Polly: Memories of an East End Girl

by Jeff Smith

  Friday:- Have arrived home from work about 5.45 and there is a warning on now the 5th today. First one at 7.10 lasted until 8.35 and we had 4 take covers. The second warning went at 8.50 and lasted until 1.10 and we had 8 take covers. The third went at 1.35 and lasted until 2.45 nothing doing. The next went just after 3 and up until leaving we had 3 take covers making 15 all day, not bad really. I didn’t notice the time of the all-clear but it was before 6. The fifth warning went at 6.10 and we have just had a fright; one went right over the top in full view of us all lining the railway fence and dived with a terrific crash in full sight of us somewhere around the Thatched House or Harrow Green – may have a more precise position later. Another one followed about 5 minutes later but he has travelled over much further and we haven’t heard the crash although it was quite plain going over. Mrs Butcher is leading off about a lifetime to get a bit of home together and then it gets smashed in a second.

  Its quite like blitz times to see everyone in the back yards looking at the sky. It is now just 6.50pm and the 5th all-clear is sounding so I will have to resume with the next warning. Until then a little news. I arrived at Mum’s and she made me a cup of tea and I gave her the lettuce & onions and started trying to persuade her down to Son’s but it seems pretty useless and I have come to the conclusion that the reason is, that the neighbours are waiting for her to turn her back and then they will flock in & rob her of her home. At least that’s what her excuses sound like to me. Jane has offered her the fare. Tiny has as well. Bob sent her £4 to do something about it and I gave her Son’s offer but it seems that she won’t do anything about it. I am going to ring up Bob & Maud later as I believe it has been hit badly around there. You remember that rather nice looking blonde girl who we saw when we went over there and you spoke about me blushing. I’ve heard that she is dying and they have sent for her husband from the Navy. Tell Son that Sister Silwood from the surgery has been killed by a direct hit he will probably know her, the tall one who took over from the old matron. Here goes the 6th to-day and its 7.5 so he doesn’t lose much time in between. Mum gave me a tomato last night and that together with the cheese and a lettuce I kept, has made me a nice tea just now and I will be able to have a rake round tomorrow afternoon for something else. I hope you will like this letter Poll but as I promised to let you know exactly what happens I am just putting it down and leaving it to you, what you wish to do, although everyone says you would be mad to come home. I am now going to clear the table have a wash and change and go round the post for a while and will continue with anything that happens later. By the way George Tiney has been to see his wife and kiddies off to Torquay to-day and seems rather worried about it. The 6th all-clear is now going and it is 7.25. Here goes the 7th one and it is now 7.55 still time to beat yesterday’s total. Have just returned from the post as one has dropped very close and I think the railway works or Temple Mills got it. Saw it go over and dive, engine still running when it hit. The all-clear for this one went at 9.10 but the 8th warning went at 9.40 and have heard a couple more go down a bit further away this time. The 8th all-clear at 10.10.

  The first page of Fred’s letter.

  I rang Bob up and both he & Maud are quite OK although they were badly blasted on Tuesday night. He told me that he had been to Stevenage (Herts) today and they have had 2 of the bombs there. To resume the next alert has gone at 1.45 Saturday morning and things are a little warm, plenty of banging around as they fall. At 3.45AM one sounded loud enough to send me round the post but it is further over. Another one even louder followed, by one that beat the lot at about 4.30AM so I am staying round the post and giving bed the go-by for tonight. It fell by Manor Rd. station and sent a gas main alight but I think it is mainly a factory area and not a lot of houses around by ‘Berks’.

