At the beginning of 1939 I lived with my parents and older sister, Sheila, in Stanmore, Middlesex - now part of Greater London, about 12 miles as the crow flies from the City of London.  We lived in Abercorn Road, which has 24 houses, all on the same side with Stanburn Primary School just past these.  A Baptist church is on the opposite side at the other end of the road.  There are well-fenced playing fields across from the house with an undeveloped area, also well-fenced, opposite the school.

During the early months of 1939, things changed with an ARP Post being built at one corner of the playing fields, and the school grounds dug up for air raid shelters.  These were large pipes sunk some ¾ depth into the earth and covered with turf.  Also, at about the same time, huge reinforced concrete anti-tank stops were built in the grounds of the church along with a large tank for static water.  It had S.W.S. painted on one side – these were also my sister’s initials and we used to tease her by calling her a ‘static water supply’.  Facilities in which to fix more anti-tank barricades were put in the road.  Later we learnt that an ack-ack gun had been mounted on a railway bogey and was intended to be used in the event of air raids.  (There was a small branch line about two hundred yards away running parallel with our back boundary and terminating at Stanmore Village.)
 
Abercorn Road is on the fringe of Stanmore about a 15 minute walk from Stanmore Village, 10 from the nearest shops at Honeypot Lane, where Mum did the family shopping.  A bus route passed the end of the road, going to Edgware (where our paternal granny lived) in one direction and South Harrow the other.

R.A.F. Stanmore, H.Q. for Balloon Barrage Command, amongst other functions, was on the outskirts of the village while R.A.F. Bentley Priory, H.Q. for Fighter Command a little further out.  The later had been purchased by the R.A.F. in 1926 and is where the D-Day landings were planned and followed by the late King George 6th, Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower.  We were blissfully unaware of the importance of this establishment, but in retrospect I expect those barricades and the ack-ack gun were there more to protect the R.A.F. than us!

Mum was an only child, while Dad was the youngest member of a large family so we had quite a lot of aunts, uncles and cousins.  Sheila and I were the youngest.  Dad had worked for the Post Office since he was 13, first as a message boy, then a postman and later a mail van driver but, in either late 1938 or early 1939, he voluntarily joined the armed forces.  He was posted to Balloon Barrage Command and went to Cardiff to be trained.  On his return to London he was promoted to corporal and put in charge of various sites including one in Regents Park.  I recall him telling us their food was prepared in the kitchen at the home of the Woolworth’s heiress and delivered in boxes full of straw.  One crew member wore blue silk underwear which his crew mates once sent up with a barrage balloon to flutter over London!

When war was declared on 3rd September 1939, we were in church - Stanmore Baptist, on the corner of Old Church Lane and Abercorn Road - waiting for the service to start.  When a siren went I didn’t understand what it meant.  The adults looked alarmed.  A man in a tin hat came in and spoke to the minister who then spoke to the congregation, probably saying war had been declared.  After some prayers and when the 'all clear' had sounded, we went home.  My cousin, Gordon, had been staying with us and his parents had come to collect him; we children were sent out to play.  Mum would have been pleased to have other adults to talk to - as I guess it would have been some days before she was able to speak to Dad.

At this time I seem to remember there was some talk about my sister and I being evacuated, in particular going to Canada.  The vessel on which we would have travelled was torpedoed with the loss of some 293 lives including 83 children…  some of whom were from Stanmore.

We were issued with gas masks, ghastly to wear.  Some of the windows were boarded up, sticky paper criss-crossed on others, blackout blinds or drapes were put at the windows.  Ration books were issued with rationing being introduced gradually.  I was aged 8 in June 1940, too young to understand what was going on in the wider world and as food items disappeared from the shops, such as bananas and oranges, I just accepted that was the way things were.  Mum did her best to fill our tummies and I can’t recall ever being hungry.  However the food was plain and there was very little variety.  I do remember sweets were rationed, 12oz a month - 3 a week.  Milk chocolate was replaced with blended, rather nice.  I did miss the tangerine traditionally put in the toe of my Xmas stocking.  Also the ice cream man who used to ride down our road at dinnertime on a Sunday.  Coal was rationed - as was petrol - and private cars all but disappeared from the roads.  The use of water was restricted; a 5 inch deep bath once a week and then shared at least with my sister!

After Dunkirk, the period known as Battle of Britain began and there were the first air raids on London.  The defences on the south coast, ports and military airfields had been hammered in the weeks preceding the attacks on London.  Raids on London meant raids on Stanmore although we didn’t suffer the damage inflicted on the East End and docks.  At this time our beds were moved downstairs to the sitting room.

