How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On (32 page)

Towards the end of 1944, the doodlebugs began their blitz on London. One day we were enjoying a swim in the River Roding, boys and girls together, all in the nude – the so-called
pre-permissive days – when someone shouted: ‘Look up! It’s coming straight for us!’

We all jumped out of the water, grabbed what clobber we could and made for one of the trenches that they had dug in the fields to stop Jerry from landing. We had about 400 yards to run and, in
our panic, it seemed to follow us. We all sat shivering in the trench, waiting for it to cut out. Luckily, when it did, it crashed in Epping Forest.

In the later war years, an old man by the name of Taters Green, who lodged in a house near me, asked his landlady to get him a bar of soap when she went shopping. When she asked him for his
coupons, he replied: ‘What? Have they rationed soap as well?’

L. J. Goodey, Loughton, Essex

Leaving my grandmother’s house, my mother and I passed a horse in a field. I said to my mother: ‘What’s he got a gas mask on under his belly for?’ How
was a wee girl to know that when a gentleman horse espies a lady horse in the field he becomes aroused? To me, he was wearing a gas mask! My mother bravely managed not to laugh and gave me a
suitable explanation.

Brenda Shaw, Kingston upon Hull

Early 1941. It’s about 7 p.m. and my mother, father and me, aged eleven years old, are going down to the Anderson shelter in the garden for the night, complete with
supper. We’re duly settled in, with an oil lamp burning nicely, supper about to be served – crayfish sandwiches for my mother and father; I had a passion for breakfast-sausage
sandwiches at that time – when we hear a lone bomber buzzing about, and a frenzied shout of ‘Put that light out!’ coming from an adjoining road, directed at a near neighbour whose
bathroom light is showing brightly. Suddenly, there is the sound of a bomb coming down. Father throws himself over my mother, and she shields me with her body. There’s the most terrifying
crash as the bomb hits a lamp post and bursts in mid-air, one hundred yards away. The oil lamp is blown out by the blast. I’m crying my eyes out with sheer terror; my father is worried that
I’ve been hit or something. Sheer panic. Then my father says that he has been hit, blood is pouring down his leg. We get the oil lamp lit, Father discovers that the ‘blood’
pouring down his leg is vinegar for the crayfish sandwiches, and I am howling because I have lost my beloved breakfast-sausage sandwiches. Having sorted out the chaos, we all have a good laugh.
Although the laughter is short-lived when we see the damage to our house. But I can still see the funny side of that incident – one among many – after all these years.

Wendy Holliman, Oxhey, Watford

As a boy I lived in Brecon. One of the ‘county set’ became a special policewoman, and one night mistook the colour of the air-raid warning system. She sounded the
siren and all over town, doctors, nurses and firemen crawled out of bed to await the onslaught. Ten minutes later she realized her error and sounded the all-clear. Alas, it was too late to save her
brief career.

Revd David Dickery, Newport

When I was a young lad and living in Thesiger Street, Cathays, Cardiff, there used to be a rather rough and ready family called the Hiats. Mr Hiat was a chimney sweep (among
other things) and most of the soot he collected would be dumped into the air-raid shelter at the bottom of his garden or, as we used to say, ‘out the back’. Like many families, they
used to stay under the stairs during the raids.

But this particular night, when Cardiff was really going through it with bombs dropping all over the place, they had no alternative but to dash ‘out the back’ into the air-raid
shelter which was below ground. You can imagine the state of that family, which was a large one, when they emerged next morning covered in soot.

My mother often tells me about the time she took me to the local cinema, The Coronet (the ‘Bug-House’ we used to call it), when during the performance, the air-raid warning started
up. When she got outside the cinema she found that she’d grabbed hold of someone else’s little boy, which is quite understandable in the dark and confusion that took place. Not funny
for her at the time, of course.

Brian Lee, Cardiff

One other incident comes to mind. I was sitting by the side of a lake at Rickmansworth, enjoying a peaceful afternoon, when I spotted an aircraft in the distance, and commented
to my mother that the plane looked as though it was on fire! She lazily looked up from her book, realized it was a doodlebug, grabbed my hand, and we ran along the lakeside to the tent where we
were camping. The doodlebug dropped in Mill End, Rickmansworth, and the tent sides ‘whoofed’ in and out with the blast. My mother suddenly started laughing and I couldn’t
understand why until she finally stopped, and said: ‘How stupid, as if sheltering in a tent would give us any protection if the thing had dropped any nearer!’

Wendy Holliman, Oxhey, Watford

My first day at school took place during wartime. I didn’t like school much that first morning, so decided to leave and not go back. I asked some ‘big ladies’
(I found out later they were sixth-formers playing netball) where the gate was and ran home. Of course, my mother was doing a part-time job and didn’t expect me to be back home so the door
was locked. She eventually found me sitting in our neighbour’s garden eating some chocolate with which the neighbour had pacified me. Needless to say, I got skelped and sent back to school
the next day. The teacher was worried, my mother was worried. ‘There could have been an air raid.’ I was ‘a wilful girl’ according to the teacher. From that first day I
hated school and was never happier than on my leaving day and first job at sixteen. Goodness knows how I passed my 11-plus.

Brenda Shaw, Kingston upon Hull

When the war broke out, all schoolchildren had to be evacuated. Two of mine were sent to Leicester and two to Worthing. When the bombs stopped for a bit over London, the
children were brought back home, only to find that very soon the doodlebugs started. So now it was all women and children to be evacuated. We all met at the local school to have tags put on our
children. The next day we were taken to the station and off we all went. Nobody knew where we were headed until, after travelling nearly all day, and asking each other where we thought we were
going, one little boy shouted: ‘I know where we’re going, I’ve just seen a Kentucky Minstrel!’

Well, it gave us mums a good laugh as we realized it was actually a coal miner. We were headed for the Rhondda Valley in South Wales.

Mrs E. Pearce, Woking, Surrey