  Saturday: left home at 6.20 A.M. warning still on and arrived at the firm to be greeted by a ‘Take Cover’. For breakfast I had cheese on toast & bread & dripping which was quite tasty. Worked until 11.45 A.M. with 3 more ‘take cover’s making it 4 in all. Had Spam & Salad with baked jam roll for dinner and then went straight on to Bearmans from Woolwich but Robert’s shoes have not yet arrived and I will call again next week. Arrived home about 1.15 to do a bit of washing and continue this letter and in the meantime we have heard 3 more come down somewhere around. The all-clear has sounded at 1.50 P.M. making that warning a 12 hour one. Another warning has just gone at 2.15 P.M. and it seems crazy to me as to why they sound the all-clear. Two more have just come down, Mrs Jones running for the shelter with her dinner in her hand sure looks funny. 3 o.clock Poll another one down. All-clear sounding now at 3.50 P.M. Here we go again 3.25 warning number 3. All-clear Poll 3.50 P.M. nothing doing this time. Sweet music again number 4 sounding at 4.20 P.M. One down somewhere at 4.25. There goes another tearing over-head like a roll of thunder and it seems to have travelled on for some way by the sound of the crash 4.28 P.M. I was changing my shoes to go out and had to nip just then. All-clear for number 4 going at 4.45 and I think I will go down Mum’s for a stroll. The milkman seems late. 5th warning 5.10 one crash all-clear at 5.20. Warning again 6th at 5.40. One more and all-clear at 6 P.M. 7th warning 6.25 2 or 3 bangs this time and the all-clear at 7.30. 8th warning 8 P.M., again one bomb somewhere near and the all-clear at 8.30 9th warning 8.55 very short this time all-clear at 9.10. Here goes the 10th warning today 10 P.M. 2 bombs right over and again the all-clear at 10.30. Plenty of time for more to-day. The 11th warning went at 11.30 and they are coming over at about 5-minute intervals. 5 have crashed down fairly loudly before 12 P.M. A short quiet and then another not so terribly far away. Now after that I get a real scare one is coming straight for me as I am patrolling Louise Rd I dive and a terrific crash brings loads of glass out and I charge off to the Electric Light Office which has got a direct hit. Lots of damage and plenty of houses blasted but I am pleased to say that we have only 16 casualities none of them terribly serious as they were nearly all in shelters. Vicarage Lane is looking very knocked about and we have been working with a searchlight to straighten up a bit At 4.30 A.M I have a lay down and sleep until 6.30 when I go home to go to work.

  Sunday:- Arrived at work 7.30 to get a take cover for No 1 warning 7.10 until 7.35. No 2 warning 8 A.M. until 8.20 I take cover and something fairly close. No 3 warning went 9.20 and up until the all-clear at 9.45 there were 5 take covers and plenty around. No 4 warning at 10.35 lasted until 1.45P.M. and again 9 take covers. No more warnings from 1.45 until 5.15 and that is going to be enough for this letter as it will make it exactly 3 days since I got back. It may sound bad Poll but I have given you an exact diary no exaggeration & no kidding I am rather tired as you can guess but I am going to get down to it round the post early tonight and believe me I shan’t come out unless it is bad. Hope you and Robert are O.K and would like to think the weather has improved but it is lousy here pouring heavens hard. I will be sending a little parcel for Robert in a day or two and have some Mars & chocolate and one or two little toys. By the way Saturday there were 22 take covers Friday 15 and today 16 making a total of 53 since I came back. You must make your own decision Poll about staying or coming home but if it is any guide to you Salway School has opened up to take evacuee names and the Government are again evacuating people from here. Take care of yourself Poll hope Robert is a good boy and believe me when I say I am quite O.K and will be seeing you for the week-end very shortly if convenient to Son & Els. Tell Bill Plum that so far I have heard nothing about round his way and will write if I do. Let me know if you want anything. The milkman is leaving me a pint every day and I am doing O.K for grub Lots of love to you and all as I can hardly keep my eyes open I going to close and will write again very shortly. All the best Poll don’t worry about anything as it is not so bad

  Love to All

  Yours Fred

  Xxxxxxx

  Robert from Daddy

  xxxxxx

  19

  Farewell to Arms

  (1940–3)

  My brother Bob was called
up very early in the war. In fact he was part of the ‘second militia’ – though I don’t know what that name was supposed to mean and who the ‘first militia’ were. Anyway, he got his call-up papers and, I think, was quite looking forward to going away. Well, at that age it was all a bit of an adventure and we hadn’t any idea what the war was going to be. The only thing that really terrified him was the thought of telling Mum and what her reaction would be.

