Daphne Parvin served as a Maidstone borough councillor for 32 years, until her retirement in May. The former mayor survived some fierce battles in the council chamber, but they were nothing compared with her experiences growing up during the Second World
time to escape.
One morning in late summer, my two sisters and I walked up the road and across a footpath to take vegetable scraps to the seaside donkeys that were staying there for the war.
The beaches had been all covered in barbed wire in case of invasion, with a solider on guard at each end of the road, where you had to show your identity card to pass through, so the poor donkeys were out of work.
As we turned for home across the potato field where women with their tiny children were picking up potatoes, a German plane came over and started to machine-gun us all.
The women laid down on top of their babies. My sisters took one of my hands each and we ran like mad for home. Luckily, we seemed to outrun the bullets.
Another day, I walked with Dad to Margate to put the takings in the bank.
On the way back, as we neared the railway station, the air-raid siren went off and enemy planes came over. The warden said we should take shelter. He stood in the open doorway and I stood next to him because I didn’t like the dark. Suddenly some kind of grenade fell at his feet. He picked it up and threw it away – and it exploded.
On August Bank Holiday, I was again out walking with my dad. The shops were mostly closed and those that were open had wooden boarding over the windows. We walked down Margate High Street.
There was no one about – just me and Dad alone. In the gutter, outside Woolworths there was a little mouse trotting along.
It was such a contrast to pre-war when Margate was always thronged with holidaymakers. Dad said to me: “When you grow up and tell people about this day, they will never believe you.”
One Sunday lunchtime, there was a raid on Manston. A bomb