Parachute Mine at Claremont Road

The Stratford upon Avon Society and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

12a - Transcription of an interview that took place on the 18th February, 2005
Present:
Neville Usher Dr.Michael Coigley

Neville Usher: … you can tell, the tape recorder, it works but it’s noisy. And I am just transcribing one now were the problem is that the lady had got a canary with the loudest voice I have ever come across, it’s a job to hear.

Dr. Michael Coigley: Talking about birds, well I can tell you a lovely story about old Mrs. Tromans who was very old when she died in Alveston, and she had this budgerigar, and we went in to see her one evening and shut the door loudly, I didn’t hear what it said, but she said oh she said I am sorry, did you hear that, did you hear that? Oh I said no what? Oh she said the budgerigar, she said I got that she said when my dad died, after the war and it had been with him all the war in London, and if there’s ever a loud bang anywhere, it says “bugger old Hitler”, and if you slammed the door like we did, you could just hear this budgerigar saying “bugger old Hitler”.

Neville Usher: My grandparents had a friend who was the first female police officer in Birmingham, and one of my earliest memories is being taken to see this lady who lived in Yardley by the cemetery there and she had a parrot, and the parrot used to say “I’m Polly Miles, who the devil are you”?

Anyway, it’s Friday the 18th of February 2005, and we are at 6 The Fold, Payton Street, Stratford, it’s 11.15 and it’s very nice to be talking to Michael Coigley.
Could we just start very briefly with where you were born and how you came to Stratford and then move on to the war Mike?

Dr. Michael Coigley: Oh crikey. I was born in central London, the other side of the road from the Middlesex Hospital in a flat in a property which my father and grandfather later bought, and there’s a long story to that. And then we moved very quickly to Sidcup in Kent where my maternal grandfather was Borough Surveyor and Engineer, he had been head-hunted. He was a civil engineer of some repute really, he used to design …, he was very good at designing sewerage disposal systems. Well they got him in to oversee the first big East End slum overspill out of London to around Sidcup. And we had this lovely house which was an old medieval house with a Victorian extension on it, and he said better move because it is coming right behind you, so we moved out to Sevenoaks, I was born in London.

And then I was at Sevenoaks School, which is I think the first school to bring in the international baccalaureate, very progressive school and always very high up. The oldest …, one of the oldest grammar schools in the country, the only school mentioned by Shakespeare in one of his plays. Lord Sackville from Old House owned a lot of property round here of course, owned Halls Croft at one time, the Sackville’s, and in Henry VI part II, (shall I go on with this, because it’s very …?)

Neville Usher: Yes please, yes.

Dr. Michael Coigley: In Henry VI part II, when Jack Cave the Kentish rebel gets to Smithfield in London and is confronted by Lord Saye and Sele who now lives at
Broughton Court …, Broughton Castle near Banbury. Well Sele is a little place next to Sevenoaks in Kent and he took his …, it was a Norman title that he took the title Sele from Sele next to Sevenoaks and he and Sir William Sennard were the two founders of Sevenoaks School in 1432, and it’s the only school he has anything to do with, and Jack Cave before they behead him on stage says you are condemned for corrupting the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school, so that has been researched and well is obviously Sevenoaks School,it was found out,it is the only school.

Anyhow, I was taking a scholarship to Cambridge called The Tankred Scholarship, King Tankred of Sicily was the Norman King of Sicily in 1065/66, and of course they went both ways the Normans didn’t they, they went to Sicily and England, William came here, went both ways. And he’d been worried, this Norman Tankred was English by now in the sixteenth century that scientists were becoming too specialized at a young age, this scholarship had to take in history, classics, something else, in order to read a science, so I never used it because the war came, and I didn’t want to spend the next 18 months studying medicine.
And I remained a medical student during the war because I was actually a “Bevin Boy” (do you know the Bevin Boys?)

Neville Usher: Yes

Dr. Michael Coigley: And the only way I could get out of going down the mines was to remain a medical student which I did so I was at St. Thomas’s during most of the war; we were evacuated of course down to Surrey, and then we came back to very difficult things at St. Thomas’s. And I then met …, I met Sylvia my wife whilst I was there, I then went in the army after I had been qualified for two years and went out east, thinking we were going to have a nice time but spent two years trekking through the jungle after the ruddy bandits.

Neville Usher: Oh dear, in Burma, or …?

Dr. Michael Coigley: No, Malaya, Malaya, it was after the war you see, it was ’48, the Malaya emergency started in June ’48. And then I came back and did a few jobs and wondered what to do, and then Scot Trick who was a partner - do you remember Scot Trick, old Trick? Well Scot Trick who was a partner in the Bridge House practice, the senior partners being Harold Girling, Dudley Marks and Scot Trick, Offley Evans and etc. And he had a very bad coronary on New Year’s day 1954 and for some reason, I can never know why and he wasn’t quite sure, the secretary of the medical school from St. Thomas’s rang me and said (because Dudley Marks was a St. Thomas’s man), and he was a local surgeon, he was a senior surgeon, South Warwickshire, one of the old GP surgeons you know, and he had rung the medical school saying do you know anybody who wants a job quick? So he rang me and said there’s a job going up there if you’re interested, and I said well I don’t know really, I wanted to be a cardiologist at the time, and I was working in the hospital you see, senior registrar in the hospital in Chichester, and Sylvia’s mother was dying of alchziemers just outside Leominster where they lived, Herefordshire, and we were going backwards and forwards and so I rang ‘em up, going up the next weekend, and came for the interview on Saturday morning with Harold Girling and Dudley Marks, and Offley was there, and out of interest and that was that, and the following Sunday Harold Girling rang me up and said when can you start? Well I had sort of dismissed it from my mind really and we had to think very deeply about this because I had this job, I had to get a release etc. from it, but with my mother in law being so ill, deep in the country, and Sylvia going backwards and forward all the while, so we decided if I could get released I would take it, although I could go back to the hospital you know after a couple of years, anyhow I never went back to the hospital because I liked it so much here, and it’s been great, so that’s how I got to Stratford.

