Wartime

Where were you at the start of the war?

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

Well I was at school. I went to a Covent School in Forest Gate and we were in the September I think it was after War was declared we were evacuated. The school was evacuated to Suffolk and not everybody went, but quite a lot of people went and we were divided amongst half a dozen different villages and we were, my sister and I we were in with … there were six of us and there were three lots of families. There was six girls, and there was Margaret and Bunty Price and two Chamberlyns, Mary and me. And we were in these bedrooms, six of us, and there was a room off where the Teacher, Miss Higson would stay, so she had to go through our room in order to get to her room so we had to be on our best behaviour all the time. But we weren’t there for long. We were only there for a month and then we were sent onto Thetford, near Norwich and divided up into little houses and Mary and I were in with a Mr and Mrs Beaumont, a very old couple, in a little cottage and all the school was all divided up and we went into a big college and that’s where we were. And then of course nothing was happening in London, so we all came back to London at Christmas time. Mary and I got a lift with three teachers in a car and we got back. I always remember that Miss Duncan had a hot water bottle tucked in the back!

What job did you do during the war?

Bill Jenkins (born 1920)

I was 20 when I joined the Army and we had to do a very long period of training, yes. Split up into numbers, three or four or five hundred I think, all round the country at different places. Recruiting over a million people who never knew a rifle from what ever and we were taken to these places where they had a few elderly soldiers, regulars and they were very very good and they taught the people the basics. Marching, handling the rifle, “Look after that rifle young man.” “You thought your mother was your best friend but it’s not, the rifle is your best friend now”, all that sort of thing. Yes, we marched up and down and we learnt how to handle the rifle and we moved on round the country as I say to where I finished up my training in Eastern England where by this time, it took us about 18 months to get there in bits and pieces.

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

I worked at Woodnutts in St Helens where they were making Motor Torpedo Boats. Well I worked in the office. I did everything really. In those days if you worked in an office, you typed, you did everything. I mean we didn’t have computers and things so everything had to be done by hand. Yes, we used to do all the accounts, you know, and sometimes we would meet some of the Army and people during the War who’d come down to inspect the Motor Torpedo Boats and also later in the year, we used to … they did trials when they built these little boats, you know, trials to make sure they’re OK and later in the War of course they had … they built these …. Oh what do they call them … can’t think what they were called … airborne lifeboats that were dropped out of aeroplanes into the sea to pick up airman when they had to bale out of a Spitfire or something that had been shot down and they had to bale out into the sea and these little boats were dropped into the … they dropped by parachutes...

Alan Evans (born 1918)

When the War first broke out, I joined the firm that was in Birmingham and so I lived in Sutton where I had been born and used to travel into Birmingham. That was in 1940. But in 1942, oh Birmingham was getting bombed practically every day, every night, well two or three times a week and in 1942 our factory was in Birmingham got a direct hit and we were … the Ministry gave us a new factory up in Shropshire well out of the range of bombing and that sort of thing but it didn’t quite suit our requirements so they needed an Architect and I was an Architect, so I was there....We designed the factory and altered it to suit our requirements to produce the products that the Army wanted. The factory we had that was given us was used for making road signs, which when I first … you can imagine in the same sort of street as Army equipment. Our equipment was mainly to do with radar, radio and communications and that sort of thing.

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

I was 20 when I was called up.....I said, “OK. I would like to go into the Air Force”. So they said, “No, they don’t need anybody in the Air Force, you’ve either got nursing, a factory or the Land Army”. So I chose the Land Army and when I … I had to go for an interview and they looked at me and said, “Ooh, you’re much too small for the Land Army”....I know, they said, “You could be a milk recorder”....they needed people to go round to check up on how much milk was coming out and all that sort of thing. So I agreed to that and so I joined the Land Army and we went to Norfolk. Woodbridge first of all.....that’s where we learnt how to milk cows and there was a girl there who was teaching us....and she said, we had to get up at five o’clock in the morning and I said, “I’m not going learn how to milk cows, I’m going to do the milk recording. That’s what I was told”. So she said, “It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you knew how it happened, how it got there”. So I said, “OK”. And I never did do any milk recording. I carried on milking and whitewashing and mucking out and doing all that sort of thing.....We had to wear a uniform, it was green jersey, brown jodhpur kind of trousers and brown boots. I can’t think, oh dear, what kind of shirt did we have? I can’t remember. I’ll have to think about that. But I did have a photograph taken in my uniform.