On the morning of 10th October, before Sheila and I had left for school, 2 R.A.F. officers visited the house.  We went to the door and called Mum; when she came to the door she immediately sent Sheila to fetch her friend, Dorothy, who lived near-by.  Mum went into the front room with the visitors while I sat on the stairs.  After a while she opened the door and told me to go to Dorothy’s too – she was crying.  I passed Dorothy on my way.  Later she arrived home and told us that “God had needed a gardener for heaven’s gardens and our Dad was the best he could find and so he had been taken to heaven to care for heaven’s gardens”.  We went home and saw Mum then went to school.  My teacher did not believe me when I said my Dad had been killed.  Later it was confirmed to the school and she was rather upset.  He had been killed in Regents Park during a very heavy raid.  He was off duty but went out to check on his men, they heard a bomb, he called out "Duck”, they all got up after a while but he never did.  On 15th October he was accorded the honour of a full military funeral; the service was at the Baptist Church and his coffin was then taken to St. John’s Church in the village to be interred.  He was escorted by R.A.F. personnel, men from the Post Office, family and friends but not Sheila and me.  I so much wish we’d been there.  We spent the day with friends of our mother and played Monopoly with their teenaged daughter.  When we arrived home the house was full of people in black.
 
The Battle of Britain was followed by the Blitz, which lasted for 57 days.  Daylight and night raids on London, and other industrial cities, with civilian targets as well as industrial and military being attacked.  During raids, when we were at school, we went quietly from our desks, outside, across to the shelters.  There we sang, read stories, recited our times tables, had spelling bees.  When the 'All Clear' sounded it was quietly back to the classroom to try to begin our lessons again.  It was all very disruptive for our education.  We had no shelter at home so just remained indoors.

Following my father’s death, Mum was very short of money so cleaned the church for a while, and took in boarders - 2 WAAFS.  Later she let 2 rooms and the first tenants were Olive and Harold Pinkham.  Olive was a teacher, Harold in the Army.  All the adults were ARP wardens.  During night raids they got up and pulled some clothes on plus their tin hats.  We listened to the drone of aircraft trying to identify if they were friend or foe, the sound of the ack-ack gun and the occasional thud as a bomb landed not too far away.  Searchlights beamed up into the night sky.  One night during a particularly heavy raid when no one was even whispering, Mum crawled across to peer out of the strip of window that wasn’t boarded up, trying to see what was going on.  Harold finally decided to go too, so down on all fours, he crawls towards the window.  Suddenly there was a horrible unidentifiable clanging noise; after a silent pause there was laughter – they had met tin helmet to tin helmet!
 
One evening, Mum called us to the front gate from where we could see a vivid red sky; it was London burning after a heavy raid during which incendiary bombs had been dropped.  They lit up the night sky and soon the bombers were back.  The second Great Fire of London.

Air raids on London and many other cities continued for much of the war but never as intense as those of the Blitz.

Mum soon gave up cleaning the church and went to work in a haberdasher in Edgware, and later South Harrow.  This meant she was away from the house for much longer.  Her parents owned a workingmen’s café at Northolt and Sheila and I often went to stay with them at weekends or holidays.  They didn’t have much food to serve but I can remember quite yummy, large jam tarts, and Doubleday’s pies and puddings.  Many of their customers were service personnel from a nearby Army Ordnance Base.  When Sheila and I helped clear the dirty crockery or wipe the tables my grandfather would tell them: “The poor little girls are orphans.  The dirty Hun killed their Daddy”, and often we would find a small tip under their saucers.  After Italy capitulated, Italian prisoners of war were allowed out of the camps for short whiles.  Granddad had a carving knife under the counter to drive away any of them audacious enough to enter his café!  Just after the war ended, the café was sold and the grandparents retired to Littlehampton on the south coast.  We had a number of holidays with them there.

School dinners were introduced and I remember the food being horrible.  Turned me off slippery food to this day.  Where was Jamie Oliver then???

Queues were a feature of the weekly shopping, which fell to Sheila and I after Mum began full time work.  The first queue we stood in was always the one for meat – families had to be registered at a particular shop so weren’t able to shop around.  When Sheila began work in 1944 I became the queuer and shopper for the family.  My father’s family had relatives in N.Z. and now and again got food parcels from them.  I do remember us getting two, one a kerosene tin filled with dripping in which raw eggs had been ‘set’.  What puzzled us was how to get them out without either melting the dripping and thus cooking them, or digging them out with a spoon and breaking them!  Then the Mayor of Waitara, father-in-law to my Dad’s 2nd cousin, sent me a tin of chocolate, wheaten biscuits.  They arrived as a solid mass as the chocolate had melted then re-set sticking all the biscuits together!!  They were yummy.

During the war there were very little organized school sports.  We tended to do exercises, team races and maybe a game of rounders; remember the school fields had been dug up for shelters!  At home we played board games, cards, read, listened to radio, skipped, played with balls, went for walks, I learnt to darn socks!  We learnt to do simple embroidery and to knit.  I can remember I knitted gloves and socks.  I learnt to crochet by first making string bags, ideal for the shopping as paper bags were in short supply.

There was some excitement one morning when Abercorn Road was closed as an unexploded shell was found between our house and the school.  I was escorted round the block and over a fence to get to school.  It was gone by the time school finished.
 
Then of course there were the Doodlebugs and V2s.  The V1s were noisy and could be heard and seen as they lumbered ominously through the sky.  I saw a few.  The V2s were silent and more deadly.

