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Post by paduard on Nov 14, 2015 16:56:56 GMT 1
Another article I missed on p.67 [don't known why I missed it - probably because there are two articles on the same page].
Anyhow it is directly related to the contribution immediately above. Reads as follows:-
(paduard)
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Archive List > Childhood and Evacuation Contributed by Julie Allen People in story: Julie Allen Location of story: Penge, South London Background to story: Civilian Article ID: A6239982 Contributed on: 20 October 2005
My Brother, My Mum, and Myself taken during the War.
I am now 70 years of age, but the memories below will always remain with me forever. 1) Being fed sthingyfuls of Cod Liver Oil and Malt to keep you as healthy as possible. 2) Ration Books with "D" and "E" coupons. Only being allowed sweets once or twice a month. 3) Having to eat: Dried Powdered Mash Potato. Dried Powdered Milk. Dried Powdered Eggs. 4) Toys were sent over from the Australian people for the British children and we had to go to the Town Hall to collect them. I had a wooden doll's bed. 5) Seeing Mum and Dad putting the Black-Outs up at the window every night. 6) Collecting shrapnel early in the morning after night air raids. 7) Watching the Barage Balloon in Penge Recreation Ground. 8) The sound of the Air Raid Siren and the All Clear sound. 9) Playing on Bombed Sites.
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Post by paduard on Oct 17, 2015 14:23:37 GMT 1
Next story - located bottom left - p.67 - additional/further information to last contribution above.
paduard
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Memories of the Gas Mask by a child in PENGE by Julie Allen You are browsing in: Archive List > Childhood and Evacuation
Contributed by Julie Allen People in story: Julie Allen Location of story: Melvin Road Infant School, PENGE, S.E.20 Background to story: Civilian Article ID: A4491407 Contributed on: 19 July 2005 Me with my Gas Mask on in Kelsey Park, Beckenham in 1940 I was only an infant (4 years old) when the war started. When gas masks were introduced I prayed that we would never have to use them as I hated having it on my face and felt I would not be able to breath properly. We were all given small cardboard boxes in which to carry the gas masks, but my mum managed to get me a special black case, which was roughly the shape of the gas mask, in which to keep mine. It was stronger and weatherproof. One memory I have was that every so often we had to have the gas masks tested at School. I hated this exercise. There were two people testing them and we had to queue up in two rows. When we got to the front the tester yanked the gas mask over our heads, which quite often pulled my hair and hurt, as the gas mask was made of rubber and clung to your hair. They held a piece of cardboard underneath the gas mask and you had to breath in so that the cardboard would cling to the bottom of the mask. Then they would pull the mask off, which again hurt my head. We had to take the gas masks with us everywhere, my mother took the attached photo of me with my gas mask on in Kelsey Park, Beckenham with her little Box Brownie camera as a memory of what it was like.
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Post by paduard on Oct 4, 2015 8:53:37 GMT 1
Another interesting story, similar to above procedures.
paduard.
Go to Archive List > Childhood and Evacuation p63 - bottom right picture:-
Contributed by Julie Allen People in story: Julie Allen and Dorothy Allen Location of story: Penge, SE20 Background to story: Civilian Article ID: A4522439 Contributed on: 22 July 2005 Me in my Siren Suit taken at a photographers in Penge in 1940. I fondly remember these warm all in one suits that were sold to keep children warm at night when they were woken up when the Air Raid Siren sounded and parents took the children into the shelters or cellars etc. (That is why they were called Siren Suits). I remember my mum buying mine, which was a bright Royal Blue, from the Department Store in Croydon called Kennards, which is now Debenhams. It was always ready for me to quickly slip on over my pyjamas so that we could get down to the shelter as quickly as possible. They also had hoods to keep your head warm. I really liked mine and it was all fleecy inside with buttons down the front. I remember Mum calling me to get out of bed and pop the suit on. The Air Raids were mostly at night and sometimes if there was one about 11 o clock we would hear this man, who had come out of the Crooked Billet Pub in Penge quite the worse for drink (and who could blame him as you never knew if you would be alive the next morning anyway) singing at the top of his voice "There'll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs of Dover". He sat on a wall near the Ladies and Gents toilets where the Bus Shelter was. The number of the buses were 227. He was probably oblivious of the Air Raid and was feeling quite relaxed. We lived in a 3rd floor flat above Lennards the shoe shop on the corner of Maple Road/High Street in Penge, which was practically opposite the Pub, so we used to hear this man singing regularly.
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Post by paduard on Oct 1, 2015 20:22:47 GMT 1
I have been closely re-reading all the various texts above and still can't get the late forties outlook/procedure for the 10/11 written State passes for interview at the grammar school. My sister has confirmed that although she passed the State exams (early fifties) she did not go for an oral interview, but was allocated to a 'Tec.' in Bromley. She has moved just recently but if I have misunderstood her I will add anything in that regard later; at which time I will give [memory permitting] a description of the kind of interview I was subjected to.