Bill Jenkins (born 1920)

We finished our training as best we could in mud until we went on to Glasgow where we embarked on our ship to North Africa........that was when the invasion of North Africa took place. And that was a tremendous size because this is when the Americans came in and there really hundreds of ships took part in it.....I was in one of the ships that was torpedoed in the Mediterranean and it was torpedoed by an aeroplane and fortunately what happened was it shipped off, it bounced a little bit and so it didn’t go so deep into the ship’s side as they would have liked so you had a big gaping hole that you could literally drive a bus through it but it was enough damage to stop the ship completely and eventually.......shepherded by a Destroyer.......into a little place in Algeria. We were quite close to the shore and luckily I happened to be on the shore side when the sea side suffered quite a lot of casualties. We got there and we managed with help from some of the locals with a lot of planks and wood from aboard to get ashore where we stayed overnight and the following day we jumped into a cattle wagon and carried on to join the rest of our Battalion.......and that was why I was a little bit behind the rest of the boys.

What do you remember about air raids?

Alan Evans (born 1918)

When the air raid siren warned it went (imitates a warning sound) … undulating the warning with a clear one was a straightforward one (imitates warning sound) kept on the same tune all the time, or the sound all the time but the warning sign was when it started to go (imitates warning sign), undulating up and down.

Mike Wood (born 1939)

The bombers were dropping their bombs here on the Island on their way back from Portsmouth if they had any bombs left. One of my earliest memories is a bomb dropping right in the middle of the road at the top of Albert Street in Lower Ventnor. I remember seeing a huge hole in the road, there was a hotel there that was blown up, later on we used to play in there with bows and arrows. ....Ventnor was quite badly bombed, most of North Street and West Street were destroyed and I remember another raid in the High Street.....I’ve got a war wound - a scar on my head, right at the end of the war there were not as many planes coming over but we were stood there watching this plane and it opened fire and smashed the glass in the windows behind us and it cut my head. It was quite nasty, I must have been about 5.

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

Before I was in the land army I was a secretary in London, my sister worked in the same building, the same office, a land mine fell and the place was hit badly, so they were on the third floor. That’s where the office was, on the third floor and they got … one of the girls there got really hurt bad but Mary got out alright.

Ken Lawrence (born 1934)

Oh yes. I remember the buzz bomb. That was the doodlebug. That was the V1. And then the others invented the V2 because I remember when the doodlebug used to fly, half the time … I remember there was a doodlebug and it hit and there was a chap in a phonebox and it got blown and he got killed. But the trouble with V2, you couldn’t see or hear them, you know, they were the first rockets.

Ted Busbridge (born 1928)

When I first saw a doodle bug or flying bomb I thought it was a small aeroplane in serious trouble with flames coming from the tail. That, of course, was the rocket motor. Seconds later another appeared and yet another, each time, soon afterwards, there was a loud explosion. Common sense made us dive for cover. This was another of Hitlers attempts to wear us down. We discovered later that a Doodle bug or V. 1. As it was officially known was a pilotless, flying bomb. Packed with 1,000 lbs of high explosives and controlled by a giro. It was a horrible thing. Unpredictable and lethal. At any time its rocket engine could stop, then it would do almost anything: it might dive, climb or glide on for a few more miles, in which case you would not be prepared.

Did you have an air raid shelter?

Alan Evans (born 1918)

When I went home to Sutton Coldfield, seven miles north of Birmingham, when there was a raid on Birmingham we always had to go into our shelter. Now our shelter, we had an old fashioned house and it had a cellar. So we used the cellar as our shelter.

Ted Busbridge (born 1928)

A lot of people with gardens had an Anderson shelter during the war but if you didn’t have a shelter you would go under the stairs.

