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00:00:03Open your right eye and close it.
00:00:15Very gently lower your right leg to the floor.
00:00:23I'm a hundred and one. That isn't bad, is it?
00:00:30Do you ever talk about what it was like to be a child during the Blitz?
00:00:35No, one doesn't. It opens up far too many horrors and crevices in one's earlier life.
00:00:49So why talk about it now?
00:00:51Because everybody's asking because they realise that we're the last elements of the generation that went through the war.
00:01:04So few of us are left. We're all popping our clogs quite frequently.
00:01:13Do you think we're right to ask questions?
00:01:18Well, if you learn from them, yes.
00:01:21No, no, no, no.
00:01:38No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:02:04It might have been better to be evacuated.
00:02:07There was always this feeling that something was going to happen.
00:02:11I had no idea the war was coming.
00:02:14That would affect us so much and be so very, very scary.
00:02:18People who have not experienced it can never comprehend how bad it was.
00:02:40I think it's important to remember, to remember the horror of it.
00:02:45The Blitz continues to live inside me.
00:02:49You don't just get over it.
00:02:52You carry the consequences with you forever.
00:03:04Hello.
00:03:06Hello.
00:03:08Hello.
00:03:10Hello.
00:03:12Now listen, this is not dementia that's making me do all these things.
00:03:17I am personally like this.
00:03:20I'm 90 and a half.
00:03:23Don't forget the half.
00:03:26The main problem of dementia is part of your brain knocks off.
00:03:35But the part of my brain that I need is still with me.
00:03:43And that's what I'm giving to you.
00:03:57We heard a lot about Hitler. We knew that he was an evil man.
00:04:02My sister, who was younger than me, was afraid the Germans were going to invade the country and eat her.
00:04:09If I had asked you as a little child, who is Hitler and what are you fighting against?
00:04:15Well, definitely he is a very, very bad man. Even from a child's point of view. I hated him.
00:04:22We were all so patriotic. It was England and we weren't going to let anybody take it away.
00:04:34The only war we could imagine was trench warfare, what our fathers had gone through.
00:04:42People mentioned air raids.
00:04:45And my father, God bless him, don't worry. He said, we've got big strong slates on our roof.
00:04:53That was the mentality. We didn't have a clue about air power.
00:05:25In the last few days, the danger of war has seemed very close to us in Britain.
00:05:28A modern war from the air comes suddenly with little warning.
00:05:32If I had asked your mum, why have you not evacuated Patsy, what would her answer be?
00:05:39I don't want her to leave. I want to keep her with me.
00:05:46And that's what she done.
00:05:49She looked after me till she couldn't look after me no more.
00:05:55As far as I know, it was never even mentioned.
00:05:58Because I knew nothing about it.
00:06:00It would have been nice.
00:06:02Especially if they'd have sent me to a farm or somewhere like that.
00:06:05That would have been really nice.
00:06:09I would have hated it, I think.
00:06:10About half the school were evacuated.
00:06:14The rest of us went to the station to wave them off on the train.
00:06:21My mother and father said, if they were going to die, we're going to die together.
00:06:28You will now hear a statement by the Prime Minister.
00:06:32I have to tell you now, this country is at war with Germany.
00:06:45I could feel this fear in the adults.
00:06:48The way they talked to each other was a little bit...
00:06:53I wouldn't say snappy, but there was a distance between them at times.
00:06:58That they were trying to reason what was happening.
00:07:01And of course you couldn't.
00:07:02Because every day was different.
00:07:04And it was the fear of the unknown all the time.
00:07:07They never knew what was going to happen next.
00:07:12I was really worried about war.
00:07:15I think children are very sensitive.
00:07:19They pick up feelings even if they don't quite understand them.
00:07:26Now may God bless you all, for it is evil things that we shall be fighting against.
00:07:32Brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution.
00:07:47I was born in 1931 in November.
00:07:50And we moved to Croydon, near Croydon Aerodrome.
00:07:55We lived in a council house.
00:07:57It was beautiful.
00:08:00We loved it.
00:08:03This is my parents.
00:08:05I should think when they got engaged.
00:08:08My father was born in Ireland.
00:08:12My mother was the daughter of an Italian immigrant.
00:08:15And she looks Italian, doesn't she?
00:08:19Very unbecoming clothes, weren't they?
00:08:23Every Sunday evening we used to have what was called the circle.
00:08:28Everybody did something.
00:08:29So the uncles would sing.
00:08:32Mum would play the piano.
00:08:33My grandmother sang beautifully.
00:08:36If you're Irish and if you're Italian,
00:08:39you are very, very prone to talking and discussing.
00:08:44The complication in our family was that my grandfather was Italian
00:08:49and Mussolini was the one who began fascism.
00:08:53I knew that we weren't like that.
00:08:55And that if Germany came over,
00:08:58being like Mussolini, we would be controlled.
00:09:00We would be told what to think and what to do.
00:09:04And I've never wanted to be told what to do.
00:09:07Or what to think.
00:09:13We just knew it was coming. We just knew.
00:09:18I think everybody knew it was coming.
00:09:49If the British Luftwaffe
00:10:09We have blackout curtains, everybody had to have those.
00:10:13Every little chink of light had to be obliterated at night.
00:10:17Oh, goodness, you had to be so careful.
00:10:23People used to light cigarettes, one from another one, with their hands clasped over it in case the glow showed.
00:10:35I don't light dark now, and I never have liked dark nights.
00:10:39Whether it's something to do with that, I don't know.
00:10:42I do not like being out after dark.
00:10:45Official information and instruction will be given over the wireless and in the newspapers.
00:10:53If you are provided with a steel shelter and have not erected it, do so at once.
00:10:59The Anderson Shelters are like a noble shelter.
00:11:05And then at the front where the door is, there was corrugated iron.
00:11:09It was earth up to half the way.
00:11:12Yes.
00:11:13On the top.
00:11:13And we had books set.
00:11:15Yeah, we had books.
00:11:17It was quite cosy, really.
00:11:19They had a door, just one door, nothing else.
00:11:22In front of the door, there was a barrier made by corrugated iron.
00:11:26It was very strong.
00:11:28And that was the sort of framework.
00:11:30It didn't, because there was soil put on halfway up.
00:11:34But the corrugated iron was also at the front because you had a door.
00:11:39It wasn't.
00:11:39There was just a door.
00:11:41I remember the sticking out because, do you remember, I fell and damaged my ear when I fell.
00:11:47And it was like fins sticking out of the concrete.
00:11:52When you hear the sirens or anti-aircraft guns, you must get under cover at once.
00:11:57But the most important rule of all is never to stand staring at the sky.