Neville Usher: And what about the Second World War, what did you …?

Dr. Michael Coigley: Well I was in dad’s army of course, and my father who was auctioneer, chartered surveyor, estate agent etc. in Kensington in London (his business of course went), so he took a job doing war damage survey work covering over all the East End bombs and everything, and he’d been in the trenches in the ‘14/18 war of course my dad, and “The Lion” kept getting bombed, and so they moved, everybody was being evacuated, they moved further into London, they moved into Chislehurst, and at that moment I had got a place in medical school, and I well remember the interview I had for medical school because I went up with my father and I saw a very famous chap Thompson, Big Bill Thompson who was then at medical school a famous chap, and we went to see Chu Chinn Chow at the Palace Theatre that night, and there was a hell of an air raid, we weren’t allowed out of the theatre (we got out about three o’clock/four o’clock in the morning at the end), and being entertained by the cast marvellously all night you know, and got home to find there was a telegram to say that I had got a place in the medical school.

And neighbours at Chislehurst, and the Home Guard headquarters was next door to us actually at Chislehurst, and I was in that, but then the medical school were evacuated to Surrey, and it was a military hospital that had been built at Guildford, outside Guildford, and they took that over ‘cos Thomas’s was bombed quite badly, and about the only hospital really …, but they were after the Houses of Parliament of course which is the other side of the river, right opposite, and so there I was and I qualified at the end of ’46, and took my degree in March ’47.

But during that time you know, Chislehurst was right on the …, whenever I was at home I had to get up every night to firewatch on the roof and that sort of thing ‘cos you had got incendiaries all round you, you know, and funnily enough yesterday I went to see the Orpen, William Orpen exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, it is a brilliant exhibition and I was just walking out and there was a chap and his teenage son, and he can’t have been more than, I should think he was forty, something like that, they were looking at the V1 and the V2, doodlebug, and the V2 and I heard him say …, I just stopped to have a look and he said to his son, of course that was the V1 and that was the V2 big rocket, and he turned to me and he said “am I right”? He had diagnosed me brilliantly! Am I right? And I said yes you are absolutely right, and I can tell you about the very first V2 which dropped on this country, it dropped at Petts Wood and my mum was just doing the washing up in their top flat in Chislehurst and she got the cutlery, the crockery, she got the crockery together on the sink, on the drainer, and she took some of it to put in the cupboard along the wall and as she did that there was a hell of a bang and the window over the sink came straight past her and pretty well hit the wall, and that was the first; and nobody knew what it was of course. We had had the V1s of course, the put, put puts!

Neville Usher: But they couldn’t pick it up with radar or shoot it down, it was so fast?

Dr. Michael Coigley: No, a rocket. But I tell you a story about the V1s, because they had this ram jet engine, they went “put, put, put” they came on, when it cut out you knew it had gone somewhere, and they used to sort of hear the wind whistle when they came down, and I came off Home Guard duty early one morning, and I thought oh I just popped in home, took my uniform off though it’s not worth doing anything, I’ll go to bed, and went down to the station, caught an early train, went into the students’ club at St. Thomas’s, saw a chap called Dempster there, arrived at the same time (a very good fly half he was by the way, died about two years ago), and we said let’s have a game of snooker. So we went into the billiard room and we were having a …, and we heard put, put, put, we heard this V1 approaching, we looked out of the window and it was coming actually straight for us in the club. We looked at each other, we got under the billiard table and shook hands and nothing happened, nothing happened, we hard it whistle past, an air current took it up and it went along York Road and it dropped on a siding of Waterloo Station and that caused some trouble because it hit a tanker which had some phosphorous substance in it, took the top off a bus, killed a lot of people, and we all rushed over to casualty, and police came in and somebody had discovered this phosphorous liquid stuff in this tanker, and it’s a devil if you don’t get it off the skin, and it’s undetected you can see it, so we got the books down, and it’s very simple, you make a solution of copper sulphate like you used for bathing, wash it over it goes black, and you can see it, otherwise it goes on boring if you don’t.
But there were so many experiences during the war. I was on duty the Sunday morning in casualty that the doodlebug fell on the Guards Chapel, that was carnage that was terrible, and we had all the casualties in from that and I can see a Guards Sergeant Major, and funnily enough I served with The Guards out in Malaya later, and being lead up the ramp to casualty with a guardsman in his arms, all of them just covered in blood and god knows what and his face shattered, he couldn’t see and yet he had another guardsman in his arms, he was 6’2” or so the Sergeant Major, and another guardsman you know, I thought you know these chaps are marvellous.

