by Genevieve Lowles

During the early years of World War II, over 18,000 tons of explosive bombs were dropped on the city of London by the German air force, known as the Luftwaffe.

18,000 tons is a difficult amount to quantify. It caused untold destruction, property damage, and approximately 13,000 civilian deaths.

It’s difficult to imagine now, especially as a resident of London in 2018. The population today certainly has plenty to worry about. However, I often find myself imagining the city during the outbreak of war in 1939.

This is mainly because of a particular resident who lived there at the time: my paternal grandmother, Joyce.

Blitz spirit: the “YOLO” of the second World War

The attacks that were launched at the capital during this time became known as the Blitz. German for “lightning,” the Blitz described the thousands of bombs dropped during night raids, an attempt by the German forces to erode the industrial cities and port-towns that were fueling the allied defense.

The Blitz is a term that most modern-day British school children come across in history lessons, as they learn about gas-masks, air raid sirens, and food rationing. We also attempt to absorb how and why a generation of men were wiped out, fodder for a never-ending conflict.

I remember learning about “the Blitz spirit,” and how the rest of the nation had to pull their socks up and “keep calm and carry on” while the men were away. My Grandma was a part of one of those communities. She would’ve been able to peep out from behind the blackout blinds of her flat to see the “doodlebugs” (an early cruise missile bomb, notorious for the deafening buzzing sound it made) fall from the sky, listening out for the inevitable impact.

She was also one of millions of children who were sent away from their families, their homes, and the only lives they’d ever known for their own protection. My Grandma is an evacuee.

“Doing your bit”

Joyce grew up in South London, in an area called Wandsworth. It is a place that to this day is known for its rather lovely common; a stretch of greenery that still gives leafy refuge to many a Londoner, myself included.

But at that time Wandsworth, like the rest of London, was an incredibly dangerous place. Joyce lived in a flat with her mother, her father, and her older brother Harry. She was a slight, speckle-skinned, auburn-haired little girl who loved music, cats, and her own way of doing things.

Her father Henry, who was too old to enlist for combat, worked in the retort house of a gasworks, heating coal to generate gas and siphoning off the crude oil. It was merciless work, and when he came home from a shift he would often have to head out again to fulfill his duties as a volunteer fire warden. Her father would scour the skyline from nearby rooftops, alerting his crew to incoming air-raids and the tell-tale orange glow of flames.

Joyce’s mother, Florence, had a full-time job at a local brewery. She was one of the generation of women stepping up to fill the void of labor left by their men, who were dying in their millions across the channel. Florence worked as many shifts as she could to help provide for her family and to “do her bit.”

“It’s not mandatory, but it’s highly encouraged”

Joyce and her brother attended All-Farthing Lane school, and Joyce enjoyed her studies. But it was getting harder to be a normal girl in wartime London. She would often have to take detours because whole streets would disappear overnight under a sea of rubble. If the family was out and about and heard the sound of the air-raid sirens, they would rush to the nearest Underground station with hundreds of other people, waiting for the all-clear to come out again.

A few times Joyce arrived at school to find that one of her classmates was absent; their family had been unlucky, their house had been hit in last night’s raid. They weren’t going to be coming to school anymore.

It was under these conditions that the evacuation scheme was launched by the British government in 1939. The scheme urged parents who lived in cities that were being targeted by the German offensive to send their children to live with foster families in the countryside. It was not mandatory, but was highly encouraged.

In 1939, Florence packed a small suitcase for Joyce and Harry, ensured they had their gas-masks and name-tags tied securely around their necks, hugged them goodbye on the platform of King’s Cross train station amidst a sea of families doing the same, and waved them goodbye.

Joyce was eight years old.

“It’s the largest village in England!”

Joyce was spirited away to a village called Cranleigh; the largest in England, or so the locals enthusiastically told my bemused little Grandma. After growing up in the depths of south London, this countryside town and its people seemed inexplicably alien to her.

Joyce wasn’t quite as far from Kansas as she first thought. Cranleigh is less than 35 miles from Wandsworth, and on some nights the villagers would gather around to watch the distant glow of bombs being dropped on the capital. Thoughts of her mother and father back home, living through the chaos were pushed aside; even young children were required to maintain a stiff upper-lip.

The theme of well-meaning but rather clueless villagers runs strongly through my Grandma’s narrative. When trainloads of children arrived with nothing but a change of clothes and a thick cockney accent to their name, the locals were unsure of how to properly care for or protect them.

