Women of the Blitz #2
‘We were sitting there a while when my mate nudged me. “Here, Dot,” she said, over the wailing siren. “This shelter’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot.” She pointed upwards and I was stunned to see the shelter had no roof! Fat lot of good that was.
‘The school basement shelter was much safer – well, it had a roof at least! The shelter warden there was called Mr Nutt, poor chap was so bow-legged he couldn’t have caught a pig in a passage. God knows how, but he managed to make it up on the school roof each night, on fire-watching duties.
‘I still remember sitting down in that shelter Christmas 1940, singing “Silent Night” with some visiting curates, with the bombs crashing down all around us, and my friend and I trying to stifle our giggles. Looking back, humour was our best weapon for survival.’
Vi
‘The Blitz gave me a passport to a better life. I was only little, so when the bombs started I was evacuated out to the countryside from the East End, away from my two brothers and seamstress mother.
‘It was glorious. I lived with an elderly widower who doted on me. I had my own bedroom overlooking lush green fields, ate fresh food, went to the village school and roamed the countryside. I didn’t even mind having to attend church three times on a Sunday.
‘Then the war ended and I had to go home. Talk about a shock. Mum did her best but it was hard for her as she was a single mother who had to scrape for every penny. Our new home was a filthy rat-infested hovel behind the Barbican in London; three rooms in the basement of a bomb-shattered building.
‘ “Who are those filthy boys?” I asked Mum. “Cheeky cow,” she shrieked. “They’re your brothers.”
‘My new bedroom looked out on a rickety iron fire escape into a dark, narrow yard where everyone slung their rubbish. It was all a far cry from my country home.
‘Life was a grind, and there was never enough coal for the fire or food for the pot, just scrag ends of meat that Mum cooked up into a stew.
‘Mum had to go out to work to support us so me and my brothers would roam the bomb sites, getting into mischief. One time we couldn’t believe it when we found a big white rabbit in a deserted building.
We took him home and named him Jiminy Cricket.
I adored that rabbit and for months I fed him every last scrap of food I could find.
Then at Christmas he went missing. Turned out, Mum had taken him to the butcher’s where she’d had him slaughtered.
She served Jiminy up for Christmas lunch!
She hadn’t meant to be cruel, just practical, but I sobbed all through Christmas Day.
People today don’t know the half of it.’
Len
‘Do you know who the real heroes of the Blitz were?
The mothers! Night after night they sat there being bombed, but they had no weapons to defend themselves or their children, no rifles with which to fire back or grenades to throw.
Nightly they hid from the bombs, then each morning they had to get up and care for children or clock onto work . . . it was business as usual, see.
‘Me, I was just a skinny little fourteen-year-old boy, working as an apprentice cabinet-maker on Brick Lane when the bombs started to drop.
‘The Blitz was the happiest time of my life. From about six to seven p.m. onwards you’d hear the drone of the enemy planes, the sirens would start up and off we’d go.
Everyone would muck in together, no matter if you were a millionaire or a skinny Cockney kid in tatty trousers like me.
Money and status don’t matter when you could be dead in the morning.
For the first time ever, society was on a level pegging and I felt equal.
‘There were hard times though, of course. A bomb landed near my buildings in Russia Lane and I ended up digging out people I knew from a brick shelter that had been hit. Terrible it was, seeing the look on the faces of the dead people I pulled out. They weren’t safe in that brick shelter, the concrete ceiling had caved in and flattened them.
I broke down and cried my eyes out at the sight of them, but the next day I got on with it.
I tell you what though, I swore after that not to use the brick shelters.
I took my chances and stayed out in the open, dodging shrapnel.
‘Four years later I turned eighteen, got called up and went straight into active service in the last year of the war in the Far East. I saw some sights there in the jungles that no man should ever have to witness, but it was the unique camaraderie of the Blitz I shall always choose to remember.’
Glad
‘My wonderful mum did an amazing job of hiding her fear from me and my six siblings during the Blitz. My father was away fighting and she was left to raise seven children in Poplar by the docks, the worst-hit area; despite this I don’t think it ever crossed her mind to have us evacuated.
She used to calmly usher us all to the nearest street shelter after the sirens went off.
God knows how she did it on her own with seven kids!
‘I remember her once in the shelters reading us bedtime stories to try and drown out the thump of bombs. When the bombs got louder her fingers would curl around the spine of the book, gripping it tighter and tighter until her fingers were blood-red. That’s the only way her nerves betrayed her.’
Kay
‘During the Blitz I worked on ambulance duty ferrying people from hospital casualty stations and getting them out of London.
‘One night was particularly bad for fires. Even the hoses were burning. We were sent on a job to a point high up above London, with sweeping views and, oh my, the scenes. The whole of London was on fire, two hundred churches and all the spires were blazing!
‘Then the all-clear went. Suddenly there was a terrific clap of thunder and fingers of lightning lit up the sky. Rain came down in buckets, drenching the fires and, in no time, we were soaking and raced back to the ambulances. It felt like divine intervention.
‘ “Now we’ll see what God can do,” I said to my colleague.’
Vera
‘I was thirteen when the bombs started to drop. My dad wasn’t prepared to sit around and wait to be killed.
‘Dad had a car-hire business, renting out a Daimler, so we used to drive it to Epping Forest each night and sleep in the woods.