John Sandell (born 1929)

My father was in the First World War and he was knocked out. He wasn’t killed obviously otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but he was very shaken and he couldn’t stand the noise of planes and bombing and that sort of thing so he had a shelter built and this shelter was I suppose about 10 feet deep in the back garden and it had wooden railway sleepers to support the sides and the roof and then concrete all the way around that and when these bombs dropped and all the dust came down from above. …

Winfred Smith (born 1935)

We did not have an air raid shelter but mum and us girls went under the stairs when the siren went, we had a big mattress in there and pillow and blankets, a bottle of water and a chamber pot for emergencies only. There was also spiders and little silverfish which fascinated me. Dad and our cousin Harold would not come into the under stairs; they always stayed out in the porch on guard for incendiary bombs, as being a thatched roof they were on the look out for fire. One night Dad called us all to come out as Southampton had been bombed and we could see it burning a huge reddish yellow in the sky.

Did you ever have to take shelter?

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

Many times! First of all at the beginning of the war they used to come round and look at the house and tell you where the safest part of the house would be to go during an air raid, and then they came round to see if they could build you … under your table … You could use the table, you know, kitchen table as a shelter. They had sort of wire sort of cage things fitted underneath so … I know it sounds daft but that’s … I only remember going in there a couple of times, and then we used to go into a shelter out, you know, out in the garden. Some people you know, used to sleep down there. I only went once and I had slugs and snails and things and I thought I’d rather stay in bed and be bombed!

Sandra Wood (born 1942)

I was born at 4.30pm on 4th May 1942 at Sandown, Isle of Wight, which was the night of the big air raid on Cowes. I had to spend my first night under the kitchen table with my grandmother for safety while my mother had to stay in bed up in the front bedroom with the noise of the planes overhead on their way to Cowes. My grandfather stayed with her to keep her company.

Madeleine Wray (born 1940)

We moved out of London in 1942, my brother was two then, he was shaking so much when the bombs were coming over the doctors said you’d have to move out of London or he would suffer, so we moved to Yorkshire where my father was stationed at that time.

Ted Busbridge (born 1928)

One day, I was in my house with my mother, with just my mother and I and we heard this doodlebug approaching. I knew it was a doodlebug because by this time I had got to recognise the engine and the engine stopped and I said to my mother, “Down!” and we laid flat on the floor and this doodlebug glided on just a little bit further and then it came down and hit the ground and we lost three windows that day. The blast from the doodlebug, it knocked out three of our windows but we were lucky. It didn’t hit the house so we considered ourselves very lucky.

Did you have to make changes at home because of the war?

John Sandell (born 1929)

We had to make a room in the house gas proof. People were advised to do this at the time. The floorboards were wood and in between there were gaps so we had to mash up newspapers in water to make something to press down in the between the boards and the chimney of the fireplace, that was stuffed up so you couldn’t get gas coming down. The windows were absolutely plastered with sticky paper, so that if they happened to break it wouldn’t go flying everywhere and we had to have a bucket of sand in case there was incendiary … a bucket of sand and a bucket of water with a hand pump to spray. Fortunately we never had to do that and the door had a heavy curtain over it and we had a cupboard full of tinned food in case there was a breakdown in electric or gas or whatever.

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

They used to come with the Air Raid Wardens, used to come round when it was dark and if they could see a chink of light, come in sort of like … bang bang bang on the door “Put that light out!” Oh they were very very fussy about not giving away to the Germans that there was anybody living there. When I think about it now I think it must have been … I don’t know how effective it would have been to be honest - the blackout. Whether it really … you know, and I suppose it must have made a difference, obviously.

What kind of defences were there against an invasion?