My Grandma once told me that during her first few nights in Cranleigh, the villagers led them out to sleep under a nearby railway bridge. The underside of the bridge was mainly ditch, and the locals laid thick wooden beams across the muddy trenches for the children to lay across. Although they were far from the city, bombs would sometimes be dropped in the countryside, as the Luftwaffe would void any remaining artillery at random before making the return flight across the sea. Having a group of children sleep rough under a bridge was thought to be the best way to prevent them being caught in an unexpected air-raid. In short, no one had a clue what they were doing.

Eventually it seems, this plan was abandoned and Joyce and her brother were sent to live in actual houses with the people who would be looking after them. They were placed with separate families, next door to one another. Harry lived with a well-to-do widow whose own two children lived away at a boarding school.

Joyce went to live with Mrs. Wilson.

“The cat is named after Joseph Stalin!”

Whenever my sisters and I managed to coax our Grandma into talking about her childhood, I would always be most excited to hear about Mrs. Wilson, the lady my Grandma lived with for several years after being evacuated.

Mrs. Wilson was a very caring, considerate and slightly eccentric person who owned a large farm, which Joyce took to immediately. Born a city-dweller, little Joyce adored the outdoors, the sights (and even smells) of a working farm, and best of all, the population of farm cats loosely employed to keep the rats at bay.

Joyce would watch as Mrs. Wilson laid out little tin plates of boiled chicken giblets for every single cat, each at a particular time of day. Only a select number were allowed in the house, and for these chosen few Mrs. Wilson bestowed names that reflected the key players in world events at the time. She named one shy little tabby Joseph, after the Russian dictator.

Joyce was happy at the farm, the only downside being the unfriendly treatment she experienced from Mrs. Wilson’s daughters. With time comes understanding, and my Grandma realized not long after that these young girls probably felt just as confused by all the changes and uncertainties as she did. But at the time, she could not understand how a woman of such love and integrity would have such rotten children.

Because Mrs. Wilson was indeed full of love. In a time when affection or personal consideration of any kind was not a necessity when it came to raising children, Mrs. Wilson was a bit of a rarity. My great-grandparents worked extremely hard to provide for their children and they loved my Grandma dearly – how else could they have let her go into the unknown just so she could have a better chance of surviving the war? However, with Mrs. Wilson I believe my Grandma was left with no uncertainty about how much she was cherished. I can only imagine how it would feel to experience such shifting tides of muted terror and sunshine-drenched contentment as a little girl.

Mrs. Wilson and my Grandma’s story is complex and became especially so in the years to come.  They remained in touch after the war ended and my Grandma returned to her life and family in London. Although the bombings had long since ceased, Joyce continued to visit the farm at Cranleigh for a few more years. But families are difficult things, and eventually Joyce was separated from Mrs. Wilson permanently.

I know that telling me this story was never easy for her. My Grandma loved Mrs. Wilson very much and we know that that love was returned fiercely.

Mrs. Wilson and my Grandma were not able to stay in each other’s lives, and while millions of hearts were left broken in the aftermath of World War II, this story speaks a little of the quiet traumas that so many people had to live through. “You just got on with things,” as my Grandma would say.

“Is there still that awful junction off Stockwell Road?”

78 years later, I live 20 minutes from where my Grandma grew up in south-west London. It brings me a great deal of pleasure to be able to call her up and tell her how her home-city is faring. She moved away in the 50s, eventually settling in the town I was raised in. I now ride a bicycle to get around London, and recently discovered that I take the same cycle route to work as she did when she was in her twenties. We both had a good gripe about a particularly busy intersection that gives me as much trouble as it did her 70 years ago.

The stories she has told me about her wartime childhood will always stir my imagination. Like all tales passed down from previous generations, they are ultimately unknowable and therefore irresistible. But they are not all there is. Since that time, My Grandma has raised three children, then after my sisters and I were born she helped to raise three more. She has traveled the world, owned several cats, and completed an absurd amount of cross-words.

Joyce is a great deal more than those years spent surviving a world that would not stop turning upside down, but she is the person she is because of them too. I wouldn’t change that for anything.

Photos: courtesy of Grandma Joyce

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Genevieve Lowles is a writer, editor and children’s book illustrator who would probably be very excited to talk to you. She’s currently Writer/Editor at a national healthcare charity in the UK. She also edits Never Say No to Metal, a blog about metal music.

She can often be found halfway up a climbing wall, swimming in the Thames (the bit you’re allowed to swim in), and picking long, ginger hairs off her clothes and furniture.

You can follow her on Instagram, if you fancy.