>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Edna Hicks at
Sturgis Library at Kennesaw State University on Thursday,
April 28th, 2016.
And miss Hicks, do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, I do.
>> Thank you.
>> So could you please state your full name at birth?
>> Olive Edna Wells.
>> And when and where were you born?
>> Well I was born July 25th, 1930,
and I was actually born in Letchworth Hertfordshire which
is about 30 miles Northeast of London.
>> Tell me about your childhood, your family.
>> When we were at Letchworth?
>> Yes.
>> I was the third one of four children.
We lived in this really beautiful town of Letchworth.
It was what they called a garden city
and had nice parks and things.
I remember walking and I loved to pick wildflowers,
and there were always lots of them.
I went to school.
I started school there at
Westbury school when I was five years old.
And I don't remember a whole lot.
I remember picking daffodils in our neighbors
garden and getting into trouble for it.
But I don't remember all that much.
I remember going to school. I didn't like it.
So I turned the cold water tap on in
the little girls restroom and put
the plug in and I thought that will flood the school,
and I won't need to go back.
But come the morning,
I was very disappointed to find that somebody had,
let the water out and I had to continue going to school.
But when I was at five and
then I guess when I was in 1936,
my father had to move close into London for work.
The depression was just as
bad or if not worse there than anywhere else.
And so he moved us to
Harrow and we lived in
a temporary house in Sudbury Court Road.
And during that time,
the job didn't work out for him.
He was hospitalized with
an ulcer and my mother really had a hard time there.
But she couldn't find a house to rent.
So they they said, Well,
why don't you buy one and she
said you're joking, aren't you?
And so he said, No,
he said the payment for a house
is less or not any more than renting.
So she bought a house
and it was so nice for us because it was brand
new and everything and we moved in and that was 1936.
We moved in in December of 36.
And then,
37 I had pneumonia.
I was in hospital for a long time.
I had to go to school and I hated it still.
But time went on and then we got to say to 1939,
and there was so much talk of war.
And I didn't know what that meant.
And I asked my older sister Joyce and she said,
I don't really know either, but she said,
I think it's when the air is full of arrows.
So I thought about
that a bit and didn't make sense to me.
But then the time went on in 1939,
we were issued with gas masks.
We we had an air aid shelter built in our back garden,
everybody did in the London area.
They called it an Anderson shelter.
It was partially under the ground and
then corrugated metal put
over it and then covered with soil.
And we spent many a night
there when the war actually started.
But gas masks, air shelter.
And then they took a Census and every household,
every family had to
disclose how many people were in the family,
and you couldn't hide that.
Any young man who was approaching 18 years old,
they were ready to draft him as soon as possible.
And with that, they issued
everybody an identification card,
which you had to carry with you.
They issued everybody a ration book,
which the head of
a home would keep, the mother would keep.
And you had to be registered for your food
at different shops like a shop that sold dairy products.
And then the butcher's shop was a sell a separate one.
And the butcher would take
your coupons when you bought and
you could only buy a certain amount.
And I have a copy of a ration book here.
It's not a real one, this is just made up,
but it has all of
the coupons that they would mark off or cut out.
I think some things that were more short,
they would cut them out so that she
couldn't go back again to get more.
Some of them, they just crossed out. Sorry.
>> So tell me what were your parents' names?
>> My mother was Olive Ansell Day.
No, I'm sorry, that's wrong.
[LAUGHTER] That was her mother's name.
Olive Day Olive Day not Ansell.
>> And your father?
>> Harold Edward Frederick Wells.
>> Wow. So what did he do for a living?
>> Well, when he was a young man,
they they lived in Newcastle on Tyne.
When he left school, he
worked with the railway for a while.
And then when they
left school early in England at that time.
When he was 16 years old,
he put his age on and joined the Royal Flying Corps.
And the people he worked for at the railway told him they
promised him that they would have a job
for him when the war ended but they didn't.
So he was in the Royal Flying Corps and
that I think it was about 1922,
I believe, it became the Royal Air Force.
And was he was stationed in
South England and that's where he met my mother.
She lived in near where I was born,
a town called Stevenage.
That's where she was born and grew up.
And that's how they met.
And then they were married and a year later,
my mother was pregnant and she
my dad moved them up to Newcastle his old home.
He couldn't get a job out there,
not for any reason and so he said,
we better move back to the South.
So they moved back and he was able
to get work and then they had a house there.
But then after I've told
you that he had to move into London
to get more work because that one just dissolved.
So he was fortunate he was able to get work near London,
Alberton it's just not
far from Harrow as you're going into downtown London.
>> Could you describe Harrow for me?
>> Harrow.
The real name is Harrow on the Hill,
and the hill is a nice one,
you can see it around.
There's a church right on
the top and you see the steeple.
On the side, there are
the Harrow Colleges and
Winston Churchill attended there at some point.
It's a very high level college and
people can go on
from Eaton and places like that from there.
And the old Harrow
was surrounding the hill on the hill surrounding it.
And then South Harrow
was not too far from the main Harrow.
There was a north Harrow as well,
and then there was Ryslip around
there and places like that.
>> And how far was it from London?
>> It was 10 miles from downtown London.
>> Very close in.
>> Yes. And today,
we drive 10 miles.
Well, look, we drove 90 miles here
this morning and it's not that far.
But we thought it was a long way into downtown London,
but it was just the 10 miles.
>> Can you describe your house there in Harrow?
>> In Harrow, it was not a big house.
It had three bedrooms upstairs,
one bath and living room,
a dining room and a kitchen and a hallway. That was it.
>> So you mentioned your sister's comment about war.
What did you know about politics in
Germany when you were a child?
Did you have a sense of what was going on there?
>> As it got closer to the end of 1939,
we picked up bits and pieces,
but still didn't register.
However, it did with my brother.
And on one particular Sunday,
my parents went to church and the children stayed
home and Bill turned on the radio
and we listened to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
And he spoke and at the end,
he said, we are now at war with Germany.
And as he said that,
the erraid siren sounded.
And we were terrified,
my brother made us put on
our gas masks and we went to the house next door.
And our neighbor said take those gas masks off,
he said, you don't need to worry.
There's nothing's happening. You'll be all right.
So he calmed us down and then went on from there.
I was at the 4th of September 1939, I believe.
But then nothing really happened from what I
can remember until 1940.
And then in 1940,
there was a battle of Britain.
And every time an airplane came over the South Coast,
the air raid sirens would sound.
Well, that meant that was very disruptive,
so they changed it
to the arrayed siren
would sound when the aircraft were overhead.
So you could hear
the sirens like in the towns that were close to you,
but you would hear it coming
and then it would get very loud,
of course, when it was over you.
So you'd better take shower
[LAUGHTER] when you heard that.
As I said earlier, we had to carry
those gas masks all the time.
>> Where did you carry it on you?
