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I was four yearrs old when war was declared inn September 1939. As my family lived in Southampton my mother and I were quickly evacuated to Andover in Hampshire. We were billeted with a very nice couple but it only lasted for two weeks. My dad was not used to coping on his own and it proved to be a Phoney war so we came back home.

We then stayed in Southampton and so experienced the Blitz as German bombers tried to put the docks out of action. My dad was a builder's storekeeper. All house building ceased. At first building workers had to construct Anderson shelters in people's back gardens; then when the bombing began all effort went to shoring up damaged buildings and repairing as much as possible.

We didn't have a shelter of our own because we only had a smalll back yard so our elderly next door neighbours used to invite us into their shelter. A gate was made in the fence so that we could slip through when the siren sounded. This practice worked well until the neighbours decided to escape the bombing and went to live near their daughter in the country. We then had to walk to the top of the road when the siren sounded and go down into the public shelter in the churchyard. It was companionable down there. Mostly the same families came with each raid and often an ARP warden would come down the steps to tell us what was happening up above. We sat on benches. It must have ben uncomfortable for older people and very tiring for those who had to go to work the next morning. My mother was very concerned when I had whooping cough and still had to go down the shelter. The lavatory at the far end of the shelter was very primitive and I didn't like using it. At the All Clear we would emerge. I remember seeing the barrage balloons up in the sky and sometimes hearing the noise from our planes going over.

Thee nearest we came to being hit was when an attempt was made to destroy the railway line from Southampton to Portsmouth where it crossed the river Itchen. Fortunately it missed the bridge but destroyed some houses on the river bank. Our windows were blown out by the blast.

The school I attended was next to the churchyard so if the siren sounded during the schoolday we used the same shelter in the churchyard. A bag of books was kept in each classsroom. As a bag monitress I had to bring the bag of books with me to the shelter. This gave us something to read until the All Clear but I do also remember that we used to sing. "You are my Sunshine" was a favourite.

The centre of Southampton was almost completely destroyed. I remember walking along Above Bar which was the main shopping street. Where the shops had been hasty wooden fences had been put up to stop unwary people falling into the shops' basements, now visible. I remember seeing one overconfident American GI swing on one of the fences. He fell into a basement aand lay there writhing in pain. The first negro I ever saw was one of the American soldiers. When I was six years old the American soldiers invited my class at school to a Christmas party at the Polygon Hotel. This was the best hotel in town so we were very excited. I remember eating luscious tinned peaches at tea and being asked how many sugar knobs I wanted in my cup of tea. I thought this was the height of refinement.

In the road where I lived there were two bus drivers. They were encouraged to take the Corporation buses out of the depot at night to prevent them all being destroyed if the depot was hit. The bus would arrive in the street in the early evening and we would be driven out into the New Forest. The adults often went and had a drink in a pub while we children had a fine time, free to play in the forest. When it was time to sleep some of the bus seats were placed across the gangway, making a bed for one person each side of the bus. We must have taken blankets and pillows with us. The only snag was that the buses had to be driven back to the depot very early in the morning for the first workers. My dad used to then get ready for work but mother and I went back to bed to try and sleep a little more. On one occasion the bus was being driven back in the dark,the driver was not so experienced and drove into a ditch. The impact shook the bus and I think some glass in the windows was broken. No one was badly injured but we were all very shaken and had to be taken into a village hall for cups of tea while we waited for another bus to take us home.

A bit later on my parents and I used to go out on the regular bus service to Romsey, a small town a few miles from Southampton. There a widow used to let us stay the night. This must have happened at weekends when my dad didn't have to go to work the next day. He particularly apreciated a proper night's rest, away from the bombing. We enjoyed being in Romsey. I remember being taken to the Romsey gymkhana in Broadlands Park, home of the Mountbatten family.. The house had been turned into a convalescent home for soldiers. The French windows were open so that the men could watch the crowd and the events of the gymkhana. Lady Mountbatten was present and mingled with the crowd, talking to people she knew.

As a child my pre-war memories were so infantile that I didn't make comparisons about life in the war and what it had been before. The bombing was a reality that children just accepted, in a way that adults could not. I was lucky in that no close member of my family wasinjured or killed; nor was our house destroyed although my grandparents' house was. I was too young to appreciate the sorrow and trauma when this happened to others not so close to me. In a way the deprivations meant that life became somewhat more exciting when the war came to an end. Certainly the whole street turned out for the VE celebrations and the huge bonfire left its mark in the road for a long time to come.

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