Wonderful stories of silk knickers and swearwords!
My dear old mum used to talk about the war – about living in a London flat during the Blitz – and how her sister Pam told her to get away from the window she was looking out of as the German bombs fell.
Mere seconds before a near-miss blew the widow in.
"I would have been cut to ribbons by the flying glass!"
And she said: "Then there were the buzz bombs (V1 flying bombs). They sounded a bit like tractors flying through the sky – if they carried on over you, then you were safe enough, but if the engine stopped before the bomb got to you, then we all used to get under the table."
And then, most memorably to a young boy listening all agog, she elaborated on the strange effects of bomb blast.
"I remember one man was sitting on the loo when a bomb fell. Blew him right down the stairs with the lavatory seat jammed on his bottom. Apart from that he was quite all right. Bit embarrassing though.
"Once a parachute bomb dropped, but it didn’t go off. When the bomb disposal had dealt with it, we grabbed the parachute and cut it up to make silk knickers!"
A spirited young lady was my mum. And I think that her wartime experience shaped a rather fearless outlook that stayed with her for the rest of her life.
Petty officialdom blocking her way? "I’m sorry, Mrs Stone, but the regulations won’t allow you to do that..."
Pah! She’d seen off the invincible might of the German Luftwaffe in her time. I used to think that if the RAF had parachuted her down to Berlin, then she would have sorted out Herr Hitler double quick.
But then there were the two German prisoners of war who were delivered by armed guards to help out in my grandfather’s large garden.
"Hans and Ernst, they were such dears. So kind, not at all like that nasty Hitler. They were always hungry, so we gave them a good lunch. And you know, they taught me to swear in German."
At this point my mother would go slightly coy. What exactly had they taught her?
"Himmeldonnerwetter!" – damn and blast it. I rather suspected that she might have learnt stronger than that, but she certainly didn’t elaborate.
At her funeral a family friend Ben (her Godson) spoke about my mother. And in this regard he suddenly made me sit up. He told a story that I had never heard before.
"There were two prisoners, Hans and Ernst, who helped in the garden and Susannah became good friends with them.
"One morning, when the guards had gone back to the camp, and both her parents being away for the day, Susannah appeared with some of her father’s clothes and told Hans and Ernst to change into them. Then, believe it or not, she drove the three of them to the station where they caught a train up to London where she had decided to show them the sights.
"Number ten, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the lot. And lunch for Hans and Ernst in Lyon’s Corner House – she blagged their way through the whole thing, and no awkward questions were asked. I mean, if Hans and Ernst hadn’t been nice Germans, then they might have tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament!"
My old mum. She’ll be sitting up there watching my recent adventures with the closest interest.