‘One morning we returned to find our house was the only one still standing in the street. A bomb had dropped, and God knows how, but ours had survived. It devastated our vibrant neighbourhood though.
‘Before, our streets were full of kids, playing whip and top, hopscotch and every doorstep was gleaming. The mothers on that street took such a fierce pride in their homes and the street was like a village. The community was decimated by the Blitz. I never saw my friends again.
‘I visited the street many years later, in the 1970s, and was devastated to see the street had been turned into a big faceless, high-rise council estate. The Blitz changed the face of the East End.’
Pat
‘We loved sleeping at Bethnal Green Tube. It was like a little village underground, a sanctuary after the street shelters. You couldn’t hear the bombs and we had peace for the first time.
‘I used to borrow Milly-Molly-Mandy from the underground shelter library and take free tap-dancing lessons.
Us kids all used to hang out together in great packs, roaming for miles up and down the tunnels.
It was great exercise and our parents never worried about us down there.
I remember watching a wonderful baritone singer in the theatre one night.
He sang in Russian and I had never heard anything like it.
I was entranced and it sparked a life-long love of music.
‘Sheltering underground really opened my eyes to another way of life. You never had time to be bored and I never saw anyone miserable, ever.
‘They had electric lighting, which at about eleven p.m. was dimmed and everyone quietened down for the night. There was never any trouble and I slept snug as a bug in a rug.’
Emily
‘I have never felt such heart-stopping terror in all my life as I did during the Blitz and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Centuries-old houses offered no protection. It was only the paint holding them together, so you weren’t safe in your home.
‘There was no room in our tiny back yard for an Anderson shelter, so we used to share with the family that lived at the back of us. To me the pulsating throb of the enemy aircraft overhead sounded as if they were saying: “for you, for you, for you”.’
‘I still feel the heart-gripping fear now if I stop to think about it. I don’t care what anyone says, they were terrible, terrible times.’
Vera
‘Jerry had a ball in the Blitz. On the first night they bombed the docks, Black Saturday, I remember going up to the top of the block of flats I lived in with Mum, Dad, seven siblings, dogs, cats, chicken and ducks. Great columns of smoke were billowing up into the skies from the docks and a ring of fire surrounded us. I remember feeling absolutely terrified; it was the first time I’d felt fear in my life.
‘Mum refused to evacuate me, she wanted me where she could see me and I didn’t want to live with strangers. I worshipped my mum – as long as I was by her side, I knew I would always be protected.
‘My brother worked as a messenger. He’d finish work in the factories at six, then he’d spend the night cycling round the East End, dodging bombs and delivering messages to fire crews where larger vehicles couldn’t get through. I don’t think he slept for eight months!
‘Everyone who stayed and defended London was a true hero. Apart from the villains that is. No one talks about them much, but there were certain men in the East End who used to pretend to be wardens and then would go in and plunder from bomb sites, taking gold rings from the fingers of dead women. It was disgusting. Not that you dare say anything mind, you’d end up with a nail through your hand. ’
Sally
‘I know I shouldn’t say it, but I enjoyed the war years because you met up with people and there was a different kind of freedom. I missed it when it was over!
‘The whole community drew together and lived as one and it brought out the best in people. We thrived in the East End because we are resourceful and stoic. We never stopped to think about it too much; we would never have been able to cope if we had dwelled on our misfortune.
‘There were some weird moments though. One particularly bad night of bombing, I couldn’t resist and I stepped out the brick shelter we were in.
A bomb dropped nearby and the building opposite literally lifted up in the air and the bricks came apart, vibrated and expanded, like you see in cartoons, before coming back together.
It was astonishing. I’d never seen a building jump before.
‘I got in such trouble from the warden. “Aren’t you afraid?” he said. “No,” I replied, honestly. I was fifteen or sixteen, and drawn to excitement and adventure. What did I care about personal safety back then?
‘That building is still standing now and seventy-five years on I walk past it and wonder how the hell it didn’t collapse.’
Babs
‘Me, my mum and sister Jean evacuated to Torquay when the Blitz began. We hadn’t been there long when we decided to have a walk on the beach. Two planes came out of nowhere and flew down low over the beach.
‘ “Look, Jean, what are those funny sparks coming out of them?” I said to my sister.
‘ “They aren’t sparks, they’re bullets,” Mum shouted over the roar of the engines, as she pushed us down onto the sand.
‘Turns out they were two German Messerschmitt planes and they were machine-gunning everyone on the beach.
‘ “Sod that,” remarked Mum, as she picked herself up, “we’ll be safer off back in the East End.” So back to London it was.
‘Back in Bethnal Green, I was so proud to have finally been entrusted by Mum with my own front door key. I felt so grown up and spent the whole night in the shelter boasting to my mates. I couldn’t believe it when I got home and found our front door had only been blown off! Strange times.’
Kathy
‘It sounds mad like, but we had a good time during the war, we didn’t wait for someone to entertain us, we entertained them!
‘During the raids, we would head down the crypt at St John Church in Bethnal Green and we would have enormous sing-songs. There would always be a fella down there with an accordion and everyone would join in. I never once felt fear.
‘Churchill and the king were around the East End lots during the Blitz to raise morale, but I didn’t need my morale raising, thank you very much.’