Outbreak of
war
I
was born in 1929, at my Great Grandfather’s house at 10 London Road,
Brandon and then lived with my parents at my Grandmother’s at 24
London Road until my parents bought a house at 11 Church Road, Brandon. My sisters and me were the only children living in the road
at the time, as most of the other people living in that
road were business people and quite a lot older.
I spent most of my time at my granny’s house as my
mother always had lodgers, but then the war started in
1939 and that changed things for us.
I remember that we were away on holiday when that
happened, we came home very quickly upon hearing the
news, and my sisters were away too.
My mother panicked and rang my second sister, who
was in London with an aunt, and my other sister, who was
in Stowmarket with my other granny, for them both to
come home.
Rationing
There was a shop in Thetford Road, and sometimes on a
Sunday afternoon he would sell sweets and if you were
lucky after queuing for ages you would get some, but
half the time you would get them they would be mouldy.
How long he had kept them I don’t know.
He was a friend of my father.
Evacuees
When the evacuees came to Brandon the authorities were
going to keep some at my granny’s but she was in her
70s and it was not a convenient place to keep them and
so the family said no as she wasn’t too well.
As it happened she died in 1942. The evacuees
fitted in alright after a time.
|
Barnardo
Boys
Then
the Barnardo boys came to Brandon.
Now some of them were a bit naughty, but I think
people made out the Barnardo boys were worse than they
actually were. I
didn’t see anything bad happen.
My sister was friendlier with the boys than the
girls and used to bring some home from school at
dinnertime. I
remember one
occasion
when my sister brought home a coloured boy one day.
My mother saw this
coloured boy,
who had found
the axe we used for chopping firewood, and he was doing
some sort of war dance with it.
She almost had a fit!
Of course he was only messing about, but he was
the first coloured boy we had ever seen, and I think he
was the only one with the Barnardos boys at Wangford.
I
became really friendly with one Barnardo Boy and his
name was Dennis
|
Picture of one of the Barnardo boys, name
unknown, although not the one who gave Ena the diary.
|
The diary that was given to Ena from her Barnardo boyfriend.
|
Mathews.
My friend and I would bike to Wangford to see if
the boys could get out of the Hall.
We were about 13 then and I know it sounds silly
but it was a different era then, we could cycle safely
for miles without seeing any traffic. They would be
allowed out on a Saturday for the cinema, so
we would go to the cinema on a Saturday to see if
we could sit next to a couple of lads we knew.
What happened to them after the war I
don’t know.
I often wonder what happened to them.
Dennis gave me a diary as a present.
Billeting of
troops
My
mother had workmen lodging before the war and
during the war she had troops billeted at the
house. We received many Army blankets, which were accidentally left
behind by the troops.
There
is one soldier that I remember, a Lieutenant I
think, who married the newspaper shop owner Betty
Green.
I
have a photo of another one of them; he was in a
Tank Regiment I think, his name was Tom Squires,
from up North somewhere. Then
I remember that we had a Royal Air Force airman
staying with us who I think served I
at R.A.F. Feltwell. |
|
|
Tom Squires, billeted at Ena's house.
|
Other lodgers
We had a music teacher live with us after the troops had
moved on. She
was Mrs Frow (Froud?) and she taught at Brandon.
She had broken her arm sometime before she came
to us and it had never set properly and the children
would take the ‘mickey’ out of her twisted arm.
My mother would often laugh when Mrs Froud (?)
would say “Can I start at the cakey end?” which
meant she wanted to eat cake first before eating the
main meal. One
day Mrs Froud (?) asked if she could have a piano in the
house, but my mother said there was no room for it, and
so my father converted one end of his shed into a music
room for her and so she had the piano in there.
He added a fire for her for heating, although it
probably would not be allowed nowadays due to fire
regulations as the shed was made of wood.
My father would have his tools at one end and she
would be at the other end.
What happened to her I don’t know, she left
before the end of the war.
|
Wedding photograph of an airman billeted at Ena's house. The photo was sent to Ena's mother after the airman had moved on and tragically the airman later died in
service.
|
|
Air
Raids
Incidentally,
machine gun bullets hit my granny’s house when a
German plane attacked the school.
We had been in the cookery room that day, and had
gone home for dinner and when we got back they told us
the ceiling had been hit.
We were at home and saw the plane go over from
our window. It
was going down the London Road, we didn’t see any
firing, but he was fairly low. |
|
|
Ena sitting on the roof
of the air raid shelter that
her father built in Church Road.
|
While
we lived at Church Road my father made us a homemade
bomb shelter in the back garden, which he dug out and
reinforced with iron bedsteads and concrete.
He dug it out very deep and even added a chimney
for heating on cold days, but we only used it once if I
remember correctly, but as kids we used to play in it as
it made a nice playhouse and light a fire to cook food.
One night there was an air raid at night and my mother
was out at a whist drive at one of the military camps
and my father got called out as he had duties with the
ARP.
He put
us down the shelter on our own, as there was no one at
home, but I don’t think we were down there that long.
Usually mother would put us into the cupboard
under the stairs.
I
think we had mattresses in their too and there was
plenty of room for us three girls.
Sometimes we would bang on the wall to make sure
the lady next door was okay, as she was quite old, and
we would shout “Are you alright” and she would reply
“Yes”. That
is how we made sure she was okay.
I think in the end we would get used to the air
raid warnings so that we would not bother getting out of
bed. We had
a landmine drop at the top of Rattler’s Road near the
asparagus field, now we did hear that one. |
|
Working in Brandon & Bury St. Edmunds
I
left school in 43 and started work at a Grocer’s shop,
I think it was called Statham’s, and was where the
bank is now, and I hated it!
The shop was overrun with rats and each morning
someone would probably want a bag of flour, which was
kept in barrels, and I would have to brave the rats to
weigh the flour.
From there I got a job at Greene King in Bury St.
Edmunds. At that time Greene King never usually employed women but
because of the war they could not get the men to fill
the job vacancies and so they had to take on us women,
and that was only a temporary position until the men
came back from the war.
When I was at Bury, I enrolled into the Girls Air
Training Corp. We
didn’t do anything spectacular apart from drilling in
the school playing field and we would also have to draw
aircraft so we could identify them, but I could not draw
very well so I could not get any of them correct.
Of course when I came back home I had to leave
the group.
My mother got me another job in Brandon, at Calders’
office, before the end of the war.
She got me the job but the trouble is I didn’t
want to come back home as I was having too much fun in
Bury. There
was more life in Bury than there was in Brandon and I
had made several friends there.
The man at Calders told me to go home and think
about whether I wanted to work there or not, and so when
I thought about it I realised that when the men came
back home from the war I would be out of a job at Greene
King, and so I took the Calder’s office job, which I
kept until I got married in 1950.
VE-Day
I
was on my way to work at Calders that day when someone
told me I might as well go home, as that day had been
declared as a holiday.
Some of the Brandon boys thought they would make
it a night to remember and so they went to the
ammunition dump at Santon Downham and ‘obtained’
some firecrackers and proceeded to let them off on the
Market Hill that night.
Dear me did they make a noise!
|
|
