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This story has been submitted to the People War website by Irene Harkins of CSV Coventry and Warwickshire on behalf of Rose Hall. The author is aware of the site's conditions.

I was born in London, but when I was six months old I moved with my parents Gossell Street in the East End, near the Docklands.We lived upstairs rooms of my auntie's house where I lived until I married. My aunt and uncle had a greengrocery stall on Brick Lane, and the house had no garden - only a yard where my uncle and aunt kept rabbits and chickens.
We ate them. My relatives lived all around and Iw ent to Colymbia Road School. I was 8 when the war began and I remember my Grandad and Grandma Wells got bombed oout 3 times ! My mum and dad put them up until they were re-housed. They lot everything 3 times and had to start all over again. Well, everyhting but the bits and bobs that grandma took down the shelter. They were given vouchers or tickets to get new stuff, by the government. My mum never used the shelter. My dad went to koin up but he had bad eyesight and was rejected by the services. He worked as a chauffeur to the directors of the London Shoe Company at one time and mum had loads of shoes given her but they were only size 3 and 4 and she took a size 7 - so I had them to play in. Great big heels they had. The Tate and Lyle factory was right by us. The dockyards were targets for the German bombers. The noise the doodle-bugs made was horible. A loud humming as they came over, then it went silent and the thing came straight down and you never knew where it would land, so you held yur breath til it exploded. I was evacuated twice. I went to Torquay in Devon and to near Harrogate in Yorkshire. When mum and dad came to visit me in Devon they missed me so much that they took me back home with them. I was their only one you see. Mum and me and mum's cousin Nelly and her two kids went to Yorkshire together. We stayed in a barn that had been made into a house and stayed there for a year. There weren't any buses coming past there and of course I had to go to school - so we had to walk 2 miles there and back. The winter snow was really bad. Not like London wher there was always a bus or a tube.

There were German prisoners of war near to us in Bethnall Green . They were kept near a place called the 'Balmy Park' . They used to wear special clothes so that we'd know they who they were - but they used to walk about freely. I remember one dinner time there was a doodle-bug noise overhead and then silence and a man who was walking alongside me shoved me into a doorway of a pub on Gossett Street - because you never knew where then things would hit ! Thank goodness it landed somewhere else before it exploded. The chap helped me up and we both went on our ways. That's what we liked about the war. People helped out complete strangers and looked after one another more. I rememeber that one family all got killed - the whole lot of them, a couple of streets away from us, by a landmine. The kids used to come to my school. We were really lucky to come through alright.

My Gran eas a one. She could get things even if you needed coupons. She kn ew where to get extra coupons ! Probably they were somebody who was hard up who sold them to her - I dont know. Even though we didn't have much else we always had food. We were happier in ourselves, then, I think even though there was such destruction. We were glad to be alive.

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