[continued]

Evacuation

In August 1939, aged 13, I was on holiday. There had been much talk of war for over 12 months and we cut our holiday short in order that my parents could attend my half brothers wedding which had been brought forward as he was being called up into the army.
The following week we were called back to school to prepare for evacuation. Each day we attended school as normal taking a suitcase with essential clothes which were checked each morning by our teacher followed by gas mask drill. We then played various indoor games until home time. On Friday 1 September we were told that we were leaving and duly labelled, lined up to march to Upton Park station. I had always been a fussy eater and a very bad riser but the ‘bush telegraph’ had done its job and most of the parents were at the school gate to see us off and call loving messages, mine being ‘Get up first call and eat everything that’s put in front of you.’
Why we didn’t go round the corner to East Ham station I do not know but we marched in crocodile behind the headmistress singing ‘ I have lost the doh of my clarinet, the me, fah etc.’ and caught a train to Ealing Broadway where I believe we should have caught a train to Cornwall. However, we were put on a train for Oxfordshire and told we were off to Kidlington. We soon ate our sandwiches and then settled down to watch the countryside speeding by. Some time later we arrived at Bicester where we were taken to the village hall and given a drink of milk, put on to buses and driven to Kidlington. Another village hall, where we were put into groups and sent round the village to be billeted. By now it was getting quite late but on we trudged stopping at various houses to leave girls at their new homes. At the end of the Banbury Road there were four of us left and we knocked at a door and a very pretty little lady came running round the side and we entered in, and that was how my friend Joan and I met Mrs Maycock. Two other friends were welcomed next door, and after something to eat we had to write a card to our parents with our new address and then met Mr Maycock and a short while later we went to bed. Mr. & Mrs ‘M’ as I called them had only been married for 2 years and in later years I really pitied them having to take in 2 teenagers, mind you, teenagers in those days weren’t anywhere near as stroppy as they are these days.
On the Saturday the teacher in charge of our group came to check that we were ok and then we had little to do. Mrs ‘M’ suggested that we took a walk over to the aerodrome which we did and gazed at the one mechanic, the petrol pump and the [plane.
On Sunday 3rd September we went to visit Mrs Maycock senior who lived by the canal and heard the prime minister declare war. I was somewhat bemused to see Mrs Maycock senior crying at the thought of war.
For a few weeks we shared the senior school with the local children, they going for lessons in the morning and we having the use of the school during the afternoons. This worked quite well as we had games and nature rambles in the morning, but soon afterwards we were given an old zoo house with various barns where the animals had been kept. As this was the other end of the village Mr ‘M’ who was a keen cyclist made me up a bike from spare parts which helped a lot. My parents came for a visit and laid down the ground rules and both Joan and I settled into a routine. Come Christmas I had a new cycle which I must say had better brakes that the other one. Joan decided to go home as there had been no bombing and I moved into the small bedroom. Mrs’M’ began to let the double room to air force personnel for weekends and longer when their wives visited.
Our teachers had been very strict about school uniform but once clothes rationing came into force we were allowed a little latitude. The winters were very cold and I suffered badly from chilblains but there were compensations in that we used to go to ice-skating on Benheim lake, and come the summer we used to go fishing in the river and canal. Our gym mistress used to take us swimming in the river and used to insist we swam in the nude much to the joy of the local boys on the other side of the river. It was freezing. I only went home occasionally when there were lulls in the blitz, my mother had returned to nursing and worked shiftwork. Returning home one night in a heavy raid she was crouched against a wall when something touched her shoulder. Convinced that she was hit by shrapnel she turned round fearfully to find a ginger cat patting her shoulder.
Mr ‘M’ was a bricklayer by trade but all civilian building stopped when war broke out so he got a job at the local bacon factory and used to bring home offcuts which Mrs’M’ made into delicious pies. He was also a very keen gardener and we never lacked fresh vegetables. With the hens which they kept and the odd pig or two they were always busy. I tried my hands at growing vegetables but was not keen on weeding and had quire a few lectures. The school dinners were very small and I suffered badly from hunger, present nutritionists tell us we were better fed in wartime but as a growing girl I dispute this.
The council house where I lived had one cold water tap between four houses and the first one up in winter would boil a kettle of rainwater and pour it over the tap to defrost it. We had a shed in the garden with a bucket for a toilet which was emptied by a collector once a week, and on one memorable occasion the axle broke on the cart and the contents spilt all over the road in the centre of the village.
We had loads of fun and lots of hard work. When we had RAF personnel staying we would play darts in the evening which I enjoyed even though it meant I had to get up early to do my homework. My mother would never have recognised me especially when I got up early on May morning to cycle to Oxford to hear the choir on Magdalen tower.
We regularly attended church and also the cinema in the village especially when Deanna Durbin was on. Mr & Mrs ‘M’ treated me to the pantomime in Oxford and occasionally we went dancing at the aerodrome after Mr ‘M’ became a handyman there. Though I must admit that as a skinny fifteen year old I was hardly ‘Belle of the Ball’.
I was a member of the school guide company and enjoyed getting badges. The Maycock family treated me as one of their own and we have remained friends all our lives, Mrs ‘M’ and some of her family are still alive (2004) Sometimes I would go to Woodstock where Mrs ‘M’s mother managed a sweet shop and I remember sitting in bed with her sister Lilian and Mr ‘M’s sister eating unrationed sweets. My friends and I tried smoking in the blackout but when I was 16 Mr ‘M’ gave us a box of cigarettes and told us it was now legal. We didn’t bother any more!
We had very little German air activity over Kidlington. Once when my parents were visiting a plane came over and my father said it was a german, and everyone laughed until a stick of bombs fell on the aerodrome. The pilot got away because the airman manning one of the guns had hopped over the fence to meet his girl in Oxford. A plane was shot down one Xmas time and one of our RAF friends was guarding it in bitter cold weather so we cycled out with hot soup for him.
Eventually we took our exams and left for home with mixed feelings. Some of the girls couldn’t settle in their foster homes and they opened a very large house where they lived for four years. I had loved being one of a large family but looked forward to my new life at work. I was so lucky to have the billet that I did and Mrs’M’ was paid the princely sum of 7/6 (37 1/2p) for my keep. My mother gave some extras such as blankets and as I said we have always remained friends.

