Interview with Laura Hickey

PHickeyL2101.jpg

Title

Interview with Laura Hickey

Description

Laura Hickey was living in Tottenham at the outbreak of war and was evacuated to Suffolk. Her brother, Charles Henry Clarke joined the RAF and was shot down, becoming a prisoner of war and enduring the Long March. She tells of her times as an evacuee, school and working as a young woman in London. Laura has many stories about herself, her brother’s success, and their time after the war, from her being Miss Tottenham, dances and trips to post-war Europe with her friend.

Creator

Date

2021-10-18

Temporal Coverage

Language

Type

Format

01:18:10 Audio Recording

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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Contributor

Identifier

AHickeyL211018, PHickeyL2101

Transcription

DE: So this is an interview with Laura Hickey, nee Clark for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s 18th of October 2021 and we are in Riseholme. Possibly also present are Amanda Hickey and Ben Phillips. I shall put that there. So, could you tell me a little bit about your early life and where you grew up.
LH: Well, I was -
AH: Can I ask you, do you think we’re better not being in here?
DE: It’s entirely up to you.
LH: I’m okay with that.
AH: Was she chatting better?
DE: I’d just done an introduction and asked a question then you walked in! [Laugh]
AH: Oh all right. We’ll see how it goes and then.
LH: Well I was born in the City of London, the City of London Hospital, on City Road I believe. And very early years had lived in that area, and my parents were both working people and they had a chance to move to Tottenham which was like a new green area, as Welwyn Garden City became later, [dog barking] so it was that sort of thing. Anyway, living in, moving to Tottenham, that changed a lot of things. I was six years old I think, probably then, yeah, and everything was fine as, you know, all kids, we just played, weren’t concerned with anything until everybody sat around the radio and Winston Churchill said, “I have to tell you,” and everybody knows that line: “we are at war with Germany.” Well then of course Charles would have been – in 28 he was born – so he’d have been twenty would he, in 39? No, no, still a young lad.
DE: We’ll do the maths later on.
LH: Yeah. But he belonged, he was a joiner, and we were all a bit like that. I was in the Girl’s Training Corps, he was in, and the Red Cross. He became an ATC and Army Cadet and of course dad had had a military career earlier. [Whisper] Where are we now? [/whisper]
DE: You’re in Tottenham and war’s being declared.
LH: Yes.
DE: So what did that feel like?
LH: Well it concerned me more that we were going to be evacuated because it was considered a good idea to get children out of London. So we all had to go to, oh no, first, earlier, I had an aunt in Canada and they said we should go to her. But when we were on the train, to Liverpool I think, and my mum’s sister was with her, and saying how could you let them go to Canada, the children, which was my younger brother, he came between Charles and I, and she changed her mind, so we came back again, consequently we were evacuated, to be evacuated and once again I think we were all sent to Liverpool Street to get on a train to safer territory. Which was a joke because we were evacuated to Eriswell, which was a little village close to Lakenheath and surrounded by aerodromes, all being bombed and my mother was very nervous, so occasionally she would come and take us back to London and then she would go back to Suffolk. And we were, it was all very comfortable really. We were, the people we stayed with, we were evacuated to, were extremely nice people.
AH: You weren’t with Dennis though.
LH: Oh no, I wasn’t with Dennis then. What happened? Oh we were, on the train from Liverpool we were allowed out at a certain point, for twenty minutes, well I was the only, it was a boy’s school and we were attached to the boy’s school, but when I got out, I was chatting to another girl, oh, another girl! And so when I got back on, the train, a bit naughty really, I got back in with her so went to a completely different village. My brother went to one and I went to the other, but it was all, all okay. Fine. So my first real thought about the war was being evacuated. But one of thousands.
DE: What was that like, moving from the middle of London to a village in East Anglia?
LH: Well we were never in the middle of London. Tottenham was quite spacious, you know, it was, the earlier version of other new city, new towns. But, you know, it was okay. Except when my mother came to visit, we were having air raids because of all the aerodromes around, one of which I believe was a dummy for a while, which they blew up, the Germans blew out of existence. But the war years were happy years really.
DE: Did you stay there throughout the war then?
LH: We stayed there, I would come home to London and then I’d go back, and my mother would come down but I stayed there more or less throughout the war, yes.
AH: Didn’t you go back to the undergrounds, didn’t you have to sometimes?