>> I've got a picture here. I can show you.
>> Please hold it up.
>> That was when I was
nine years old and we had to carry them.
>> So tell me about being fitted for the gas mask.
>> Oh, it was horrible.
We were taken to some building,
I think it was a school and lined up and Greg,
everybody had their gas mask put on.
And I remember screaming
because I thought I was going to die.
I thought they were choking me and
the smell was horrible, that rubbery smell.
And I only learned not too long ago they had
asbestos in them. I'm alive.
[LAUGHTER] It didn't kill us,
so I don't know how much asbestos,
but there was asbestos in them.
But so we were all fitted and babies.
Now, a little baby had to be put in not a balloon,
but something like it and
the mother would have to pump it continually.
So in an air raid,
if the mother was killed,
the baby would die.
That's all they could do.
>> So the mother strapped on her own gas mask and
then was pumping this bubble for the baby.
>> Yeah.
>> So you said Neville Chamberlain said we were at war,
do you remember when
Winston Churchill came to power as prime minister?
>> No, I don't but it must have been shortly
after that, I don't remember.
But I do remember him speaking and my father,
he listened to every speech and I think
Chamberlain gave everybody a lot of strength in that,
we felt sure that we would win.
And we were going to not let those Germans defeat us.
I came close to it.
Then at that time, too,
there was talk of invasion,
and I don't know why it didn't succeed.
I thank God they didn't
but there was talk
about there being parachutes
soldiers dropped from the air.
And I remember saying to my mother,
what would we do?
What would happen?
What would happen if one came down in our back garden?
And she looked at me and she said, oh, Edna.
She said, if one comes down in our back garden,
it will be a young boy just like Bill and she said,
I'll give him a cup of tea.
So I thought, that's the way it'll be, and I was happy.
But to warn us of an attack like that, first of all,
no churches across the nation
were allowed to ring their bells during the war.
Only if there was an attack by air or an invasion,
then the bells would peal out to warn us.
So we didn't hear the church bells until the war ended.
>> So were there
church bells and air raid sirens together?
>> No, I think in the case of invasion,
it would have been just the bells.
And everybody everywhere could hear the bells because
lots of churches they all had bells.
>> And who was supposed to ring them?
>> Well, I expect that would have been up to
the Vicar Ruby Beach Church.
I don't know.
See, I'm only telling you what I remember.
I'm not going to read to look it up,
but you can Google it.
[LAUGHTER]
>> So I think at this time,
there's the perception that for many in
Britain that they were fighting
alone here for a period of time.
>> Oh, absolutely.
>> And can you speak at all about your family's attitude,
where did you talk
about that? Do you remember your parents?
>> Well, I do remember a little bit
because the French were unable to help us.
They couldn't help themselves.
The Belgians and everybody.
And so we were alone.
I don't really remember a whole lot
except that all of our family,
my uncles on my mother's side and on my father's side,
they all went to war.
And then in 42,
my brother was 41.
He was 18 and in 42,
he was sent to India.
The training wasn't very long,
he came home and he said he got two two weeks leave.
So my mother said, Bill,
two weeks, and he said,
yeah, he said it's embarkation leave.
So after two weeks,
he left and we didn't hear from him for a long time.
And he ended up in India and how he really almost didn't
get there because something happened to the ship he was
supposed to be on and the convoy had to leave.
So they sailed by themselves
just one ship going all the
way around the east side of Africa,
they stopped in Durban for
a while and then they went on to India.
But they were all by themselves,
and they were German U boats all the way along there.
So it was a miracle that he got there,
but he stayed there until 1946.
So when he came back, he was a grown up man.
>> What branch of service was he in?
>> Royal Air Force.
>> But he was on a ship and going to [inaudible]?
>> Yes, they took him by ship, yes.
>> Do you have any sense of what he did in India?
>> Yes. He was a mechanic.
And he worked on the American mosquito.
And they were on the south west Bangalore,
southwest of India.
I think it's west but south Bangalore.
>> So tell me about your sister, Joyce.
>> Joyce was five years older than me.
And when she was 15,
she left school and she had this job learning to
be a treasurer at
a big department store in Harrow and she had a bicycle.
And one morning, it was 12, August,
1940, I was up early that morning for some reason,
and I went to the gates and she cycled off and
I waved and she turned around and she said,
Edna, tell Mama I should be home for dinner.
And that was it.
She was killed in a traffic accident right then.
They came to school to take me home
and nobody had a phone in
those days my mother learned by
this policeman knocking on the door to tell her,
which must have been such a horrible thing, how she.
And so she had the death of my sister, she had rationing,
the war starting and all
at one time and she wasn't the only one,
but how they did it,
I got strength from above.
>> Did you notice a change in your mother?
>> Oh, very definitely, yes.
She took it so badly that she had
a friend and the friend was
a Christian scientist and
my mother was Church of England.
So my mother went to
the Christian Scientist's church with
her and she could
confide in this lady and this lady said to her,
you've got to pull yourself together.
You've got two little girls at home,
you've got to take care of them.
So I think that was the turning point for my mother.
But she was very good.
She took care of us, oh my goodness,
with the rationing, which was absolutely dreadful.
And clothes were rationed.
And you were issued clothing coupons and they
had to buy your clothes,
your shoes, bed linens,
anything made of cloth.
So it was like a gamble really,
what should you buy? What should you do?
Fortunately, my mother was a dressmaker, a good one.
And so she was able to alter clothes to fit me and Irene.
And I remember once
she made me a dress out of a man's suit.
I guess it was one of
my dad's old suits and things like that.
And I'm getting off the subject a bit,
but wool, of course,
was very short, wool to knit with woolen yarn.
So she would get buy from thrift shops or
somewhere old sweaters that had been
knitted by hand and would pull them apart,
wash the yarn, and then knit, recycling.
>> And what foods in particular were very short?
>> Everything. England imported all food.
Just as a guest,
I would say 75%.
And most of it came from Australia,
New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, United States.
Of course, all those avenues were cut off.
So everything was ration very sharply.
Cheese was like a little square like that once a week.
And of course, in the beginning,
there were six people in the family, of course,
then when Joyce was killed, five people.
So my mother could get rations
or put it all together so it didn't look so bad.
But then when Bill went to India,
that was another one cut off. It was bad.
And in the beginning when
they told us they would be rationing,
my mother who had such a sweet tooth went out to buy
sugar and she bought pounds and pounds of sugar.
And I remember her standing by the pantry
looking in and there was all the sugar and she said,
there, that will last us for the duration,
not knowing that the duration would be five years.
Rationing was bad,
and still things still
came in from the United States and Canada,
but there were U boats throughout the Atlantic and,
well, they sank a lot of ships of the maritime ships.
But it was one of those ships
that captured a German U boat
and on it was an enigma machine,
and they captured that and they were able to decode it.
