Narrow Escape from the City of Benares

The contributor was born in 1933 and lived in Caterham, Surrey.

We were surrounded by airfields, Kenley, Biggin Hill, and Whyteleafe. They were a target for German bombers and bombs often fell on houses and people. When the raid started, the siren sounded. I would take shelter under the metal kitchen table, my parents in the hallway, ready to go into the understairs cupboard. I don't remember being frightened, but sometimes the blast bent our metal window frames and broke glass. I watched the fighter planes in the sky and learnt the different shapes of Wellingtons, Lysanders, etc. I knew the sounds of the engines; ours sounded different from the German fighters and bombers. We would often see dogfights going on in the air above us.

In London, they had large barrage balloons to prevent the city from being bombed, the theory being that the fighters could not get beneath them. This proved not to be the case, but it was the belief at the time, and my parents decided it would be safer in London than in Caterham, surrounded by airfields. We moved to a small third-floor flat in the Marylebone/Paddington area, built around a central garden. Many different nationalities lived in the other flats. At night, when the siren went, we went to the big air raid shelters. There were air raid wardens in charge, and I tried to sleep on a mattress, but it was very noisy with thumps and flashes, and the earth was shaking. We took food and water with us and torches. The entrance to shelters had sandbags piled up to protect the entrance. Near the flat was a clear area where the barrage balloon was tethered when not in the air, with soldiers guarding it. I would walk there with my mother to look at it.

My parents realised the flat in London wasn't safe at all. My mother had a brother in Canada, Douglas, and he offered to have my mother and me live with them, while my dad stayed in England. My mother put my name down for a place on a ship sailing to Canada along with hundreds of children. I was given a place, and my mother thought it included her. But it was children on their own, except for a few parent helpers. My mother refused to let me go on my own, I was only seven. Just as well, because this ship, The City of Benares, was sunk by German U-Boats in mid-Atlantic and there were few survivors.

Instead of Canada, my mother and I went to Cornwall. My aunt and cousins were already staying there at a farmhouse, where my parents had holidayed. I was enrolled in the village school, then the Education Authority moved me to the village hall school for evacuated children. They moved me between the two, but I eventually stayed at the village hall school. The main hall was divided into groups, but it was difficult to hear and concentrate. Once there was a dead rat in the girls’ toilet, and we didn't want to go there!

We moved from the farm to a family in Constantine Bay; we would either walk to school or get a lift in the postman's van. I then sat the entrance to Newquay Grammar; there were 60 in a class, and we had to share books. We stayed in Cornwall until 1945, and my father wrote to me every single week.