How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On (8 page)
Read How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On Online
Authors: Anton Rippon
Eric Cutmore, Bourn, Cambridgeshire
During the war I had three apple trees in my garden, which I painted with whitewash to keep insects away. One moonlit night, when we expected an air raid, my next-door
neighbour looked out of her bedroom window at the back of the house, saw my trees and panicked. She ran down the stairs to her family shouting: ‘My God! German paratroops, dressed in
white, have landed in Mr Barnett’s garden!’
A. A. BARNETT, COLINDALE, LONDON
Between 1940 and 1943, I was employed as a senior nursery attendant in Oxford, with a group of forty children aged between three and five. The nursery had originally been a
large home but Lord Nuffield had taken over the building as part of his factory. The nursery unit was housed in an old youth hostel with a beautiful garden.
We had several air-raid alerts, thankfully all false, but the children found a wonderful game imitating the siren, after which an older child would take a smaller one, usually carrying it to a
large oak tree.
One day we were visited by an air-raid warden because the children’s imitation of the siren was so good, it had been fooling the neighbours!
Josie Nicholson, Ivybridge, Devon
During the summer of 1940, my husband had gone down to the local pub for an evening drink. Around 9.30 p.m. and alone at home, I decided to step outside for some fresh air.
Our cottage stood on a bank and from the garden I saw what I thought were German paratroopers dropping from the sky. Quickly, I ran the 300 yards towards the pub to start the alarm. Everyone,
including the landlord, put down their pints and rushed outside, climbing up the steep hill to our cottage. The first man up there, however, seemed less alarmed.
‘You fool! They’re barrage balloons!’
Mrs A. Taylor, Shifnal, Shropshire
In June 1944, I was travelling to my job as an invoice typist with the LNER at King’s Cross Goods Way in London. It was a beautiful day and I was wearing a white dress and
shoes and carrying a white bag. My train was sitting in Vauxhall station and the carriages were packed when suddenly one man shouted at me: ‘Get down, missus!’ A flying bomb’s
engine had cut out over the station. Everyone else threw themselves to the floor, but I took one look and saw it was filthy. There was no way I was going to lie down there. So I just huddled up and
prayed.
Gladys Lutterloch, Yeovil
During the war one of my friends, Dorothy Griffiths, decided to have a party and, as she lived in a flat, her aunt and uncle gave permission for her to hold the party at their
Salford home, a small terraced house with no bathroom and an outside lavatory. As the party drew to a close, a few of the boys were too late to get back to their various camps and lodgings in
Eccles and so were invited to stay overnight. All was quiet until the return of the aunt and uncle. The uncle had a sudden thought about what might happen if any of the lads had to answer a call of
nature during the night. So he grabbed a spare chamber pot, went upstairs, knocked on the bedroom door and shouted: ‘Jerry’s here!’
There was utter chaos as the men scrambled down the stairs, pushing the uncle to one side. They thought there was an air raid and were heading straight for camp!
Mrs Frances Sheridan, Bolton
One of the Group 2 staff, London Civil Defence, was a very tidy secretary known as Rosie. We were on night duty, but resting as we did when no alert was on. Then the air-raid
siren sounded and we rushed down to the basement room to man our posts. Poor Rosie was quite unaware at having run down there dressed only in blouse and petticoat!
Leila Mackinlay, London
The scene is my grandmother’s air-raid shelter. It must be about 2 a.m. The shelter is full of people, maybe about a dozen or so. It is easy to hear people in adjacent
shelters in gardens on either side. Laughter, singing and so on. Suddenly everything goes quiet. A pair of very booted heavy feet begin to walk down the long path towards the shelter. Thud, thud,
thud. Is it an enemy parachutist who has landed nearby? Everyone is holding their breath. Left, right, left, right, clump, clump, clump. And then, in a very loud voice: ‘Achtung!’ Utter
terror on everyone’s faces. Until they realize it was my uncle playing a trick. I don’t think they knew whether to kick him or kiss him.
Brenda Shaw, Kingston upon Hull
Aunt Maggie had been evacuated to the country. When Uncle John came home on leave, she moaned and moaned about having to live in a converted stable.
‘Oh well,’ said Uncle John, ‘our Lord was born in a stable.’
‘Aye,’ replied Aunt Maggie, ‘but he wisnae paying seven shillings and four pence a week.’
Sheila McGerhan, Glasgow
The nearest air-raid shelter was a communal one at the end of the road. One night we were all running madly down the street while the guns boomed overhead and flares dropped
around us. Halfway down the road, one of us noticed that Nanny was missing. She was standing in the street, gazing admiringly at the flares and wanting to know who had put them there.
Mrs B. M. Hipperson
One morning, in the early hours, just Mother and me at home. It’s a warm summer’s night and the windows are open. There’s suddenly the sound of heavy breathing
in the bedroom. My mother gets out of bed, warily, to search for our ‘intruder’. After creeping into the other rooms and finding no such man, yet the heavy breathing getting louder and
louder, we discover it is the noise of the breeze whipping through the ropes attached to the barrage balloon in the neighbouring playing field.
Brenda Shaw, Kingston upon Hull
There were some strange sights after the air raids on Hull. There was a house where the front wall had been blown off but you could see almost every piece of furniture still in
its place, like a doll’s house with the front just taken off. After one raid, a complete fish-fryer from a fish and chip shop that had been hit was sitting on the roof of a house on the other
side of the street. But people just got on with it, and it was the little things that bothered them. One old lady who lived opposite my friend was being lifted out of the rubble of her house and
she kept asking for her false teeth. Apparently, they’d been in a glass of water beside her bed. The Civil Defence men told her not to worry about her dentures, they could be replaced. But
she said that she wasn’t leaving without them: ‘I’m not letting people see me without my teeth.’
Phyllis Rippon, Derby
Flat 66 in Newport Buildings, Covent Garden, wasn’t a luxury apartment. But in May 1941 it was a comfortable enough home for seventy-two-year-old Rose Heffer – even
after the Luftwaffe had dropped a bomb nearby and caused sufficient damage for the building to be declared unsafe. So Mrs Heffer ignored cracked walls, loose brickwork and the absence of doors and
windows, and continued to live there.
She ignored, too, the notice pinned to an outside wall, declaring the building unsafe and forbidding anyone to enter it. When a night-patrol policeman heard someone moving around, he
investigated and found Mrs Heffer alone, sitting by a roaring coal fire. Yes, she’d read the notice but she didn’t have anywhere else to go, so she was stopping where she was.