And that was one of the good things
that happened in the war.
That was very important lots of bad things too,
because this was early in the war
and they found the Germans were going to bomb Coventry.
And Churchill said,
we can't let them know that we know that.
So they had to let that raid go.
Otherwise, they would have found out
that we had the code.
Horrible decision for him to make.
>> Well, tell me about your
father's work during the war.
>> Well, it's sketchy.
In the beginning, he was put
on night work because he was not fit for service.
And the first work he did was at Mill Hill,
a place there, and his master's record,
I think you may have heard of
his master's record company,
there was a little dog by gramophone.
That was this logo.
But they didn't make records at that time.
They made munitions.
And actually, what it was at that point,
I don't know what he did.
But then he was moved to place in
Acton where they were working on radar.
And again, it was night work.
And one night, he told me that they were so sick
and tired running to
the air raid shelter that he and his friends,
his colleagues,
they decided to just sit in a room and play cards.
And that night, the air raid shelter took a direct hit.
Everybody was killed.
So that's one of those things.
And so he came home.
And then another night that he was coming home,
a bomb had dropped close
to us and it came down between two houses,
and it was a land mine that comes down with a parachute.
And they don't go off immediately.
It's a delayed fuse
and I was reading in one of those papers
this morning that this one had come down
in St. Paul's Cathedral and they managed to get it away,
but it was eight feet tall, big around.
And if one of those bombs exploded,
it would take out just about everything around it.
I wouldn't be here if it had exploded,
but they were able to diffuse that one.
And they diffused the one for St. Paul's too.
But there were a lot of those that came down
and the men who took them away and diffused them,
they were the bravest people,
I think, in the whole war.
But anyway, you were asking me about my dad's work,
and that's all I know about it.
>> So he worked at night?
>> Yes. So that brings me to the next question.
Why weren't you evacuated?
>> Well, the evacuation began in
1939 before even anything had started.
And I can remember my parents talking about it.
And then in 1940,
when the bombing started,
they talked about it again.
And my mother with my, well,
my brother was there then,
but a little bit later on,
my brother had gone,
my older sister had gone.
My dad was on night work that left
just my mother and two small children.
And she didn't want to be alone at
nighttime with a heavy bombing.
So that was why we weren't sent away.
And it worked out for us.
We weren't killed, we weren't injured.
A lot of the children who were evacuated
had not such good stories to tell.
Some of them were very happy,
but some were not treated well.
>> Did you have friends who were evacuated?
>> I did. One girl went to Canada.
Another girl went to Wales,
which is on the West side of England.
And then there were other girls that I knew who,
they weren't close friends,
but a lot of them went.
But the school that I went to was very
crowded because so many people
in the East end of London,
they were homeless people.
So they were all sent to the rim
around at London and they
went to our school and they were given homes.
There's one lady who lived in this house alone,
and she had to let a family live with her.
And there were there were quite a few like
that and one family,
the older sister, my brother married her.
They wouldn't have met otherwise.
>> So still here with Edna Hicks,
>> We were talking about why you weren't evacuated,
and I wanted to ask one more question about that.
Did anyone in your extended family or friends,
other people in the neighborhood,
did they express any concern that
your mother had chosen not to
evacuate you and your sister?
>> No. Because a lot of
the children that lived around us didn't go either.
I think it was mostly from the downtown part of London.
See, we were in what do you call
the outer boroughs of the city.
I'm guessing at this,
they probably didn't think we would be
bombed so as much as we were.
But it was a chance,
it was a gamble that you took because even being
evacuated wasn't 100% safe.
But the reason I
think was if my father hadn't been on night work,
I do believe we may have been
sent out into the countryside.
But my mother didn't want to be
the only person in a house with bombs dropping around.
I don't blame her. We gave her company.
We couldn't have given her much help, I guess.
>> So let's talk about
when the bombing started in Earnest.
>> Well, it
started in 1940 in September of 1940.
I think that there was
bomb damage in London earlier than that,
but it was gradual.
The Battle of Britain,
we would see another thing when Poland fell,
the Polish Air Force pilots
and maybe some others escaped to
England and they joined the Royal Air Force,
they flew in the Battle of Britain.
They helped along Canadians, Americans,
Australians and New Zealanders did as well,
a sprinkling of them.
The house that my mother bought
was about as the crow flies,
not very far from an airport.
And before the war,
it was a very small airport just like,
what would you call a small airplane?
>> Auxiliary peel.
>> Just small. But it was taken
over by the Royal Air Force
to be used for the spit fires.
And so we would see them occasionally
come up and fly off in a squadron over our house.
The Battle of Britain was mostly around
the South Coast because they got the Germans as
they came in on the South Coast.
So we would see them go out and then we would see some of
them come back with
holes in their wings and things like that.
And there is a memorial there now at
Northolt for the Polish pilots because they did so much.
So it began gradually and the air battle was daytime.
But then the Germans started bombing at nighttime.
And now this is when we got the big ones,
[inaudible] were fighters.
I can't remember the other name of
the other airplane right now,
but anyway, the big ones.
And we had the air raid
sirens and we would go to the air raid shelter.
My dad was home at weekend,
so then he would join us.
And I remember one night I was in my bed and my dad
awakened me shaking me
violently and he said, Come on, Edna,
didn't you hear the air raid siren
and I hadn't and they'd gone
down with Irene and they forgot me for a while.
Anyway, I managed to get down.
So the air they bombed at nighttime,
and it got worse and worse and
they were looking for Northolt airport,
but it had been camouflaged.
What I read some time ago was that the camouflage was so
good that even allied pilots
had a difficult time finding it,
which wouldn't have been very good for them.
But the Germans, I don't know,
I may be wrong, but I don't think they ever bombed it.
However, they did bomb us
because we had a big green park at the top of our avenue,
a big green park,
like the size of a big golf course,
and they bombed it thinking
perhaps that it was the the airport.
And so in the wintertime,
I know we used to go up when there were no air raids on.
We would go up there and just play in the craters.
And in the winter when there was a bit
of rain and a little bit of freezing,
we would slide on the ice.
>> How big were the craters?
>> About that big.
Not terribly deep.
I don't recall, but
about as big around as this end of the room.
>> So I want to break down an air raid.
From start to finish,
you talked a little bit about this,
but what was the sound
like of the bells and the siren going off?
And then how long would it usually last?
>> An air raid siren,
how long would it last?
>> Well, and how long would the whole raid
last, did it vary?
>> It varied greatly.
They didn't sound and all clear until they
absolutely knew there were
no planes left in the vicinity.
So it could be half an hour,
could be two or three hours,
could be all night.
And it was during
the nighttime bombing. It was all night.
And I remember once,
I think by then I was probably maybe 12 or 13.
I got up and went to school
and I thought it's funny, there's nobody around.
I went upstairs to
my classroom and this warden came toward me,
and he said, what are you
doing here? What are you doing here?