In 1944 we went to stay at a farm in the south; I have no idea where – all place name signs had been removed at the outbreak of war in case of invasion; the idea being the invaders would have no idea where they were.  I remember the visit for 2 things: ducks - the farmer was collecting some, perhaps for market, and gave Sheila and I one each to hold…  round their necks.  I held too lightly, so my duck flew away.  Sheila held hers far too tightly and strangled it.…  and troops on the way to the coast, D-Day.

By D-Day I was old enough to follow the progress and set-backs, but this is not a history lesson.

On the evening of May 9th it was announced the war in Europe would end the next day.  I ran to tell the girls including Sheila who were at a Girls Life Brigade meeting at the church.  We had 2 days holiday.  On 10th May, V. E. Day,in the evening we went up to Bentley Priory with people from the church and danced round giant bonfires with service personnel.  Then did 'Knees up Mother Brown' on the way home through the village.  The next day we went to London to see a big parade with the Royal family and Churchill.  Oh the joy of hearing church bells again.
 
War in the Far East continued for 3 further months and was finally over and celebrated with V. J. Day on 15th August.

But Peace brought the news of horrors and human suffering beyond description both in Europe and the Far East.

For instance, there was Mrs Craig, daughter of a member of Stanmore Baptist Church, her husband and young child.  They had been missionaries in the far east and were captured by the Japanese and interred - he in one camp, she and the child in another.  He had been abused and starved, she and her daughter starved.  On their return home it was mentioned at church that the small girl, then about 6, had never had any toys.  I was moved to give her my cherished doll.

Then there is Arthur Hicks, captured in the retreat from Malaya to Singapore.  He had been the spotter for a British gun crew and during the retreat he was badly wounded.  His mates carried him back to Singapore.  They were interred in Changi Jail where a British Surgeon amputated Arthur’s leg under pretty bad conditions.  Arthur counts himself lucky that he wasn’t able to be sent to work on the Burma Railway.  While he was in Changi his first wife and small daughter were killed during an air raid on London.  He told me he kept sane in Changi by remembering the notes of all the church music he had learnt as a choirboy.  He was to return to work in a W.H. Smith’s Book Shop in Edgware where he met and married my cousin Pam.  He is a wonderfully serene, peaceful 87 years old (in 2015) whose company we enjoy when we see him on infrequent visits to England.

Life for me centered round the church, home, youth club and school.  Our home became the venue for small social get-togethers when we played ping-pong, party games and generally had fun.  There were some visits to London, when all the bomb damage was still very visible.  I had left Stanburn School in 1943 and gone to a secondary modern school, Chandos, for 2 years and then went on to Hendon Technical College and did a Domestic Science and Nursing course intended for girls who wanted to be cooks or nurses.  A very interesting educational concept.  Our English teacher at the college introduced us to Shakespeare and took us to London to see Michael Redgrave in Macbeth, my first experience of live theatre.

Xmas 1946 was harsh, the water froze in the pipes; relatives of my father wrote to tell us what a grand time they had at their bach (a small, modest, holiday home.  However, today, wealthy folk’s holiday places are often far from modest! - J. A.) in the Blue Mountains north of Lower Hutt, a city adjacent to Wellington in the south of North Island.  How about Mum taking us to N.Z.?  She talked to us about it and applied.  She was determined we would pay our own way.  We had somewhere to live and were fit and healthy.  We were accepted, my father’s eldest sister insisted on buying No 17 Abercorn Road and cousin Pam with new husband Arthur moved in after their wedding in June 1948.  We left Stanmore on 6th April 1948.  A large group of family and friends saw us off from Liverpool Street Station; there were a few tears.

We sailed on 7th April, 1948 from Liverpool on the M.V. Wairangi; steel decks, saltwater showers, shared cabin, but wonderful food.  I was terribly seasick for about 8 days.  Sailed via Curacao, Panama and Pitcairn and arrived in Auckland on the 10th May.  It was wet, there were children with bare-feet!  We were met by Keith and Rena with whom we were to live and had a Tiki Tour of Auckland.  We spent the night in Devonport, had lunch in the Farmer’s rooftop restaurant.  Next day we drove to Waitara via Ngaruawhaia, we had to pronounce the name before we could have lunch!  Stayed with the Mayor.  Next day:  to Lower Hutt…  Southerly tin-roofs.

By 1949 Mum had taken a flat in Lower Hutt, and was working at Carey's, Sheila was working at National Mutual in Wellington and I was in the 6th Form at Hutt Valley High School (attended 1948-49).  We had learnt to cook with butter and real eggs, were active members of the Lower Hutt Methodist Church, had swum at Petone, been driven over the Rimutaka’s to Eketahuna, I’d been back to Waitara, discovered the joys of Elbe’s Milk Bar, eaten a pie out of a brown paper bag, been to a school ball and had a part time job at Lower Hutt Library.

My late father used to say he’d like to go to N.Z, plant a flowering cherry in the front garden and own a wire-haired terrier.  Well Dad, we came to N.Z, Sheila and I have both planted flowering cherry trees, and one of your grand daughters has had a wire-haired terrier.