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Post by paduard on Aug 20, 2015 15:41:56 GMT 1
Found another interesting picture on site - childhood & evacuation - photo gallery. p33 entitled World War II - My Story. Many names mention; so have pasted below details as it is directly connected to Beckenham, Penge, and Anerley. paduard.
VE Day street party, Eden Road, Beckenham, Kent. 1945 WORLD WAR II — My story My name at the time, before I was married, was Rita Rousell and 1939 found me living with my mother and two grown up sisters and their children at Eden Road, Elmers End, Beckenham in Kent about ten miles south of London. I must have been nearly five years old when the war broke out and had already learnt to read and write. I attended the local school called Marian Viran, at least I think that was the name, it was quite a long time ago and I might have got the last name wrong. I was born late in my mother’s life and there was over fourteen years difference between the youngest sister and me. Both sisters were married with their husbands in the Army. Joan was the eldest with Margery the youngest. My mother had three other children, two girls and her only son. Nancy, who I believe was my mother’s third daughter died at the age of seven with meningitis. The other daughter Gertrude, owing to circumstances beyond my mother’s control, was lost until after the war. This was due to a divorce way back when her children were very young and she was separated from them through no fault of her own. Her son, William Ronald Rousell known simply as Ronny by his family, had joined the Royal Navy before the war had started. His wife’s name was also Joan and by late 1939 they were expecting their first child. To better his income Ronny transferred from surface ships to submarines increasing his wage due to additional danger money submariners were entitled to and became First-Class Chief Stoker aboard HMS Thistle, one of 22 diesel/electric submarines of the T-class (14 of which were lost in service between September 1939 and October 1943). Although the submarine did not have a boiler and therefore no stokers were required the rank I assume was carried over from his time serving on surface ships and he was most probably Chief Engineer in charge of the engine room. During the battle of Norway in April 1940 HMS Thistle was ordered to patrol the coastal area and destroy any enemy vessels she encountered. After an unsuccessful attempt to sink a U-boat also patrolling the area, the same U-boat, U4 later attacked the Thistle sinking her with the loss of all hands on the 10th April 1940 south-west of Stavanger, Norway. This was obviously a great shock to all concerned and especially for his wife, who lost her baby as a result of the distress. However, she still waited until after the war in case Ronny had survived somehow and had been taken prisoner since no bodies were ever found and were only ever reported missing. After the war, finding no evidence of any possibility that he had survived, she eventually emigrated to Canada. Soon London was being bombed heavily night after night. I can remember how the skies glowed bright red from the fires that had occurred after the bombing raids of which there were many. I remember we all had gas masks and had to carry them wherever we went. We had an Anderson shelter in our small back garden, which was only used when things got really bad. I remember well sleeping in the cramped conditions; it was not very big for three grown ups and four children. Joan had two daughters, Patricia and Gillian, Patricia being the eldest, and Margery had just one son named David, a babe in arms. Out of all the children I was the eldest. Although the family stayed in Beckenham for the duration of the war, I was the only one that was eventually evacuated. It was when I was nine and Hitler had started sending V1 rockets over to kill us. By this time I had changed schools and now went to a Roman Catholic school called St. Anthony in Anerley, near Penge. My family had become Catholics during the war due to my eldest sister, but that is another story. I would eventually stay at the school until I was fifteen but vowed and declared that I would not be a Catholic when I was old enough to choose for myself, yet I have to admit the teachers were good and it was just the religious part that I hated. The bombs were dropping all over the place and my Mother’s friend lost all her family in one raid. I remember well while playing in our small back yard, German planes flying over just above the chimney tops, machine-gunning anyone as they flew past. They were that close that you could see the pilots, close enough to even see that they wore goggles. We all dived for cover and thank goodness no one was hurt on this instance but later that day we heard that a lot of children had been killed coming out of a school not far away by these very same German aircraft. It had been a lunchtime when this atrocity happened, in broad daylight and I cannot remember why I was not at school on that particular day myself. I can also remember climbing the stairs to bed one evening and on reaching the top I felt the whole house vibrate after a bomb had exploded nearby. We certainly had some near misses. The new threat from the Doodle Bugs had finally convinced the school that things had become far too dangerous and decided that it was time to evacuate the children, at least those that were willing to go, although I must say that we did not have much of a choice. Just how many eventually went I do not