Don't you know there's a raid
on and we hadn't heard the all clear.
So my mother just assumed because it was quiet,
but there were still planes around.
Well, I dodged that one.
But things like that happened.
As seniors in the school,
we didn't have an air raid shelter,
but we had to sit in our cloak room,
which was as big as this perhaps.
I don't know why they thought it was safe,
but the infants and juniors,
they had built air raid shelters in the playing fields,
and that's where I went at
first and they were horrible places,
just like a mole would tunnel
a round hole going through dark damp.
We of course, had our gas masks and
my mother would put
a little snack in there and then she said,
if you're in there for a long time,
well, as soon as we sat down, got it out.
A direct hit would've would've wiped them out.
Nothing could stop a direct hit.
I mean, just the way it was.
>> So it was mostly for [inaudible]
and can you describe the shelter in your garden?
>> They dug a hole,
maybe four feet down,
six feet long and maybe I don't know, five feet wide.
They built them depending
on the number of the people in the family.
We had a relatively big one because
there were six people in the family at that time.
And it was thick concrete, well,
about as thick as this because there was
a shelf and they covered it with corrugated metal.
And then they put a flat end to it and a flat front
to it with an opening so that you could get
in and covered it with soil.
And it would have stopped if
the house had been bombed and the bricks came down on it,
we would have been okay.
Direct hit, no, or
shrapnel was okay because the shrapnel.
And there was a lot of shrapnel.
There were loads of
anti aircraft guns all around London, all the way around.
And we would hear them going like that.
And then there were search lights, too.
And if a plane got caught in
the search lights, they got in.
>> Did you have blackout curtains?
>> Yes. Absolutely. And there were wardens on
each street and they would walk up and
down and if there was a chink of light,
they would knock on your door,
put that put that light down, put that light down.
And coming up, I read one
of those newspapers that I gave you.
And at the bottom,
there was times for blackout.
Tonight, blackout will be at 7:40 until
maybe 6:00 something in the morning or whatever it was.
But during those times,
you could not let light get out.
People were not allowed to smoke outside
because an aircraft could see
that red end when you were smoking.
And you couldn't have a flashlight
when you were outside because for the same reason.
So when on a night where there was no moon,
it was very dangerous.
And then we often had fogs so with a blackout and
a fog the buses had a hard time because,
trying to get through anywhere.
And I was reading not too long ago
about. I wasn't reading.
It was a tape my brother gave me about
the great fog in London in 1954,
but the same thing applied during the war.
This bus was following a car,
it was like this much in front of you period.
Because folks in England,
when they say you could only see couldn't even
see your hand in front of you, they weren't joking.
It was total and you lost your equilibrium.
You didn't know which way was up.
So anyway, this bus was following a car
and the car made a turn and the bus made a turn.
But the bus had gone into this person's driveway,
must have been a long one.
But there were funny things like that.
In those days, the buses had a driver and a man,
a conductor who took your money and gave you a ticket.
So they would walk ahead of
the bus holding onto the bus, walking along.
Terrible. And then when it was
foggy and you go into a movie,
see a movie, the fog would be in
there too and you couldn't see the screen very well.
[LAUGHTER].
>> So how frequent were these air raids?
>> Every night. In the beginning,
there were nine months of nighttime air raids,
57 consecutive nights in the very beginning,
57 consecutive nights of nighttime bombing.
And that was not only London,
but it was like Coventry up in
the North in the South, different places.
They bombed the steel industry,
which Coventry was in that area.
And they just went I don't think they
were allowed to go home with their bombs so
they just dropped them indiscriminately,
Buckingham Palace was bombed three times.
And the king and queen,
they wanted them to leave, but they said,
no, we're going to stay here with our people.
And they would go out visiting people who had been
bombed and that endeared them to everybody.
>> And you were the same age as Princess Margaret?
>> Yes.
>> So did you did you
ever how did you feel about the two girls?
>> Well, we loved them.
I never did see them in the flesh,
but we loved them because,
they were our princesses.
And my older sister Joyce was
the same age as the queen and.
I just wonder have been a different world
if she'd still lived.
But yes, we we thought and we'd see them quite a
lot on special occasions wearing their royal gowns.
And that was always so much so important to us.
>> So when you were in
the bomb shelter during one of the raids,
what would you do to pass the time?
>> Well, we looked at comic books.
I don't know that we did much of anything.
Because it was nighttime mostly,
so we tried to go to sleep.
I told you the concrete
or cement was that thick. So there was a shelf.
So at the end, when you got in at the end,
there was a bunk across that rested on each side.
My sister would go up first and I would be beside her.
And one night, I remember,
I could feel myself falling and falling and
falling and I fell right down onto my parents.
I wasn't far, but.
No, I don't think we did anything.
In the daytime in
the beginning before we got really the war started,
Irene and I would go in and we would put
our dolls in there and flowers and things.
We thought it was fun.
But then getting on after the German nighttime bombing,
there was a lull because the By that time,
the Americans, thank God,
had come over to England and they were bombing
Germany and taking the focus
off of them bombing us really.
But Hitler had another program for us,
and that was the V1, the flying bomb.
So when that started,
we had to get down into the shelters again.
And my mother who
was so sick and tired of the air raid shelter,
she said, We will just sleep under our dining room table.
It was a thick oak top,
which I don't know if it
would have saved us. It may have.
But one night, well,
one day, our neighbor came over and she said,
Mrs Wells, I saw
two aeroplanes flying over your house last night,
very low and they were both on fire.
Fortunately, they've flown over and gone somewhere.
Well, we learned later that they were
two flying bombs and that
with the flames coming out at the end, that was okay.
But as soon as their motor stopped,
the engine stopped, they just fell.
So if you heard one,
you better take shelter
immediately because they were that bad.
And at school, we came up with
this rhyme that we call them doodle bugs.
And the rhyme was, if a doodle dallies don't doodle dive.
>> So do you remember hearing them?
>> They were horrible made a horrible noise.
Yes. And once in school,
we heard it coming our way,
one of them coming our way
and everybody was just
so quiet because we knew that if that stopped,
it would fall right on the school.
But thank goodness, it went on a bit
further and landed in a field.
And then after we got used to those,
there were the V2 rockets and they were true rockets.
And we couldn't hear them coming.
You would just hear an explosion.
They didn't sound the air raid sirens because
they didn't know nobody knew when they were coming,
and they killed a lot of people.
They just just landed and if you heard the explosion,
you thought, thank God, I'm over here and not over there.
>> Did you know anyone who was injured or killed?
>> In the war?
>> In the bombing.
>> In the bombings? No. I I really didn't.
I heard of people,
but they weren't close to us.
I had this friend
who she was my age and during that time,
she lived in the east end of London, the dark part.
