Chapter Six

     On the 1st September, 1939, German troops entered Poland, just after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with Russia agreeing to a non-intervention policy. Immediately Britain declared war on Germany. At 11.15am that day, Britain heard on their radios that we together with our then colonies had declared war on Germany.

     Prime Minister Chamberlain spoke to the nation.

     ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany’.

That same morning the postman brought the last letter I would receive from Berlin, from my pen-friend, Werner. He wrote “I have been conscripted for military service and am being sent into the Infantry”. I found this most strange as he was a fully qualified dentist.

     I had been writing to him since 1933 together with another German, Hanneliese Nelb from Hamburg. She always wrote in English, and I now realise must have been a member of the Hitler Jugend. She mentioned hating the Jews and how wonderful Hitler was. I at that time had never been aware of any racial differences between people and didn’t realise the significance of her words. Werner on the other hand, writing in Deutsche Schrift, had never mentioned Hitler or politics in any of his letters, all of which I still possess. He wrote of his studies, of his love of music and of his family. It was not until 1980 when I visited his sister Gea in the American sector of Berlin that I learned the difference between these two German pen friends.

     That first day of war is etched vividly in my memory. Barely had the announcement been made on the radio when London heard its first air raid warning, an ugly and ominous wailing sound. My brother turned to me and said ‘We must put up the air raid shelter at once’. We rushed into the garden and started to dig, a vain hope of protection if the enemy aircraft had arrived! We would have to excavate a deep trench and join together heavy curved sheets of corrugated iron to ensure protection. All of this would have taken a long time to accomplish. Fortunately, it was a false alarm, caused, as I later learned, by a trainee RADAR operator making an elementary error and not sensing the echo on his cathode ray tube, to check whether the aircraft response was in front or behind the RADAR installation!

     The rest of the year 1939 in Britain passed in an uneasy calm which continued into the early months of the following year. We called it the Phoney War. We had bombed Germany but only with propaganda leaflets, hoping that this would persuade the population to ask for peace.  In Britain in the early months of war, many children had already been evacuated from the big cities to more remote and less threatened areas. The ‘Phoney War’ caused many mothers to bring their children home again.  Then in April 1940 the blitzkrieg on London began. The capital city underwent constant bombing day and night. Those days and nights of terror and fear seemed endless.

     My boy friend, George Duncan, as a Territorial, had been called up on the first day of war and was soon serving with the British Expeditionary Force on the continent, no letters, and no news. Our forces were involved in heavy fighting. Things were going badly. The Maginot line was breached. Holland and Belgium were swiftly overrun by the Wehrmacht and the Allied forces were in retreat. The army of the Reich was better armed and trained. German troops moved swiftly through France.    

     Our troops were outnumbered and out-armed. In June 1940 the evacuation of our retreating army took place, followed by the miracle of Dunkirk when so many men were saved from the ravaged beaches. I wondered whether my boy friend was one of them. Had he even survived the battles to get to Dunkirk? Everyday I learned of my friends’ brothers or boyfriends being killed or wounded. I dreaded every letter, every phone call.

     By then I was once more working for the Scottish Provident Hearing I had returned safely from my au pair adventure, they contacted me and asked me if I would return to work for them. Many of their young men were being conscripted and as they had already trained me, I could fill their place. Their City offices had been evacuated to Woking in Surrey. Many City firms had either been bombed out or they had shut their offices and moved to safer premises away from London. I was happy to agree. We were installed in a large house at Woking. Nightly we heard the bombs falling on the Capital, many being jettisoned by the returning planes near us. The bark of the ack-ack guns kept us awake. I worried about my parents, still living in the suburbs and still being bombed.

     After the office closed each day, there was very little to do. I decided to volunteer to help in the evenings at the YMCA canteen in the town, which offered food and companionship to the troops stationed in nearby barracks. When we heard the news in June of the Dunkirk evacuation, we were asked to stand by for daytime duties as well.

     From the first day the arriving battle-weary soldiers were brought back from the Dunkirk beaches. Woking station was the initial stop for the evacuated troops to receive any food or drink. The ports were too crowded and the men were moved out as soon as possible. We were asked to man the feeding stations on the platforms as train after train arrived, full of hungry and tired soldiers. My boss was only too happy to let me help. It was heart rending to see these dispirited men; some wounded, sometimes mortally, their uniforms filthy and torn. They could barely drag themselves out of the carriages for refreshments. Yet after a cup of tea and a “wad”, they still managed a smile and a thank you. One train would leave, only for another one to take its place. This seemed to go on for day after day.

     I wondered where my boy friend was, whether he too had escaped. I’d received no news from him for weeks.  So many of my friends had lost their brothers, their fiancés or their husbands: I feared the worst.

     On the third day, an amazing coincidence occurred. From one of the carriages there emerged a French pilot who came straight up to me and hugged me. It was Rene Cadier, the French student I had met five years before when he had come to Britain for a holiday and stayed with my music teacher. He looked very different, tired, and grey-faced but he had recognised me. Of all the lucky chances to think he came to the very platform I was working on! I gave him a special welcome. After half an hour, he was back on the train again and away. We said au revoir and hoped we would meet again some day.

     Meanwhile for many weeks, the bombing of London had continued unendingly, fire bombs by day to show the way for the night-time raiders. Hundreds of people were left homeless, many living permanently on the platforms of the tube stations, sleeping in the metal bunks provided, leaving little room for the passengers,. I will never forget the little “old man” faces of children who never left the Underground for days on end. This was the courageous London I will always remember. As I travelled home at weekends, these were the scenes I will never forget: everywhere devastation, shattered homes with personal belongings lying neglected in the streets, factories burned out, emergency services overstretched, London burning but Londoners who never gave up. As I looked up through the carriage window on my occasional journey home, I could see land mines, entangled on the telephone wires, ready to cause havoc if they fell.

     The late summer of 1940, Fighter Command’s young Spitfire and Hurricane pilots began to turn the tide. With their skills and daring they were causing unsustainable losses to the Luftwaffe and I together with the rest of the population of the Home Counties cheered every time we saw a bomber in flames, crashing to earth.  I did not realise then the significance of RADAR nor how this was what had helped us survive. Little did I know how, in the near future, I would become part of that fantastic organisation.

Wartime

Bridging the Centuries 

By Eileen Younghusband