00:12:02Have you ever heard an air-age siren?
00:12:18I can hear it, but I can't reproduce it.
00:12:23I know exactly what it sounded like.
00:12:27But for some reason, I don't want to remember it.
00:12:34My body doesn't want to be reminded.
00:12:38It went, ooh.
00:12:41Yeah.
00:12:46Ooh.
00:12:51You know, and it's really frightening.
00:13:08It's just, it's just in my brain.
00:13:12You had to get up as quickly as you could.
00:13:16Leave everything.
00:13:18And down the stairs.
00:13:25We had an air-raid shelter in the garden.
00:13:31I used to be responsible for the animals in the family.
00:13:37We had two dogs.
00:13:40Peter.
00:13:41He was a fox terrier.
00:13:45Bimbo.
00:13:45We had another one called Bimbo.
00:13:49Cat.
00:13:50We had a cat.
00:13:52We had a budgerigar who was taken in his cage.
00:13:58We called him Django.
00:14:02I don't know why.
00:14:06Because our wee houses didn't have a garden either front or back, we had nowhere to go.
00:14:13We just had under the stairs, where the gas meter was.
00:14:18We could have been gassed.
00:14:21We used the cupboard under the stairs.
00:14:23We just got in there in the dark.
00:14:25I thought it was a queer joke to begin with.
00:14:28It was nice because mummy would cuddle me and we would play spoons and we would talk to each other.
00:14:34I told mummy not to be upset because my daddy would chase the bad noises away.
00:14:45The thing I remember first is seeing the fire raid on the docks.
00:14:52We saw the red glow in the sky.
00:14:59We saw a German plane drop something.
00:15:03My younger brother thought it was a chocolate box, but it must have been a bomb.
00:15:09And when the bomb started being dropped in Croydon, we heard this absolutely weird sound.
00:15:17I can't describe it.
00:15:19It's a bit like a wind, but a very dull sound.
00:15:24And then the explosion.
00:15:26So I knew by then that they could explode and destroy houses.
00:15:59The Blitz was not confined to London.
00:16:01The Blitz was not confined to London.
00:16:07I hope people realise that it was countrywide.
00:16:15It's very annoying to everybody else in the country that London is always thought to be the be-all and
00:16:20end-all of everything.
00:16:21It isn't.
00:16:23It absolutely isn't.
00:16:26When anybody mentions the war, I think of Coventry, of course.
00:16:31I don't think of London.
00:16:33I think of Coventry and my experiences.
00:16:45I was born not very far away from the Alvis factory, where they were making all kinds of things for
00:16:53the war.
00:16:54Coventry was a lovely old medieval city.
00:16:57Coventry was a very close-knit community.
00:17:03Nobody, for instance, locked their doors.
00:17:06Nobody had the television.
00:17:08I'd never even heard of television.
00:17:14Mum was an extraordinary woman.
00:17:18She would put me to bed.
00:17:21And then she would sit with me.
00:17:28And I'd heard all these bumps, you know, which were the bombs, of course.
00:17:33But she never gave me any idea that she might be frightened.
00:17:38At all.
00:17:39She made a game out of the whole thing.
00:17:49I had no idea what the bumps were, until there was a house on the corner with a low brick
00:17:57wall.
00:17:59And I could see over that low brick wall.
00:18:01And in the garden, they got a chicken run.
00:18:04And I used to love going and looking at the baby chicks.
00:18:09So this one morning, I went to see the baby chicks.
00:18:14And there was basically just a pile of rubble.
00:18:18And I stood staring at this pile of rubble.
00:18:25And I said to my mum,
00:18:28Well, where are the baby chicks?
00:18:31And she didn't pull any punches.
00:18:33She said, they're dead, love.
00:18:35They're under the rubble.
00:18:39It didn't occur to me, until years later,
00:18:42that people lived in that house,
00:18:43that they must have died.
00:19:10I'm a Hull boy.
00:19:11I was born in Hull,
00:19:13and not far from where I'm living now.
00:19:20Hull was quite a good-looking city in its finest days.
00:19:26My father was working for the Prudential Insurance Company.
00:19:33I came a little bit late in mum's life.
00:19:36I think she was 29 when she had me,
00:19:38so that was probably a little bit late.
00:19:40But they were very loving parents,
00:19:42and ours were very well looked after.
00:19:50The Hull was very much a working-class area.
00:19:56The dockers were quite tough guys,
00:19:59but they were nice guys.
00:20:01As a little boy,
00:20:02I would love going to Victoria Pier,
00:20:05and you'd be able to see ships going in and out of the docks.
00:20:30One night,
00:20:31the air sirens went off.
00:20:33The mother said,
00:20:34we're going into the air raid shelter.
00:20:36We just got out onto the terrace at the back of the house,
00:20:38and suddenly this whole sky exploded.
00:20:43The searchlights were pinning up into the sky
00:20:46and picking out the raiders and the bombers.
00:20:49And with that,
00:20:50then the anti-aircraft guns went off.
00:20:55You could see sparks flying all over.
00:20:57It was like firework night.
00:21:02And suddenly a hand went under my bottom,
00:21:05and a few seconds later I was in the air raid shelter.
00:21:17It was like living in hell.
00:21:19But first of all,
00:21:20they were in front of me,
00:21:21and then they moved around to the right-hand side of me,
00:21:25and then to the back of me,
00:21:26and then to the left of me.
00:21:28We thought,
00:21:28any minute it's going to be our turn.
00:21:30And it went on,
00:21:32so I'm told,
00:21:33for six hours.
00:22:02We'd have this harrow raid,
00:22:04and then to the right-hand side of me.
00:22:04It was a tremendous night.
00:22:05But dawn came.
00:22:07It was my grandma's morning off
00:22:10that she would have,
00:22:11and she would go into the town.
00:22:14My grandma was a very powerful woman.
00:22:17She didn't meet five foot.
00:22:19Hitler was not going to stop her going into the town.
00:22:23And so she got me ready.
00:22:38When we got to the end of Beverly Road,
00:22:40to Blundell's Corner,
00:22:42it was the most horrendous sight
00:22:44that you would ever wish to see.
00:22:47Virtually all the buildings were down.
00:22:49There was smoke,
00:22:50rubble across everywhere.
00:22:52There were people searching for survivors.
00:22:55There was fire engines,
00:22:56police cars,
00:22:57ambulances.
00:22:58We had to stride over all these hosepacks,
00:23:01but we kept on walking.
00:23:14On that corner was Fields Cafe.
00:23:16This is where grandma and I aimed for,
00:23:20and we got to.
00:23:21And we'd gone through all this devastation,
00:23:23and the cafe was open.