LH: Oh yes, from where mum lived in Tottenham of course, we used to, she was very nervous and she would go, we had a concrete shelter in the garden, but she would go anywhere to be you know, underground or wherever, and at that time people used to sleep on the underground stations, like Wood Green which was our nearest station and so we spent many a night on the platform, sleeping there, you’d carry whatever you needed. Which was the safest, a very safe place to be. Actually you know, there was an occasion where one of the underground stations was bombed direct: obviously everybody was killed. So it wasn’t all honey, being down there. [Laugh]
AH: Was it good fun though?
LH: Sorry?
AH: Was it good fun?
LH: Yeah, it was fine, fine. People used to sing, play musical instruments. But yeah, it was fine.
DE: So your mother was worried but you saw it as a bit of an adventure, excitement.
LH: You noticed the blackout of course because you might be in Wood Green and everything was black, the trolley buses and everything, and I can remember an occasion when my brother was, who had already, he was, he immediately joined up as a cadet he would, I can remember him coming to Wood Green, and we were go, we lived in Tottenham and he said not to worry, we’ll follow the tram lines. And we did, we walked along with, by the tram lines from Wood Green to Tottenham. Not a good idea, but a brilliant idea in some ways, jogging along the tram lines. It was lovely to have him around, at that time. But then he was shot down, over Schweinfurt I think.
DE: Before we talk, before we talk a bit about that, how did it feel, what did you feel like that he volunteered and was going to become aircrew?
LH: Thrilled for him because it was what he wanted. If ever earlier on, if ever he was missing, he’d be somewhere, I think it was Northolt, was an aerodrome, he’d be somewhere like that, he’d disappear, and he was always keen on, you know, aerodromes and things.
AH: When you say missing, do you mean like if he just got lost? Not like he’d gone off for the day.
LH: He was missing from home.
AH: Oh right, yeah.
LH: You know, you’d say, mum would say do you know where he is, well we’ll find him wherever there’s an aeroplane. I think he’d had several flights, you know, paid for, and various places. But once he was aircrew, that’s a different ball game because they used to, there used to be someone on the radio announcing if they’d located somebody that was missing because you just got a telegram saying we’re sorry to inform you that your son did not return from a flight so and so, but there was a radio programme where different people rang up and heard about other people and perhaps they already had someone in a prison camp and it was unbelievable the amount of, amount of thought people put in to letting other people know that somebody had been found and you know, because you, the only thing you knew was that they were missing. Devastating because you haven’t got a clue, have you?
DE: No. So I suppose, did your mother receive the telegram then?
LH: Yes, I regret to inform you that he’s not returned from, somewhere, you know, and that was a very worrying time of course, but the information seemed to filter through in various ways. I had a cousin who was extremely busy with the Red Cross: Laura Kramer and she lived in Streatham and she seemed to be able to find out lots of things that you couldn’t, which was good. And then of course he was a POW at, oh we all know the camp but I can’t remember.
DE: Stalag Luft 3, the one where the Great Escape was.
LH: Yes. And I believe he arrived whilst it was being, you may know more about this than me, having spoken to him, while it was being engineered, you know, the underground track and so on. So he wasn’t involved in the escape as such, only in the way you had to gather everything together to prepare them to do that. So, you know, obviously worrying time, that.
DE: What was it like for you when, first of all you heard that he was missing and then you heard news that he might be a prisoner of war. What was it like when you heard that he definitely was okay and he was being held as a POW?
LH: Well, it was a mixed blessing, as you can imagine. Sad, but, I, we used to write, you were allowed to do so many letters and I wrote regularly, cause I was probably thirteen and you know, more independent, thirteen.
DE: Were you in London or were you in?
LH: I was in London partly and then in Suffolk.
DE: Okay.
LH: But again it was, that was all strange; it seemed strange to me because my mother used to come down from London and say why do they bomb around here! Well of course, what better place for it!
DE: Than where the airfields were, yeah. So what sort of things did you write to him about, what did you put in your letters?
LH Just tell him, mostly about the family things, in people that I lived with, people that my brother lived with. He was, my thought, when I changed, when I got into a different carriage, he was twenty miles away on a farm somewhere, but you know, but my mother did, and father, they both went down. It was a, he was a gamekeeper that he was living with and they used to go out and shoot things and what have you. Anyway they soon had him moved to the same village as me.
AH: So did you write things like that to Charlie then? To tell him.
LH: Oh I expect so, I don’t know if he got our letters, you couldn’t possibly know, but event, after some time we had letters back from him. The short air mail letter thing that you fold up.