And this one night,
there was an air raid and for some reason
or they didn't have anywhere to
go or maybe they couldn't get out quickly enough,
but the mother who was holding a newborn baby,
and Eunice and her little sister,
they stood in the arch of
the doorway and the house came down but they were saved.
However, the mother was in days she was holding the baby
and there was glass sheds in
all around and she didn't
know whether they were in the baby or not.
And in the turmoil and that's all you can call it,
the wardens managed to get her out,
sent her to hospital straightaway
with the baby and the baby was fine but
the two little girls they just took them and
put them on the train and sent them up to Scotland.
The mother didn't know where the girls had gone.
The girls didn't know where the mother was.
The father was in the army, but miraculously,
they all got together when the war
ended and when you think about things like that,
and I'm so thankful that our family,
although my sister was killed,
our family didn't experience any of that type of thing.
Yes, we were afraid because we
could hear the bomb is coming down,
but they didn't hit us.
There were lots of incendiary bombs.
>> What's an incendiary bomb?
>> It's a small bomb that when it breaks open,
it spews out fire and if one hit your house,
and you didn't get to it,
it would burn your house down.
That's what they were. They dropped loads of them.
>> Was your house hit by anything shrapnel.
>> Shrapnel. And then at
one time an anti aircraft shell that hadn't
exploded it came down and went under
Oba Garden and the people came to dig it out,
but they couldn't find it.
So it must have traveled quite a distance
and who knows and we moved away from there.
I don't know if anyone ever found it
or but they're still finding unexploded bombs in
London when they excavate to build
something new they often come across them.
>> So if you're going through
this night after night after night,
do you develop a certain attitude
or routine in these situations?
>> I'd hear people say, here we go again.
Let's get into the shelter
and make sure you've got your gas mask,
make sure you've got some tea in a thermos
and then we had air raid shelters that
were built in the street as well.
So if a person was visiting someone,
they could go in there.
There were bunks in there, you could sleep in there,
some people did and
right in the center of London
where the underground tubes are,
people would sleep in those stations,
which were very safe.
However, one night,
so many people pushing to get in there.
Somebody slipped and they
all fell down and a lot of people died.
That was a tragic thing.
Anyway, as I was saying,
we all had our gas masks,
we all had our identification cards that we had to carry
with us and our identification cards were,
father it was BICJ,
and my father was number 1, BICJ 1.
My mother was two, my brother three,
Joyce four, I was five and Irene six.
I'll never ever forget that number BICJ 225.
>> What did BICJ stand for?
>> No idea. It was just codes that I guess,
people in this area would be this
and so on but I don't know.
>> Who did you have to show it to?
>> Anybody who asked you for it.
If you were killed in one of the bombings,
they could find out who you were by that card.
It's like us having a driver's license or something.
It didn't have a photograph on it,
but I guess if you were out bombed
or out there wandering
around and there was no proof that it was you.
I don't know how they did that,
but you had to carry it.
>> So when the planes came in,
were there other planes were flown
by the RAF to fight them,
did you ever see any fighting in the sky?
>> The bombers came over at nighttime but during
the day when the raiders would come in,
there was small planes.
Yes. My my brother before he was pulled up,
he would go out and watch them to
my mother's horror and I would go with him,
but when he was in school,
he joined the air training corps.
So when he was called up
with the knowledge that he had gained there,
they put him in the Air Force,
which he loved and before he was called up,
he would have these cards with
black picture of a shape of an aircraft and he would say,
okay and I hold them up I got to.
He had to know which airplane was what.
So then he started testing me.
I learned to identify quite a few airplanes too,
which we had fun doing that but anyway.
>> Tell me about holidays and
family traditions in those years
when the bombing was heaviest.
Did you carry on as normal?
>> No. There weren't any holidays.
The only thing we did was
occasionally go to visit my grandfather who
lived in Stevens 30 miles north of
London and we didn't stay long,
but for those, my mother had to take
the Russian books with her and you'd
have to tell the store where you were
registered to mark them so
that you could take them somewhere else.
Food, I would say it was so scarce that had to do that.
>> Did you travel by car?
>> No. Went by bus.
We didn't have a car.
Not many people did.
>> Did you follow news of the war?
>> Yeah.
>> And how did you follow it?
>> Newspapers primarily on the radio.
We didn't have Fox News or anything
like that with the glamor girls.
>> What are your memories of
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?
>> I honestly don't remember.
>> So do you have a memory of getting
the knowledge or realizing that
the United States was entering the war?
>> Yes and it was because the Americans are coming over.
They'll have chewing gum.
>> Did it mean anything to you beyond that?
>> I guess, not really.
I think I was probably too young to
understand the full implication.
But we knew that the Americans
were flying bombers over Germany.
That was good news,
but I don't recall a whole lot about that.
As far as chewing gum,
we didn't get any because Americans didn't come to
where we were on our part of the island.
[LAUGHTER] Although once during the Lull in the bombing,
there was a theater in London that never closed.
And [NOISE] so my dad took us all,
there was a movie made about that,
too. It never closed.
We went and it was really downtown London.
I don't remember much about the show,
but coming home, we were going down the escalator.
And these two Americans passed by us.
These young men in the beautiful uniforms,
and one of them turned round to my sister and he said,
"Hello, honey. What's your name?"
And she said, "Irene."
Then he went on his way.
So my dad looked at my mother and he said,
"That's the second American that spoken to Irene."
And my mother said,
"I bet she'll marry one."
And then I thought to myself.
No, she won't, but I will.
[LAUGHTER] I don't know why I was so sure about that.
But I had [LAUGHTER] no idea how I'd ever meet
one, I did. [LAUGHTER]
>> And what was your perception
of the United States when you were that age?
>> Well, occasionally,
we were able to go to see a movie of
Betty Grable and beautiful technicolor,
beautiful clothes, beautiful people, beautiful places.
And every time I got out into reality,
depressed me terribly because all we had was darkness and
grunge and bombed out buildings and not much food to eat.
So America seemed like almost a paradise to us,
and it persisted America,
that's why everybody,
America, we're going to America?
It was paradise.
When I did come over here in 1956,
I wasn't disappointed because we lived in Massachusetts
and I came over in September and the autumn leaves,
the blue sky, and then the snow.
I really thought I was in technically,
I thought it was beautiful.
>> So what are your memories of the D-Day invasion?
>> I do not remember that at all.
I only remember what I've read and
how horrible disaster it
was although it was alleviated by everybody who
owned a boat went
across to pick those soldiers up and bring them back.
And that's all I know.
It was just something that. [BACKGROUND]
>> You're talking about Dunkirk? But the D-Day.
>> Oh, I'm sorry.
>> No, you're fine.
>. That was Dunkirk.
>> So we're moving later on now.
>> D-Day. We just
heard little bits because it was all pretty secret,
but we just heard little bits
that there was something going on. That's.