remember, I only remember the group that ended up at the same place as I, which was Huddersfield in Yorkshire. Silver Street was the name of the road where I finally stayed, right next to a canal not far from a place called Kilderbank. We were very late in being evacuated from London since this was 1944 and most evacuations occurred much earlier during the war. As I mentioned earlier I was the only one from my family who eventually went. I was away for nine months and it was the worst time of my life. I stayed with an elderly couple that had a daughter that lived in Scarborough and whose husband was in the R.A.F. As a sort of a break for one weekend I stayed with them. The elderly couple were kind enough, I was fed and clothed but it was the school that I went to that was so awful or rather the teacher that I had. She looked quite old, well into her fifties as it appeared to me at the time and was very strict and I mean strict. With her hair pulled tight at the back of her head in a bun, she was quite ugly and stood for no nonsense regardless of the fact that we were evacuee’s and very homesick. She would not hesitate to wrap you over the knuckles with the thin edge of a ruler or squeeze the lobe of your ear until it tingled and burned. Some of us evacuee’s when we could get together plotted to run away and make our way back home but this proved more difficult than we thought and we eventually gave up on the idea. I had only one visit from my mother in all the nine months I was there, and even on that occasion she was not very well when she arrived and only stayed the night before returning home the next day. On one day while in Huddersfield, everyone heard a strange sound and no one knew quite what it was except the evacuee’s; it was a Doodle Bug. It seems ironic that this was the reason why we were evacuated from London in the first place but it turned out to be the only one that had got that far north, however I cannot remember if it did any damage. Then out of the blue and what seemed like a mad impulse the rest of my family decided that they would move north to Birmingham as things in London seemed to be getting even more dangerous now that the new V2 rockets were also coming over. They only spent one night there and all returned home the very next day as they hated it so much. The nine months in Huddersfield seemed like a lifetime, by then the couple I was staying with must have had enough of me. Perhaps they being elderly found it was a bit too much and I was then sent home in the care of a railway guard all the way back to London on my own. They had informed my family that I was being sent home who then arranged that someone would be there to meet me at the station in London. Some of the other passengers were kind to me giving me sweets when they discovered I was an evacuee and travelling on my own. Although it was arranged that someone would meet me, there was some confusion and they went to the wrong station. Luckily for me a couple that had also been on the train heard of my plight and took care of me so I went to their home instead. I don’t remember much of this except their home had an indoor air raid shelter, sort of like a large cage with a thick concrete top. They questioned me about where I lived and even after giving my address they were still no wiser on who to contact or how to get there. I could also remember the number of the bus that I used to go to school on, and from this some how I did eventually arrive back home although still to this day I do not quite know how. By this time everyone was out looking for me and strangely it was my tenth birthday, January 22nd 1945 and somehow my family had managed to get hold of a second hand bicycle for me as a present, which I certainly never expected. They were not at all pleased with my state of health; I had lice in my hair and worse still ‘Scabies’ of which I had to have medicated baths to be taken in special facilities at the local swimming baths. My sister’s husbands both survived the war. One served in the Eighth Army under Monty and was one of the Desert Rats and then went on to the Far East to fight the Japanese. I do not remember where my other brother-in-laws served but they both came home safe and well. When the war was over I remember the celebrations and street parties were organised, as you will see from the photo taken of the very event in the street where I lived throughout the war except for those nine months of my evacuation. The street seemed to have been missed by the many bombs and rocket the Germans had sent over, we were by all accounts very lucky. Although my mother lost her only son we can count ourselves fortunate that the rest of us survived. I am now the only one that goes to the Portsmouth war memorial on Southsea seafront where my brother’s name is engraved along with the many others in the Royal Navy that died. I will continue to visit this memorial to remember Ronny until I am unable to do so any more now being in my sixties. He will then be just another name out of the many who paid the ultimate sacrifice but I hope this document will be kept in the archives of history so that he will not be forgotten, and also how some of us lived through a terrible war of hardship, rationing and not knowing if one was going to live or die from one day to the next. Sometimes I look back and wonder had it all been worth it and I often think how things are today and ponder had they given their lives for nothing for we still have wars and still people die, and for what? Rita, Southampton.
