Marigold Bootock

I was lodged at Woburn Abbey & Crawley Grange while I was at Bletchley – both beautiful and peaceful places to go home to after a hectic day working the Bombe. One of my memories while at Eastcote was being a defaulter (stayed out late!) and my punishment was either peeling potatoes in a hot greasy galley or fire fighting on the roof with a pump looking for incendiary bombs! I choose the latter! I still have a few Wren friends and have a lot of happy memories of my time in the Wrens. I am now 83 and hope to come back to Bletchley one day. 

What Grandmother did in WWII

The Blitz

I was a thirteen-year-old student at La Retraite Sacred Heart Convent when war broke out in 1939. Living in the country in Somerset, England, was supposed to be somewhat safe from the bombs and the blitz. In fact, the Mother House from France had evacuated to La Retraite after France fell to the Germans. However although we were not a military target, we did have our share of bombs dropped on our small seaside resort of Burnham-on-Sea. This was sometimes caused by the crippled German planes trying to jettison their bombs to get across the Channel lighter and quicker. We also heard many dog-fights between the English Spitfires and the German fighter planes over our homes. Sometimes the shrapnel from the shells and bullets would rain down on our roofs. We had many air-raid alerts at school and during the night too. We were bundled up and sent down to the underground shelters or cellars carrying our gas masks that were issued to everyone (even babies) and which we had to have on us at all times. I do not think there was ever a gas attack on Britain. Every day we would have one class wearing our gas masks in school. The funniest sight was the nuns in their black habits wearing a gas mask and trying to hold class.

While I was still in school, I volunteered to join the W.R.N.S. (Women’s Royal Naval Service). I was 17 when I graduated from the convent and joined the Wrens. When the English boys and girls reached 18, they were all conscripted into one or other of the services – Army, Navy, Air Force, or to the factories if they were needed, or on the farms as Land Girls. The Wrens were all volunteers and a nice group of girls. I was trained to decode and worked on the first type of computer which broke the Nazi Enigma code. I spent most of my training at Bletchley Park, which was a top-secret post about an hour north of London. I also served some time at Eastcote, about a half-hour from the City of London by underground (the tube train). We worked eight-hour shifts around the clock for a week or ten days and then we had a three-day leave. That is when we hopped on the train and dashed up to London, bombs and all.

London had evacuated all of the non-essential business and people. They were sent to countryside. The people that had to stay sent their children with their schools and teachers to live in the country to be out of harm’s way. Some of these city children had never been in the country or seen a cow, horse or sheep before. Of course, it was very hard for them to be taken away from their families. London was taking a terrible licking. The only people you saw in London were Services people – many from other countries such as our allies – Canadian, the Aussies, Poles, Free French and later the Yanks. The old men who stayed were firefighters and Home Guard. The women were Red Cross and W.V.S. and canteen people. King George and Queen Elizabeth stayed at Buckingham Palace, which had been hit several times. They were much admired by the people as they went about London trying to cheer people up and to urge them to keep a “stiff upper lip”. Prime Minster Churchill and his cabinet stayed and worked underground in a bunker. The Cabinet Rooms where all of the orders were issued are now a very good and informative museum with many memorabilia – Churchill and his famous cigar and “V” for victory sign, his bed and siren suit, maps etc.

I can remember that when we got off the train in London, in our Navy uniform, tin hat and gas mask always with us, the first thing we would notice was the smell of the smoke from the hundreds of smouldering buildings. I remember the sidewalks glistening in the sunlight from the shattered glass that had been ground into the cement by the force of the bombs, and the huge craters that they had left. The bombs not only shattered buildings but people and their lives. The wail of sirens would go off day and night, and you had to take cover, usually in the Underground. You could not come up until the long wail of the “All Clear” went off. Then, you would come up from the shelters only to find more smoke and fires and buildings gone. Night time was really eerie because there was a complete blackout all over Britain. All of the windows had to be boarded up or have blackout curtains. There were no street lights. People used torches and car lights were shielded. The only thing lighting up the skies over London were the huge search lights which criss-crossed overhead looking for the enemy planes and sometimes bright sparks like huge firecrackers when the ack-ack would shoot at the enemy planes overhead.

It was strange. Somehow, we were not afraid to be in London. We went to the Service dances and the Stage Door Canteen and had some fun among the ruins. Being young, we did not think about dying, and yet, there was evidence of death everywhere we looked, with the ambulances screaming by, Police and the bomb squads everywhere. Sometimes, after a raid, you would see people, their bodies all bloody and broken, lying in the ruins or sometimes part of a body – an arm or something hanging up a tree next to a broken chair or clothing flapping in the wind. The incendiary bombs that rained down day and night had London all lit up in a ghostly orange glare with the skeletal ruins of old buildings and spires of churches all blackened in the background. Another odd sight was all the blimps or barrage balloons hovering overhead which were to stop the Jerry fighter planes getting too close to their target. The whole picture of the blitz is something I will never forget.
In early 1944, the V1 and V2 rockets started to attack London. I think that these were worst and most frightening of all the bombs. They were the first rockets ever used in the war, and they were launched by the Germans from occupied France. The terrifying thing I remember about these rockets was the screaming noise they made. The noise would then stop and you knew that the Buzz Bombs (as we called them) were coming down. You had to drop to the ground and cover your head and hope for the best. You never knew where they would land.

Thinking back on all of these chaotic events now seems like a hazy movie from so long ago – a bad dream. However, the thing that I remember the most was how everyone pulled together and tried to help one another through all the good times and the bad times. It did not matter if you were a total stranger. We would sit down in a shelter or a bunker with a cup of tea and become friends not knowing what the next hour or day would bring. We were all bonded in a common cause – VICTORY.