DE: Yes, I’ve seen some.
AH: I’ve got.
LH: I did keep them for years, I know.
DE: What sort of things did he write about in his letters?
LH: Not a lot of information really, just we played football against somebody else, you know, they made teams in the prisoners, in the camp. But you heard stories afterwards about some people, the person that couldn’t take it, and just ran at the wire. You know, they couldn’t stomach being a prisoner, there was never a length of time for you, was it, you can imagine, is that all an unknown quantity. But he survived. That would have been, special time. I know, my dad had a police truncheon, leather covered, that he kept in the house. And I believe it came from a police station in Shoreditch and Charles used to come home ad hoc and I remember him saying, it’s a wonder he didn’t get himself killed cause he’d come in in the night and my dad would be – [laughter]
DE: Oh, you mean. Thinking it was, thinking your brother was a burglar, I see!
LH: He was lucky he wasn’t killed.
DE: I think it was lucky he wasn’t killed quite often!
LH: Quite often, yes.
AH: So when, did you know he was coming home or not?
LH: No, no, we didn’t know he was coming home. He just walked in as if he’d been out for the day, you know. You can imagine, that was brilliant. And I don’t know how he got home. I think, was the war over?
DE: The war in Europe was, and I don’t know if it happened to him, but the RAF flew lots of prisoners of war back. You could get twenty prisoners sitting along the inside the Lancaster and they flew back. A lot of them.
AH: He had to march though, didn’t he.
DE: Yes, as the Russians were advancing the Germans evacuated the camps. It was just out into the snow carrying whatever you can.
LH: They wanted to move them.
DE: Did he tell you about that?
LH: Yes, briefly, but it got so that, on the march, I think it was pretty much every man for himself really; it had to be, didn’t it.
AH: What did he have? Didn’t he have something wrong with his feet, and his mouth? Was he eating?
LH: Oh, he had trench mouth, and his feet of course were bad. [Pause] Yes. But he survived.
AH: If you’re thinking things in your head, say them out loud because we don’t know what you’re thinking.
LH: I thought, you’d have to be pretty brave I think, for a start to bale out of an aircraft, wouldn’t you.
DE: I think so, but you know, you don’t have a lot of choice if it’s if it’s been hit. You have to.
LH: That’s right.
AH: Did he tell you about that, cause I don’t know about that.
LH: Well they were shot down over Schweinfurt, I know that, no he didn’t talk about that. But I think three of the crew survived, I did meet them, later on. [Sigh] He didn’t talk a lot about being a POW.
DE: Did he talk much about what it was like when he was on the squadron and when he was on operations?
LH: Not really no, he didn’t talk a lot about it. I bet he had a lot to say, but he didn’t talk a lot about it.
DE: So when he was at home on leave or after the war when he came home, what did you and him, what did you and he talk about?
LH: We were, both intent on enjoying ourselves and we used to go dancing, in the Mecca Ballrooms and I’ve got a picture that came from a newspaper of he and I dancing.
AH: I think I’ve got a copy of it in there.
LH: Oh, modern technology.
AH: They interviewed you, didn’t they and said and you’d promised, it said ex prisoner of war; Miss Tottenham, sister, sister and there’s a picture of you and him dancing, promises.
LH: You know, fifteen I think I was, and I worked at the Eastern Gas Board and the girls said to me, oh come on, get up, you know, there’s a beauty competition and I won it! I suppose what she’s talking about [laugh]
DE: Oh wow!
LH: There’s a picture in the paper of me dancing with him I think.
AH: With him and it says Ex prisoner of War’s sister promises to kiss four hundred servicemen! [Laughter] Or something like that. I thought I’d got it actually.
DE; Well there’s a story I think you need to tell us! [Laughter]
AH: Tell Dan about the, what you used to do with the girls when you used to meet them, arrange to meet them to go to the balls.
LH: Well at the Gas Company, which is in Wood Green, it’s now the Magistrates Court, it’s a beautiful building, Woodhall House, and we, our offices were in various places there and we used to organise dances, at the social club, and somebody had to phone the London Service Clubs, and that was me; that was my job. To phone them, and invite the people, servicemen, to come to our dances, which were very good. We had, not a bad band, and there wasn’t a lot going on anywhere else. But we would say, “We’ll meet you at Wood Green and someone will take you.” And that’s what we did. We met them.
AH: You didn’t always meet them.
LH: We didn’t always meet them. If you had two, oh I can’t say that, two great hulking suntanned people [laughter].
AH: I don’t know what that means.
LH: Don’t bother, which wasn’t very nice.
AH: Oh dear. Sorry.
DE: That’s okay. So what sort of music did they play? What dances did you do?
LH: Really mostly you know, foxtrots and waltzes and quickstep. No jiving, or anything like that.
DE: There wasn’t any of that, okay.
LH: Just before that I think we were.
