everybody has a story to tell

EILEEN

EILEEN'S STORY:

Memories of an Ealing resident– bombs over Ealing, hiding from Mr Selfridge and dancing to Glenn Miller

Eileen Nutt has lived in Ealing most of her life and I recently had the opportunity to video interview her about her life story.  Eileen is warm and friendly and still has the same irrepressible joy for life she had as a young girl – still socialising with her many friends, going to the theatre and, unbelievably, working one day a week as a bookkeeper at 82!  She’s even planning a hot air balloon trip later this year.  Some of her wartime memories are fascinating, providing insights into our social history.   Here are some extracts in Eileen’s own words:

I was 15 when the war broke out and to begin with it didn’t make any difference to our lives.  We used to carry our gas masks round with us wherever we went and sirens would go off and so we’d go to the air-raid shelters, which had been very hastily built; but then of course nothing happened, so you got a bit blasé about it and didn’t think anything would happen.  We kept being told that the war would only last for 6 months.   In August 1940, I was in the cinema with my brother and the siren went; they put on the screen, ‘if you wish to leave the theatre …’  but people didn’t take any notice.  Then there was this almighty crump and we still didn’t take any notice, as we didn’t realise what it was.  My brother insisted on staying until the end of the film and when we got outside it was the most amazing sight because there had been a bomb very close by, and the tram was blown away and the tramlines were arched up in the air; but the most amazing thing was they had also bombed the docks and the sky was a vivid red.  All you could smell was burning sugar.  There were black pieces flying through the air, coming down like snowflakes, all black and charred.  The ambulances and fire engines were tearing everywhere.  I don’t think I shall ever forget that sight, with the sky bright red and the smoke - and the docks were at least ten miles away!

When war broke out the school I was at, along with all the other schools in the London area, was evacuated.  My parents didn’t want me to go away.  Their idea was that if we were going to get bombed we would all get bombed together.  So that was a bit traumatic as all my friends had been evacuated and I didn’t have school to go to, so I got a job in Selfridges, in the office as a trainee ledger clerk.  I was there a week before I even knew that there was a dining room.  No one thought of saying ‘would you like to go to the rest room’ or anything like that; you were just left to fend for yourself.  My first job was to go around to the cash boxes; there must have been a hundred of them.  In those days you used to have a bill with a double part and the customer had one bit and the other part was put in the box to go to the ledger department.  My job was to go round picking out all these bills and taking them back to the ledger department.  Everyone used to talk about Mr Selfridge as if he was God.  I used to think ‘what on earth would I do if I met Mr Selfridge on the way round’ then one day I was in the piano department as he was coming through.  I was so terrified I went and hid behind a piano so I didn’t have to see him.  Can you imagine anybody doing that now?  I really hated that job, so I only stayed for about three months. 

When my father was in Roehampton Hospital, a lot of the Dunkirk wounded were brought in, all very young boys, some of them only 17 or 18, and some with the most horrendous injuries.  I used to write their letters home for them because they couldn’t, in lots of cases, write to their parents.  That was so sad because most of them didn’t want their parents to know how badly injured they were.  They would want me to make light of it.  Travelling was very difficult in those days, so a lot of the parents, if they lived in Scotland or the North, couldn’t get down to see their sons, so they would have had to rely on letters.  I think that really brought it home to me how awful war was, when you’ve seen hundreds of young people like that, all maimed, with legs and arms off, or blind.  In some cases one or two of them had said that they wished they had been killed outright, because what was their life going to be, no legs, not being able to see, things like that.  That really was very sad.

In 1944 we were living in Chapel Road; my mother was in the garden, holding a two week old baby from the house next door, and saw this thing coming over.  If you could hear the engine, you knew that you were safe, it was when they switched out that you knew they were going to come down and you just didn’t know where they were going to land.  This one landed about 200 yards across the road from us and the whole shop was devastated, a lot of people in the shop were killed and we, once more, had all the windows blown out and all the crockery was broken.  We lost so much furniture throughout the years; you couldn’t just go out and buy bits of furniture, you just had to depend on somebody to give you something or go to a second-hand shop for crockery.  I don’t think anybody had a complete set of crockery in those days because it was all very scarce and rationed.

In 1945, just before my father died, he was in hospital; we used to have to go to Westminster Hospital every night to see him.  I worked in Uxbridge and used to meet my mother in Ealing and we would go together.  It was so cold, absolutely bitterly cold; we had terrible cold weather from the November onwards and we didn’t have any coal, we couldn’t get it delivered as it was on rationing anyway.  My mother and I used to come home and put our legs in the gas oven and consequently we had the most horrendous chilblains; we used to go to bed with so many clothes on.  I think one of the things that I appreciate most now is having a warm bathroom; because we’d go to the bathroom and there’d be icicles on the inside of the bathroom and no hot water - we washed in cold water because there was no heat.   We used to borrow a pram from a neighbour and walk from Ealing down to Brentford to the gasworks to get a bag of coal to bring back.  It was horrendous and that went on for months and months.  That was just about the worst winter I can ever remember.

One of the highlights of my war years was the fact that we used to go dancing every week, Saturday evenings always and often Sunday evenings.   I had a friend who lived in High Wycombe, where the American Air Force base was, and we used to go to the dances that they organised.  We were very fortunate because Glenn Miller came to play for them and Enid and I were invited to the dance.  So I have actually danced to Glenn Miller’s orchestra.  It was wonderful, absolutely marvellous.   I shall never ever forget it and I can’t ever hear a Glenn Miller record now without I don’t remember what a lovely time that was.  

I used to trace engineering drawings and I really enjoyed it; it was a lovely atmosphere.  We used to get paid on a Thursday, so people would go out – whereas now they would go out for meals, we would go out to the pub for a drink and one drink would last you all evening.  We would have to ring the local pubs to see who had got beer in and you used to have to take your own glass.  As for spirits, you never saw them unless the naval boys had saved a tot of rum and brought it home.  Occasionally somebody might have a glass of port – you’d have a port and lemon and think you were being so daring!