Care home residents remember WWII and when the 'bombs were still falling'

For care home residents up and down the country, Remembrance Day holds special significance and personal memories.

In the run up to this year’s commemorations, three residents at Faithfull House Residential Care care home, Cheltenham share their memories of what life was like for them during the war.

Brian Knight was six years old when World War II broke out. He lived in Plymouth which was one of the most heavily bombed British cities during this time.

The first bombs fell on the city on 6 July 1940, with the heaviest period of bombing occurring in March and April 1941.

“I remember the outbreak of war and I was interested in it all.

“As a major naval town, it did come under attack. When the first war raid began, I was at school and I ran home to check on my grandmother, who was on her own and blind. The school was frantic.”

'The Americans took such heavy losses'

During the blitz in April 1941, Mr Knight said: “I have never lost the image in my mind’s eye of seeing a house with flames coming through the windows.

“This was in the middle of the night when the bombs were still falling. Most of our street was flattened. The war really came home to me then.

“There was a Polish Naval unit based in Plymouth at the Aggie Weston’s hostel. On Monday evenings they showed American films and invited in children of the dockworkers, so I saw my first Frankenstein and my first Abbott and Costello films. It’s always left me with a warm spot for the Poles.”

The D-Day Landings on 6 June 1944 was the largest and most complex combined airborne and amphibious military operation of all time where approximately 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region.

“There was a large park near us and in 1944 it suddenly filled with tents, full of American army personnel. Afterwards, we knew it was the preparations for D-Day,” says Mr Knight. “I remember the garish American comics being handed around, and the fights between the soldiers.

“I remember being very excited about the D-Day landings and telling my grandfather that it was taking place. I’ve subsequently been to Normandy and seen some of the landing sites for myself and Omaha beach where the Americans took such heavy losses.”

During the war, Mr Knight took the 11 + exam and went to a local grammar school. After leaving school, he completed his two years of National Service in the RAF before working for GCHQ for 38 years.

’We used to stand in the dark on the lawn’

Margaret End, also a resident at the Cheltenham care home, remembers her childhood in the Gloucestershire village of Naunton during World War II.

“I remember during the war a lot of foreign troops were billeted in our area. The Americans were at Guiting Grange. My father organised whist drives and dances in the village and the troops came in coaches.

“The German planes had a different sound to the British ones. They came over in droves. We had to make sure the house was blacked out. “We used to stand in the dark on the lawn and watch them go over and I remember mum saying ‘I wonder who is going to get it tonight?’”

Ms End remembers there were not many shelters in Naunton. “Our dining room was strengthened, extra wood to prop up the ceiling and we would sleep downstairs.

“My father was headmaster of Naunton school. A school from London was evacuated to our village along with two staff. The school wasn’t big enough for everyone, so the village hall and another building were used to help accommodate them.”

Ms End was 14 when the war ended. “I can picture listening to the news on the radio in the living room at home and hearing Churchill.

“After the war ended things remained the same, things were still short, petrol was still short, and we still had rationing. You did what needs must.”

’I didn’t see her for many years’

Irene Kettley, 94, was 11 when war broke out. She had just won a scholarship to Parliament Hill High School in London, but she and her older sister were evacuated to a village in Middlesex.

“The village school had just one classroom for children aged five to 14. When there weren’t any raids, we came back to London.

“Later I was re-evacuated on my own to North Devon to Barnstaple Girls Grammar School. My mum and two sisters followed. At grammar school, I was given a grant of £15 a year which was given in three lots. I bought a bike for five pounds, and it was my pride and joy. I used to cycle to the seaside with a friend.”

Before the war, Ms Kettley’s father made toys for Woolworths in a factory but during the war, the factory made tools for armaments. Her father also worked as a firewatcher in London.

“My eldest sister, who was the beauty of the family, was one of the first to marry a GI,” says Ms Kettley. “She moved to America, and I didn’t see her for many years."

Ms Kettley says she did "okay" when she took her O-levels but this was because she missed "over a year of school due to the war."

When she finished school, Ms Kettley worked as a telephone operator and at the end of the war got a transfer back to London.

“There was a feeling of relief at the end of the war, we thought rationing would end but of course, it didn’t for a long time.”

In the following years, she was promoted to work at the Houses of Parliament. “It was a tiny little pothole of a switchboard but I worked there very happily. Looking back, it was a different world.”

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