Vol 3. Chapter 2 - Bombshell

My mother started her apprenticeship as a tailor at the age of 13 and went on to have a lifelong obsession for making her own clothes. She always had to be at the forefront of fashion. Till the day she died she fussed over what she was going to wear and had no qualms about giving unsolicited fashion advice to others.  By her own admission she both looked like and dressed like Wallace Simpson, who by 1937 had become The Duchess of Windsor.   My mother’s claim to fame is that whilst working at Universal Tailors, she made a suit for Stanley Baldwin, a former UK Prime Minister.  Unfortunately, the things she made me as I was growing up would also have suited Stanley Baldwin.

On Friday 8^th October 1940 a German High Explosive bomb fell on Ponton Road. Another fell on Saturday 9^th. Still another fell a few days later. The London Blitz had started.  20 Ponton Road was badly damaged and the family was forced to seek refuge at 34 Wyvil Road.

Situated in Wyvil Road was a public air raid shelter. Local residents had made this as homely as possible, even moving a piano into the shelter for morale boosting singsongs and entertainment as the bombshells exploded around them.

The nightly Nazi bombardment of London continued until 21^st May 1941.  It was during one of these night air raids that my mother first set her eyes upon a young man who was playing a piano in the shelter.

For her it was love at first sight. She became completely besotted by the good looking 19 year old; 5ft 10 1/8 inches, hazel eyes and dark brown hair. Not even his slight pigeon chest put her off.  Mum, by her own admission, took the initiative. It seems he was a reluctant boyfriend. She did all the chasing.

His first invitation to meet her family was not a success and my Nan forbade my mother ever to bring to the house again. What he took as wit, others took as sarcasm. My grandmother would never allow anyone to say those things about her precious bread puddings!

The courtship continued clandestinely, until one day my grandmother caught them getting off a tram together. She was not happy.

On the 14^th February 1942 he sent a Valentine’s Card.  The foolish young man simply addressed the card to “Miss Walters, 34 Wyvil Road”. The idiot! Didn’t he know that there were TWO Miss Walters at that address!  My Auntie Eileen got there first and opened the card. My mother was furious! An almighty row broke out in which my mother accused her sister of trying to steal her boyfriend. This fit of jealousy was a symptom of something much deeper that would surface many times in my mother’s life.

On the 14^th July 1942, the young man was conscripted into the army and was sent to Scotland for basic training before being set off to North Africa.  Jealousy arose again and my mother wrote to him accusing him of having a Scottish girlfriend.

Within weeks my mother was also conscripted. She joined the ATS, the woman’s branch of the British Army. It took her a while to adjust to army life and vocabulary.  On one occasion an officer instructed her to go a fetch his “Sam Brown”, the army nickname for an officer’s belt that went around the waist and across the chest.  Mum spent the next few hours walking around the camp asking people if they knew a Sam Brown and where he was. The Officer concerned gave her a right barracking.

Mum trained to be part of the Anti-Aircraft gun team. Operating the AKAK guns, her role in the team was to train the sights on the enemy plane. This needed great precision. The search lights would shine across the sky when the air raid siren was on. There were loads of barrage balloons to keep the planes from flying low. The AKAK crew needed to be able to identify Germans planes by their shape and sound.

In training, pilots would tow a target across the sky. On one occasion my over-enthusiastic mother trained the sights on the RAF plane instead of the target following it. Fortunately an officer noticed the mistake and prevented my mother shooting down one of ours and doing the Luftwaffe’s job for them. As one Australian pilot is reported to have shouted over his wirelessin a similar situation, “STOP, I’m towing the bloody thing not pushing it!”

Still, my mother couldn’t have done too badly, because she was eventually promoted to Lance Corporal.

Then in 1943, the love of her life dropped a bomb shell. He dumped her. He wrote to her saying he didn't want to see her again.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Three weeks later she married a complete stranger whom she’d met at a Dance Hall.