AH: Here we go, it says: POW had a grand time at civic reception: Dreams Come True. Four hundred prisoners of war and their friends attended the civic reception given by the Mayor of Tottenham, President of the local Prisoners of War Relatives Association at the Tottenham Municipal Hall on Thursday night. For many of the many of the men it was a night of dreams come true, they were dancing with wives or sweethearts in dear old Tottenham. No one could watch the faces of the dancers and remain unmoved. In prison camps over many weary months some of them had longed, hoped and prayed for such a night as this. Yeah, he might, that’s quite interesting.
DE: Might try and find that newspaper. That sounds like a fantastic party, that.
LH: Yes. Well it had to be. Everybody was having parties. Either for someone coming home or someone being –
AH: There’s another one as well.
DE: Oh wow.
LH: Someone being, leaving, you know retired from the services. But there were parties everywhere. Party, party, party. And what, you know, why not.
AH: So did you go out with him a lot then after that?
LH: Charlie? Quite a bit, we’d go out together, dancing, but then he met a young woman in Southend and we didn’t see so much of him once they get, got a girlfriend, and that was it.
DE: What about you? Did you have any boyfriends?
LH: Yeah, naturally! [Laughter] But nobody, there was nobody really special. Just used to, because I was involved with the Gas Club social thing and I was, we were always busy organising our own stuff.
AH: Where is it? We’ve got a book. You’ve got your book of notes, maybe that might help you. Where did you put it?
DE: There’s, there’s those two things.
AH: No, there’s a whole bag.
DE: So how, did you stay working for the gas company for long?
LH: Oh, I worked for them a long, long time, yeah, from oh I think, oh I know I was, we’d be walking home from work at lunchtime, after lunch, at four o’clock home, and there’d be, that when the doodlebugs were coming over.
DE: Yes.
LH You’d be walking along and you’d say oh the engine’s stopped. But they seemed to go in a half circle before they actually landed so it was a case of you were better if you were either immediately below it or could think about where it was going, you know. We were walking home many times, when we’d have to redirect ourselves, out of danger.
DE: How did it feel when you heard them?
LH: Well, you’d be frightened, cause you knew what was, what damage they could do because there’re sorts of, wherever you went there’d be craters and that. Craters of bombs and rockets and what have you. I never really panicked about it, I don’t think. I think my mum did enough panicking on her own for everybody. She couldn’t understand why they were bombing us in Suffolk. [Pause]
DE: I was just letting you have a think to see if there were any other memories that came up.
LH: Any special memories.
DE: Yes.
LH: An odd thing really. Where I, the people I lived with in Suffolk, we had a well which was a great novelty to me, I’d never seen anything like that before. And we grew all our own vegetables and fruit and everything, and he was the local barber and he used to, and in the shed he’d have, all the men came to him to get their hair cut. I think it was about tuppence they paid. Amazing. I remember him because I wasn’t used to that, that was something different. But the food was good. We were never short of food. As you wouldn’t be.
DE: So the food was better in Suffolk than it was in London.
LH: Oh yeah. Yes, we never, certainly never went short of food. And after that they built the aerodrome, the American aerodrome at Lakenheath and then of course everything was available. I remember the, some American guys giving us some tins of pineapple, which were very strange. It was an eventful life I think.
DE: What did you think about the Americans?
LH: Well my host, she worked for them. So you know, she was in her late thirties I think. Yes. She was quite smart, savvy, you know. So we never really went short of anything.
DE: So he was, amongst other things he cut people’s hair and she worked for the Americans.
LH: Yes.
DE: Do you know what she did?
LH: No.
AH: You’ve written here mum, shall I read this out to you.? She’s made some notes here.
DE: Well.
AH: Betty and I would collect milk cans in the evening.
LH: Yes, because all the milk had to be collected from the farm, the local farm and Lock was name down there, the farmer’s. And so we, every house had a can, like little half pint or pint or whatever, and we used to go to the farm in the morning and get the milk, but in the evening we’d go round and pick up all the cans and they’d have the requests for what they wanted and the money in the lid. You collect all the cans, yeah, and go and get the milk in the morning and then deliver it. I think we got paid about a sixpence a week.
AH: This says to be shared equally before school?
LH: Oh yes, we’d pool the money.
AH: Then you’d have a thirteen mile journey to school.
LH: I did, because I took my eleven plus there.
DE: Right.
LH: In the, locally. And I think, there were only two of us that got through, one boy and me.
AH: To go to the grammar school.
LH: To go to the grammar school. Now I didn’t want to go, I wanted to go where all the other kids were, that I knew and you know, been mixing with, but I went, and he went, and it was a thirteen mile journey.
