with newspaper. Every time they saw anyone they said: 'How be?' so in the end all my gran's family called them How Be 1 and How Be 2.

My dad was a child in the war, born in 1933. He lived in North London but wasn't evacuated - I think his parents chose not to. He did go and stay with a cousin in the country for some time at the peak though. He doesn't really talk about it very much, although he doesn't really like fireworks as he remembers the fear associated with explosions.

When you think about it now evacuating the children was unbelievable. What we’ve gone through in the last year was (hopefully) the biggest crisis most of us will ever live through- can you imagine if Boris had gone on the telly & said we want you to send all your kids living in a city to live in the countryside. We’re not going to tell you where they’re going or who they’ll be living with, just bring them to the train station?

@nancy75 God, yes. Did you ever watch Ethel and Ernest? The bit where they were taking him to the station and waving him off - I went to see it at a parent and baby showing with DS and DH, and I bawled.

I’ve never heard of Ethel & Ernest, just looked it up & I’m pretty sure it would make me sob

My mum was a teenager during WW2. She used to say despite the obvious danger, it was the happiest time of her life. She used to go to a place called Rainbow Corner to dances organised by the GI soldiers. She said they looked so elegant and handsome in comparison to the English soldiers and always had access to chocolate, fruit and Nylons.

I haven't read the full thread so apologies if this book has been suggested, but Bandaging the War is a true story told by a lady who was a student nurse during the war in London, it's really good, really enjoyed it.

@TellySavalashairbrush

My mum was a teenager during WW2. She used to say despite the obvious danger, it was the happiest time of her life. She used to go to a place called Rainbow Corner to dances organised by the GI soldiers. She said they looked so elegant and handsome in comparison to the English soldiers and always had access to chocolate, fruit and Nylons.

Have you seen the horrible history GI song? It’s on YouTube if you haven’t.

My DF was evacuated to Canada under the Commonwealth Overseas Reception Board (CORB). Only about 3000 children went in total as the programme was halted after the City of Benares was sunk by torpedo and many children lost their lives. (The ship my DF was on was a couple of days ahead).

Late MIL was born in Wandsworth but grew up in Kent. She moved back to London as a married woman. DH’s older sibs were born 1940 and 1942. First child born in London, then she was evacuated to somewhere in the country where the second baby was born. It was a former stately home that was turned into a nursing home for evacuated and pregnant women from London. Not sure where it was - I thought Northants but DH says not. We should just ask BIL what it says on his birth certificate. Anyway MIL told a story of being in a railway station late at night, the new baby was bawling. No idea why she was there. I think waiting for a train but no idea why. ?back to London. Surely not at night? Anyway MIL told this heartwarming story of the lady from the closed tearoom hearing the crying and opening up the tearoom so MIL could feed the baby. Her sister and family weren’t evacuated- they were in Surrey, forget where exactly, Kingston maybe? Is that Surrey? and lost everything in a bombing. Luckily they were all okay though.

Nominating for Classics too

Was just thinking about the air-raids (my maternal grandmother used a Morrison shelter - one of the ones that’s basically a table with quite serious ambition); & wondered if other MNers knew that Operation Double Cross (vaunted as huge success - in circles allowed to know, obviously! - at time, & then later, when declassified, seen as act of genius pretty much on a par with, say, Operation Mincemeat) was revealed to have essentially made no difference* a couple of years ago as V-2s were so inaccurate (18 miles is quite the margin of error) anyway. The sheer size of the things is just horrifying...

On subject of books, if you’re familiar with E. M. Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady, she wrote one that covered her wartime experiences. While they’re fiction, they’re based on her own life, and they’re lighter going than lots of other stuff - plus they were written for a contemporary audience. Have just found The Provincial Lady in Wartime on Project Gutenberg Australia, so you can read it immediately should the mood take. And I must not read it immediately but must try to get some sleep...

• link is to the Daily Mail as academic work in question is not open access & their article is perfectly reasonable handling of topic; warning only as so many MNers v vocal about not looking at it at all ever, so hardly seems fair not to mention.