Ted Busbridge (born 1928)

On the other side of the County (Kent), the northern side, there was about 30 miles of barrage balloons. Now a barrage balloon is a big balloon about the size of this room, I’d say. It’s huge, and they are filled with Hydrogen and they’re meant to lift cables up and so of course they’d rise to about 2000 feet, I think that would be about the height, and they’d take cables with them that were interlocked with other balloons as well, so it formed a network right the way along, you see? Now the whole point of these was when the raiders or German aircraft came over, they would have to climb over these balloons and the network. They couldn’t go through them you see, otherwise if their wings struck one of the cables, they’d come down, of course. And they had to climb up over them. Well, quite often, if they were heavy laden with bombs, because they were on their way to London, you see, if they were heavy laden with bombs or if they were being bombarded with gunfire, they would start to climb, because they wanted to climb over the top of the balloons or away from the gunfire and when that happened, if they couldn’t climb quick enough, the obvious answer was to drop a few bombs anywhere, so instead of going on to London, they used to drop their bombs and we used to get it in Kent!

Do you remember the beaches being barricaded?

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

Oh yes. That was horrible. We hated it as children, having had access to the sand all our life and suddenly you couldn’t, and that was horrible. Yes, you couldn’t. They had all barbed wire and stuff to stop people. It wasn’t to stop us, it was to stop Germans coming in boats, yes.

Sandra Wood (born 1942)

The beaches on the Island were cordoned off during the war, you couldn’t go on to some of the beaches. The pier in Ventnor was cut in half , they just took a chunk out of the middle so ships could not dock and come up the pier.

Where were some of the worst bombing raids on the Island?

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

Well I think really Cowes got the worst of it from what I’ve been told. There was so much war work going on in Cowes, you know, that I think that … more people killed. You had a few in Ventnor but nothing like they had Cowes. The worst thing I do remember was when Ventnor was actually bombed because they were trying to bomb the pylons that you know, radar that was used against the enemy. We had these pylons up on top of Ventnor Down and during the Battle of Britain, I was on my way home for lunch and I got caught up in this Battle of Britain but we’d got to get used to it by then. You could see the bombs dropping on Ventnor from work, you know. I wasn’t made to go down the shelter because I’d left the office and I was on my way home on my bicycle … and we just stopped and looked. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing actually, but when you’re young you’re not frightened like you are when you’re older. I would be frightened now but I wasn’t. You know you get used to these … You just hope for the best.

Winifred Smith (born 1935)

During the war high points around the south coast of the Island were key radar posts. Niton and St Boniface Downs and there were RAF camps all around these areas. One such camp was on Stenbury Down and all service men had to pass through our lodge to gain access to the camp.

Did you have an identity card?

Winifred Smith (born 1935)

I still have my identity card. Everyone had to have one - adults and children, it was known as National Registration. You couldn’t get off the Island if you didn’t have one. It had your identity number on it. There was also an identity bracelet you had to wear with your number on it.

Sandra Wood (born 1942)

You had to have an identity card if you wanted to leave or come to the Island. One time my Mum went to the mainland to visit my Dad who was in the army then and they didn’t want to let her back on the Island!

Did you have a gas mask?

John Sandell (born 1929)

Oh, horrible. Being about nine years old, they came and fitted a gas mask on me and I absolutely thought that I was being suffocated and this gas mask had a siphon thing in the front to clean out any gas and you took in a breath and breathed in through this cone and then you breathed out and there were sort of rubber bits down your cheeks and when you breathed out it made the farting noise (makes the sound). And I had to carry that to school every day so until I moved up into the public school.

Did you have a ration book?

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

Oh yes, yes. And of course you couldn’t buy any new clothes. You had to … you only had coupons. Most of us used to go to jumble sales and buy things and cut them up and make them into … I remember Mum used … My mum made me a coat out of a blanket. These are the sort of things you had to … You know, you had to improvise, and it was all quite good fun really, yes.

Do you remember being affected by rationing?

John Sandell (born 1929)

Well you just ate what was put in front of you. You didn’t have … leave lumps like people do today. You ate everything, literally and it was meat that was difficult to get much of, sugar, you didn’t see things like bananas and oranges, they weren’t available because they had to be brought by sea.

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

Stockings were very difficult to get hold of. We painted our legs and put pencil lines up the back ‘cos in those days, women wore stockings with a seam up the back and you always had to get your seams straight. We’d do each other’s legs, you know?

John Sandell (born 1929)

Oh you had … sweets they were rationed. You had so many ounces a week and you took your ration book to school and they had a sweet shop at the back of the school where you could draw some sweets each week.