The Prime Minister’s quiet and responsible voice from the radio which announced that we were at war with Germany had the same immediate lack of impact that is true of hearing of the death of someone we love, one’s whole being refuses to acknowledge its truth. One cannot grasp it or acknowledge what it will mean or how it will change one’s life. The wartime comedy which showed the dad saying “Put the kettle on Mum we’ll have a cup of tea” was an expression of the reactions of the time which made it a classic response to disaster.

In 1939 my husband was a schoolmaster in the Waltham Forest area and he immediately became involved his school to the “safe” area in the Midlands( Kettering). We lived in Woodford Green and the children (three) and I began hastily to pack up our special needs for we knew not how long , to go to the same area. The children took favourite toys and my eldest son was persuaded very reluctantly to leave behind his xylophone. It was put in the loft for safety but was never seen again.

A large limousine ( schoolmasters could not afford limousines ) came and collected us and in a bemused stste we set off across Hackney Marshes on our way to become that downgrading term to describe our flight , “evacuees “.

Our first billet was in a good residential area, and in a large house inhabited by a single lady who had never been married or had children ( the two situations almost invariably together in those days ). In addition she had a gentleman friend who called every morning , but after our arrival he stood and held a conversation at the gate . ah!

Young children are inclined to be rather conservative in their expectation that life will continue on the same pattern and that food will be what it has always been at home. Fortunately an arrangement was made for them to attend school( far away it seemed ) and the nearby Wicksteed Park was a blessing in the freedom and fun it offered . However food was often a problem …”What’s that!” - (a summer pudding) - A child wet from top to toe who had walked into the lake pretending to be our blind piano tuner was not laughingly received by our hostess, unused to family messes, it must have been a more traumatic experience for her than we stopped to consider at the time.

After a time we were invited to move next door to be billeted with a breezy Head Teacher of a Primary school and her Billy Bunter son. The former was in the habit of spending either one or other day of the weekend in bed “ to enable her to cope with the stresses of her professional life”. The introduction of a mother father and three young children was really more than could be endured by any settled group and we too found it very difficult to be constantly trying to fit into another’s pattern. One day something (perhaps the whole thing) seemed too much and I burst into tears which startled everyone, even myself.

Change and new thinking was required and my husband, very capable of both, found us an empty house to rent. It must have been empty for years! It was filthy, but we set to with joy and turned it into a home.

Settled at last, my mother and sister joined us at first from a ‘defence area’ (Southend) from which everyone had to evacuate as German invasion was expected. All able bodied citizens had to be employed as a gesture towards the war effort; my young sister, an art student, became a telephonist. My mother, brought up and educated to be a lady had never had a professional job, but she became a shop assistant in the curtains department of a large local store and thoroughly enjoyed it. Her Head of Department was a very jolly little Welshman who made toys surreptitiously under the counter. He also knew which grocer would have oranges or bananas in (absolute treats during rationing), which butcher would have a few sausages ‘off ration’ for friends (shades of Dad’s Army), and which customer would bring in a few eggs for the staff if ‘spoken to nicely’. Another blessing when clothes were on ration too was the curtain material (off ration) which my sister and I purchased and made into house-coats.

Kettering was the enter of the boot and shoe industry, well-off, socially comfortable and until the coming of the evacuees, undisturbed by the war. The mass invasion of Londoners, particularly after the bombing started was not welcomed and could be equated with the seeming intrusion of immigrants and refuge-seekers today. Those who came in the early days of the war settled into local schools but when the bombing of London actually happened, children from east London which was then a very poor area flooded in.

My own family became relatively settled and I enlisted as a voluntary billeting officer. The children from London arrived often after nights of bombing, wearing a name and address label, carrying a gas mask and sometimes a packet of food. They surged into local schools where we met them, reassured them, and the professional full-time billeting officers sorted them out for likely homes.

The children varied from one extreme to another in their response to the experience. Some were as jolly as if on a treat, sitting on tables, swinging legs, making friends and waiting for the next happening. Others cried sadly, and some, but only a few inconsolably. Later a handful of children actually walked back to London, and other parents were known to collect their child and take them home, especially when there was a lull in the London bombing.

