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Interview with Honor Saunders
Honor Saunders lived through the London Blitz. She was initially evacuated but returned to London. Her father was a fire watcher and on one occasion took her to the road bridge near her home to watch London burning. Their own home was damaged by a…
Interview with Ronald Roffey
Ronald was born in Charlton, south-east London. He went to Charlton Junior School and was nine when war was declared. He remembered being fitted for a gas mask at his school. His aunt who lived in Torquay found a private billet for him and his mother…
Interview with Millie Roberts
Millie Roberts has lived her life in and around Lincoln. Her early memories include watching an airship fly overhead from the school playground at Reepham, getting locked in a cowshed and knitting baby clothes from wool collected from hedgerows. …
Interview with Laurie Richardson
Laurie lived at 31 Buckingham Street, Hull, before being bombed. Laurie, then nearly three, and his mother went to stay with distant relatives at Talbot Farm, Bassingham Fen. There were a lot of Land Girls working at the farms in the area.…
Interview with Jeremy Reade
Jeremy Reade recalls the memories of his father, Charles Sturrock Reade. Charles was born in Belfast and grew up in Portrush. On leaving school, Charles spent a short time working at a solicitor's office, before joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary…
Interview with Donald Rainey
Donald Rainey was born in 1927 and he lived with his family at the Royal Oak in Scopwick. Donald remembers George Formby’s wife, Beryl staying at the pub for four days in the war whilst entertaining the troops at Digby. Got a job as an apprentice…
Interview with Fay Price
Fay Price was nine at the outbreak of the Second World War living in Grimsby. A twin, they were the youngest of six siblings. Her memory of the start of the war was the ending of birthday parties. Her father was a fish merchant and was able to…
Interview with Ruta Popika
Ruta Popika was born near the river Nemunas, in what was Lithuania before the war. She remembers her family being forced to move eastwards and westwards from Lithuania according to the changing tides of war. Remembers the occupation of the Baltic…
Interview with Beryl Pickwell
Beryl Pickwell lived in Lincoln during the war. The youngest in a family with three brothers and two sisters, she remembers the day war was declared. Her father and two brothers worked in war factories, Clarke’s Crank and Ruston and Hornsby. She…
Interview with George Thomas Marsh
George’s family lived on a farm at Bassingham Fen. His earliest memory of the war was when he was about two and a half, his father pointing out a Lancaster flying over. On 5 November 1944, EH977 Stirling crash-landed nearby and he saw the massive…
Interview with Merv Owen
Merv Owen was a school boy during the war. He recalls two aircraft crashes in and around Welton in Lincolnshire, a Lancaster and a Ju 88.
Interview with Margaret Ottaway
Margaret Ottaway lived in Louth, the sixth of seven children, and tells of her childhood there. Tells of an air raid shelter they had in the house. Witnessed, as a seven year old, an enemy air raid on 19 February 1941, which caused damage and…
Interview with Ann Mullin
Ann Mullin’s father, Sergeant George Fredrick Bedwell was killed in action. She found it difficult to come to terms with the loss. She found it impossible to visit his grave although she lived in Germany after the war.
Interview with Iris McClements. Two
Iris McClements remembers being issued with a gas mask at the age of 11, before the war started. Her family moved to Eldwick when she was about 13 to avoid the bombs. She joined the Women’s Junior Air Corps and recalls being issued with a bucket,…
Interview with Mike Cope
Mike is the adopted brother of James (known as Sonny) who was in the Royal Air Force with 460 Squadron. The crew were all English apart from the Australian pilot. James was a wireless operator/mid-upper air gunner. Mike was seven in 1943 when his…
Interview with Colin Lloyd
Colin Lloyd was born in 1933 in Torksey, Lincolnshire. He recalls hearing Mr. Chamberlain’s broadcast on Sunday 3rd September 1939. His father got a job in 1942 at the gravel pits near Whisby and they moved to that area. Colin describes being close…
Interview with Joy Joy. One
Joy Joy was evacuated from Hull at the start of the war. She returned home for Christmas. She was again evacuated as the bombings began. She took responsibility for her younger sister although she was only six years old herself and she says that from…
Interview with Jack and Jean Howes
Jack Howes was born in 1933 in Nottingham. His father was a machine engineer and by the start of the war they were living in Lincoln where he worked for Ruston-Bucyrus. His father was then transferred to Grantham where he lived during the week. His…
Interview with Pauline Holloway
Pauline Holloway grew up in Harrow and turned eighteen one month before the end of the Second World War. She recollects listening to Churchill’s speeches on the radio, sheltering during air attacks in a purpose-built extension to her house, and…
Interview with Margaret Hodgin
Margaret’s family lived in Fiskerton and her first memory of war time, when she was seven and her brother four, was of her father digging a shelter in the garden. The children would walk or cycle to Reepham school.
Margaret was about eleven when…
Margaret was about eleven when…
Interview with Johanna Heslam
Johanna Heslam was a young child when Holland was occupied. The family had to move on several occasions because their area was being used for military purposes. Johanna experienced increasing loss as shortages began of clothing and then food. Even…
Interview with Betty Hedges
Betty Hedges grew up in South London in the final years before the war and she recalls a happy childhood. She describes a close family and community life where the children played unworried in the streets and she talks about the games they played and…
Interview with Richard Heath
Richard Heath remembers watching Lancaster aeroplanes flying in the skies above him from his back yard and listening to the sound of them fade into the night. One morning he could see red flares exploding in fields nearby where a Lancaster from…
Interview with Ken Hayton
Ken Hayton’s father, George Stanley Hayton (Stan), worked worked for Lloyds Bank. In 1940 Stan left his post to join the Royal Air Force; Ken recalled going to Durham station to see his father off, travelling to start basic training at RAF Padgate.…
Interview with Nora Hailey
Nora Hailey was born in Portsmouth, and then the family moved to Eastney. Before the German bombing she was evacuated to her Auntie’s in Worthing. After a few weeks nothing happened so they went back to Portsmouth. When the bombing began she and…