DE: So how did you get there?
LH: By coach.
DE: Right.
LH: You used to have to be at a certain point. Which happens nowadays, doesn’t it. I know I’ve two grandsons who have to catch a coach very [emphasis] early in the morning. Yeah.
AH: It says here mum you ran away to Cambridge once.
LH: Oh, when I was at Eriswell, which was the village, and their daughter was the same age as me, there was only four months between us, which was a bit awkward. It was awkward when I passed the grammar school, and you know, that.
DE: Oh, and she didn’t, she went to the other school.
LH: That was awkward. So I wasn’t happy about it – more for her than for me. But while I was at Eriswell, I had an auntie that had, was living in Cambridge. She’d gone away because of the bombing in London. And I decided, oh she and I were having a tiff one day, while cycling to get some shopping: the girl that I lived with, four months between, and I think I had I the money, or she had the money [cough] but whatever, but we decided, I decided I wasn’t going to go to Mildenhall think it was, I was going home, back. So the money was tossed in a purse between us in our baskets on the bikes and, is that when I ran away?
AH: Yes, says you ran away to Cambridge and something about Charlie.
LH: Oh, cause I knew my auntie was there, that’s right. It must have been a Saturday I think. I cycled all the way to Cambridge from Eriswell and he came, he cycled down there the next day.
AH: Charlie.
LH: From London.
DE: Oh wow!
LH: To take me back again. [Laugh]
DE: Crikey!
LH: I was thrilled. And he did. And then he went back afterwards. I think he might have stayed overnight and went back. Yeah.
AH: It says he cycled down from London to collect me the next day and took me, both cycling now back to Eriswell to Mrs Lock and then back to work. Any spare time and holidays was spent on field jobs, paid for, weeding kale.
LH: Oh, we had to weed kale.
DE: Right. So they worked you hard then!
LH: Yeah. I think we got thruppence a day, something like that.
AH: Says school was a mess and so you attended Charles’ old school, Down Lane, and then it says eventually decided I could apply to leave and work after brief spell at Tottenham High. Met Beryl and became good friends and then started working at the Eastern Gas Board.
LH: And stayed there for years.
DE: Would it be possible perhaps to, at a later date, to take a photocopy of that or something?
AH: Yes. Fine, yeah.
DE: Brilliant. Thank you.
AH: There’s quite a bit here.
DE: I can see!
AH: I have got more stuff about different things have been over the years, have been written down and things like that.
LH: They asked me to write things and I know I should.
AH: It used to roll off, but it’s -
LH: Yes. And I think it would have been very good if, had I been, applied myself to it. It would have been much more useful, wouldn’t it, but you don’t. You think you’ve got all the time in the world.
DE: Well I’m enjoying talking to you and listening to the stories.
AH: Tell us about the rationing. That’s quite interesting.
LH: What?
AH: About the rationing, do you remember about the rationing and the ration books. After the war.
LH: Oh rationing, was you know, a real bug, wasn’t it! Because when I got a Saturday job in the butchers, butchers! And they put me in a cashier’s -
AH: Kiosk.
LH: Kiosk thing and the people used to have to come to me and the butcher himself would write on the paper: so many coupons or whatever he was charging, and you’d say they had their, to cut the coupons out, and everything you had to keep a detail of. You can imagine, can’t you. Yeah. Rationing I think was brilliant, really, overall, but it was a major -
AH: I didn’t realise it went on till the fifties.
DE: 53 I think.
LH: You what?
AH: I didn’t realise it went on till the fifties.
LH: Well, that’s true.
DE: So what you do after the war?
LH: Well I went to the gas company.
AH: Didn’t you work in London as well, in Helena Rubenstein.
LH: Oh yeah, I worked for them. I had the chance to work for Power Samas, and I don’t suppose you know what that is, but they’re accounting machines.
DE: Right.
LH: I had the chance to go to Power Samas in Holborn, so I did and within that accounting machine area, I worked for J Arthur Rank, Helena Rubenstein, what’s the chain of, one of the chains of clothes, still going I think, I worked for them as well. So I worked mostly around Mortimer Street, Portland Road, one place was the, Helena Rubenstein was in Mayfair, that was good, but because you were a Power Samas worker, you could change your job whenever you like. You’d pick up the evening paper and you’d see half a dozen jobs, in various places. So we, I had a friend at the time. Who, I worked with her first at the gas company, Doreen, and we would say, oh they’re paying more at so-and-so and we’d go [chuckle], no loyalty, paying so much more an hour.
AH: What about your modelling career, what about that?
LH: That came to an early stop.
AH: Early finish.
LH: Early finish, yeah.
AH: She won a place in a modelling school, a very famous modelling school but her mother wouldn’t let her go.
LH: My mum wouldn’t let me go, she said all models became tarts. [Laughter] But I did a place at Lucy Clayton. That came up quickly didn’t it. Ah dear. [cough]