My role soon became established and in the first instance it was to accompany the billeting officer in his car with two or three children, and to back him up when he arrived at a house and announced to the occupants that they were to have a child, or sometimes a family (brothers and sisters were kept together where possible) billeted on them. Protests were sometimes overcome (‘I have a sick mother – or aged father etc) but the times were urgent and in general a willing attitude was expressed. Later I visited the families to help with problems that arose: e.g. children homesick, incompatible relations, bed-wetting.

The poverty in east London during the 1930s can hardly be imagined today – and it showed itself in the condition of many evacuees. Children came with scabies, ringworm, impetigo and other expressions of the conditions in which they lived. Some had never eaten at a table or slept in a bed; additionally they had already lived in air-raid shelters, the underground stations, bombed sites or any place deemed safer than their own home or street. For the people in the Midlands who had never before met children of such poverty, adapting to their needs cannot have been easy, but the spirit of the times was remarkable in hindsight and our hearts and minds were totally focused on the war effort.

The arrival of the American Air Force in Kettering during the war had an impact on the local people comparable to the arrival of evacuees but with a very different effect. Their appearance and demeanour were so relaxed as to make a sharp contrast with our own troops.

To our eyes the Americans wore soft fitting uniforms, like a gentle summer suit and shoes. They walked in an easy manner, not marching and without the tough resolution which was underlying the British trained members of the forces. Amongst their number was Clark Gable, the leading film star of the day (‘Gone with the Wind’), and when he appeared on the High Street, police were called to control the crowds.

Women in Kettering whose husbands and sons were not in a ‘reserved occupation’ had been bereft of male company for a long time and these very attractive newcomers had a refreshing effect on the local population. Ultimately the Americans had well-stocked canteens, and dances and entertainments were set up by the Red Cross. American generosity, especially to children became renowned.

I have a lingering memory that at 4 am in the morning we heard the strong throb of the American planes as they set off to bomb Germany (daylight bombing) – many did not return and our respect for their courage and support for our war effort added to their glamour. Not unexpectedly liaisons were set up and promises and expectations of marriage ‘after the war’ abounded.

My mother and sisters wee volunteers at the American Red Cross canteen, and my sisters, both artistic painted and decorated the canteen walls with huge attractive murals. An American soldier fell in love with my younger sister but the liaison did not end in marriage. My second sister had a lighter relationship which snapped when her husband startlingly returned from India where he had been taken by ship after the fall of Singapore.

My second (middle) sister and her husband and two small children were in Singapore when the war came. My brother-in-law was a surveyor there and when the Japs invaded my mother spent sleepless after sleepless nights worrying about their fate – no news, no news, no news. Then one unbelievable morning my sister and her children turned up on our doorstep in Kettering wearing extraordinary Red Cross clothes, carrying a few bags and parcels and the children’s Kiddycar.

By this time we had moved into a more salubrious home, a small house at the top of the town. Already we were five people plus my mother and sister. Now we nudged up more closely and took in one more sister and two little children. All the newcomers from Singapore were traumatized. Their family goods, silver, cars, wedding presents and any other valuables had to be thrown into the river in Singapore. Father and servants had been left behind. The ship on which they travelled back to England with many other refugees had been threatened by enemy submarines, the refrigeration system had broken down, and children and especially babies on board had suffered from the consequences; lack of fresh milk and noticeable effects.

During her years in Singapore my sister had been waited on hand and foot, experience of wartime conditions here were perhaps cruelly hard for her to adjust to. An outstanding memory was of a tray of tea cups and saucers being thrown into the sink at a time when utility cups, as thick as shaving mugs, could only be purchased in the market by near seduction of the vendor. Her children screamed all night and soon developed (with her) scarlet fever, and passed it on to our children – some were sent to the isolation hospital, already well stocked with London evacuees. Parents were kept beyond the glass verandas and when visiting I was much amused to hear a parent shout to her child: ‘Don’t do nuffink wot they tell yer!!’

There came a time when we returned to London (the sequence of events is confused in my memory) and to a large family house we bought in Wanstead. It may have been following the D-day invasion or after the Germans invaded Russia, probably their most serious military mistake – Hitler had certainly never read history and Napoleon’s fate. It seems in retrospect that at this time Germany developed a huge new bomb which came without warning and created wide destruction, the doodle-bug.

John my husband, now Deputy Director of Education in the London Borough of East Ham once again arranged to take us all to a ‘safe’ area, his mother’s home in Hakin, Pembrokeshire. Yet again we strove to adapt to her way of life – not easy.

A strong and courageous woman whose husband, skipper of a fishing boat, had been lost in the first World War when serving in the Royal Navy. His ship was said to be carrying gold bullion between England and Ireland and had been sunk. The crew were known to have escaped in a ‘long boat’ and for years my mother-in-law truly believed he would turn up, perhaps having been picked up by another vessel but also because she knew him to be a strong swimmer ‘with webbed toes’.

She lived long before there was state support for widows and children, and her determination that her children should have a good education led her to work very hard to give them that chance. She worked equally hard for us whilst we were with her, cooking and shopping, preparing picnics for us for the beach. She was strict and her home lacked any of the facilities we take for granted today, but we managed to live and endure much time in Wales thanks to her generosity. The children went to school here – another cultural change.