>> Do you remember a point at which the war seemed to
be on the road for the allies to win.
That's badly phrased.
But did you have a sense that the war was turning?
>> I think we did. We did,
it was like, well,
this will be over soon.
It was that attitude.
And I think at that point we stopped
carrying our gas masks with us.
I was like, we're not going to need these.
And we may have left off
the gas masks a bit earlier than that,
we just felt that Germany just
wasn't capable of doing
much more than send those rockets over.
And with people like
Crawford over there doing what he did, that broke it.
>> But how long did the bombings last?
>> Well, I told you the nine months of bombing.
But after that, it was spattered, irregular.
The Germans were still intent on coming
over and a lot of them continued to get through.
And just one plane
would come over circling
around and dropping a bomb here and there.
But after a while, they did stop,
but then that's when they sent the V-1 rocket,
the buzz bomb and then the V-2.
>> So there was a pause and then they sent it.
>> It lightened up quite a bit.
The rationing was just as bad.
But the bombing,
that did ease up a bit.
And we felt that we could go out not worry too much.
In fact, in 1943, I think it was,
we were able to go on
a school tour to a museum in London downtown London.
So, they judged that it would be safe for us to do that.
And another time they took us to a theater Ballet,
Swan Lake in the afternoon.
>> Did school ever shut down for any period of time?
>> Yes, it did. Right in the beginning.
And I've been trying to think it seemed
to me that it was a year.
But I I must Google at
some time and find out because at first,
the schools were closed.
And they were closed for a while.
And my parents were getting concerned because,
we weren't being educated.
Well, then the schools opened every other day,
not every other day,
but half the school went this day and
then half the next day so that with a bomb,
it wouldn't have killed as many.
So it went on for a while,
but I don't know exactly how long.
[NOISE] It seemed like a year.
And I know my parents were trying to find
somebody in the neighborhood who would home school us,
but we didn't have to do that.
>> What are your memories at the end
of the war and victory day?
>> Well, of course V-E Day came first and we had
the neighbors all got together and built
a bonfire and there
were cross roads and our house was on a corner.
So this was right in front of our house, huge bonfire.
And we sang and we danced
and the adults drank, we didn't.
But we had a lot of fun.
And it was about midnight when the fire had
gone down but had reached its height of heat,
the whole road blew up.
And we said, well,
we did what Germany couldn't do.
[LAUGHTER] But then as it got dark that night,
airplanes flew over the house
low our own airplanes with their lights on.
I never knew an airplane had lights to put on
and we were able to turn our lights on with no blackout.
And then I'll never forget my mother saying,
"Oh, Edna all this time,
we could have been sleeping in our own bed."
[LAUGHTER]
>> We could have. We needn't have gone into
the AA shelter because nothing touched us,
but we were fortunate.
>> Do you remember the songs that you sang?
>> Yeah. There'll be blue birds
over the white cliffs of dover,
Vlen, she was wonderful.
The songs that she sang were so uplifting and so good.
She was wonderful lady.
And then in victory in Japan,
we were more prepared for
that one because we knew it was coming.
So we had a stage,
and I remember we dressed up
in costumes and I made a cowgirl costume.
And I say, the only song I knew about America was
Chocolate Soldier from the USA [LAUGHTER].
>> How does that go?
>> Well, it was like they used to call
him Lazy bones in Harlem.
Lazy good for nothing all the day,
but now they're mighty proud of him in Harlem,
Chocolate soldier from the USA.
[LAUGHTER] I think that would be banned now.
>> Wouldn't it out of date song.
>> It's out of date, but calling
a black man, a chocolate soldier.
They wouldn't like it and I wouldn't like
it either at that time.
>> So tell me about leaving school.
When did that take place?
>> July of 1945.
>> So the war in Europe is over?
>> Yeah.
>> And why did you leave school?
>> It was the time they made us leave.
>> So you were a senior so to speak?
>> No, it wasn't 45. It was 44. I was 14.
>> And why were you made to leave school?
>> Well, everybody my age did.
This is what was so bad about England and schooling.
We were tested at age 11, English and math.
And if you didn't get A or B plus,
you failed and that
meant that you couldn't go onto grammar school.
I did not excel in either one of those.
So I liked art and history geography.
That was what I was really interested in.
I didn't count.
So when I was 14,
we left school and there was not much work
around at the time with the end of
the war or nearly the end of the war.
So my father said he didn't want me to
work in a factory or a restaurant,
so the only option for me was an office or a shop.
Looking back, I wish I had but at that time,
I didn't fancy working in an office.
So my mother got me a job in a department store in
the millinery department and they were going
to teach me millinery
which is one another thing I really loved.
So after three weeks there,
I was informed by
the manager that I was leaving and I said I'm.
And she said your mother came in and said
that you would be leaving and
my father was taking us up to
Newcastle to get away from the V-1 bombs.
And I thought, well, I didn't know I was leaving.
I was getting to like it there.
So when we didn't stay in Newcastle very long,
but we came back and my mother was able to get me
another position in a ladies shop closer to home,
and they had a milliner,
and I was going to learn millinery.
Well, another one all I had to do was pick
up pins and dust things
and then they put me
into the ladies department selling dresses,
which I didn't want to do that.
So I my mother,
again, helped me get this job in Harrow in a toy shop.
And I rather like that because the lady who owned it,
she was very nice and she let me dress the windows.
We called it window dressing.
I don't know if you do now,
but with all these pretty dolls
and things and I really enjoyed that.
But then after a while,
I heard that Americans had come back to the London area.
This was after. This was off around 47,
48 with the Berlin Airlift.
Americans had come to
London and they had opened a station.
It wasn't a base, it was
a station not very far from where I lived.
So I'm getting a bit mixed up here,
but I got this job.
I got an interview with a place in London.
I wanted to sketch dresses for
the fashion envelopes and fashion books.
And I could sketch pretty well.
So I had my portfolio and we were
on the station waiting to go into London.
And this American came onto the station.
He looked like something out of one of
those technicolor movies too.
My mother, she embarrassed me to death.
She went over.
I was 17 or 18 and she said,
are they hiring young women on the base?
[LAUGHTER] He said, Oh, no, ma'am.
He said, if your daughter is
interested in working on the base,
she would have to see a personnel officer.
So that was that and I just missed it.
Well, we went into London,
went to this place and they looked at my work and
they thought everything was
okay except I wasn't tall enough.
Now, I can't understand why that
would make any difference to sketching.
But that was at the time.
So then I had another interview a
short time after that at
a photographers and it was not to take photography.
It wasn't to model.
It was just to do whatever work needs to be done.
But he said, I'm sorry,
you're not tall enough.
Another one. So when I got home,
I thought, well, he, what can I do?
I'll go to the base personnel office
and I got a job in there.
We called it a Nephi.
They called it the post exchange
where they sold all things.
