Children of the Blitz BBC 2

I managed to watch it on Iplayer last night. It was such a wonderful, moving programme. My heart went out to the lady who had her natural mother die and then her marvellous adopted mother she must have felt so lost. Can't get over the lady who was over 100, her flexibility was amazing. They were marvellous people and so resilient.

I need to watch this . Is it on iplayer ?
My mums 90 and was 4 when ww2 started. She remembered the sirens and the bombs , she lived in South London and the school opposite their house had a shelter . My maternal grandfather was in a protected occupation and couldn’t sign up, but he was a fire warden and would go out each night.
Both my parents were evacuated, mum to family in Bournemouth , but then Southampton was bombed due to the docks , so she was sent to a family friend in South Devon , luckily she was with her 2 siblings . My dad who lived in Deptford went to a wealthy family in Kent . They recognised that he was very bright and encouraged his education. My dad was the first in his family to go to grammar school and eventually worked in the city of London . Both my paternal grandparents stayed in London . My GD was a docker and my GM a seamstress.
My mum can’t remember what she had for breakfast but can remember being a child during the war .

I was born at the beginning of WW2, and was 5 when it ended. I don’t remember oranges or bananas, at least only dried bananas, which were delicious. I have very vivid memories of rationing, which persisted well after the war.

We lived on Merseyside, where obviously docks were a danger, so my mother, elder brother and I went to live with my grandparents on the Lancashire coast. My father commuted. (He was in a reserved occupation, so was not involved in the war.)

As far as I was concerned it was a blissful rural existence. We had to return to Merseyside before the end of the war, though, because the village school was not considered good enough for my brother!

I remember barrage balloons, blackout material, those very scary gas masks, and tin hats. I was scared of aeroplanes, and thought Spitfires must be enemy aircraft, because they had such a vicious, horrible name. I knew that not all Germans were bad, though, because my linguist parents had German friends, who loathed Hitler and his Nazis as much as we did.

I still look in amazement at the plentiful and varied food in supermarkets. Do we really need all that?

My Mom, born in 1921, was from a very large family. In fact, there were 16 children born and about 12 survived. The age span was vast. From about 1901 to 1923. My mom, at the age of 7, being sickly, was sent to live in a Catholic home for children in Spennymoor, St. Mary’s Home for Girls. She lived there until age 16 when she was released and sent to work in a Sanatarium near London. Because she had previously had TB as a child, she did not want to stay there and decided to leave to become a domestic. At age 16, she went to work for Agatha Christie’s sister as a kitchen worker. The Home had trained the girls in homemaking, sewing and much more, enabling them to obtain employment as a domestic. She spoke of the parties and the clothes. She later moved to another position as a housekeeper for a surgeon in London. She was about 21 at the time. It was during the war. She met my Dad at a military dance. He was an American soldier. She also volunteered as a British war bride in the American Corps, doing her service for the war effort. As a child, she experienced a difficult life in the Home, which she referred to as a convent. It was not. It was actually a home for children that had been abandoned, came from poor families or those that the County determined were better off living there than in their family homes. She spoke fondly of the Home but after she passed, I contacted some of the children and a resident that was there at the same time as my mom. It seemed that they had horror stories about being abused by the Catholic nuns, were referred to as numbers, were fed spoiled food and some of the girls were beaten. From what I learned later, the children were, on occasion, given dolls to hold when photos were being taken and then the dolls were taken back and put away. My mom said that on occasion they were allowed to go into the town of Spennymoor to the local candy store. I do remember we went to the town to visit the school and the church and the cemetery. It was a very sad memory for my mom. She saw some of the gravesites of the nuns she knew while living there. It seems that her father, an Italian immigrant, tried having her released on a few occasions but was unsuccessful due the the large number of children living in their home and my mom’s medical situation. I was able to obtain many of the documents from St. Cuthbert’s and my mom had also saved lots of memorabilia from her time there. My Mom rarely spoke of her time there but as she got older she got upset thinking about it. After she passed away, I arranged to return on her birthday and met one of the woman and her daughter that knew my mom from the time they were there. This woman had had extremely bad experiences there as had some other women I contacted later on. My Mom married my Dad and came to the United States in 1946. I remember her joining a club of British war brides. Not everyone was happy with their situation and many wanted to return home to their UK families. I believe that because my Mom was not raised by her family, she was fine staying in the States. She had a large family still in the UK and she stayed in contact with her younger sisters and was able to visit and reconnect with her older sisters. She never saw her parents again after leaving the UK. Later on, I know that the home had changed to a boys home and I did read so many bad things about how these boys were abused by the priests that were in charge. There is a Facebook page that addresses their stories. They are sad and also horrific. Some of the boys committed suicide as a result of their personal experiences. I did see a film that was made addressing this Home and how a mother who had live in this Home had a son who was handicapped. She murdered her child rather than send him away to a home as she did not want him to experience abuse as she had. She was tried for murder and ultimately found innocent of her crime. It is a short movie and can be found on the internet or Facebook. So, hearing about the above BBC show awakened memories of my Mom

. As a result of her stories and her experiences during the war, including her family neighborhood being hit with bombs and the sirens and her stories of taking my infant sister to the subway bomb shelters until the all clear siren went off, I do hope to be able to see the BBC show from the States and send a little prayer to all of the victims of the war.

My father was away at sea for months at a time, sometimes there were no letters for weeks and she had no idea if he was alive or not.
My brothers were old enough to help her and the next door neighbour used to dig the garden so she could plant vegetables. The front garden wasn't lawn and flower beds - it was the potato patch.

I should read before posting

She - my mother.

A moving story, Terric.

I was born in 1937 so truly a child of the blitz. I well remember all the hardships of wartime life, ration books, queuing for hours for food, having a special allowance for my pregnant mum, one orange, what a treat, and the bombs aimed at the Steel works and the underground Royal ordnance factory making bombs day and night which the German were never really able to find. My dad was in the ARP Air raid patrol and he had a tin hat, my sisters and I loved that hat We played with it for years after the war. When there had been a bomb dropped and there was a huge crater Dad would take us four girls to see the damage, my two brothers were in the navy out on the high seas. We had a day out, ride on a double decker bus and dad with his helmet on and his badge displayed and we were allowed to literally stand on the edge of the damage. Many years later when I was courting 😁 my boyfriend told me he had a lucky escape in the war as the next street to his had got a direct hit and he was lying in his cot under the window just a baby and the blast blew the window in and he was covered in glass, luckily he was well wrapped up and didn’t have a scratch, that was his war story, even in his eighties. We had a great time as children, what we had never had we didn’t miss but I often wonder how my poor mother managed to feed us all and live to 87 years but my poor dad who worked in asbestos clearing out after the war died age 63 so in a way the war and the aftermaths killed him.

Just got to see this programme last night. And l though it was one of best documentaries l have ever seen.

In it's content and scope. The contributions from the people featured in it were immense and unforgettable. They will.live with me for a long time.

The BBC at its best.

We have seen it twice as my SIL visited and wanted to see it. We sat in silence right to the end and everyone had tears running down their cheeks.