“How will we ever manage? Our house and a meager pension were all we had. James barely left us enough to survive on when he died…without all of this.” Missus Madden punched towards Heaven.
Mum set down the dustpan and broom and put her arms around Missus Madden’s shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Mary. You and the boys can stay with us until the wars over. We’ll figure out what to do after that. Don’t worry yourself about it right now.”
“Ta, Janet. What would we do without you?” Her eyes glazed over, and she slowly nodded.
“You’d do the same for us if it were our house. Let’s see if we can find a little something to eat.”
Mum found three tins of rice pudding. She shared them fairly and added some currants. I hadn’t eaten it cold before. It didn’t smell warm and inviting, but I ate it and found it to be quite tasty. It would’ve been better if it had been warmed, but the rules stated no using electricity or gas after a bombing. We had to wait for the warden to come around and let us know if it was safe to start using it again.
“I’ll help you clear up the rest of the house, Janet,” Missus Madden said.
Mum and Missus Madden worked for hours sweeping and dusting the house. Dust kept rolling in our glassless windows, coating everything. By the time they cleaned the sitting room, it needed to be cleaned again.
Bill and Alex went out to see if they could help Daddy and the other men clearing up our road, so that the fire brigade, police, and ambulances would be able to get through.
“I have to go to the loo, Mummy.” Gina crossed her legs to prove it.
“Well, what’s wrong with using the toilet?” Mum frowned.
“It’s broken into bits and pieces.” Tears leaked from Gina’s eyes. “Nothing’s ever going to be right again. The war’s ruining everything.”
“We won’t stand for it long. Love, Mister Churchill will resolve this soon.” Then Mum went to investigate the loo. We all followed her.
“Well, good gracious!” Mum exclaimed. “All that’s left is a hole in the floor and a pile of crumbled porcelain. We’ll get the boys to clean this up when they come back. For now, you’ll have to use a basin.”
“Ew,” I squealed.
“I’ll use it,” Gina said reaching out for the big basin Mum had gotten out of the cupboard. Then she ran to our room.
“Put it under your bed when you finish. We’ll have Daddy empty it later.”
A shiver ran through my body. “That’s horrible, Mum.”
“You have to be able to adjust to the situation, Dear.”
Bill and Alex came back even grungier. “Ain’t no one got water in their ‘ouse, if they ‘av an ‘ouse,” Alex explained.
“There was broken toilets all the way up the row,” Bill said. “I’m sure ‘appy you got a toilet, Missus Munsey.”
“Sorry, William,” Mum thought people should go by their given names. “Ours needs to be carried outside too.”
“This is batty, blowin’ up ‘ouses and toilets.” Bill grabbed his brother by the arm, and they went to fetch our crumbled-up toilet.
“Mummy, when can we go back to bed?” Gina stuck her thumb in her mouth and held a very dusty Dolly with her other hand.
“Very soon, Dear. Why doesn’t everyone change into clean night clothes while Missus Madden and I will make sleeping arrangements.”
They spread out quilts for the boys to sleep on. Mum made me let Missus Madden sleep in my room.
Gina and I went upstairs to get ready for bed. I carried my pillow and my nightgown into Gina’s bedroom. I’d be sleeping with her tonight and possibly until the war ended. My eyes felt heavy. Last night’s bombings blurred in with the events of the day.
Gina sat on the edge of the bed. “Do ya think it’ll happen again, Joyce?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.” We snuggled under the blanket, said our prayers, and tried to go to sleep. The day kept replaying in my head. Over and over again. I looked over at Gina. She was curled up like a kitten with Dolly. I rolled over and tried to sleep on my stomach. It didn’t help. I rolled back over and concentrated on closing my eyes and breathing slowly. Sleep finally arrived, but then…
WHRRRRR, whrrr, WHRRR, whrrr
Chapter Four
September 8, 1940
8:00 PM
“Come on everyone get to the shelter.” Beads of perspiration trailed down Mum’s forehead. She waved her arms vigorously towards the back door.
Another night of bombings. How much could one take? We were fortunate in the last bombing, but would we be as lucky tonight?
Gina and I were dressed in our nightgowns. We slid on our slippers and put our gas masks over our shoulders, then ran downstairs.
This time I grabbed my tuck box as we rushed out the back door towards our shelter. The siren screamed, and the sky flashed from dark to light in the distance.
WHRRRRR, whrrr, WHRRR, whrrr
“Mister Hitler is a real rotter,” Missus Madden yelled as we ran through the back garden. “I hope he gets what he deserves.”
“Where’s Daddy?” I shouted. “He needs to come to the shelter too.”
“You’re right about that,” Mum shouted back.
Gina grabbed Mum’s hand. “What about Daddy?”
“He’ll be fine. He’ll go to the fire brigade station or to a public shelter.” Mum squeezed her eyebrows together and clenched her teeth. She wouldn’t want us to know if he was in danger. Missus Madden, Alex, and Bill rushed ahead of us.