Madeleine Wray (born 1940)

I can remember being hard up and food being rationed. Mum was good at making pastry and we had a lot of pies to eek the meat out because you couldn’t get very much meat.

Ken Lawrence (born 1934)

My uncle … he worked for a firm and he brought these bananas and they were black. They tasted alright, didn’t look like bananas, horrible you know, they had done something to keep them fresh but there were very very few … there used to be a song, ‘Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today’. They were in very short supply, most food was in very short supply.

Dorothy Morris (born 1923)

The margarine was horrible. It smelt, a horrible smell to it. Nothing like the margarine that we have now. But although we were very very low rations, it was amazing how well fed we actually were. You know, because everybody was growing vegetables so you could have plenty of vegetables, and you didn’t get much meat but I’m sure we were much healthier not having a lot of meat, so you know I think for a child where you’re young, the worst part is not being able to have sweets, and sugar being rationed and all those kind of things. I do remember that, but I think actually people were very healthy on the sort of diet that we had to make do with, but it’s amazing how people can improvise. I remember no salmon. There’s pink salmon, and there’s red salmon. Well during the war you couldn’t … You could occasionally if you were lucky, get a tin of salmon, but it was pink salmon. We never saw the red salmon. And I remember some people used to put cochineal in it to make it red. I think my aunty used to do that.

Did the rationing of petrol affect you?

Alan Evans (born 1918)

Oh yes, you had to be doing a certain job or be say a Doctor who would have a ration and specialised people. When I eventually started managing the firm that I had, I got an allowance for that because I had to travel about the country and go down to Birmingham or somewhere else and I had to travel, or though a lot of the time it was done by train but if you had a necessity for petrol, you could get it but you had to have a legitimate reason. What you wanted it for was to do with the War effort. Otherwise you wouldn’t … well apart from Doctors or people who work with that sort of nature was not connected with the War specifically.

Were your family or friends involved in the war?

Ken Lawrence (born 1934)

Well my dad was in the ARP ‘cos when I went Sunday school, she says, “What does ARP mean?” and I used to say, “’anging round Pubs.” It didn’t mean that, I can’t remember what it did mean now ‘cos the Queen was in the Auxiliary Service, you know, whilst she was a Princess then you know, because she used to be a driver, you know she was driving.

Were you an evacuee?

Ken Lawrence (born 1934)

Well sort of because in 1944, I was evacuated with me mum. They could take their children, or their children could take their mum. I remember when War was just announced, we went up to … there it was gone now, it got bombed, you know, but a friend of my dad said Berlin was more badly damaged than the English towns. Someone said the bomb even dropped on the Isle of Wight.

What are your memories of the end of the war?

Alan Evans (born 1918)

Oh that was interesting, because I was in Bridgenorth, my digs that I was in was five minutes’ walk from the works you see, so I remember the day the War finished. I walked to work about 8 o’clock or 9 in the morning whatever it was and the crowd of the work people, 200 of us in the factory, already round the gate waiting but they hadn’t gone in. And when I came up they said … they just asked me straight up, “Have we got to go to work today Mr Evans or can we have it off?”. I said, “No, you can all go home if you want to”. Mind you I was only too glad so that I could go and get off to Birmingham myself so, yes, I remember that day. That was at my personal memory of it.

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

Well I had just come out of the Land Army at the end of the war and so on VE day I went up to Trafalgar Square on my own because my sister’s had already gone, my elder sister was there, but I never found them. There were millions of people in Trafalgar Square, everybody laughing and dancing about so I wasn’t happy about that really. I joined in a bit but being on you own up there and don’t know anybody and millions of people so …

Winifred Smith (born 1935)

Our village celebrations for the ending of the war in the village were wonderful. My father and the carter from the farm brought out their hay wagon and the shire horses and dressed them in great splendour with gleaming brasses and the little tinkling bells and magnificent and headdresses and we village school children were lifted up on the wagon and we rode around the village finally ending up at the village hall where we had a splendid tea party. Where our mothers got the food from I never know but it was all lovely.