AH: Can you remember more about Charlie, mum? Can you remember more about things that you know, you might have done with him or, cause you’ve told me so many stories and sort of not, they’re not coming.
LH: [Cough] Yeah, we did quite a lot of stuff together. We used to, you’d seek out the old relatives. I haven’t seen that. Is she still alive you’d say and we’d have to go and visit them. But one of them, my cousin, she, I said that was, she did quite well with the Red Cross but she was also, worked in the, for the Admiralty. She was very clever lady.
AH: I thought she worked with Winston Churchill?
LH: She did.
DE: She may have, might have done, if she was at the Admiralty.
AH: Cause you always told me about how she used to, she was in a room somewhere, with him, and something to do with the war.
LH: Oh, there was a big meeting, somewhere, that she was at. That’s gone.
AH: Was it abroad, or?
LH: I think it was a meeting that was held abroad.
AH: See I did a bit of research and the only thing I came up with was Yalta.
DE: Right. Well that is fairly abroad.
LH: The what?
DE: Well they would have had lots of other meetings with other people I would say.
AH: But I would love to find some history on her, Laura Kramer. Don’t know how to do that really.
LH: Laura.
AH: Yeah. That’s who you’re named after, isn’t it?
LH: Yes. Well, yes.
AH: She’s your cousin.
LH: I’ve got a death certificate in my name. Laura Bertha Clark. I think I was aged sixty five. It’s a black memorial thing.
AH: Yeah, why have you got that?
LH: I don’t know, probably amongst my dad’s papers. And I thought ah, hang on to it cause it had my name on it.
AH: And your dad was, he was in the war, he was in the first world war, has she told you that?
DE: Yeah. But I know that from listening to Charlie’s interviews.
AH: Okay, yeah. Then he was Military Police as well. But he had shell shock. Was it shell shock?
LH Oh no, that was another, that was another uncle.
AH: No, your dad.
LH: Oh my dad, no, he didn’t have shell shock.
DE: What did your dad think about Charlie joining the Air Force?
LH: Well we knew it was inevitable because he’d been an ATC nut, you know, but he was also an Army Cadet. We knew that he would you know, join the Air Force.
DE: So he was, he became a bomb aimer, didn’t he. Did he actually want to be a pilot?
LH: He wanted to be a pilot and he got mumps at the time that he was supposed to have his assessment, I suppose. Had mumps and was heartbroken. Yeah.
AH: Was that why he couldn’t be a pilot?
LH: Well, he failed because he, whilst he had mumps, you know, if you weren’t fit when you took the important bit of the tests you’re bound to fail aren’t you. Anyway.
AH: So the bomb aimer, they were the ones in the, weren’t they in the back of the plane?
DE: Front.
AH: Front. Of yeah, of course it was!
DE: Laying down looking out the little -
LH: Not much room in the front there.
DE: There’s not a lot of room in them at all, no.
LH: I’ve seen one recently. Not that recently, but [Cough] you know, there’s no room in them.
AH: She coughs like that all the time by the way.
DE: I’m not, no worries. So your brother, he stayed on the Air Force and he did quite well, didn’t he.
LH: He did do well. Yeah, he did do well. He ended up as what?
DE: Air Commodore I think.
LH: Air Commodore.
DE: Yeah. And he was awarded an OBE 2007 I think.
LH: OBE. He was a nice man, a nice bloke, very popular on the stations. I went to a station once where apparently he’d jumped into the swimming pool fully clothed and of course that went down really well. [Chuckles] An RAF station that was. Not a police station! He was a nice man.
DE: Yeah, and he was the chair of the Bomber Command Association and the Prisoners of War Association and then he did a lot of work towards getting the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park in London, didn’t he.
LH Yes, and the guy on the end looks bit like him.
DE: Oh, do you think?
LH: So I’m told.
DE: Did he talk to you about his work with the Associations and the Memorial?
LH: No.
AH: Yes he did, he used to ring you up all the time and talk to you.
LH: Yeah, but I don’t, can’t say what he talked about. Can’t remember.
AH: He was always going, every time you spoke to him he was always off somewhere, and doing something, here and getting the train to Oxford or back and things, or, he was always travelling around.
AH: Yes he was, and the last time -
AH: And at an older age as well.
LH: Well, not so long ago he came to see me and, you probably remember, he was staying at the Royal Bath, and I remembered he was staying there and I remember he was going to a funeral, somewhere at, north of where we live, in Bournemouth, but -
AH: Salisbury, Wimborne?
LH No, still in Bournemouth, but -
A: Ah, okay.
LH: North part of Bournemouth.
AH: Don’t know.
LH: And I thought well if he’s staying at the Royal Bath and he’s got to get up there, it’ll be a long way, I’ll drive down and see if he wants me to take him there, cause I knew exactly where the church was. So I did. I went down to the Royal Bath and he said, I drove in the front and he was on the steps and that, oh hello, I’d got the Lexus, get in, where do you want to go? A taxi service!
AH: She was eighty something!