00:23:25You wouldn't believe it.
00:23:26In the window was a coffee machine,
00:23:29and it ground coffee.
00:23:30And when you came to this area here,
00:23:33you could smell the coffee beans.
00:23:37This cafe also had people playing music in us as well.
00:23:42And you think,
00:23:42where did they come from?
00:23:44After all this devastation surrounding us,
00:23:47life went on.
00:24:01When it was in our own city,
00:24:03we thought we were the only people being attacked.
00:24:06But it wasn't that at all.
00:24:16Jean?
00:24:17Would you like me to make coffee or tea for the flask?
00:24:22Tea, I think.
00:24:23Tea?
00:24:24Shall I put the milk in?
00:24:26Yeah, you need to make it in the tea box,
00:24:28it'll be easier.
00:24:29Yeah.
00:24:29You want two tea bags in?
00:24:30Yeah.
00:24:34There was a saying in Yorkshire where you shut up and get on with it.
00:24:38These days people talk about caring and loving and being together.
00:24:43That never happened in those days.
00:24:46I think you just had to look after number one as best you could,
00:24:50even when you were little.
00:24:53Where we lived, it was a very small house,
00:24:55and there were eight of us living there.
00:24:57And the toilet was across the big courtyard at the back.
00:25:01And that was shared, I think, between six houses.
00:25:05All the local kids were out in the street every day.
00:25:08And the babies in the prams even as well sometimes.
00:25:12Because the mothers used to put the kids outside
00:25:14and I suppose have a little bit of peace and quiet.
00:25:19I was the youngest of six children.
00:25:23I was a spoilt little brat, so they said.
00:25:25I once threw myself into a grave in the cemetery.
00:25:30There was an open grave that was ready for somebody to be buried in.
00:25:34And to get my sisters into trouble, I told my mother that they'd pushed me in.
00:25:41That was the kind of child I was.
00:25:45My father worked at the tram sheds.
00:25:48I know he did something where they walked round the streets
00:25:51and they were checking that everything was all right.
00:25:54They were called ARP, I think.
00:25:58ARP will enable timely warnings to begin a hostile aircraft,
00:26:06and all mailers designed to start.
00:26:10The steelworks made ammunition.
00:26:14So I suppose the Germans were thinking,
00:26:16if they blasted the steelworks and finished those,
00:26:20then they couldn't make ammunition.
00:26:22And where we lived was not far from the steelworks.
00:26:36My sister was about 14.
00:26:39She wanted to go out and she got stockings on
00:26:41and she thought she was really dressed up, I suppose.
00:26:44And I can remember looking up at her and thinking,
00:26:47oh dear, she's getting herself all fancied up to go out.
00:26:51And then the sirens went.
00:26:53And my mother wouldn't let her go.
00:26:55And there was a bit of an argument.
00:26:57I can remember thinking,
00:26:59I hope she doesn't let her go.
00:27:03Just to be nasty, I think.
00:27:25When the all clear went in the morning,
00:27:29everything was just devastated.
00:27:32My mother would have got me dressed and ready,
00:27:35and then my sister-in-law must have taken me with her.
00:27:41We walked from Pitsmore to Infirmary Road.
00:27:50I can remember my sister-in-law saying,
00:27:52oh, look, that's gone.
00:27:53That's gone. Oh, they're not there anymore.
00:27:59I'm just feeling like this is what happens.
00:28:02This is the way life is.
00:28:08It was nearly lunchtime, so of course I was thinking,
00:28:12I wonder what we're going to get for lunch today.
00:28:18I had no idea what was going to happen next.
00:28:24The last road I remember we went up was called Fowler Street,
00:28:27and we'd gone about just a few yards.
00:28:30I can remember the exact spot.
00:28:33This man came up to us and said,
00:28:35don't go up there because a woman's just been killed by a bomb.
00:28:40I thought, my mum's up there, it could be her.
00:28:57This is it here.
00:29:04This spot here is a common grave,
00:29:08and it's where my mother was placed after she was killed.
00:29:15And I think it's so sad that nobody cared enough
00:29:21to give her a proper grave and a proper burial.
00:29:28There was a time bomb which went off
00:29:30while she was hanging and washing out.
00:29:39There was a lady next door to us, Mrs. Bluff.
00:29:42She sat me down on the chair, and she'd just made a...
00:29:47It must have been two or three dozen jam and lemon tarts.
00:29:51And she kept saying, have a tart, have a tart.
00:29:55And I just sat there on this dining chair.
00:29:57I didn't want anything.
00:29:58I didn't want to talk to anybody.
00:30:00I didn't want to speak.
00:30:01I didn't want anybody to talk to me.
00:30:03I wanted to be left alone with my own thoughts.
00:30:09I knew my mother had got killed, but I was in a state of total confusion.
00:30:19Well, there was a different attitude then.
00:30:22Our thoughts were held in our brains and stayed there.
00:30:26You didn't tell anyone what you felt.
00:30:32I don't know who would have listened.
00:30:38I was constantly being told children should be seen, not heard.
00:30:45I can only remember sitting on my mum's knee once.
00:30:50I don't think I was unusual.
00:30:55Looking back, I don't recognise that I needed to have love and support and so on.
00:31:03It's only now, thinking about it, perhaps it would have been a good thing if I had had it.
00:31:27What number was your house?
00:31:2863, I knew it well now.
00:31:35There we are.
00:31:37Oh, things have changed.
00:31:44The street, as you see down there, would have been straight all the way through the terraced houses.
00:31:51And I'll show you now where our house was.
00:31:54Yes.
00:31:55Near enough, this spot here would have been our house.
00:31:59Number 63, Jubilee Street.
00:32:05I was very, very, very poor.
00:32:10Don't remember me wearing a nice shirt or a nice thing.
00:32:13You had a really bad, bad necessity, but it really was.
00:32:22I remember, even at 10 years of age, a couple of the lads may have hired a little truck from
00:32:28a little shop at the end of this street, Mr. French, and you'd borrow that truck to go walk them
00:32:35out to buy you coal.
00:32:37Coal fires for warmth.
00:32:54My father came home on leave.
00:32:58After a cup of tea, he said, come on, he said, while I'm home for the evening, I'll take you
00:33:04to the cinema.
00:33:05And I'll always remember the night.
00:33:07It was a George Formby film, and it was called It's In The Air.
00:33:12It's in the air, this funny feeling everywhere, that makes me sing without a care today as I go on
00:33:25my way.
00:33:26And within 10 minutes, whoops, the lights went on.
00:33:30Up on the screen, there is an air raid going on.
00:33:34Please go as soon as possible out to the rear doors.
