World War Two in London suburbia: on the home front

My perspective on WW2

I was born three months before the Second World War which started in 1939. So I grew up knowing nothing but war. War was a way of life. Rationing was a way of life. Bombs were a way of life; as were air-raid shelters; sirens wailing; searchlights piercing and fluttering over the night sky; row upon row of 'For sale' notices against houses; and buildings that were there when I went to sleep no longer being there the next day. This was simply how people lived and I never questioned it. I knew nothing else.

To get one important point clear before I start. Some people suffered dreadfully in the war - my paternal grandparents were bombed out, my uncle was killed on active service and my aunt was disabled for life - and there were many more like them, but I never did suffer. I suppose with the values of today, things can't have been anywhere near ideal, but I didn't notice that. I was too young to understand the seriousness and reality of what was happening around me, and I never remember feeling hungry. How I was living was how everyone lived and presumably had always lived. Yet, although I didn't understand with my emotions, I certainly did observe and remember.

In what follows I have found it impossible to separate my recollections of the war years from the years immediately afterwards. One reason must be that I was so young at the time, but another must be that although the general feeling among the adults seemed to be of hope that the future would bring better things, the austerity continued for years. So all my experiences during the 1940s seemed to be dominated by the war or its effects.

Night time Air-raids during world war two

Air raids were - I am ashamed to say - enjoyable experiences for a very young child. I can't remember my first one because there had always been air raids, and it never occurred to me that I could possibly be hurt in one.

When the siren sounded to herald an air raid while I was asleep, I would be got out of bed at any time during the night and taken downstairs with my mother to sleep in our Morrison shelter with her and her own mother who was living with us. My father of course wasn't there. There were very few men around at all because they were away on war work in the forces.

During the latter years of the war, I was still up in the early evenings, and with my young ears I often heard the wail of a distant siren before my mother did. I always told her because it was fun to go into the shelter. It must have been awful for her, though, tired out at the end of a long day, having to organise her mother and me. She was very house-proud and it must also have been horrible for her to have that Morrison shelter stuck in the front room.

Equally horrible for my mother of course was not having my father to talk to, to ease the tension. In the early days of the war, before he was called up into the army, he was often up all night on fire-watching duty, but I was too young to remember that.

Sometimes when the houselights were off, I would peep through the blackout curtains at the outside world. The searchlights flickered across the sky trying to seek out enemy bombers to shoot down. I thought that the lights were pretty. Yet years later when I saw laser lights as part of the Christmas decorations in London's Oxford Street, a shiver of recollection ran down my back. So perhaps I was more scared than I realised at the time, or maybe I had developed a better appreciation of the dreadfulness of war.

There was a shelter at school for use in daytime air raids.

  

The street peace party

Brook Avenue where I lived in Edgware had its own street party to celebrate the end of World War Two. It was held in the garden of the flats at the start of the road. I can remember very little of it, except that we children had to dress up and there was precious little available to dress up with. As the photo shows, most of us just wore home-made hats. I am third from the left in the front row of the picture and my mother made my hat by covering a custard tin. The brim was made of cardboard.

In the background of the picture is the shed for housing the trains of Edgware Tube station, a terminus.

Street Peace Party for Brook Avenue, Edgware, Middlesex at the end of the Second World War in 1945. Names, where I remember, are as they sounded to me at the time. Left to right:

 Back row Leatrice Less, -, -, -, - , -, Sylvia Less, -, -, -, -
Middle row: James Mather, Marion Lewis, -, -
Front row: Stephen Newing, -, Pat Clarke (me), -, Bernice Coleman, Corrine Less, -, -, -, Annette Samuels, Betty Samuels, -

  

 

This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.