Written by my aunt Joan Punter ( nee Toller )whilst attending Miss Winnie Chandler's infant school, Richmond Road Cambridge. c.1940's
Do you remember a red roofed school
A handful of shell for your sums?
They gave you a Mickey Mouse gas mask
And a pack of American gum.
Do you recall when your dad was on leave,
Dancing around like Astair?
They dressed you up like Shirly Temple
With a big ribbon bow in your hair.
At night sleeping under the table
While bombers droned over your heads,
And granny said "Won't it be lovely,
when we can sleep safe in our beds",
One day they said " The War's over!"
Grannie sang of the Alley and 'Sal'.
When Vera sang 'White Cliffs of Dover'
And the bells rang 'for me and my gal'.
Joan Toller
This is my aunts story ( Joan Punter, nee Toller )- as she wrote it- March 2005.
I was born in 1940 so war was a normal state of affairs for me and my sister. The family ( grannie, aunts, uncles and cousin ) all lived in Oxford Road Cambridge. My father was away fighting the war in France, in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Uncle Bill was in the Fire Service and Uncle George was in the R.A.F. so men in uniform was normal. Uncle Russ and Uncle Arthur worked away some of the time in munitions, so ours was a world of women.
We grew our own veg and salad, kept the allotment going to help Bill, with chickens and pigs to feed. We made our own clothes often and baked cakes and pies.
Nights were spent sleeping under the air-raid metal ) table, surrounded by wire mesh on a red cross blanket. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden, which was cosy but cold and damp. e also went in the cubord under the stairs when the siren went, and took it in turns to sit on the gas meter! Luckily for us the bombers which came over Cambridge usually headed up north to bomb our factories which made munitions, but I remember the sickening siren sound, followed by bombs exploding. My daddy was driving these baddies away, and he later told us how he came back from Dunkirk with bombs dropping all around and near their boat. He kept saying " Please God get me home to my wife and children."
I was five when it ended, and all I remember then was red, white and blue everywhere, street parties, and best of all a new baby brother! ( Sadly I had friends whose daddy never came home as ours did.)
Joan ( nee Toller )
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