LH: So he said I’m going to this funeral at, oh, you head straight out of Bournemouth, Alma Road and up that way somewhere, I can’t.
AH: Talbot Woods.
LH: Yes. So I took him up there, dropped him to the funeral, he was very pleased because in a place like Bournemouth getting from A to X Y Z, is always, if you don’t know where you are, well he’d had to got a taxi I guess. In fact that’s what he was doing and I said to him, do you want a lift and he said yes, and he said I was just going to order a taxi. I said well you’ve got your own here. So I took him up there, dropped him off and blow me, the road was, one of those roads across the top, and they were all barricaded up with roadworks. But he did appreciate it. [Pause] Yes. He had a good life though, didn’t he.
DE: He did, yeah, very busy, definitely. What about you? How’s your life been?
LH: Mine’s busy, got two sons and two daughters. One of them’s in ‘Marbellya’
AH: Marbella.
LH: Marbella, yeah. She’s out there languishing. Oh dear, but she said she would be didn’t she, when she retired. But she’s not retired! [Laughter]
AH: Oh dear.
LH: Well she’s sixty three.
AH: Yes, so she’s got twin boys. I’ve got an older sister and older twin brothers and then I came along sort of fourteen years later.
DE: Right.
AH: So she had me at forty one, which is quite late really.
DE: And what brings you to Lincolnshire today?
LH: Amanda and Ben. Literally, driving. It’s a long way isn’t it.
DE: It’s a fair old way from Bournemouth.
AH: We came up yesterday. What did we come up for yesterday?
LH: Tell me.
AH: Where did we go yesterday?
LH We went to a memorial of some sort yesterday, didn’t we?
DE: Yes.
LH: In Lincoln. Was an air, at Bomber Command.
AH: Yeah, that’s it.
DE: For? That’s fine. What do you think of the way the war’s been remembered and Bomber Command’s been remembered?
LH: I think it’s good, that it is [emphasised] being remembered, definitely, but I can’t remember yesterday! [Laugh]
AH: Yeah, you can remember things about the war, can’t you, cause you often randomly, you can remember things she comes out with things randomly.
DE: Just looking at my notes. Oh. Did you have any pets during the war?
LH: Yes, we did. We had a dog. Guess what it was called? It was my mum’s spaniel and he was called Raf.
DE: Okay
AH: Like RAF
LH: And he was lovely. Cocker spaniel. But before that I don’t remember having lots of pets.
AH: You told me once about the dog barking, as Charlie -
LH: Oh no, he would, he would bark, he knew my mother’s routine was to get down to a shelter somewhere. So the dog would bark an hour before the raid started, you know, their hearing is so acute, isn’t it, and he would pull on her skirt as much, you know, come on, we’ve got to go. They’re on their way over, we’ve got to go.
AH: You told me the dog was barking before Charlie got home, as if he knew the dog was coming, as if he was coming back. You told me that a long time ago.
LH: Oh well, that might have been so but I can’t say I remember.
AH: Do you remember him, do you remember him coming through the door when he got back?
LH: It was a bit difficult because I probably was still at school, or at the gas company, I don’t know when he, would have been the end of the war wouldn’t it, 1945. But I knew that we did, we objected, Dennis, I’ve got a brother between Charles and I, we objected to the way he had to eat all the eggs and all the milk. My mum – [laughter]
AH: Spoilt him, when he got home.
LH: Yes, because he, fair enough we realised later, he was suffering from trench mouth is it? And stomach problems, I’ve forgotten what.
DE: The rations that the prisoners of war got were very, very poor and you know, particularly during the long march, they were freezing cold and starving hungry.
LH: Terrible.
AH: What did they eat, do you remember what they ate when they were walking back?
LH: No, they would eat raw -
AH: Vegetables.
LH: Raw veg that was growing in the ground still. I knew all that, and there’d be people dying along the way, on the way and you just, they just had to leave them.
AH: I would imagine though, can you imagine if it was, you know, you were sort of fifteen and your brother’s sixteen and they’d been off somewhere, they’re still brothers and sisters aren’t they. They’re still going to bicker and fight, whatever.
DE: Yeah, why is Charlie getting all the food?
AH: Why’s he getting all the food? Who cares if he’s been and done that, you know. Whereas the mother would be coddling him like, obviously, but then.
LH: And that’s what it was like.
AH: Why should he get the eggs?
LH: Why should he get all the eggs?
AH: Probably for two or three days was fine, but if it went on any longer – it’s funny.
LH: He had something wrong with his stomach, I can’t remember what it was, but it was something that was quite normal for somebody in his -
DE: Well I know lots of the POWs had things like dysentery and things like that, when they got back.
LH: Yes.
DE: He didn’t, he got better because it didn’t keep him out of the RAF. Well, I think I’m probably going to wind it up as talking together for well over an hour now.
LH: Poor man!
DE: I just wondered if there was any other memories or thoughts or things you’d like to tell us.
LH: About the war? I don’t know that it affected me that much, the war, because I was happy.
