My first experience of the Second World War

A fascinating story, Sieska. Great that you lived to tell it.
I was born in 1940 so living in a war was “normal”. On the outskirts of London we weren’t bombed but suffered shrapnel damage to the windows, These were temporarily boarded and then replaced free of charge by the War Office.
I remember sleeping in the shelter and I remember the awful wailing sound of the siren. It was a relief to hear the all clear siren afterwards.
I remember BBC’s Stuart Hibbert reading out the news on the radiogram.
One day my father came in, picked me up and said “We’ve won the war”. I remember feeling that it didn’t really mean much to my 4 1/2-year-old self.

My mum was born in 1929 and the war started 2 weeks before her 10th birthday . They lived near Bootle docks but grandad didn’t want any of his children to be evacuated so they instead had a shelter built in the garden. The whole family survived.
My dad was almost 14 when the war started and within months he had lied about his age and joined the merchant navy. He was on the Atlantic convoys protecting the ships bringing in food to Britain . His ship was bombed twice but he survived the war albeit with TB . He suffered ill health the rest of his life .

These are all wonderful, fascinating stories, thank you. It shows what can be done when people stick together.

I wasn't born until 1951, so no first hand memories.
However, as a child, I remember a friend of my parents' but strangely not her name.

She was on duty in the "Vic" - the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow the night Clydebank was bombed. Her parents and all her younger brothers and sisters died that night. I believe she was 18 or 19 then.

It still makes me shiver to think of anyone going to work one day and coming home the next to find the tenament building a heap of rubble and to be told that all her family was dead.

And every bombed city had at least one person who had the same horrifying experience.

Could it be "On Government Service" for example, absent?

I was extremely lucky to have been born in 1958 and never have to experience the horrors of WW2.

What an interesting recollection Sieska - thank you for sharing it - and Kevin.

To this day, if I hear air-raid sirens when watching films or documentaries about the 2nd WW, I feel agitated and even 'weepy' and have to turn off the sound.

I have no idea whether this is from the recognition of what these warnings foretold, or whether I absorbed the sounds as a two-year-old when my mother would grab me and hide under the dining-room table - the only 'shelter' available if there was no time to reach a designated one.

At 88, there is still time for you to achieve something special - and this very thread, started by you, is just that. Because the interesting and moving stories being posted by others will be one of the final memoirs of those born during this era.

Who knows - the Wayback Machine (a web-crawling archiving tool) might snapshot this thread. Even if GN ceases to exist, the content could remain on the archives.

Dickens, I was born in North London during an air raid and to this day my stomach flips if I hear a siren. My dad was a firefighter in London and Mum, my sister and I were supposed to go into the shelter in the garden but I always screamed the place down as it was dark, damp and full of spiders so we huddled under the stairs. We were in the suburbs so not often under fire but we had a couple of hits on houses in the next road. All the local children thought it fun to collect shrapnel, it was quite prized!

My maternal granny lived in Chalk Farm ( N London) and refused to move. They were bombed so moved into the house next door which was full of cracks and uneven floors from bomb damage. Granny loved to go down in the tube station every night. They had great parties down there she said it was better than the music hall, she was a great old girl, working in the garment industry in the area around Oxford Street until she was 75.

My older sister went to school held in a big shelter on the school playing field. All ages crammed in together, it is a wonder she learnt anything.

PinkPrincess, I remember having a very stiff petticoat (waist slip) made of Parachute silk. Made my skirt stick way out, almost like a crinoline! Army surplus I guess as the war had finished a few years previously.

Thank you for sharing these stories. I was born in the 60's in Canada, so far away from it all. However, both parents were children during occupation; my mother in Jersey, and father in Brittany.

Mum told more stories than my father ever did, and they were indeed very hard times for them, especially the last year in Jersey when they nearly starved. Apparently my mum was the smallest one that could fit under the shed where the potatoes were hidden from the Germans. She lived part of the time in an orphanage, and part of the time with an uncle's family.

I was born in 1940, Dad was a teacher and was called up to the RAF that year. We went to stay with a great aunt in Lancs, as both sets of grandparents lived on the south coast.