00:33:39But when we went out, my dad said, people were coming out backwards, and he said, right, jump in the
00:33:44car.
00:33:46He drove away from the cinema, through Cardiff, and bombs were dropping as we were going past the Cardiff castle.
00:33:53He said, I'm going where he knew all his sisters and brothers lived in Port Talbot.
00:34:05The next day, we drove back into Cardiff, and my mother burst out in tears.
00:34:11There is half the street crumbling. Our house crumbled in pieces.
00:34:18The crater was a big, round area, deep, deep, and all the houses demolished.
00:34:26People were killed.
00:34:30Two children and an adult got killed.
00:34:35My father, he got out of the car and joined the AR people up amongst our rubble,
00:34:40and he brought two items out there, which I'll never forget in all my life.
00:34:45One was a baby, a little bit of a horn be set that he had bought for Christmas ready for
00:34:49me.
00:34:51And a two pound bag of sugar, which I think he won from the army.
00:34:58If he had gone home, or not gone to the cinema at night, and we would have been underneath that
00:35:02stairs,
00:35:03I wouldn't be talking to you, Dene.
00:35:07Luck? Absolutely.
00:35:09Lucky, lucky.
00:35:11Lucky, lucky.
00:35:28It was a time of great deprivation, but you just shrugged and got on with it.
00:35:36This was the way we had to meet the Germans.
00:35:44This is delicious cake.
00:35:46Mmm!
00:35:49Is it the apple in it that makes it so lovely?
00:35:54Food was in terribly short supply.
00:35:57You have no idea the stuff we all ate.
00:36:05Just to keep alive.
00:36:08My mother always said,
00:36:11You eat every scrap of food on that plate.
00:36:16There's some poor sailor risking his life to bring you that food.
00:36:22And I used to think of this poor sailor, and I didn't really want to eat what he brought in.
00:36:33Food was all on coupons.
00:36:35Milk was delivered by horse and cart with John and Maude Briggs.
00:36:39Mmm.
00:36:39Yeah.
00:36:40We were brought up to get on with him.
00:36:41Yeah, that's right.
00:36:42Yeah.
00:36:43Yeah.
00:36:43We just had to, we didn't, you know, like they do now go on and on and on.
00:36:47And if I'd done something that I shouldn't have done, I'd get a slipper.
00:36:51Yeah, because you was a little monkey when you were young, weren't you?
00:36:53You used to get hit more than I would, didn't you?
00:36:56In those days.
00:36:57Because you used to go out with Michael Tomlinson, didn't you?
00:36:59We didn't do malicious things.
00:37:01There were all these dead cartridge cases.
00:37:05Loads of them.
00:37:06And we started picking them up, joined them all together and put them around our necks.
00:37:11Like a status symbol.
00:37:13It was always out, messing about.
00:37:15When you heard the air raid warden, quick, quick, quick, run into your shelter and wait for the all clear.
00:37:37When you got up in the morning, there was this smell of dust.
00:37:42And you knew that that meant there were houses near you that had collapsed.
00:37:48You would see evidence of bombs that had done damage, but you saw the damage.
00:37:55But you wouldn't look.
00:38:00When two of my best friends, Jean and Ernest, received a direct hit, they were the first two people that
00:38:12I knew had been killed.
00:38:13And they were dead.
00:38:17I'd never see them again.
00:38:19And it was that that hit.
00:38:21That was the moment I realised it was real.
00:38:26And that people weren't playing at war.
00:38:41Nobody took it terribly seriously in Northern Ireland.
00:38:45We felt we were too far away.
00:38:47Our government felt we were too far away.
00:38:50And they didn't bother building anything much in the way of defence.
00:38:56When Clydebank in Scotland was bombed, our government began to realise that Belfast could be bombed next.
00:39:21I'm very, very proud that I'm from Belfast.
00:39:27I wouldn't change it for the world.
00:39:30My house was in a terrace.
00:39:35Seven houses.
00:39:37I've never classed 13 as an unlucky number, even after what happened there.
00:39:50I was an only child.
00:39:54This is me from when I was a year old.
00:39:57That must have been my party dress.
00:40:00And this was me with my wee sailor boy.
00:40:04And I loved him.
00:40:12My daddy took me down the Shankill Road and taught me to do the tap dancing.
00:40:20I was on the stage at five year old.
00:40:28And this is my daddy.
00:40:30My daddy.
00:40:31Here.
00:40:32They were the resident band in Lorinca.
00:40:37I was just a happy little girl.
00:40:42Loved everybody and everything.
00:40:46Never in a million years did we think that our town was going to be bombed.
00:41:08I was born in Ajax Street.
00:41:11Kirkdale.
00:41:13Grew up there.
00:41:16People were always short of money, but they were honest people.
00:41:22My father worked on ship repairs.
00:41:26He worked as a blacksmith striker.
00:41:31He could walk 10 minutes from where we lived.
00:41:34And it was just ship repairs, ship repairs, ship repairs.
00:41:39A hive of activity.
00:41:42It was the busiest port.
00:41:50There was a feature in Liverpool in those days called the Overhead Railway.
00:41:57Now, you got on one end of South Liverpool and you ran along overlooking the docks.
00:42:06I think eight miles.
00:42:07I used to love it, just going along on the overheads way away.
00:42:18The British planes mostly had Merlin engines, which were sweet sounding engines compared to the rough German ones.
00:42:27The Germans seemed to go in a droney noise.
00:42:35In other words, like a bouncy one, whereas the other was a clear sound.
00:42:41A clear sound.
00:42:43Yeah.
00:42:48Once it started, it was quite noisy.
00:42:53You could hear the whistle used to be not very good to hear.
00:42:58And when you heard the whistle, you knew they were close.
00:43:01You know the screeching sound they made.
00:43:08I would imagine that Cynthia and I possibly cried.
00:43:12We would cry sometime because we'd be worried, wouldn't we?
00:43:15No, I don't think so.
00:43:16I remember the most significant thing.
00:43:18If you said, what do you remember during the war?
00:43:22It's that.
00:43:23Teeth chattering, you couldn't do anything about it.
00:43:29The night of May the 3rd, 1941, was one of the worst nights of my life.
00:43:37I spent that night with the family in an Anderson shelter in my sister's back garden.
00:43:43I was sitting there with clenched fists.
00:43:48So you just felt it was coming.
00:43:51This was the time.
00:43:57Once the bones were released, they were screeching at you.
00:44:01They screamed at you.
00:44:07I just felt very, very safe in my mum's arms.
00:44:10Until she didn't feel safe and she started crying.
00:44:13But she kept comforting me, kept her arms around me and telling me,
00:44:18you know, it would be alright, it would be over soon.