Still later when the bombing in the south-east stopped and we returned to London the future appeared assured. In the euphoria of the time I became pregnant, but grievously we were perhaps too hungry for peace and once again the bombing began.

At this stage our first two children were settled in schools. Our eldest son at the City of London School was evacuated to Marlborough College Wiltshire which he loathed. A telegram which said ‘Please come and fetch me, everyone here hates me’, could not be acceded to. Perhaps the fact that he was billeted with the Vicar and his wife and that when I very rarely visited (due to petrol rationing) I was required to sit in the garden shed with my son. It speaks more of the reception in Marlborough than a more detailed account could offer.

My daughter was now a pupil at St. Angela’s Forest Gate where her Grandmother had been educated, a very satisfactory situation. Nevertheless the bombing once more urged us out of London and this time (my mother and sister having returned to the south-east, no longer a ‘defence area’) we went to stay with them near the coast. The elder children continued at their respective schools, the City of London School finally returning to London. During all this change and readjustment the children remained undisturbed and reflecting on the times today remember it simply as the way of family life.

Television was unknown and entertainment was home-made. A sheet of string across the room for theatre and plays were created on the spot. Often the productions were hilarious and reflected the war as heard on the radio but devoid of the trauma of reality. Ships were demonstrably sunk, planes were seemingly bombed, people were apparently rescued, no-one was apparently mortally injured or died, a child view of the war.

Three other memories return to mind. The first is that dentists seem to have disappeared in our area, probably recruited into the services. The second was the pressure on the local G.P., probably doctors too were called up. Medicine bottles were in very short supply and every patient to the G.P. was invited to bring a urine sample in a medicine bottle, a most effective way of restoring the current inadequacy.

The third memory is of the role of the W.R.V.S. in helping us to vary the use of limited rations during the war to make food more interesting and attractive. A shop was set up in the High Street with cooked food on display, recipes printed and available, and demonstrations of cooking where cakes made with the rinsed out milk-bottle as fluid mixer were seemingly palatable.

With Churchill’s speeches to the nation we pressed on with never a doubt that we would win.

I was 4 years old when the big day came, September 3rd. 1939.
It took a while before the war started to affect us. It must have been sometime in 1940 that I first remember being woken by my old mum bless her, I remember it was so dark and very cold and she would never, never wake us till the buggers where right overhead.
This was West Ham, deep in the East End of London, with a railway yard, 2 chemical factories and a pumping station at the back of us and right in the middle was No.6 Pond Road.
Before the balloon went up some men came and dug a big hole in our tiny back yard and I saw what is now known as an Anderson shelter, it had 2 long benches inside and this was where we were going to spend many a long night.
My dad had died when I was a baby so my mum, sister and myself found things pretty hard. My mum worked shift Work in one of the chemical factories called Berks.
My sister had been evacuated to Newbury in Berkshire, so when mum was doing her shifts I would be farmed out to different neighbors.
We lived next door to a bakery which was owned by 2 brothers and these 2 men used to be in our shelter and had made themselves at home before we were able to get there, my mother did not like the situation one bit.
My mates and I would scour the streets in the morning after a raid looking for spent cases and pieces of shrapnel, sometimes this was still warm and the shell cases were great for swapping with your mates.
As the war went on us kids became used to dog fights in the sky, planes leaving vapor trails and weaving in and out with there guns blazing it was very exciting to us.
Many, many bombs fell in and around West Ham, one of my sister’s friends was killed during a bombing raid and many of our local shops were also flattened. A school, which was used as a fire station received a direct hit and many firemen were killed.
One of the most amazing night I remember was of being hauled out of bed, taken to the shelter, we were in there all night, the noise was incredible, all we had at the entrance to the shelter was a piece of wood about a yard square and so while all this was going on I peeped out and the picture I saw has stayed with me as though it was yesterday. The sky was alight with color, searchlights were lighting the sky, fighter planes weaving about with there machine guns blazing, the planes were very low and all the time you could hear the loud bangs from the bombs, that picture will stay with me forever.
Next morning not a window was left in our house, our street was completely wrecked, there was slates missing from the roofs and none of the house had windows. There were police everywhere, I remember the street being roped off, my mum was inside collecting things together, then I don’t remember how we got there but we ended up in Mill Hill. We stayed with a lovely family and I remember being given a box of lead soldiers and this was one of the best gifts I was given as a child. I can’t remember how long we stayed with these people but when we got home our house was clean, windows, doors and roofs were as new.
As the days went by and the bombing got worse we had to go to these big underground shelters where there were rows of bunk beds, these were in rows and you were sleeping next to people you had never seen before. There were crowds of us every night walking to the shelters with our blankets, some even took mattresses with them.
You got hardly any sleep and you didn’t know if your house would be there when you got back in the morning. Mums and Dads still had to go to work the next day How they did it I will never know. Could the young people of today do it? I don’t think so, do you?
One day the YANKS came to Pond Road, now the only Americans we knew were in the films so obviously to us kids back home in America they had all been either cowboys or some sort of gangsters like James Cagney.
Where the houses had once stood they started to put up prefabs, they gave us chocolate and gum and we looked at these tanned men in with our mouths open we found them unbelievable. They gave us their time and would stand and talk to us in a way that we were not used to and to us we felt they were all like the film stars we saw at the cinema, they were all so nice and nothing seemed to much trouble for them.
Not far away from where I lived was Carpenters Road, which had lot of factories which had been bombed out and the rubbish had been cleared and a prisoner of war camp had been built there, in it the prisoners were all Italians, they all wore dark battledress and on the back was either a large yellow diamond or circle. We would often see them walking about, we never spoke to them, but we would stare at them till they were out of site.
Sometimes we would see these prisoners with English girls, now this did not mean a lot to us children, but they would be told off by some of the mum’s and the older men as they were the enemy.
One time my girl friend came to our house crying and said her sister’s boyfriend had been killed in the war. I remember everyone just being so quiet. After that whenever we saw her sister, whose name was Vera, she was always alone.
Where my sister was evacuated was quite a nice place, we went to see her once. The house she lived in was opposite a huge park, once a German plane shot at her and her friends as they played in the park luckily he missed and nobody was hurt. Another time a German plane crashed in the park and my sister said they took the pilot away.
As the months wore on more and more parts of West Ham disappeared, whole rows of houses would be there one day and gone the next. In a part of West Ham there was a part you could walk from Stratford to Becton dumps, this long walk was called the “Sewers Bank” it is quite hard to describe what it looked like because I have never seen anything like it since. If you can imagine a really high grass covered bank at leasts30ft. or more high and under this ran a huge sewer pipe about 6ft. in diameter, it carried sewage and went over bridges which were over roads and rivers and went on for miles and miles. One day there was a mighty explosion and a V2 rocket had hit the side of the bank, lots of houses went in the blast and the smell was unbelievable.
You often hear Londoners say, “the Germans bombed our chip shop” well in our case it was true. I was in a neighbors having some dinner, I will never forget, it was stew, when BANG, the ceiling came down in my dinner, dust and plaster everywhere. A crowd had started to gather at the top of Stevens Road where there was a very large pub called “The Lord Gough” this had disappeared along with the small cinema and sweet shop which were next door. Opposite was “Eileens” the fish and chip shop, the front had been blown in and Eileen was badly injured and her face was permanently scarred which was very sad as she was only young and quite pretty,
The Doodlebugs came next and they were scary because you heard them and saw them but when the engine cut out they glided in silence so where they landed was in Gods hands.
The East end spirit saw many people through and we had many street parties, how the mums put food on these party tables must have been quite a feat as it was hard enough in the best of times, but they did it. Out would be brought a piano from someone’s house and a good time was had by all.
When the bombing eased up and things got easier my sister came home, it was very strange, I think my mum stopped doing shift work then and we didn’t use the shelter so much.
The Americans finished building the prefabs and moved away, those prefabs were in use for many years after the war.
I suppose if I am honest we kids quite enjoyed a lot of the war as it was like an adventure, and we didn’t see it the way adults did, to see planes fighting in the sky was so exciting and collecting bits of shrapnel and shell casings was like toys to us as we didn’t have a lot in those days..
I have tried to remember the parts that someone may find interesting of a small boys war.