  At first he kept the call-up secret: he just didn’t want her to know in case she got all emotional. Of course, she had to know and I eventually convinced him to tell her. But then, even more important, he refused point-blank to tell her when he was due to go.

  ‘I don’t want her blubbing all over the station, it’ll show me up,’ and so on. I said that he couldn’t just go off on his own with no one to go with him to the station and, eventually, he agreed that I could go. I seemed to get all the ‘going-to-the-station-to-say-goodbye’ jobs. Anyway, Mum wasn’t stupid and it was impossible for Bob to hide all his arrangements, so she soon worked out when he would be going. On the day she got up early, got herself ready, sat down in the kitchen and waited. When the time finally came to go she just stood there and insisted so that, in the end, Bob had to give in.

  We had to walk up to Bow to catch the bus to the station; I can’t remember what station he had to go from, but Bob was terribly embarrassed all the way. Fancy your mother crying over you as you went off to war. As we approached the bus stop there was a bus drawing in – not our one though – and we saw a man running up a side street for all he was worth. So Mum did no more than step out in front of the bus and tell the driver to wait. The bus driver told her, in pretty broad language, about his timetable and how he had to get to wherever by whatever, etc, etc. In return Mum told him, in just as broad language, about the pressures of wartime, being reasonable, giving people a chance, etc, etc. She would not be moved. Only when the fellow reached the end of the side street he turned left, ran straight past the bus, and headed off up the road to goodness knows where! Good God, that really started it and I thought the war would be coming to an end right there. By this stage Bob was totally beside himself with embarrassment and there was terror in his eyes as he thought ahead to the scene at the station.

  Well, we reached the station and there was the platform – a whole mass of people, mainly young men going off to war and young women hugging, weeping, kissing. Not a mother to be seen anywhere. Poor Bob. But then we got the surprise. Mum didn’t say or do anything, but as she stood there these girls seemed to gravitate towards her. In no time at all she was surrounded by them, giving a word of comfort here, a little smile there, a squeeze to another. She was the pillar of strength supporting all the sorrow and anxiety that was being piled up on that platform. Looking back, I realise that she had maturity, she represented life going on and, of course, she had experience because she had been through it all before in the First World War. She was the heroine of the hour, the star of the day, and we looked at her with new eyes.

  A little later in the war my sister Tiny was working in a menswear shop and really quite liked it. Her best mate was named Marie and was ever so posh. She had, it turned out, been ‘given away’ soon after her birth because her mother just couldn’t afford to bring her up. Instead she was brought up by her aunt who, it seems, looked after her quite well. For some reason, though, she was desperate to get away. At the time they began the call up for women, mainly into the Land Army and things like that, but they had concessions for those who volunteered. If girls volunteered and joined up together they could stay together and be posted ‘near home’. So one day Marie started working on Tiny and suggested that they should join up together. After a bit Tiny agreed and they volunteered. Eventually the day came for them to leave. They went from Stratford station. So there we were, standing on the platform waiting for the train to start, when suddenly Marie’s aunt/mother suddenly cried out to Tiny ‘to look after my little girl’. This, for some reason, made Mum see red and she led off something chronic at this woman about who looked after who, whose idea it was, her poor child going ‘off to the country’ and goodness knows what else. It turned out later that Marie was desperate to get away because her aunt’s ‘boyfriend’ had started to molest her. Still, Tiny and Marie had a great time together living in the country and it was while serving near Colchester that Tiny met her husband to be.

  Bob (left) and an army colleague with their lorry.

  One day six of the Land Girls, including Tiny, were out hoeing in fields near Peldon when they heard a plane approaching. When they looked up they saw it was a Flying Fortress flying low, streaming smoke and obviously in a bad way. It finally ploughed into the ground a few fields away, so they all ran over to see what had happened and whether they could help. It was all a terrible mess, but lying on the ground a few yards from the wreck was an airman who seemed to be just a mass of burns. They were sure they had to do something but couldn’t think what. Eventually, in desperation, Tiny rushed off to the edge of the field and lifted the gate off its hinges – goodness knows where she got the strength from. Then between them they carried the gate over to the man, lifted him onto it, and then carried him a couple of miles across the fields to the nearest main road.