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Post by paduard on Jul 31, 2015 16:50:42 GMT 1
Further to my comments regarding the Co-op in Penge/Anerley, from what my family can remember the main Co-op General Store was situated immediately past the 50Bob Tailors and before the Cinema. That is on the right hand side at the start of the Beckenham Road. As I indicated previously the main Bakery was situated in a building immediately behind the tailor shop. It adjoined the main store but we do not know whether there was any direct access from one part to another. It seems most likely that the actual bakery serviced many of the bread shops etc. in the locality of Penge/Anerley. Regarding the main Co-op store itself, we know for certain that it contained various other functions e.g. my father attended their Dentist (which was on the premises) and had his teeth taken out. They also supplied dentures etc. Whether my friend Eric used the same facility I do not know, but he had a complete set of upper and lower dentures; much to the amusement of my father for that happening to such a young man. The Co-op ordinary bakery was situated in a shop immediately opposite the General Store – i.e. on the opposite side of the road. Walking on the ‘left’ hand side of the road as you looked up towards Beckenham. My sister assures me that it also included a Butchery. All in the one shop – so you could purchase bread and then meat on adjacent counters. That ties up with Eric offering me ham with the buttered rolls – which I clearly remember personally. My comments do not relate or refer to any other bread shops in the vicinity. If anything more comes to mind I will put it on here. paduard
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Post by paduard on Jul 18, 2015 21:28:26 GMT 1
As it has come to my notice that the main Co-op Bakery Unit was sited in a building just behind the 50 bob Tailors. My uncle Jack was the master baker in charge of that establishment. When I get time I will post more details on the other topic covering bread shops in the Beckenham Road.
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I have duplicated my remarks on the 50 Bob Tailor topic (see above), so as not to confuse the allied subject of the Co-op outlets [still getting details together]
paduard
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Post by paduard on Jul 13, 2015 19:21:08 GMT 1
My friend Eric used to work there part time [1951 if I remember] – and he invited me to go there where I was treated with a roll, loads of butter, and fresh ham. Have never forgotten that treat. If I recall any other detail will post further. Further to more info. to follow, my friend Eric used to work for the Co-op; and not Logans. paduard
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Post by paduard on Jul 12, 2015 19:56:43 GMT 1
As it has come to my notice that the main Co-op Bakery Unit was sited in a building just behind the 50 bob Tailors. My uncle Jack was the master baker in charge of that establishment. When I get time I will post more details on the other topic covering bread shops in the Beckenham Road.
paduard.
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Post by paduard on Jun 2, 2015 18:22:36 GMT 1
Another additional reference for those interested. "Off to Exeter". Penge - Williamson family.
Go to Family Life, then photo gallery - p.35
paduard
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Post by paduard on May 26, 2015 16:02:07 GMT 1
Another reference for anyone interested. "Loss of Best Friend". Penge Article with photo. Go to Family Life, then photo gallery - p.26.
paduard
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Post by paduard on May 17, 2015 15:12:06 GMT 1
In addition to my last post above, I was interested somewhat later to ‘recall’ that my friend Tony (who accompanied me during that particular visit to the dance hall), was to reveal to me some few years on that he had actually met his then future wife at that dance and that they were now married and lived in Penge [in flats near Penge West Stn). I now remember very clearly what happened at the time. It is funny sometimes how old memories return suddenly; although I hope this doesn’t bore you!
It was fairly commonplace, as those older ones here will remember, that - when going over to ask someone for a dance – to wait until the lights dimmed enough and then go over as quickly as possible – trusting that you didn’t get an embarrassing refusal (which sometimes happened). Tony said to me that he fancied a ‘tall’ girl sitting with a friend of hers, and we agreed that we both nipped over the dance area, and that I ask her companion at the same instant. We both got a dance and then returned to the drinks area to chew things over with the usual boy-chat.
So, as I have already indicated – Tony got and married his girl. Nothing much happened in my direction except I met and danced with a girl I knew quite well and had already met several times before in Penge/Anerley; she lived in Anerley - at the end of oakgrove road; and worked in Penge High Street - [Woolworths].
Any more “flash-backs” and I will post.
paduard
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Post by paduard on Apr 26, 2015 15:41:04 GMT 1
BBC War History – Blitz Stories I found an Interesting web-site which can be accessed at the following:- www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/categories/c55533/Click on Archive List Then click on V-1s and V-2s section Then go down to People’s War in Penge and click on. You then can read there an article contributed by Shelagh Worsell (nee Percival) You may find it interesting….. Additionally there are many hundred of texts; this is just one example I found. Happy hunting…. paduard For those that may be interested there is another article entitled "PENGE MEMORIAL" [with pictures] within the Archive List: Go to Family Life Go to p.74 The article is about half way or over down. It mentions there quite a few names of Penge residents. paduard
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Post by paduard on Apr 15, 2015 21:35:08 GMT 1
I went through the Beckenham History site to see if there was a picture of Woolworths in Penge High Street; couldn't find one but not sure that one might have been there and I missed it.??
Reason is that I downloaded a picture of the store some few years ago, but only have a printed copy which I wonder whether it would be worth scanning. My original file is now obsolete/unable to open because it was in the days when you could wander up and down streets on line and the only reference I found recently available was when the pound shop took over.
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Post by paduard on Mar 31, 2015 15:22:16 GMT 1
Sorry I was wishing to quote Alan Wisely's words concerning who owned the shares etc. But seemed unable to past this in - my computer error perhaps. paduard
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