I remember the blackouts on the windows, using a torch outside at night in the lane, and the sound of the anti-aircraft guns as I tried to get to sleep at night. There were also searchlights raking the sky in the distance. I will never forget the gravelly sound of the Lancaster bombers flying out overhead, which my mother assured me were ours.
Yes to powdered egg and orange juice and no to cod liver oil (vile).

Dad mended spitfires in the North African desert and occasionally sent home made-up stories for Mum to read to me. They were on tiny photograms and I still have some of them.

At the end of the war he brought home for me a carved wooden camel toy and a stainless steel brooch of a spitfire he had made for me in the workshops. It had a safety pin soldered in for a clasp. I wear it so proudly with my poppy on Remembrance Sunday.

What a lovely story, Indiebee.

CanadianGran Yes, the Channel Islanders suffered greatly in WW2.
How shocking (but ingenious) that they had to hide such a basic food such as potatoes from the Germans.

Siesta I have to ask do we share the same birthday as I am, as far as I can tell, almost identical to the date you have given . Mine is July 8th 1937 and I was 2 years, 2 months and about a week old when my mother sat with my dad and heard it on a neighbours radio (we couldn’t afford one at the time)
You’ve been told it was coronation year and everywhere was in a dreadful mess, food stocks low, queuing had started, and poor dad couldn’t get his usual daily pack of 10 woodbines, tragedy 😥 The Anderson shelter was about to be delivered so dad and grandad were digging up the garden ready for it and mum was absolutely refusing to ever put a foot inside it.
While all this was going on somehow a huge street party was being arranged for all the children in the area, the amount of food and children increased daily and many a secret tin of corned beef was offered for sandwiches.
It was the worst if times and the best of times, I had a wonderful childhood as the shelter was left up way after the war was over and it became our den
I have such wonderful memories of those times but sadly no one to talk with about them as a disadvantage of heading for 89 years means my old friends have all died or are in nursing homes, I can’t complain as I’m now housebound with visiting carers 4 times daily, such nice young girls who have never heard of Old Mother Riley, Educating Archie, what a cheat that was listening to a dummy and thinking he was real.
Ah memories Sieska, reminds me I must phone my 93 years old sister but she’s deaf as a post and argues a lot and complains about going to work age 14 for 25/- a week and how she remembers the doodlebugs, luckily I don’t but I do remember the corner shop making cinder toffee and selling it for 6d in a triangle bag.
Time for evening drinks, I do hope there are custard cream biscuits tonight 😍

Age 88 i have vivid memories of WW2. We lived a stones throw from the centre of town, in view of the town hall that had a brass lady on top. It was covered over throughout the war but I remember the day it was uncovered.

I clearly remember being carried across to the shelter, Mum running while the air raid Warden opening the door for us and many neighbours to get down into the shelter quickly.. the wardens knew every one by name being a small country town. "Come on Rose get yourselves down the steps" .. the door would re open when the all clear siren went.."come on girls get back to your beds, let's hope we're not disturbed again tonight"..
Sevwral bombs dropped on the town during that time. We had a few factories locally doing war work.. apparently that's why the bombs..the Germans were out to destroy for that reason.
I could tell many WW2 stories. My husbands grandmother and 3 friends sat around the fire in her cottage, refusing to use the shelters..the house was bombed. All 3 ladies were dug out the debris, alive.

Three Sherwood Forrester soldiers were billeted briefly in our house. They had been on a route march and my father took them upstairs and got them bathed.. Then we had Polish soldiers billeted in our house for a longer period and they became our friends.

My Aunt and Uncle had a German POW allocated to their farm. He was a good worker and a pleasant man, apparently.
My brothers remembered him.

My mum was born in Lambeth in October, 1939. Ver much youngest of four sisters. They were 16, 17 and 19 when she was born.
Mum and granny were evacuated to Durham when she was just a few months old but Granny couldn't stand being parted from her older girls so they went back to London a few weeks later.
They were bombed out twice but thankfully all survived, as did my wonderful grandad who was 16 at The Somme and a fire warden in WW2 London.