00:44:20Which it wasn't. It just went on and on and on.
00:44:27Everything was so intense.
00:44:29And every explosion was so near.
00:44:32I honestly think most of us did not think we were going to survive that night.
00:44:39I honestly think that.
00:44:47When the house shook, mum had said to me,
00:44:49I think we must have been hit.
00:44:51And she opened the door and very, very gently put the light on.
00:44:56And she said, I don't believe it.
00:44:58It's perfectly alright. It hasn't changed.
00:45:01God help anybody who's in the middle of that, who has been hurt, who has been bombed.
00:45:07We heard the noise, the noise on the roof.
00:45:13The noise came in from the roof and right down to where we were.
00:45:21And the noise was horrific.
00:45:23And then everything was on fire.
00:45:26It must have been horrific for my mum.
00:45:31Trying to get me out.
00:45:33It came down me.
00:45:36Not on me, but it may as well have.
00:45:41I don't even know where it went.
00:45:44I don't know what happened.
00:45:45I just probably realised that that would have been the end of my dancing.
00:46:00We spent hours, I can't remember how long, in the shelter.
00:46:07When we eventually heard the all clear sound,
00:46:12I remember coming out the shelter,
00:46:15my younger sister by my hand,
00:46:21looking what used to be familiar sights,
00:46:25Thompson's shop, Sunderland's,
00:46:28they'd completely disappeared.
00:46:39I was put into my pushchair and pushed down the Newton Arge Road,
00:46:44and it was horrendous.
00:46:48Absolutely devastating.
00:46:50The houses were sliced into two.
00:46:53They just looked like doll's houses.
00:46:55People were trying to collect bits and pieces of their belongings,
00:46:59which had been destroyed.
00:47:02It suddenly struck me,
00:47:04there was people I got nowhere.
00:47:06Just nowhere.
00:47:12Oh, you could not explain it.
00:47:16And obviously you're walking through rubble,
00:47:18there was no clean streets and nothing like that,
00:47:21everything was just rubble.
00:47:23And we walked where Jessica Street used to be, gone.
00:47:29Hermes Street, gone.
00:47:32Chaos.
00:47:39After May the 3rd, none of those streets existed.
00:47:48Half of our schools went to the same school as me.
00:47:52They were all my schoolmates.
00:47:55Just never seen them anymore.
00:48:00And I couldn't even number the dead.
00:48:04Good God, there must have been a lot now.
00:48:07It was the end of our community.
00:48:10The end of it.
00:48:12It was my life, my childhood.
00:48:15It had gone.
00:48:19Friends, gone.
00:48:45For years after the war, I couldn't speak.
00:48:50It was and I couldn't speak, nothing would come out.
00:48:59There's a wee thing that I do with a certain type of cloth.
00:49:05I have to have these wee bits of cloth and they have to be a certain thing and it makes
00:49:12like a wee zzzz when you're doing it.
00:49:16I think I started doing it on the pillowcase after we were blitzed.
00:49:32That's one of my labels.
00:49:34I just remembered I had that in my pocket.
00:49:37One of my pockets has one of them in it and I do that with that and I have to
00:49:44have that
00:49:45going to bed.
00:49:46Now I'm 90 years of age, imagine saying that to anybody outside, don't be telling anybody
00:49:54that.
00:50:02What does that say under Craig Avon?
00:50:04In brackets, quarter down, quarter down.
00:50:09I just can't believe I'm going down here.
00:50:20After the bomb went off in our house, the government had said to my mum that I would have to
00:50:33go
00:50:34away for safekeeping and that was to port it down.
00:50:39My mum took me down to the station with my case.
00:50:47So this was the first upheaval, was leaving my mum and dad to go to a place that I didn't
00:50:58even know.
00:51:01This has stuck in my mind, this Brownstown Road and…
00:51:06It's funny that, how that stuck in your mind, isn't it?
00:51:10Do you think it's the trauma?
00:51:12I know.
00:51:13It's…
00:51:14It's just I've always remembered it.
00:51:16But it was a row of…
00:51:18Now there's a school.
00:51:19Garden houses.
00:51:21You see there's a row of houses.
00:51:24Yep.
00:51:25There, it would have been something like that.
00:51:27Mm-hmm.
00:51:28And these houses here would be from before that era?
00:51:31They would have been built.
00:51:32There before that era.
00:51:33This definitely resembles the place.
00:51:47Now you're doing your zizzer.
00:51:49How…
00:51:50Are your nerves going?
00:51:52It's on my trousers.
00:51:59I didn't know these people who were older than my mum and dad.
00:52:06And they'd be put in there with just an elderly woman and man.
00:52:14They didn't really know what to do with the child.
00:52:18I couldn't speak to them.
00:52:20Suck my thumb.
00:52:22Wet the bed.
00:52:23And that didn't go down too well with the two elderly people.
00:52:31I was just so unhappy.
00:52:35From…
00:52:36From a…
00:52:37A child who was a happy little girl.
00:52:42You know, when I was going to bed at night, we had to say our prayers.
00:52:46Sitting on my knees at the side of the bed.
00:52:50Father God, I just hope you keep my mum and dad safe.
00:52:57And I just wish you were here.
00:53:00And I hope the bombing stops and the war will be over.
00:53:11Like, I hope the people are happy here.
00:53:33Do I take the top off?
00:53:34No.
00:53:34Oh, right.
00:53:37Oh, my goodness, what's going on?
00:53:40Oh, you're not winning again, are you?
00:53:48Oh.
00:53:49I only knew wartime when I was a boy.
00:53:52I had no recollection what peacetime was like.
00:53:55It was just a normal way of life for me.
00:54:01An incendiary bomb fell right in front of the house.
00:54:04And it exploded.
00:54:06So we moved to 163 Beverley Road.
00:54:09It happened to be a doctor's house.
00:54:12I would spend many hours just looking at what was happening on the main road in front of me.
00:54:22People did come with arms bandaged up or an arm missing or a hand missing.
00:54:26You know, all these awful things that would happen.
00:54:28But a child's understanding isn't a grown-up's understanding of what was happening.
00:54:32I just saw the grown-ups were unhappy.
00:54:38My father, he had to go off to North Africa, to Tripoli.
00:54:42He left my mum pregnant.
00:54:44And so mum was left on her own.
00:54:47And then Susan was born.
00:54:50Sadly, she was born with a heart defect.
00:54:54But she looked perfect to me.
00:55:00She was a beautiful little child.
00:55:04She was a little blondie.
00:55:05She was a little bobby dad.
00:55:08I was all the time linking with adults.
00:55:11And suddenly, someone of roughly my age came on the scene.
00:55:15She relied on me for everything.