  That was that. They never heard any more, whether he lived or died, went back home or whatever. In wartime you didn’t hear these things, it was all ‘security’. They didn’t even know the man’s name, only that he was an American airman. The sequel came almost exactly fifty years later. Somebody saw an item in one of the local papers about an American ex-pilot trying to trace the girls who had saved his life all those years before. Knowing Tiny’s story they told her about it and, after much umming and aahing, she contacted the address given. The local paper had taken up the cause and after much checking and chasing managed to trace five of the girls, including Tiny. Eventually the airman, now a retired US Air Force Colonel living in Spokane, Washington, came over and they had a reunion which made the national press and television.

  Mind you, I don’t think Tiny will ever forgive him for his admiring tribute to ‘the Butch girl who lifted the gate off its hinges!’ That was her. [Editor’s note: A couple of years later Tiny was informed by the US Embassy in London of his death – she was very touched that they should have remembered her].

  20

  Produce

  (1940–5)

  Mum could cook a good meat-and-two-veg meal, even if it was a right performance and a terrible ordeal for everybody around her, but for everything else she was a real ‘hit and miss’ cook. The food could come out beautifully or it could be a disaster, there was no way of knowing in advance which it would be, and Mum didn’t know either. One day in the war, though, when I called round to see her, she put on the table the most beautiful cake you had ever seen. It had the most perfect texture and yellow colour – it looked like a picture in a book.

  ‘Have a piece,’ she said, and set about cutting a great big slice. I just couldn’t understand it. I mean, where could she have got the ingredients, especially the fat, because it was so tightly rationed? If you did manage to get enough fat together to make a cake you certainly didn’t dish it out in big slices. There was something going on.

  ‘Where did you get the fat from?’ I asked.

  ‘Just have a piece and enjoy it,’ she replied, ‘it’s ever so good.’

  ‘Yes, but where did you get the fat from?’ I repeated.

  After another couple of rounds of this to-and-fro she finally said it was from the butcher. Well, that was no answer because fat from the butcher was on ration just like everything else, so there still had to be more to it. I kept on asking and asking, and refusing to take a slice of cake, until I got the truth. Eventually she admitted that it was horse-fat, which accounted for the beautiful colour of the cake! Well, you know how horse fat is quite yellow. It seems that the butcher had managed to get hold of a supply and then found that he couldn’t sell it. Even with the tight rationing nobody would
buy horse-fat until Mum turned up and took the lot for a knock-down price. I am afraid that even for a knock-down price I still couldn’t bring myself to eat horse so I never did taste the cake. I don’t even know what happened to it and whether anybody else ate it.

  Polly’s final ration book, kept just in case …

  These sorts of things seemed to happen to Mum. I remember that she was no good at making tea and somehow she never cracked the problem. Whenever she made tea it tasted awful and generally we used to avoid it, which suited her down to the ground because tea was expensive. Once, though, early in the war, I went round to see her and she was ever so insistent that I should have a cup of tea. I was suspicious and eventually got it out of her that she had got it cheap from ‘that man up the road.’ Well, ‘that man up the road’ was a real spiv. Goodness knows where he got his stuff from, but it must have been pinched. Everything he sold was ex-army and dirt cheap; he sold new army blankets for 4s at one time, I remember. Anyway, Mum had bought this tea from him and, because it was so cheap she had bought a load of it and was feeling generous. When I eventually gave in and said that I would have some tea she proudly went and got a packet out from the cupboard under the end of the dresser. She boiled the kettle, looking ever so smug, and made the tea. I was dreading it because, as I said, Mum couldn’t make tea. In the event it was worse than you could have ever imagined in your worst dream – even Mum couldn’t drink it! Unfortunately the taste was all too obvious and the reason all too clear. Mum had also bought a large quantity of cheap, almost certainly ex-army (if the army had ever managed to get its hands on it, that is), carbolic soap and she had stacked the whole of this treasure trove together under the dresser. She tried separating them but it was no good because the damage had already been done. After a couple of weeks she had to throw all the tea away – a fine bargain that turned out to be.