My father was 8 in 1940 and remembers the war in Sicily, Italy. His city had tunnels under the road and he remembers going into one of them. When the sirens went off, some people fled to the countryside as many homes were bombed in the city.

My mom was born in 1941 but she remembers her mother saying that they would hide under bridges. My mom was too young, but her 3 year old sister was scared. My grandparents owned a farm and they always had food including chickens. It was definitely a difficult period and many people suffered.

The saddest part of the war for me was when a bomb hit our house and we were all sleeping in the shelter in the garden. I was two years and a bit and toddled into the house to find our canary flying back and forth in its cage. It never stopped. I looked at it closely. Both its legs had been shot off by the blast and the poor thing could not land and was suffering. I went and told my parents and dad went and put it out of its misery. I remember I cried a lot.
Then about a year later a nearby house had two tortoises that lived in their garden. One night one bomb fell on the area and the destroyed both the house and the tortoises whom I thought of as friends. This time although I was very sad, I did not cry.
I think I grieved more from the deaths of animals than the deaths of young human friends who suddenly disappeared, never to return.
Unhappy memores indeed.

My granny told me she went out to visit a friend and when she came home her house had been bombed so she had a lucky escape.
My grandfather was sent to the docks to work just after the war ended and unloaded bananas. He was given a huge bunch to take home. He stood by his gate and gave bananas to all the children walking home from school. Most had never seen a banana before.
I was born after it ended but my mum was a nurse in the RAF and my dad failed the medical so drove prisoners of war to work sites. My granny had special permission to work in a munitions factory as she was an alien from France. She became a British subject in the early 50s. I still have her 'alien' card

Both my parents were children in the war. My mum and her family moved temporarily to Lancashire from Portsmouth but my Dad's family were Shipwrights so they were needed in the Dockyard. He tells stories of sitting out side of the house with his brothers and his Dad watching bombs fall in the Dockyard.

I was born in Plymouth in 1937, not a good place to be when the war started in 1939. All my earliest memories are of bombs, fires and explosions, air raid sirens, etc.
Luckily I was adopted and taken to Torquay which was much safer, but still I had to sleep in a tiny bed under the stairs until our shelter arrived. I remember the bombing of the local church in which many children were killed one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't gone to Sunday school that day and was playing outside when I saw the plane fly over very low and could clearly see the swastika on it. Our two evacuees from London threw me to the ground and laid on me to keep me safe. I often wonder what happened to them after the war.
We were out shopping one day and when we returned home all our front windows had been blown in by a bomb which fell further down the road. I was particularly upset because my dolls were all on the sofa in our living room and were covered in broken glass.
I clearly remember the American servicemen which came to practice in south Devon for the D-Day landings. We had two of them living with us for a few weeks and they were so kind and generous. They gave us chocolate, soap etc which lasted us for years, and stockings for mum.
I also remember how we all supported each other, the feeling of being a community fighting together. I shared a bath with the boy next door, for instance, due to the difficulty of getting hot water. And queuing at the shops for our ration of cheese, meat, fish, etc. Luckily we all grew lots of vegetables, and mum kept chickens so we swapped eggs for cabbages etc.
I have so many memories of the war, and they are becoming clearer as I grow older.

henetha I remember my MIL telling me stories about the Plymouth blitz and DH remembers some although he was very small at the time. His father was coming home on leave and could see the blaze in the distance of Plymouth on fire.

Henetha I also remember those long queues for basic foods, and the ration books, beige for the adults and blue for children. Like you we grew lots of fruit and veg, and also kept chickens, mainly for eggs although one Christmas we did have roast chicken, and when I was told it was one I called Daisy I couldn’t stop crying. It’s so hard to reconcile the very limited availability, and variety, or food back then with the wealth of foodstuff in our shops today.

I was talking to an elderly man in hospital last year and he was talking about the war. He's haunted by a memory of walking down a street in London in daylight when a bomb fell in front of him. He was thrown to the ground but a Wren in uniform walking In front of him was just vaporised.