00:55:16Wherever I went in the house, she was there with me.
00:55:20Whether I went to the loo or wherever, she was there.
00:55:24And we played cowboys and Indians.
00:55:27She thought it was wonderful.
00:55:30And she laughed so much.
00:55:31I used to get into trouble.
00:55:32My mum used to say,
00:55:33Please don't make her laugh so much.
00:55:35You know, you'll make her ill.
00:55:38Yeah.
00:55:39Very touching times, those.
00:55:50I haven't seen these before.
00:55:52I can't believe you've got all these.
00:55:54Oh, it's about moving those cups, do you think?
00:55:58I think it looks hernly.
00:56:01I think it looks untidy.
00:56:04OK.
00:56:07That's you?
00:56:08That's me, yeah.
00:56:11When my mother died, no one reported her death.
00:56:16I don't remember having a funeral even.
00:56:19My dad left as soon as he found out that my mother had died.
00:56:24And nobody knew where he was.
00:56:27So he was way out of the picture.
00:56:31So there was absolutely nobody to turn to.
00:56:35Even relatives.
00:56:36I don't remember.
00:56:38My mother had a sister.
00:56:40They were very close, apparently.
00:56:42But I don't even remember her coming to see us.
00:56:47And then I was adopted.
00:56:50Yeah, that's Harry, my adoptive father.
00:56:52I think that must be his brothers.
00:56:55They look like gangsters.
00:56:57Yeah, they do, darling.
00:56:59I wish men dressed like that now, you know.
00:57:01Yeah.
00:57:02I'd love it.
00:57:04Oh, my goodness.
00:57:06Frances Smith.
00:57:07Yeah.
00:57:08Parents.
00:57:08She was doing the parents.
00:57:09Parents of Penzance.
00:57:11Because she was to have a concert party at the church.
00:57:13She's the woman who adopted me after my mother died.
00:57:17She went to social services because her husband had no children.
00:57:22And they knew there was a lot of children made homeless in the Blitz.
00:57:26So they adopted me.
00:57:28Did they live in Sheffield?
00:57:29Yes, they did.
00:57:30They lived at Hillsborough.
00:57:31Hillsborough.
00:57:32Did you get spoiled?
00:57:32Oh, yeah.
00:57:35Oh, you look quite happy on that.
00:57:37Oh, I was, yeah.
00:57:37For a change.
00:57:38I got a proper little coat on.
00:57:40It's not been worn by five other people.
00:57:43It's had a velvet collar.
00:57:45I can remember it.
00:57:46Look at your hair.
00:57:47Yeah.
00:57:48Curly hair.
00:57:49Yeah.
00:57:51They lived a proper life.
00:57:54It was what I thought was a proper life.
00:57:58That I didn't know existed before I went to live with them.
00:58:03And it was like being taken out from living under a bucket.
00:58:09And then put into somewhere nice, into the sunshine.
00:58:17She was such a kind person.
00:58:21And she was just so happy to have me for her little girl.
00:58:27But unfortunately, that didn't last very long.
00:58:37Frances wanted to take me to the seaside because I'd never been.
00:58:42And they had a friend who had a farm near Grimsby.
00:58:46And the doctor told Frances, because she had asthma very bad,
00:58:52he said, don't go to the seaside because she wouldn't have been able to breathe.
00:58:57And we'd only been there from Saturday till Tuesday.
00:59:01And she died Tuesday night, overnight.
00:59:05And I was in the bedroom on a little camp bed.
00:59:10I was totally heartbroken.
00:59:12I think worse than when my birth mother died.
00:59:32It stays with you every day of your life, I think, about how you were.
00:59:37And how people tried to manage.
00:59:41But me, as a little girl, I can imagine thinking,
00:59:46I don't know what's going to happen to me now.
01:00:01The daytime raids were in many ways the most frightening.
01:00:07I remember my father and I were walking back from a neighbour's shelter where we'd been.
01:00:12We heard this plane come over and it came low and it was fighting,
01:00:17sending out machine gun bullets as hard as it could.
01:00:21Dad threw me on the ground and lay on top of me.
01:00:27I actually saw the man, the pilot.
01:00:32I realised then that this wasn't a personal thing.
01:00:37They weren't looking for people to kill who they knew or knew could be important.
01:00:44It was part of war.
01:00:50This is one of the things that I have kept since the war.
01:00:55Because this was in the upstairs bedroom when the plane machine gunned us.
01:01:01The bullets ricocheted off the statue that was in my brother's bedroom and left that mark.
01:01:10This statue has always remained valued, I would say loved, ever since.
01:01:24I was only a child and I really felt this had been what had kept my brother safe.
01:01:42It was hard, but one was so proud of what we were doing.
01:01:50People were selfless in those days.
01:01:54But there's always a rotter.
01:01:57There's a rotten apple in every barrel.
01:02:02I had five miles to go to school.
01:02:06I started off going by train.
01:02:09And the railway line got bombed.
01:02:13So I used to get a bus.
01:02:17Then the roads were bombed.
01:02:19And my father bought me a bicycle.
01:02:23And that was stolen one day.
01:02:26I was told to leave my bicycle and get down into the air raid shelter.
01:02:34And when I came out, my bicycle had gone.
01:02:38And the very thought that anybody would be so selfish,
01:02:45couldn't imagine anybody doing such a hateful thing.
01:02:54And so I had to walk five miles to school till I got another one.
01:03:02And when people's homes were robbed,
01:03:07you despise the people who would steal from somebody whose house had been bombed.
01:03:34I lived on the Thames, near Hampton Court Palace.
01:03:39And the Germans used to come in and just follow the Thames up.
01:03:46And they bombed it night after night after night.
01:03:50And you could smell the smoke from London.
01:04:02They were determined to get London and obliterated.
01:04:17The next day, we got on our bicycles to go and look at the fire.
01:04:24And we cycled for miles.
01:04:26And we suddenly realised that it was further away,
01:04:31but so intense, so very bright,
01:04:37that we hadn't realised how far we were cycling.
01:04:42I can still see us on our bicycles,
01:04:47school kids trying to cycle to look at the fire
01:04:53and not realising it was so many miles away.
01:04:58It's an abiding memory I have.
01:05:06I have only to think about it,
01:05:09and there it is, London burning.
01:05:36My mother was always looking for letters to come back from her father.
01:05:41And he was asking about me and my sister and how mum was and everything.
01:05:46Because he'd been away three and a half years.
01:05:49It looks as if they were communicating every week to each other.
01:05:54And the situation in Hull was very bad because of the blitz.
01:05:58And so there was this understanding that anything could happen at any time to any one of us.
01:06:07I didn't know much about this letter and my mother revealed it to me.