I was evacuated for the first three years of the war but my parents were living in the east end of London. My father was a ship's plumber in the docks and as soon as the war started my mother went back as a nurse on a first aid post. After a few months the post was closed due to the fact that there were no air raids and mother went to work at the local hospital. She was a fully qualified nurse and had given up nursing when I was born.

I only knew one person who was at Dunkirk, and I remember him making lots of jokes about it when he came to tea after he was rescued. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr Churchill was an inspiration to us all as we listened to his broadcasts on the radio, I never for one moment imagined that we might lose the war.

When the Blitz started, life became very difficult for the eastenders and my parents decided to have an Anderson shelter in the back garden. The bombing was dreadful but I only knew one friend who was killed. She had been my patrol leader in the guides before the war and was sheltering with her mother and brother. During a lull in the bombing her brother went into the house to make a cup of tea and the shelter received a direct hit killing May and injuring her mother, her brother surviving with minor injuries.

Things gradually became worse and many foodstuffs were rationed, the bread was very grey, and long queues formed for anything unrationed, e.g. fish, offal. It was difficult for my mother working and getting unrationed foods but after a while we had a new neighbour move in and she would queue for mother as well as herself. Occasionally we would be allowed an extra ration of dried fruit for special occasions and I can remember having to wash the fruit about 20 times to remove the grit before it could be used.

In 1942 I returned from evacuation and the worst of the Blitz was over so I set about finding employment, not the easiest thing despite having done well in my exams, the trouble being that I didn't want to be evacuated again and many firms were now located in the country. I applied to banks and insurance firms and finally went to the headmistresses association who offered me an interview with an accountant and a solicitor. Having no idea what either of them did I opted for the accountant and was offered a place as a comptometer operator and audit clerk which was a deferred occupation and released a boy for the forces. I first had to train as a comptometer operator and then would go on audit carrying the machine. All for 35/- a week (£1.75)
That winter I also learnt to make blocks of coal with nutty slack because the coal we received on ration was mostly dust.

I would also go shopping in the market in Green Street, Upton Park for material to make clothes, soon learning that if I didn't mention coupons nobody asked for them. I've since learnt how these materials were obtained and occasionally get a twinge of guilt!

My father died in January 1943 and the night before his funeral we had an air raid, Mum snatched up her knitting and we rushed under the stairs leaving insurance money and other valuables on the dining room table.

