Children of the Blitz BBC 2

Yes we watched. Horrific and so sad for so many. But amazing that there are still those around to tell what it was really like.

We have recorded it

What an emotional programme. The value of contributions from people who remember in such detail the danger, terror and emotional stress cannot be overestimated.
I read this morning that the lovely lady from Belfast. who became mute for a while due to the horrors, has died since filming.
They were such a brave and stoic generation.

My mum was a late surprise, arrived when her three sisters were working adults. Born in October, 1939, she and her mum were evacuated to Durham but lasted just a couple of weeks there. Granny couldn’t bear to be away from her other daughters and grandad, who was a fire warden after fighting in WW1 and thankfully survived without physical injury. Different story mentally. The screams in the night didn’t cease, even into very old age.
The family were bombed out twice (Lambeth) but miraculously all survived.
All lived on into their late 80s and 90s.
Mum is the last one. 86 with mid-stage dementia, she can still remember the sound of the doodlebugs and running with mum to the shelter and being put to bed under the metal table. Her first banana and orange, too, in the late 40s, I think. They had plenty of canned peaches, though. Single Auntie Peggy was rather popular with American troops 😁

Bassett, l remember my first banana in the late 1940's. There were long queues at shops if they were selling bananas .

Hilltop

Bassett, l remember my first banana in the late 1940's. There were long queues at shops if they were selling bananas .

What did you think, Hilltop?
Mum still remembers the huge disappointment! Her sisters had regaled her with stories of bananas and how wonderful they were. It was, well, a banana 😁
She still has to force herself to eat them.

Apparently, Attlee arranged for some shipments of bananas post-war to boost the country's morale.There was a time after the war when food and other goods were more restricted than during the war itself, so arranged for the bananas to persuade people it had all been worth it.

Basgetti, my Mum also spoke of tinned peaches. Her mother owned a haulage company which had a contract with the US army. I guess a few tins of peaches (and a few other things) "dropped off" the lorries. Ahem!

She was evacuated to Herefordshire to avoid the blitz over Merseyside.

Basgetti (it got changed to Bassett somehow) l was not impressed by banana taste either. But other children watched me eating it so that added to the excitement really, l think.
The war was not good for my family, not casualties, but it altered our way of living for ever.

We were chatting about this today when we were out to lunch; most people on our table were in their 80s and some in their 90s and they remembered the unused bombs that were dropped by German planes on their way back from raids. One man said they'd evacuated to Devon but the back of their house was blown off by one such bomb; DH remembers the windows cracking during Plymouth Blitz. He was too young to know what had happened. The Australians sent food parcels with tinned fruit, jams, tinned meat etc during WW2 and afterwards. DH was lucky to have Australian relatives who sent them parcels.
My brothers came running home one day to report that the local greengrocers had oranges, so they were sent back to join the queue!

I have just watched it, after reading this thread. It was so moving, especially the fact that the war memories stayed with these people all their lives, and shaped the people they became.

It must have been so traumatic for many the children who were evacuated.

But I remember hearing about my auntie, who lived in a terraced house in an inner city. She was evacuated and lived with a very wealthy couple. She remembers being driven to school in a Rolls Royce.
She kept in touch with them for the rest of her life.

I've just watched the programme too. It deserves people of all ages to see it.

My mother was not-evacuated during the war because my Grandma (an East End matriarch) refused to let her go stating that if they were doing to die then they'd die together. So she went through the war with very little schooling and sleeping in an Anderson shelter dug into the garden.

She spoke of the V1 rockets that often came chugging overhead and and the fear when the engines stopped and they fell to earth - her neighbours a few doors away were killed when their house was hit and they had failed to get into the shelter early enough. She also talked of her mother dragging her over a garden wall when one fell nearby.

Despite not remembering what she’s just eaten for lunch, Mum also recalls having measles on VE Day and being wheeled out into the front garden in her bed-chair to watch the street party.

There was a photo of me in the local newspaper (a Memory Lane page) and I'm at a VE Day street party in 1945, being held by a neighbour's teenage daughter.

However, I wasn't born then. It's definitely me so it must have been an annual celebration for a while.

My mother was 10 when the war started. She was an only child, living in Bethnal Green. They never went to the air raid shelters, her father used to say if they were going to die they'd go together. They had 2 dogs and a rabbit which had to be brought into the house due to people eating them! He was in a hutch outside but came into the kitchen for the duration.

There was a shocking tragedy in Bethnal Geeen. Well over 100 people died as they were running into the shelter. A woman and child had tripped on the steps causing everyone to fall and many died in the ensuing crush. It was hushed up at the time due to worry about morale etc.

Of course my mum knew about it and she knew one of the families who had died.

I found it very moving. It made me think about my mother who lived through it. She used to tell us stories about it, wish I’d paid more attention as she’s no longer with us.

I watched it and was both horrified anew at photographs and accounts of the bombings and pleasurabley amazed by the clear recall and accounts given by those now very elderly people

I have recorded this. I make myself watch programmes like this so I know what has happened in the past.

We watched it yesterday and felt very lucky that both my husband’s family and mine lived in fairly rural north western areas ( Cumbria and the Fylde Coast). We were both born just after the war so can only vaguely remember sweet rationing. It was so distressing for the elderly man remembering his father’s death at the end of the war. So many years later and he still felt bereft.

My parents lived thru WW2 working in London. My mother was a 'glass half full' type of person. I could not get her to talk about her war experiences. She was a teacher and said she had to accompany the children being evacuated. Only the train driver know of the destination.

Very emotional

I am almost 86. I remember clearly being taken from my bed, wrapped up in mother's coat whilst she carried me to the air raid shelter. the noise of the guns shooting at enemy aircraft and the lights spotting them, and the flashes of the guns, and the drone of the planes. Going to sleep in the crypts under Manchester's cathedral with lots of other people. A lone enemy plane that flew very low, shooting down the side street, killing our dog. I was outside in my pram, my mother hearing the commotion ran out tossing her knitting aside, to get me. When she got back inside, her knitting had landed in a dish of marmalade.
My dad was a barrow boy (was turned down to join up for health reasons) and when he got a delivery of bananas (this would have been mid to late forties by then) the queue was so long that the police arrested him for blocking the road, and the hopeful customers all followed to the police station. The local paper reported it naming him "Banana Bob"

My mum was 13 when the war broke out. They lived in the countryside and took in some evacuees from London. These children wouldn’t eat Nana’s home grown vegetables because they “were dirty” having been dug up from the garden! They asked for fish and chips but there was no chippie in the village. Mum later became a GPO telephonist and had to sit at her switchboard wearing a tin hat as the planes shed their last bombs on the way back from bombing London.

There are children in the world right now experiencing the same trauma as these children did.