Bill jumped in the shelter first. Mum lowered Gina to him. I went next and then Missus Madden. Alex helped Mum and then jumped in. Bill and Alex pulled the roof over us, and we crouched down, again. The air to warm up quickly. With extra people made it a tight fit, no room for stretching out. Not that I wanted to lay on the dirt floor, but now it wasn’t even an option.
“I wish we had a real Anderson Shelter, Mum,” I said. Daddy should have gotten us one, but he was too prideful to accept a handout. He thought making a trench shelter would work just as well. Mister Elstone had been in a trench shelter too. He lost his house and his life. Thinking about him dead in the bottom of his shelter made my stomach hurt. “Or better yet a Morrison Shelter.”
“We have to make the best of what we have.” Mum stroked my back for a few seconds.
The air raid siren screeched on and on. The shelter was cold and damp inside. I kept twitching uncontrollably. When I wasn’t twitching, I was shivering. It would be a long night. And where was Daddy?
“We’ll be all right, Joyce,” Mum said.
“It feels like spiders are crawling up my legs and on my back. I’m trying to get them off,” I said as I wriggled around.
The darkness made it impossible to see anything, so Mum ran her hands across my back and legs. “I don’t feel anything on you or your nightie. I’m sure it’s all of the excitement.”
“Can we bring a blanket next time? Perhaps it won’t be so icky if we are on something other than dirt,” I said.
“That’s a brilliant idea!” Missus Madden said.
“Wot ‘bout a mat?” Bill asked.
“Even better! We’ll make our shelter into a holiday house,” Mum said. Everyone eked out an awkward laugh.
“Did anyone else notice that the siren’s still blarin’, but there ‘aven’t been any explosions?” Alex asked.
“I wonder what that means,” I said.
Then we heard it. The roar of a German aeroplane. The air made a loud whooshing sound. A giant thud shook our shelter and dirt from the walls rolled onto us. Gina screamed. I shook. It felt as though all the blood
rushed out of my face. Gravity seemed to pull my cheeks to my chin. The aeroplane hovered above us.
Could this be the end, our end?
And then…nothing.
No one breathed. No one moved. Silence. We waited until the all-clear siren blew.
“What do you think it was, Mum?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But it must be safe to go up, or they wouldn’t have blown the all clear.”
Bill and Alex pushed back the roof part way.
“It’s jammed on somethin’, Missus Munsey,” Bill said. “We can’t move it anymore. We’ll ‘ave to climb out the other end an’ see wot the problem is.”
Bill climbed out first, then Alex.
“Wot the ‘eck is that?” Alex yelled.
“It’s a bloomin’ bomb!” shouted Bill. “And it didn’t explode.”
I got dizzy and sat down.
“Well, wot are we goin’ to do ‘bout it?” Alex asked.
“We’d best get everyone out of the shelter an’ then worry ‘bout the bomb.”
Bill and Alex pulled us up and out.
The greenish-gray bomb lay on the edge of our shelter roof. It was a huge canister with a pointed top and a cross-shaped tail. We all stood motionless staring at the unexploded bomb. If it had exploded none of us would have survived. If it’d landed a few inches to the side, it would have come down in our shelter. One of us or maybe more would have been crushed. No shelter would really protect us. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
I looked at Mum. Her face reflected how I felt inside. When she noticed me staring at her, she erased the expression on her face rubbed her hands together. “Right, I think the best thing to do is to go and get help. Boys you go to the house with your Mum, and I’ll take the girls with me.”
I thought we all should have gone together. What if the bomb exploded while we were gone, and they got injured?
Gina, Mum and I walked down the road. The air was full of smoke. It coated my throat and filled my lungs. A ruddy glow above the skyline of London lit the streets. People rushed about in all directions. Men dragged big chunks of brick from the center of the road to the edge. A fire brigade lorry rang its bell to get people to clear out of the way.
“There.” Mum pointed to the fire brigade house “That’s where we’ll find help.”
She walked straight up to the front door and entered without knocking. I’d never seen her be so bold. To Mum, manners were everything. Her upbringing was very proper.
Mister George sat on a dusty brown chair listening to the wireless with his spectacles on the tip of his nose.
“George,” Mum said. “We have a bit of a problem.”
“Shush, Love, Mister Churchill is talkin’ on the wireless.”
“…One ought never to turn ones back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.”
Mum tapped her foot.
“George, I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but we have an unexploded bomb in our back garden, and we don’t know what to do about it.”
“Cripes, why didn’t ya say so?” Mister George jumped out of his chair. You would ‘ve thought he was twenty instead of being an old Grandad. He ran to the front door and rang a handbell. “Elp’ll be ‘ere shortly, and we’ll figure out wot to do with that bomb of yours.”
Three gray-haired men, in olive green wool uniforms with funny round tin hats, sprinted towards us.
“We’ve got a dud at Missus Munsey’s ‘ouse. We’ll need to disarm it for ‘er.” Mister George turned and winked at Mum. “Unless you’d rather do it yourself, Dear.”
“I think I’d rather have you take care of it, Governor.” Mum’s forehead wrinkled. She wasn’t amused by Mister George’s attempt to be funny.