My father had been ill for a long time from effects of the first world war and although I was very sad to see him go I have to admit that things were easier after his death. There was no health service and my mother had to pay all his Dr's bills and hospital bills out of her salary once the panel money and HSA had run out. When my mother was on duty at nights I would get my father's tea in the morning and my own breakfast of dried egg etc: which was edible as long as you ate it as soon as it was cooked otherwise it was like leather. I could manage dried milk in coffee but it was awful in tea and at work I would drink marmite.

Shortly after the death of my dad my best friend lost her father and that summer we went to Torquay on holiday with my mother. The train was packed with troops and the guard invited us into the guards van where we were able to sit on luggage and from which we emerged covered in smuts from the engine. We had a great time, a small part of the beach was open and we were able to swim. The food was excellent and we had scones with Devon cream for breakfast.

My friend and I both worked for the insurance side of the business when I was not on audit and we girls loved to help the office boys take the ledgers down to the basement where they were put in the safe against bombing. When on audit I would travel all over London and occasionally would go away. I went to some lovely places, The Hotel de Paris in Bray near Maidenhead where Willis Faber were was beautifully situated by the river and you could imagine the rich and famous, including the Prince of Wales staying there. I also went to Derby to Rolls Royce, and stayed in the Midland Hotel realising that wealthy people were able to acquire better food and conditions than we mere mortals. The senior auditors used to go for long walks in the countryside around Derby and once they realised that I would not be a drag they allowed me to join them, and despite the icy conditions I fell in love with the area.

Meantime my mother applied for the position of matron at an old folks home at Cuffley Hertfordshire so we went to live there. It was a lovely old Georgian house at the top of a long hill. I would cycle to the station each morning which took ten minutes and back in the evening which because I had to walk half the way took thirty minutes. We had a swimming pool and tennis courts in the grounds and I had a huge room and a servant to clean my shoes. Every so often they would hold a Red Cross fete which was great fun and to which I donated all my old toys. The only regret I have is that I gave all my cigarette cards and my son now collects them and would have loved them.

One morning in May 1944 I was cycling to the station and became aware of masses of planes overhead. D-Day had arrived. One night shortly afterwards there was an air raid warning and having got the patients into the main sitting room several of us went on to the terrace to watch the bombing over London. We saw a plane dive to the ground and all felt sorry for the pilot little realising that we were watching one of the first doodle bugs.
Within a few weeks we received a call saying that our house had been damaged and my mother went up to East Ham to see the extent of the damage. The bomb had fallen two roads away but the house was ok at the front nearest the bomb except for losing all of its windows. The roof had come off, the wall between the front and living room had collapsed and there was a huge hole in the back of the house. My half sister who had been staying over night was standing at the front door in the pouring rain brushing the muck and rain out as it poured down the stairs.

The emergency services soon effected repairs to make the place reasonably safe. The windows had a sort of frosted glass fitted and mum said, the middle wall was so well fixed she thought that whatever else came down that would last forever.

I was supposed to be going to Scarborough for a week with a friend who lived even nearer to the bomb but while waiting at the station received a message to say that she couldn't come so eventually she spent the week at Tolmers where I was living. The authorities gave you money and clothing coupons if you were bombed and she did quite well all her best clothes had been packed in a suitcase ready for her holiday.

I remember that we walked out of the village to see the Italian prisoners of war. They seemed happy enough and stood by the wire whistling at us.

I was allowed to go dancing at East Ham and stay over night before the bomb providing the girl next door stayed with me and one night a buzz bomb dropped fairly near and we crept to the back door to make sure that her house was still standing having no idea of the damage they inflicted. Sometimes I would go to a film in London with a boyfriend and on one occasion missed my train and ended up getting the last train home arriving at Cuffley at 1am and getting a real rollicking. 'You could have been attacked in the woods by a prisoner of war' but as we all know those sort of things never happen to us!

After 18 months my mother transferred back to East Ham to become matron in charge of the day nurseries, a change which pleased me greatly as I was able to resume all my activities. I studied bookkeeping and accountancy, went to the cinema at least once a week and joined the old school club and dramatic society. Not that I was any great actress, they soon made me secretary. I would spend at least 2 evenings with my mother and knitted myself jumpers and made various items of clothing. I was never bored.

One morning we were shopping in the High Street when the alarm went off and we dashed in to the basement of a butchers. As we went down the stairs we saw a huge rat and decided we'd rather face the bombs and went straight back up again.

At last VE Day came and we had a great celebration. I shall never forget the atmosphere and I didn't even mind that it was my birthday and I received no post.

The blackout protection came off the train windows and it seemed as if we were travelling in a large goldfish bowl.

A few months later VJ Day arrived and I was on holiday at Clacton but although we all celebrated there was not quite the same feeling of relief possibly because things at home with rationing and shortages were even worse. Still, the boys were coming home and life could gradually get back to normal. Best of all we could now stop sleeping in the shelter for as I had reverted to my old ways and wouldn't get up when the siren sounded my mother had fixed two bunk beds together in the Anderson and every night we trooped down the garden to sleep. It was really quite comfortable but boy did my mother snore. I had always attended church and we all went to a Thanksgiving Service, we had been very lucky.