And they put me on a department that sold English dishes,
oil paintings, ornaments, and I loved it.
That was really that was really very interesting.
>> This was part of the post exchange
that was set up by the American?
>> Yes. It was all American.
>> And why did they have this place selling these things?
>> Well, I suppose it was because
so many Americans were stationed there
and they would buy gifts to send back home and
items for their homes in England, things like that.
Well, after a while,
I left there because I
wanted to see if I could get a better job,
and I got a job in a drug store,
a chemist in England,
and I worked in their surgical department.
And that was a very good job and I liked it.
And when I asked the manager what chances were there for
me to be promoted to have an increase in pay,
he said, Oh, in about five years.
So I thought I'm not getting anywhere.
So a friend of mine still worked on the base.
And I called her and I said, Irene,
if you can find me a job on on the base because I said,
I just I need to get a better paying job.
So after a while, she called me and she
said, I've got your job.
She said, it's as a cashier in the officers club.
And I said, Irene, I failed math.
I didn't even get a D in math.
How can I be a cashier or treasurer?
But then I thought, well, I'm going to do it.
So I got the job.
And it was there that I met my first husband, Jerry.
He was a captain.
He was a general's pilot.
That's how it all began.
>> What did he do during the war?
>> He flew in India over the hump.
He flew a C-46 taking
gas over the hump to
the free Chinese. That was what he did.
>> What's the hump?
>> The Himalayas.
[LAUGHTER] They flew
the lowest passage through, which was?
>> Twenty thousand feet.
The Himalayas is 30,000,
but this is a low spot.
>> Twenty thousand. And they went through that gap,
and it was very dangerous because if they went down,
nobody could rescue them.
So it was death if you went down,
if you survived the crash.
But that's what he did and he was there
until all the way through the war.
He made 23 missions.
And then when the war ended,
he had to stay out there to
transport the free Chinese from,
I think it was in the Kunming area to
Shanghai so that they could get
with Chiang Kai-shek to go to Taiwan.
Then he got back,
and as soon as he got back to the States,
they sent him to
Germany to take part in the Berlin Airlift.
And in that, he flew coal into Berlin.
So that's quite a job.
>> And how did he end up in England?
>> Berlin Airlift. So when
he got through with the Berlin Airlift,
he was sent back to the states.
And then they sent him to this base in England,
the one near London, doing
aerial photography as spy work.
But somebody said to him,
Davis, you're not getting anywhere in a job like that.
Well, he was very fortunate.
Out of all of the pilots in England at that base,
he had more hours than
anybody else in multi-engine planes.
And so with that,
he was selected to be General Celsus designated pilot.
And he had a very good job there.
>> And why did you like him,
why were you attracted to him?
>> Well, he was very good looking.
He was very handsome man.
But he was very busy.
So we had a few dates
and it didn't seem to be going anywhere.
And then in 1954,
by that time, I quit the job in
the Officers Club and I'd gone back
to work in the post-exchange,
and then I was working on the jewelry department.
So he came in to say what I thought was goodbye.
So after a while we were
talking and talking and he wasn't saying anything,
it wasn't going anywhere.
So I thought, if he doesn't go soon,
I'm just going to cry.
So I put my hand out and I said, well, goodbye,
Jerry, and he turned away, walked away.
But then we began corresponding,
and in 1956, I flew to the states to marry him.
>> And what did it mean to you to leave England?
>> Well, I was so enthralled with getting married,
I really didn't think I was leaving England.
It's a strange thought.
Because America didn't seem to be that far away,
so I knew that I would be able to go back.
Earlier, I had wanted to immigrate to New Zealand.
And I had all the papers and my dad signed them.
But when I thought that I'd
never see England again in the springtime,
I'll probably never see England
again because it's such a long way.
I thought I can't go there.
So I tore those papers out.
So my destiny was here.
>> How did your mother feel about you leaving?
>> She was very happy.
She was overjoyed.
She thought it was just wonderful,
something she would've liked to have done.
>> Did did she make any trips over?
>> No, I could never get them to come over.
There was always something.
And after my dad died, I said, mom,
I'm coming to England
and I want to bring you back with me.
But you have to get a passport.
Well, she didn't do that.
So when I got to England,
it takes quite a long time to get a passport there.
So I said, well I
would've taken you back with me and I would have
brought you back to England because she said she didn't
like to travel alone. She wouldn't.
And then my sister had three girls and each one of them,
as they turned 16, I said,
when you're 16, I'm going
to pay you fare for you to come to America.
Stay with us awhile.
They had excuses.
One girl didn't want to leave her boyfriend.
The other girl didn't want
to and the three of them said no.
So my sister and
my brother-in-law, they weren't interested.
So I finally got my brother to come
over and that was when he was 75,
and he had the most wonderful time.
We saw to it that he did.
We took him to Disneyworld
and all places that we thought he'd like,
and he didn't want to go home.
[LAUGHTER] And thank goodness,
he came over when he did because
he died the following year.
>> Well. And I want to talk
about your husband's military career,
your first husband's military career.
How many bases did you live on in the United States?
>> Massachusetts, Westover Air Force Base for three years.
Then he went to
the Command and Staff College in Maxwell, Alabama.
We were there for about a part of a year.
And then went to MacDill, Tampa.
We were there three years. Excuse me.
And then we went to Japan,
Tokyo for three years.
And then came back to
Hamilton Air Force Base just north of San Francisco.
And that would have been a four-year assignment,
but we were there 2.5 years
and he gave up flying at that point.
And so he couldn't stay
there because it was a flying job.
So they sent him out here to Robins.
And that's how I came to Georgia.
>> And where is Robins Air Force Base located?
>> One Robins, Georgia, south of Macon.
>> And when did you come there? Do you know the year?
>> Yes. It was 1968,
and he retired as soon as he could in 1969.
And then we left Georgia,
went up to Massachusetts where I thought we would live.
And I don't know.
After being away after being in the South,
we decided it wasn't for us.
And then he said, "Well, where shall we go?"
because we didn't have children.
And he wasn't close to his family.
So we went to Missouri where he was born,
lived there a while, didn't like it,
so we moved to Florida.
And we stayed there for 18 months,
went back to Missouri for a while.
Then went back to Florida for a while.
Finally bought a house,
18 months we were there at that time,
went back to Missouri.
And then we went back to Florida and bought a house,
we were there for eight years,
and then we moved to Williamsburg, Virginia.
We were there two years.
And I liked it, but he didn't.
And so he said he wanted
to go back to Florida and I said,
no, we left there for many reasons,
and the reasons still apply.
So we made a compromise and settled
on Georgia or a little bit in between the two.
[LAUGHTER]
>> So tell me about meeting your second husband?
>> You mean old [OVERLAPPING]
>> Back here.
>> That guy.
>> Well, after Jerry died, that was 2000.
