by Jeff Smith
She shared the house with an older couple. During the war if you were bombed out you were pleased to get a roof over your head, you didn’t think there was anything odd about sharing that roof with whoever the council said you would. The older woman tried her best to help, and really kept them going a lot of the time. From our house I could look through into her kitchen and was absolutely staggered one day to see the family eating their dinner. The older woman had cooked the dinner for them and delivered it in its cooking pots. And there at the table were the four of them eating, one from a plate, one from a pudding basin, one from the potato saucepan and one from its lid! Can you imagine eating your dinner from the saucepan lid?
Those houses had a 2ft-wide ‘front’ surrounded by a low wall against the pavement. One day I went out and she was sitting on her front wall crying.
‘My little Tommy’s got chicken pox; why has my little Tommy got chicken pox?’ she wailed. And she alternated floods of tears with the same despairing cry. The poor little devil was lucky just to have chicken pox when you think of the squalor he lived in. Anyway, of course the pox sores got infected and started to ooze pus and muck so that he had to go to hospital. I can still remember seeing him going out of the house. Apparently they slept in beds directly on the mattress and covered by blankets, no sign of a sheet. I don’t know whether she couldn’t afford sheets or whether she just had no idea about how to use them. Anyway, the poor little kid had been laying in bed suffering from his chicken pox and the infected sores on top of that. As the sores had oozed the blankets had stuck to the pus and blood so that he was just stuck to his bedclothes. When the ambulance men came they had to cut out the bits of blanket round the sores. And that is how he came out of the house, laying on a stretcher with circular patches of blanket stuck to his sores. He must have been tough though, because he recovered.
We lost touch with them when we were bombed out. That was by a doodlebug in late 1944 though their house next door was almost untouched! I moved in with my sister for a short while, while Fred slept at his ARP post. Eventually we got the half-house in Earlham Grove so didn’t see much more of them. For all I could say, there must have been love in that family because they stuck together and looked after each other. After the war the mother became very ill. I used to see her out shopping with the two girls. One of them was married by then and had a baby in a pram. Sometimes the mother would support herself on the pram and sometimes the girls would take an arm each to support her. She died soon after. I often wondered what happened to her little Tommy, and her very handsome husband.
18
War Babies
(1940–5)
My eldest boy was born in 1940, right in the middle of the London Blitz. I wanted to have the baby at home and that was the plan, right up until pretty well the last moment. In those days they said you had to stay in bed after a baby was born so you had to have somebody to look after you. Well, I asked around and a woman round the corner said she would come in every day. Between her and my mum the hospital decided that I had enough people to look after me so it was all OK. Then, at a routine hospital visit they asked me some question or other about this woman round the corner and when I went to see her about it there was no house and no woman. They had just disappeared in a raid. Well that put the cap on that plan! Of course, with all the raids going on it wasn’t possible for me to go into the hospital there. The only possibility was to be evacuated somewhere and so they gave me a note and sent me round to the Evacuation Office in the town hall the next morning.
So off I went to the town hall. There had been a raid the night before and, although the town hall hadn’t been hit, it had been pretty badly shaken by the bombing and the whole building was really a bit of a shambles. What was worse, the Evacuation Office was right up on the top floor and the girl on the counter at the entrance just pointed me up some stairs which rose from the back of the entrance hall. These stairs were thick with rubble and everything was covered with plaster dust that had shaken down from the ceiling. Looking back on it, I’m not sure that they were safe for anybody to go up, let alone me with an almighty great lump. But then again, at the time everybody had their problems and you couldn’t make special arrangements just because somebody was going to have a baby. To be honest, you didn’t even bother to think that special arrangements might be a good idea; you just got on with life whatever you had to do. Eventually I picked my way over the rubble, got to the top of the stairs and found the office. They asked all sorts of questions, took down all sorts of details, filled in this and that, gave me a card and told me to report at the baby clinic next morning. The clinic was also the departure point for evacuation.
Stratford Town Hall, home of the area’s Evacuation Office.
© Crown Copright, National Monument Record.
Fred managed to take a half-day off and was going to take me up to the clinic so that he could find out where I was going. That night there was yet another raid and when we arrived at the Broadway the whole place was closed off. The woodyard was on fire, piles of rubble lay across the road, fire hoses snaked across all over the place and firemen were still running around trying to put out the fires from the night before. The whole area was surrounded by a barrier and a couple of policemen were watching it to stop anybody getting too close. Well, that was no help to me so I called the policeman over and told him I had to get across to the clinic because I was supposed to be evacuated to have the baby. At first he said that it was impossible but eventually it was agreed that a fireman could escort me through the danger zone to the clinic. But only me; he couldn’t spare the effort to look after Fred. And that was that. We just said goodbye there and then and off I went – nothing else to be done. He had no idea what I was doing, where I was going, whether he would ever see me again. I know that having a baby isn’t easy anytime, but at least I knew what was going on. I honestly wonder how the men coped. It must have been terrible just seeing your wife go off, goodness knows where, with no time to say anything.