01:06:12A letter to Susan.
01:06:13And it would be on her first birthday.
01:06:20This is the first letter I've had the pleasure of writing to you.
01:06:25And just fancy it is your birthday.
01:06:28In 20 years time, you will be 21.
01:06:34So when you have read this letter, put it away so that we can read it on your 21st birthday.
01:06:49Susan was growing up and then tragedy happened.
01:06:54I was sleeping with her in the same bedroom.
01:06:56I heard these very strange noises coming from her cot.
01:06:59And when I went to the cot, it was not a nice sight.
01:07:07She was having like a convulsion of some form that I didn't understand.
01:07:11Her mouth was throttling and her arms were flying around all over.
01:07:15And so I went down very quickly down to my mum and told her she flew upstairs.
01:07:21And then she said, stand there.
01:07:23Don't move.
01:07:24Keep with Susan.
01:07:25I'll go and ring up next door.
01:07:27We need the doctor.
01:07:29Soon as he saw Susan, he said, it's a hospital for her.
01:07:33My mum held my hand all the way down.
01:07:40I think she knew what was going to happen.
01:07:43Susan had died.
01:07:48So that was a very massive change then.
01:07:53And then we had the funeral and I was the only child there.
01:07:59My grandma held my hand all the time.
01:08:05You know, all the fun we'd had together, it all stopped.
01:08:11No laughter.
01:08:12No fun.
01:08:14Suddenly she wasn't there.
01:08:19I tell her I love her every day and I miss her.
01:08:23I do it every day.
01:08:33Life did change after that.
01:08:36I went into a quiet mode.
01:08:38I didn't speak.
01:08:40I could speak perfectly well.
01:08:41But I just didn't.
01:08:45Very difficult time.
01:08:49You had to keep...
01:08:52Had to keep everything going.
01:08:54You could not add to the unhappiness of your parents
01:08:58who were already worried about you and about the war.
01:09:05In those days you took on a lot of responsibility when you were young.
01:09:16When the bomb fell in our garden, it didn't explode.
01:09:21But you could still feel the shuddering sound in the shelter.
01:09:27Then the bomb disposal people came.
01:09:29It was them who told us we had to leave within three hours.
01:09:33The idea was that when the bomb was defused, we could go back.
01:09:41But it blew up, killing the man who was doing it.
01:09:54When we got down to Patchham and I started seeing the downs,
01:10:00suddenly everything changed.
01:10:02I didn't feel frightened anymore.
01:10:05I was determined to climb all the downs.
01:10:13It was...
01:10:14It was...
01:10:15I want to cry now, but it was crying at the pleasure
01:10:19of not having to be in under another night.
01:10:42I didn't look back on my life at all.
01:10:46That was it.
01:10:47It had ended.
01:10:48The house had gone.
01:10:50I wasn't going back there.
01:10:51And that's when I pushed everything underground.
01:10:56I never thought about it again.
01:11:21At four o'clock this morning, Hitler attacked and invaded Russia.
01:11:27The Germans, maintaining heavy pressure against the Soviet,
01:11:31have won successes in the north and south.
01:11:34Aircraft, squadrons have been moved from the west
01:11:36in anticipation of a Soviet offensive.
01:11:50German plates have been shot down in large numbers.
01:11:55Here's the scene in a Moscow square
01:11:56where they've been putting war trophies on exhibition to the public.
01:12:00German bombers, aircraft which may have themselves
01:12:02raided the capital only a few nights before.
01:12:07And German incendiary bonds,
01:12:09now as familiar to many Soviet cities as they are to us.
01:12:13We did have a radio,
01:12:15and so the grown-ups around me
01:12:16would be always listening to the news of the day.
01:12:19I was a child with limited knowledge,
01:12:22but I did realise there was this massive change
01:12:26and we started then to take the war back to Europe.
01:12:31From the west, from the south, from the east,
01:12:34the war-making potential of Germany will be bettered until the job is done.
01:12:38Would God have definit from its head?
01:12:39At the airport its return to treason is buckled.zzarella
01:12:43passtатели здесь, örne
01:12:51been placed on fire in crucial events. Should we
01:12:58have bombed German cities in ober
01:13:01warrant항 space as the east in all the way we
01:13:01did to total destruction?
01:13:05I don't know.
01:13:09It was even worse than Hull, if you can say that,
01:13:12and that was bad enough.
01:13:17All we thought served them bloody right.
01:13:22We had no sympathy for them.
01:13:26They'd allowed the Nazis to take over their country
01:13:30and bomb the hell out of us.
01:13:34Why should we feel sorry for them?
01:13:39Well, they've brought it on themselves.
01:13:42We've been through it, now it's your turn.
01:13:48I was 14 when Dresden was bombed.
01:13:51You could not think about what we were doing in Germany,
01:13:54because if you did, you would have gone mad.
01:14:01But there were people who were pleased to see
01:14:05the eye for a nine and tooth for a tooth sort of thing.
01:14:09Well, we've got to.
01:14:12We just can't let them punch us and beat us like Joe Soap.
01:14:17We've got to. Good, Mr. Churchill.
01:14:20Thank goodness, Mr. Churchill. We've got to.
01:14:28I wasn't aware at all for years what we had done to Germany.
01:14:37I was horrified because I thought the people who'd done that to us
01:14:45were disgusting people.
01:14:48I didn't think we were disgusting.
01:14:53It's very sad that people think the only answer is to do what's happened to us,
01:15:03only even more so to the other chap.
01:15:17Towards the end of the war, a plane threw over Belfast,
01:15:21and we were all out playing in the street,
01:15:23and there was immediate other planes going to shoot it down.
01:15:26And a man fell out of the plane, and a parachute came,
01:15:32and I started to cry.
01:15:34And mummy asked me what in heaven's name I was crying about.
01:15:38And I said, that's somebody's daddy.
01:15:42And that's something that stayed with me.
01:15:46No matter who the enemy is, it's probably somebody's daddy.
01:15:49Somebody loves them.
01:15:55I have a photograph of my father with a pram, and I was in the pram.
01:16:05That was the only real time I had with my father.
01:16:16As the war came to a close, I know my father, in the Royal Artillery,
01:16:24went across to Europe just after D-Day.
01:16:31And he fought all the way through France, Belgium and Holland,
01:16:36and into Germany.
01:16:39Two weeks before Hitler committed suicide,
01:16:42my father was ambushed, and he was killed.
01:16:49And the telegram arrived.
01:16:52I remember the screams from my mother and my grandparents.
01:16:59And I ran from the house.
01:17:03I couldn't stand, I couldn't, I couldn't stand the noise.
01:17:08And I ran.