Some widow friends of mine said,
why don't you come with us
to have dinner at the Officers Club
on a Saturday night? So I did.
And then on a Wednesday night,
they would go and have
something to eat and then go to a movie.
Well, on this one particular Wednesday night,
it was a buffet on a Wednesday night and I got out
and there was a man standing beside me and he said to me,
"Do you know if that is chicken or shrimp,
the deep fried chicken or shrimp?"
That's how I got to know Crawford.
What a line. [LAUGHTER]
>> And when did you marry?
>> Well, I met him in January,
February of '03 and we were married in October.
And when he asked me to marry him,
I said, no, I don't want to get married.
Not intending to get married.
And he said, think about it.
And I said, okay, I'll think about it.
But we were married in October.
>> Tell me about the conditions under which I had to make
the proposal to you at the restaurant.
>> Well, there's a sandwich [OVERLAPPING]
>> Bending knee in the [inaudible]
>> There's a restaurant in Warner Robins,
very nice sandwich restaurant.
We had a sandwich and we were leaving,
and I was driving my car.
So I was in the car
and you didn't get down on bending knee.
[LAUGHTER]
You were in the car.
You said, will you marry me?
And I said, no. Then I said,
well, just let me think about it awhile.
Give me six months.
Well, it was three months.
I think it was about four months later we got married.
And this was what was interesting.
He said, where will we get married?
And I said, well, I don't know.
We didn't want to go out to Las Vegas to get married.
I said, well, I'd like to be married in the Church,
and he said, he would too.
>> I think I was one
insisting we are getting married in church.
>> So I had no objections to my church.
So then he said,
I need to have a bagpiper,
I thought bagpiper, well,
Dickens, will I find a bagpipe?
Well, I did. So then
it went on and on and on and in the end,
it was quite a formal wedding.
>> Three sons.
>> His three sons were there.
And I called my cousin in England
and I jokingly said to him,
I said, Dick, I'm getting married.
I said, how about you giving me away.
So he said, so they came.
And all in tuxedos and he walked me down the aisle.
>> The church was crowned.
>> Yeah it was.
Because they were all waiting to see
what on earth I would marry.
But we had the bagpiper lead us in.
I had a maid of honor and
a little flower girl and my wedding dress,
I went to this Japanese dressmaker and that poor girl.
I picked out a pattern that was quite difficult and
the fabric was flimsy and difficult to deal with.
And then what was so tragic her only granddaughter died.
And I think she was here at this school, this college.
She was 22 years old and she had meningitis.
She died. And then I said to her,
Mary, I said, please just forget it.
I'll buy something. She said,
no, miss Edna, she said, I'll finish it.
She said it's therapy for me.
Well, we two went further along.
And her husband had a heart attack.
And I said, no,
I said, now this is it.
I said, you can't do anymore to this.
She said, I'll finish it for you.
She said, please. Her husband
was getting on okay after that,
but she said, it's therapy for me.
She did an excellent job.
But poor lady, I felt so sad for her.
So we had this nice wedding.
Yeah. It was very nice.
>> Yeah. And my sons call her their wicked stepmother.
>> And why is that?
>> It's only Rob.
>> He's only one.
>> It's only Rob.
>> Does he have a reason?
>> Well, no,
because he tries to trip me up with things,
so I trip him up.
And I was the one that said I was his wicked stepmother.
>> They love her to pieces.
>> We do have a good time.
>> So you've been married to two World War II pilots?
>> Right. And you know it's a funny thing.
I don't think I would have married
Crawford if we hadn't got that connection,
that connection not just
with the war, but with airplanes.
We talk about airplanes.
We understand them.
>> And so going off of that,
why do you think it's important to
share your World War II story?
>> Well, hopefully,
others will learn from it.
Hopefully, we'll never have to
go through that thing again.
>> And hopefully they'll know more
about actual things that
happened in the conditions
that were present during the war.
>> Yeah. I hope it helps somebody.
And then when the war ended,
it wasn't like you closed
this door and everything's normal again. It wasn't.
It wasn't normal for another 10 years.
Rationing still went on.
Things were very drab.
All of the nice things that England
made was sent for export.
We could only have seconds or the utility things that
were not such good fabric and stuff like that.
It was very dreary and that's
why a lot of people went to Australia,
New Zealand, where they could go and
the government would pay their passage out there.
That's why I wanted to go to New Zealand.
The government paid your passage.
You had to stay there for three years.
If you came back earlier,
you had to reimburse them for your fare.
So it was dull.
>> And I want to go back to one
more thing before we finish.
You said you got out of school in 1944 at
the age of 14 and
your father didn't want you to go to work in a factory.
Was it necessary that you work at that time?
>> Well, probably not.
I mean, probably not.
But I guess they just didn't want me sitting around home.
>> But you worked during the war?
>> That last year of the war, I did.
Yeah. And when I worked in that toy shop,
I remember the lady who owned it saying because we had
huge glass windows and I would have to get
in them to arrange things.
And she said, you're not afraid, are you?
And I said, afraid of what?
She said, well, the war is
still on we could have a bomb.
And I said, no, I said no,
it doesn't bother me because it was
unlikely then that there would be anything.
It was pretty much over.
It was just finishing off the bits and pieces.
So yeah, I worked during the war.
But no harm came.
There were no bombs then except the flying bombs.
>> Is there anything else you'd like to add?
>> Well, not really,
but I have a poem.
>> Please.
>> If I may. And this
is a tribute to the battle of Britton pilots.
And it's anonymous, and it's called The Few.
Mischievous laughing boys who
grew to quick manhood to be the
few who flew above
all human call through Summer's height to Autumn's fall.
Infringed the sanctity of space in
freedom's name and died in grace,
falling like leaves upon
the wield to Russetspot and English field.
Their brief, gay valiant season spent for us.
Our task, their monument,
nature herself has taken
over and has decreed forevermore,
the few shall be remembered
by white chalk marks in a summer sky.
So now during the battle of Britain,
the skies were full of
the contrails and that's how we remember them.
>> Thank you so much, miss Hicks.
>> Thank you.
>> And you were telling me a story
about a moment in the bomb shelter.
>> Well, we could hear the bombs coming
down and there was a lull.
And so I mimicked this bomb coming down with,
like a they whined as they came down more than whistle.
But I was whistling to copy it.
And my dad he looked and he said,
boy, he said, this is a close one.
And because he was waiting for the explosion.
And I said dad that was me. I whistled it.
And then one other time,
I had this piece of shrapnel, a big piece.
And I don't know whether it came from a bomb
or from an anti aircraft gun, but shell.
But I held it. And then after a while,
I threw it away because I was terrified,
it was going to explode.
But other than that.
>> [inaudible].
>> I can't whistle anymore.
>> [inaudible] a while ago.
>> No, I didn't. I can't do it anymore. Sorry.
>> Because I heard something.
>> Well. Thank you very much.