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Jo Wheeler

In September 1939 my home was in the Weald of Kent where my father grew hops and apples. My sister and I were then just seven and five. My first memory of the war was of a lovely summer Sunday morning there, when the sirens suddenly sounded, an announcement was made on the wireless that Britain was at war with Germany, and my mother immediately ran up to the attic to get our gas masks. Fortunately, we never had to use them except during practice at school.

The beginning of September was when the hop picking families used to come from London for their annual holidays. I don't remember any change that year, but it must have been at the time when there was mass evacuation of children from the cities. May/June 1940 saw Dunkirk. The main railway line from Dover and Folkestone to London ran just below the farm and the troops who had been rescued were brought in trains along that line on their way to their recovery units.

The trains often stopped where we were for us to give them some apples, and in return I remember being given all sorts of foreign coins by the soldiers as we talked to them.

In July 1940, when the Battle of Britain was imminent, my sister and I were evacuated to the home of our two maiden aunts who lived near Banbury in Oxfordshire. These ladies, in their 50s, had no knowledge of young children so it was very brave of them to take us on as we were only little. In retrospect, that was the situation many older folk throughout the country would have found themselves in, as children were evacuated en masse. To get to Banbury my parents had to take us by train because petrol was rationed, and I remember that we sat waiting on the platform at Paddington right alongside the large monument to the soldiers who had fallen in the 1914/18 war. We were well cared for by the aunts and stayed for about a year. There was no sign of war for us except hearing the bombs falling on Coventry in the far distance. The aunts also took in a couple who lived in Coventry to stay for a while whilst we were there, and one aunt did volunteer work with the Red Cross, so they did their bit towards the war effort.

We were back at home in Kent at the time of the V1 doodlebugs in 1943. These were flying bombs propelled by a pulse jet engine and they flew fairly low. When the jet engine switched off they then dived into the ground and exploded - so you had to listen for the noise of the engine and if it cut out you took cover very quickly. They caused havoc and a lot of damage. We all stayed safe, but it meant that we often spent nights sleeping in deckchairs in the cellar or in the air raid shelters.

Sweets were rationed, so we children used to eat Horlicks and Ovaltine tablets as a treat. We were also issued by the Government with cod liver oil and malt extract to take daily. Most foods were rationed, except what you grew yourself, and rationing continued for quite a while after the war.

Truth to tell, as children we quite enjoyed all the changes and excitement created by the war and had no idea of the considerable worry it must have caused our parents. Indeed, it wasn't until the early days after the war when I visited the city area of London that I realised how terrible it must have been during the Blitz. There was still rubble and  bomb damage everywhere.

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