01:17:17I just lay on the grass of that church.
01:17:23I didn't go back for hours.
01:17:25It was...
01:17:28It was awful.
01:17:31It was awful.
01:17:36It was awful.
01:17:36It was awful.
01:17:50The country were joyful and celebrating.
01:17:57And we were saddened.
01:17:59My family had lost the war.
01:18:05And I...
01:18:07I never saw my father again.
01:18:21I think I would have been a better person had he been around.
01:18:27Because I've been very much an introverted character because of that.
01:18:39It's important for me to come here and say,
01:18:42please remember my father.
01:18:46Because he gave his life for you.
01:19:11I came through World War II, and I survived it.
01:19:19And my mum came down and picked me up and brought me home.
01:19:28It was just like heaven.
01:19:35I just loved her so much and missed her so much.
01:19:39And my dad.
01:19:45I was so, so, so happy to see my own bed, even though it was all charred with the burning.
01:19:55We thank you, Lord, for sustaining us through another week.
01:20:00People did think that I was mentally retarded because I couldn't speak.
01:20:07It was there to come out, but it wouldn't come.
01:20:13We had a shop at the bottom of our street.
01:20:16The daughter of the shop was serving me and I couldn't get it out.
01:20:21And she started to laugh and make fun of me.
01:20:26And I ran out of the shop crying.
01:20:30And my mummy went straight over.
01:20:33She said, don't you ever laugh at my child again.
01:20:38That is an illness from this war.
01:20:41Good girl.
01:20:43Even when I was married, I mean, I still was quite bad.
01:20:49With the stammer, my girls would have talked for me.
01:20:54And my husband.
01:20:57I wouldn't even have answered the phone.
01:21:01What did you feel like?
01:21:03Like, what emotion did you feel like?
01:21:06Very bad.
01:21:07Very sad.
01:21:08And then it was the centenary of the First World War.
01:21:15And I got up that first time to the children in the school.
01:21:20And I was able to say, good morning, class.
01:21:26And I couldn't believe it.
01:21:28So I went with my wee case.
01:21:3230 children there with their wee parcels.
01:21:37And that just helped me that I could say that without stammering to them.
01:21:43It was very lonely being away from your mum and dad.
01:21:48I wet the bed because of the bomb coming in.
01:21:55Oh, right, right.
01:21:56Can I give you the right of the cross too?
01:22:03I was eight years of age when I used to walk down this street.
01:22:09It never leaves you.
01:22:13Because of my house, being bombed, relations of mine gave us a home for four years.
01:22:20And them relations were very, very kind.
01:22:23God bless them.
01:22:24Excellent.
01:22:26Absolutely.
01:22:27That's why I'm here today.
01:22:35It's come to the fact now that I'm well over 90 years of age.
01:22:39And I'm helping other people.
01:22:43Hello, people.
01:22:46You're early again, aren't you, eh?
01:22:48Thank you very much.
01:22:50For 10 years now, I've been oldheartedly giving them a few hours.
01:22:55Oh, my gosh.
01:22:57Watch your feet in and I'll slide them out your way.
01:23:01I know what it feels like to be lost.
01:23:06Where are we going to sleep tonight?
01:23:08Where's the next meal coming from?
01:23:10Right, sir.
01:23:10What would you like this morning?
01:23:13Dave, would you help this gentleman with his cup?
01:23:16I do serve him nice cups of tea and coffee.
01:23:19It makes the best tea in Cardiff.
01:23:21Be careful, now.
01:23:30I'm doing something.
01:23:33Helping something.
01:23:34And I'm still healthy enough to do it.
01:23:37Touch wood.
01:23:39All right, everybody.
01:23:41You ain't seen nothing yet.
01:23:43You want a tea?
01:23:44Why, girl?
01:23:47Come on, it's your eye.
01:23:48Like a big pizza pie.
01:23:51That's a moray.
01:23:53Scoti me bat, you see.
01:23:55Back in old Napoli.
01:23:57That's a moray.
01:24:00That's a moray.
01:24:04We're working on the spine now.
01:24:07Yes, if you want to, hang on to your knees.
01:24:12People had more to their lives than just money, money, money,
01:24:19which seems to be the be-all and end-all of everybody's lives these days.
01:24:28And push the heel away.
01:24:30People don't seem to have the standards which we had.
01:24:36Altruism.
01:24:37We were all committed to getting rid of Nazism from the earth, really.
01:24:46Because they were so wicked, these people.
01:24:50But what comes next, I do not know.
01:24:58We went through that war, and for years afterwards,
01:25:03everything was hopeful, looking towards the future,
01:25:07building, inventing things.
01:25:11But now I look at the television news,
01:25:16and it fills me with horror.
01:25:19When you've lived through a world war,
01:25:22and the end of your life,
01:25:25you're really scared
01:25:27about what your grandchildren are going to go through.
01:25:34It's so important to remember,
01:25:39because it wouldn't take much for us to be there again.
01:25:50So many people had their lives turned upside down by the war.
01:25:55I think I thought that that was just the way life was going to be for me.
01:26:04When I became a mother for the first time,
01:26:07I really felt like I was somebody,
01:26:11and I belonged to somebody,
01:26:13and somebody belonged to me.
01:26:16You've got something to love and nurture.
01:26:23I think I am who I am today, because of the bliss.
01:26:29The horrible things that happened
01:26:33made one realise you can't give in.
01:26:37You must deal with it.
01:26:40Don't feel sorry for yourself.
01:26:43Just carry on fighting.
01:26:50You know that you're going to die before too long.
01:26:54It's the way life is.
01:26:56It ends sometimes.
01:26:58Doesn't it?
01:26:59Like everything else, it comes to an end.
01:27:10What can you expect when you're 90?
01:27:15Especially having dementia.
01:27:17It's going to get worse.
01:27:18I know it's going to get worse.
01:27:21The family knows that it's going to get worse.
01:27:25I just have to live each day as it comes
01:27:29and be thankful that I've had another day.
01:27:43Oh, you beautiful doll.
01:27:48You bring me beautiful doll.
01:27:52Let me put my eyes about you.
01:27:55I could never live without you.
01:28:00Oh, you beautiful doll.
01:28:04You great, big, beautiful doll.
01:28:07Great, big, beautiful doll.
01:28:08Let me put my arms about you.
01:28:12I could never live without you.
01:28:17Oh, you beautiful doll.
01:28:19You great, big, beautiful doll.
01:28:23If you ever leave me, how my heart will break.
01:28:27Oh, you beautiful doll.
01:28:32Oh, you beautiful doll.
01:28:34Oh, you beautiful doll.
01:28:36Oh, you beautiful doll.
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