AH: Yes, she always says she was happy where she was, she had a best friend, she lived in a lovely farm.
LH: Lovely family, and nothing I needed or wanted, particularly, yes.
DE: It sounds like you got to go home to London to see your mother when, at least sometimes.
LH: Yes, she used to come down to us and she would stay with us, in the house where I was living and so they were very good to her, and they stayed friends, my parents and my Eriswell parents.
AH: That was taken in Eriswell aged eleven.
DE: Oh wow.
AH: That’s her mum.
LH: Let’s have a look, quickly. Oh yeah, that’s my mum. I like that picture because it’s got the wooden, see where we’re sitting?
DE: Yes.
LH: My dad used to saw wood over that, you know. That was what it was for. Wasn’t meant to be a seat. [Pause] Who’s that? [laugh]
DE: Someone looking very glamorous: Miss Tottenham. I’d love to arrange to get copies of these at some point.
AH: Yeah. Oh, there’s in the gas board.
DE: There’s nothing I can do with it now.
AH: No, no, just to show you see if there’s pictures in there might be of interest
DE: I’ll press pause, I won’t stop the recording. So just been talking that you, after the war you went on a bit of a tour round Europe. What was that like? Where did you go?
LH: Oh yes, well a lot of it was trips really, you know, like, the gas company used to organise trips and we went to Paris, we went to -
AH: Holland.
LH: Holland, yes, and somewhere else.
AH: I saw you in pictures Monaco, Cannes.
LH: Oh that was Sadie and I going, we’d go on these holidays, save up, you know. We went by train down to the most southern part of Italy. Would you do that now? You wouldn’t would you?
DE: What was it like?
LH: It was lovely. We were just two girls saving up for a holiday. She worked in a bar and once again they put me in a kiosk. People seemed to like putting me into a kiosk! [Laugh] I had all the cigarettes and all the sweets and things, you know, in a Mecca dance hall, in a kiosk. I loved that cause I’d get there early and had some good bands there.
AH: Oh yeah.
LH: And they’d all be playing and I had some music all to myself. Cause I’d be in there piling up.
AH: Who did you meet in there then?
LH: That’s where I met your dad! He used to come hang round the kiosk, buy cigarettes from me. Yeah.
AH: But was it interesting going round Europe after the war? That must have been quite strange.
LH: Well yeah, but it didn’t matter, it was, well you know. Well, not, exciting isn’t the right word, but you felt you were doing something a bit, different.
AH: Yup. I don’t know if I’d have fancied going, after a war, where people were being held prisoner. I think that’s pretty brave to then go at a young age. Isn’t it.
LH: Yeah, well, you need to see things for yourself, don’t you.
AH Did you meet Bruce Forsyth?
LH: I did meet him, in the Mecca.
AH: Yep. What about Tommy Steele?
LH: Oh, Tommy Steele was a funny story. I had a friend, she was having a party, and she said can you bring somebody, cause it was, you know, it was like cider and what’s it called.
AH: Whatever.
LH: Anyway, it was just a party and I asked your dad if he wanted to come and he said no, because he was a man, at that time, that didn’t, completely opposite, didn’t venture out of his area much, at that time and we went, got to the party and Tommy Steele was there and he was, yeah, it was really fun. It was Merrydown and, I can’t think, the drink, and it was a really good party, so it was nice. That that was before he was famous.
DE: Right, okay.
LH: Or the night before I think!
AH: And you went to the opening of the Festival Hall.
LH: Oh yes, I did go to that.
AH: To the all night ball, the Royal Festival Hall, in London, the Barbican.
LH: That was in 51, overnight. Yes, oh yeah, that was a big [emphasis] event, on the South Bank and that was the only building there.
AH: Did you have bacon sandwiches in the morning?
LH: [Laugh] I think we had breakfast.
AH: Breakfast, yeah.
DE: That’s how all good parties should end, with breakfast, I think!
LH: Yeah. But I was allowed to go, which was something: that I was allowed [emphasis] to go.
AH: I think that’s probably the end.
DE: I will switch it off. Thank you.
LH: - in Canada. It was all arranged we were going up there, and on the way Sue would say, kept saying to my mum, I couldn’t let my children go to another continent like that. So we didn’t go.
AH: She wouldn’t let them get on, go on the boat, they got to the station.
LH: We were on the train going up, then we came back again. And I think that was the boat that was sunk. There was a boat load of evacuees going out there and there was a boat that was sunk, wasn’t there?
DE: Hm. So you’d gone up on the train with your mum and with your auntie.
AH: Your mum didn’t go did she? [Telephone]
LH: Yes. She was on the train with us. We were all on the train and Sue persuaded her not to go and we all came back again. There was the boat that was sunk then?
AH: What was it called?
LH: No idea.
AH: I think you have told me before.
LH: Began with B I think.
AH: Do you know about this?
DE: There was a couple but I can’t think which one that would be. I shall press.

Collection

Citation

Dan Ellin, “Interview with Laura Hickey,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/34734.

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