We got on a coach which took us all over the place but nowhere could take us in until, at last, we arrived in rural Hertfordshire, at a large house in Ware that had just been taken over as a sort of maternity unit. It was the home of Lord and Lady somebody, but he had died and she had just gone off and married the vicar. She moved down to the vicarage and let the government have the house ‘for the duration’. We were very lucky really because just at the same time as we arrived a party of nurses from the London [Hospital] arrived to run the place. They were absolutely marvellous.
There was no proper hospital furniture. A load of hospital beds had been sent down with some blankets, but nothing more – no sheets, or pillowcases or anything. Anyway, these beds were put up in some of the big rooms and that was that. Before we went to bed we wanted something to eat. Well, we hadn’t eaten all day. So we told the nurses and they looked a bit lost. After a couple of minutes though they said we should follow them. So we did, down to the kitchens. There they gave us bread and cheese. Just that, bread and cheese, no butter or anything to go with it. Well, there was a cup of weak tea. We were not very happy but it had to do, and so we went to bed. That night we just had the blankets and we had to put our coats on the bottom of the bed in case there was a raid. Next morning when we got up I was livid. I had just bought a new dark blue overcoat and I was ever so pleased with it – thought I looked the real cat’s whiskers. Next morning it was covered with white fluff from the blanket! It took me ages to tidy it up again. A little while later we realised that we had eaten the nurses’ food; it was what they had brought down from London with them for their own supper and they just went hungry. I told you that they were marvellous.
They really were wonderful people and they did an amazing job. The next day the food began to arrive so we had something to eat from then on. Mind you, the food was awful because they had no idea how to cook. I suppose none of them had ever had to cook before and certainly not for a maternity hospital full of women. One day they asked what we w
anted and somebody said neck of lamb stew. One of them went off to the butcher’s with our ration books – we had to give in our books when we arrived – and came back with best-end chops. Well, that’s not the point of stew; what you want is the cheap scrag-end and get a lot more of it for your money. Anyway, they stewed the meat and come lunchtime there we were with our mouths watering. When the food came up you would never believe what they had done – on each plate was a couple of potatoes and a small piece of this meat. They had only drained off the liquid to use as soup for our supper. One of the girls was ever so upset, asked why she couldn’t have her ration book back and go back to London. She was sure she could manage better than the nurses!
One day they asked if we could help with some housework. About time really, because these poor girls couldn’t hope to do all the work that had to be done. They were only the usual nursing staff for a hospital, but they were meant to be doing the housekeeping, keeping this house running and everything else as well. Most of us volunteered, so they gave us dusters and mops and things and off we went. Downstairs, along a passage, and then into the servants’ quarters was where the nurses were living. Talk about having your eyes opened! It was real squalor; they had absolutely nothing down there. No carpets on the floor, no chairs, nothing. I went to do staff-nurse-whatever’s room and I was shocked. I mean, we were from the East End and had seen most things but this was dreadful. She had a double bed spring base with a single mattress pushed against the wall so that when she went to bed she had to crawl across the springs. On the bed she had a single blanket, no sheets or anything. I was so shocked I called all the others in to see how she was living. I don’t think we complained very much after that.
We had a couple of warnings, not raids, because who was going to bomb a country village? We honestly didn’t bother very much because we knew that they were only flying over to bomb some other poor sod in London. And anyway, by then we had all got pretty used to it in London. The nurses, though, had to get us up and into the shelter. Mind you, it wasn’t much of a shelter. They cleared out the space under the stairs, even if it was an enormous staircase, and put some chairs in it. The first night that there was a warning was absolute bedlam. They got us all down in the shelter, but there wasn’t enough room. The nurses all stood around outside in the hall. One woman was in the middle of labour and she was hanging on the stair rails moaning, yelling, and saying ‘never-a-bloody-gain’ (or words to that effect). She wasn’t getting much sympathy from the rest of us though and there was a constant running commentary going both ways. Later, one of the nurses told me she had been to all the London shows but had never had such an hilarious night as that one. I suppose we had to calm our own nerves and we knew the bombs were not for us.
Mind you, the locals weren’t too sure about it all. One night a couple of bombs were dropped just outside the village. It must have been some sort of accident, the pilot got lost or was shot up or something, because nobody could have deliberately bothered to bomb such a nowhere place. Next day I was proudly pushing my new baby through the village in the pram with one of the other girls when, a few yards ahead, a door suddenly opened and this old woman stepped out on the pavement with a face like thunder. She shook her fist at us, and until then I didn’t realise that people shook their fists in real life and not just in books. She shouted out that it was all our fault – ‘Hitler’s bloody followed you!’ she screamed. Goodness knows why she thought Hitler would order his bombers to follow two young pregnant women out of the East End of London so as to bomb them in the country as well.
My younger boy was born at the other end of the war when the only remaining hazard was the rockets. By then I had been evacuated to rural Cambridgeshire, but when I looked at the local hospitals I decided I would rather risk the rockets. Somehow they seemed a lot less dangerous than a country hospital. Fred wasn’t very keen on the idea and tried to persuade me not to come back. He wrote a letter over three days listing all the incidents as they happened and what the results were [Editor’s note: the complete text can be found at the end of this chapter]. I still thought that it was safer than a country hospital and so I returned to London when the baby was nearly due. Our house had been destroyed a few months before by a doodlebug and we were living in the downstairs half of a requisitioned house a couple of streets away.