Mister George coughed and straightened up. “Right, you lot stay ‘ere, and we’ll take care of it.”
He and the other men gathered their tools and piled them up in wheelbarrows and left.
Mum sat on a chair in front of the fire brigade house. Gina and I sat on a bench made from a couple big chunks of brick and a piece of wood.
We waited. We listened. We watched all the people scurrying around the crumbling streets of London. I believed the war wouldn’t come to London. But it came anyway. Now, I wished it would end so life could go back to normal. Carrying our gas masks everywhere constantly reminded me we were in danger, even when we weren’t in the middle of an air raid.
Chapter Five
September 8, 1940
12:00 AM
We sat in silence waiting. I hoped to see Mister George and his men wander back up the road. I closed my eyes for a second and put my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to see or hear it if things went wrong.
Mum stood up. “Girls, they’re coming.”
I felt my whole body relax; my shoulders fell, my fingers dangled beside my legs, and my toes unclenched. Mister George and his men were walking up the road with their wheelbarrows. My heartbeats slowed, and I could breathe again, but then...
WHRRRRR, whrrr, WHRRR, whrrr
I grabbed Gina’s hand. Mum grabbed mine. She yanked us up, and we ran across the road.
“Where are we going?” I shouted. Being heard above the air raid siren seemed impossible.
Mum didn’t answer. She pulled us towards the underground.
“I don’t want to go down there!” I shouted. But I knew we had to. I hated going in the underground on a normal day, let alone in the middle of an air raid. What if all of London collapsed on top of us? It would be dark, and there might be rats. I dug my feet into the ground. Gina and I stumbled and fell to the ground. Mum dragged us a few feet before she realized we weren’t walking with her. My knees were bleeding and dirt stuck to them. Gina, being much younger than me, had trousers on. She tore a hole in one knee and scratched up her opposite hand.
“Get up, girls!” Mum shouted as she pulled us up. “We have to go in the underground. We’ll be safe there. No bomb would go that deep.”
Safe? Was anyone really safe? Mister Elstone thought he would be safe. That turned out to be wrong.
We had no choice. Mum rushed down the steps to the platform, and we followed her. We got on our knees next to the wall, ducked our heads and wrapped our arms around them. I heard little children crying and their mums saying, “It’ll be all right.” I wasn’t sure if I believed them. How could we keep doing this night after night? Didn’t Mister Hitler have anything else to do with his time other than to bomb us every few hours?
When the all-clear blew, we got up and tried to leave. The mums and children pushed past us rushing towards the steps. A few men remained in the underground with us. They stood back and watched. “Ladies first,” one of them said.
“That wasn’t so horrible, was it?” Mum dusted off her knees and straightened her dress.
“Well, I would’ve rather been at home,” I said. “I’m sure I felt a rat crawl across my shoes.” A shiver ran through me, and I gagged.
Gina put her hands on her hips and thrust her chest out. “I’d rather have been on holiday.”
Mum laughed. Gina and I dusted off our scraped up knees and climbed the steps out of the darkness.
The street bustled with activity. Some men fought a fire from the tops of fifty-foot ladders. Sparks flew onto the street. They reminded me of the sparks from a sparkler on Guy Fawkes Night. A man rushed up to us and threw a Macintosh over us. Gina and I screamed. It was hot and dark, and I couldn’t see where we were going. Who had covered us up? Wh
y was he making us run? The smell of smoke was strong and window panes crashed to the ground.
“Come on, now. Let’s ‘urry up,” the man said.
Once we were across the road, he took the heavy coat off us.
“Can you get ‘ome from ‘ere?” he asked Mum.
“Yes, we can. Thank you so much for your kindness. If there’s a way I can repay you for your help, I’d appreciate it.”
“It’s the war, Dearie. We all ‘ave to do our bit. I’m too old to join up, but I’m not too old to ‘elp out,” he said. “Now I better ‘urry along and see if anyone is ’urt in the underground.” He threw his Macintosh over his head and shoulders, turned and went back towards the underground.
“Who was that?” Gina asked.
“I don’t know, Love,” Mum said.
“I do,” I said. “He was a war hero. He saved us from getting splattered with glass and fire sparks.”
“He certainly did,” Mum said. “Let’s try to weave our way back home.”
I tried not to think about all the dangers as we walked home. We all did something that mattered to help England against Germany. The fireman fought fires and disarmed bombs. The stranger helped people when he was able. Daddy worked at the munitions factory. Mum did all the things on the lists to help conserve our resources because the military needed supplies. Gina and I helped Mum, and I gave Missus Madden my room. And I tried to not complain out loud. Everyone was suffering, and it didn’t matter how wealthy or how poor you were. We were all in the same boat.
Chapter Six
September 9, 1940
7:00 PM
I hid behind the sitting room door and listened to Mum and Daddy talking in the kitchen. They still thought of me as a child and didn’t tell me everything, which was completely unfair.
Daddy pulled back a chair at the kitchen table.
Keep Calm and Carry On, Children Page 2