Well, this day I suddenly started into labour. So I had a quick bath and then called Mrs J – she was the lady who had the other half of the house – and she came with me off to the hospital. We had just got off the bus in the Broadway when I got the most almighty whopper of a pain and I was doubled up with it in the doorway of the cinema when the warning went! Well, we couldn’t help that, and once the pain had passed we walked the last couple of hundred yards to the hospital.
Now, whenever an alarm sounded the hospital went onto standby, so by the time we arrived all the doors were closed and there was no way in. Anyway, we went up to the door and rang the bell. After a couple of moments an irate nurse appeared and before either of us could speak began to read the riot act to us. There was a war on, didn’t we hear the warning?, no visitors could possibly come in, what about possible casualties, at which she paused for breath and I managed to get in that I was ‘not a visitor but a customer’. That quite caught her fancy and for the whole of my stay I was called ‘the customer’. Anyway, her arm shot out, I was pulled in, and the door slammed shut leaving Mrs J standing outside. There was no time for ceremony.
I was rushed through to maternity, helped into a hospital gown, put on the table but, just as the nurse was about to examine me, there was a tremendous bang. A rocket had landed just a couple of streets away. I was blown up in the air and felt as if I was on my way across the room but the nurse’s reflexes were up to the occasion and she just managed to catch me and push me down onto the table again. In moments the alarm bell rang – this meant major causalities coming in and the staff had to drop whatever they were doing to get down to the reception area. So she just told me to hang on and rushed away.
So there I was. After a few moments I realised that the woman in the next cubicle was having a terrible time, or so it sounded. She was moaning and groaning. Every now and again she let out an awful animal noise. But still nobody arrived. My pains were getting much more frequent and I was getting nervous, so I started shouting for help. Eventually a nurse came and started to examine me. I tried to get her to look at the woman next door but she sternly replied that I had to deal with my own problems, not hers. Within a very short while the baby was born. The nurse cut and tied the cord and, lacking anything else, wrapped the baby in a dirty towel and gave it to me to nurse. Then she rushed out again back to casualty. It must have been at least an hour until anybody reappeared. I thought I had been forgotten. Obviously the immediate casualty crisis had been dealt with and the staff were a bit calmer now. They started cleaning me up, and suddenly realised that there was no afterbirth! Another panic, but eventually the midwife managed to massage it out.
All that remained was to get me up onto the ward. Fortunately a bed had ‘just become vacant’, only when they got me up there the bed was still in the same state as the last occupant had left it and they realised they had no clean sheets. After a hurried consultation they decided to use the dirty sheet on which I had just delivered the baby, saying that ‘it was, after all, her own dirt.’ So in a couple of moments there I was, sat in bed waiting for the nurse to bring my new baby. Suddenly a woman, another patient, arrived at the end of my bed, looked at me in horror as her mouth dropped open – ‘Blimey’ she said, ‘I know that they are short of beds but I only went out for a wash!’ She was due to leave that day but the nurses had got a bit ahead of themselves.
When that was eventually sorted out the nurse appeared carrying my new baby, tightly wrapped in a piece of blanket. As soon as the nurse had gone I unwrapped him to have another look. I had never seen anything like it. He was dressed in two woollen matinee jackets. They had obviously been over-washed, over and over aga
in. They were matted and stiff like cardboard. One was put on the right way round and tied with tapes at the collar. The second was then put on back to front over the top and tied again. I was pretty annoyed because all the family had been collecting wool oddments and knitting for me, so the baby had a wonderful ‘wardrobe’ ready and waiting. I had a go at the nurse, and said I would get my own clothes in but she said that was against the rules because they got ‘lost’. I suppose they got pinched. I did dress him in his own clothes to go home though. All the nurses wanted to give him a cuddle because he looked so lovely. Well, I had all the clothes left over from the eldest and all the stuff the family had got together. He looked like a real baby going home and I suppose a lot of the nurses hadn’t seen one of them for years!
My only thought then was to get back to the safety of rural Cambridgeshire. As soon as I left the hospital I sent a telegram to Aunty Blinco [Editor’s note: the lady of the house where Polly was evacuated to escape the V1/V2 campaigns – see also p. 101 and p. 108] and asked if I could go back. By return came a telegram saying, simply, ‘COME COME COME COME’. So I came.
* * *
The unchanged text of a letter from Fred reporting incidents over a three-day period in an effort to dissuade his wife from returning to London.
77 Keogh Road
Thursday
Dear Poll,
Have arrived home safely after a rather quick trip getting to Mum’s about 5.50 and hearing a terrible tale of the past week, and living in the shelter which seems to be the wisest thing. They have had 5 or 6 warnings up to then, and I arrived in the middle of one. Since then up until midnight there has been 4 more, making a total of 9 or 10 warnings but have lost count for sure. A warning has just gone shortly after midnight and I suppose this is the all night one so I am off round the post.