Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
WE WILL SURVIVE THIS
While shielding for five months this year, 88-year-old great-grandmother Betty Kness in Worthing, West Sussex, wrote a short book called I Did Survive about her wartime youth. This is Betty’s story…
“I was seven when war broke out in 1939. I lived with my mum, dad and older sister Eileen in a two-bedroom house in Carshalton, Greater London – the same house dad lived in until he moved to a care home in his late 90s.
“He couldn’t join the forces as he was partially sighted, so worked at Smithfield Meat Market in London delivering rabbit to butcher’s shops.
“Mum worked in a factory in Wimbledon called Lyons Toys until it was converted to make parts for airplanes.
“My sister, who is three years older, had to look after me while our parents worked. She’s still doing it today at the grand age of 91! Like other kids, we had to take ourselves to school, which was a cold, smelly air-raid shelter. We spent five years down there and we had the same thing every day for lunch – cheese sandwiches and soup!
“We had to grow vegetables in our gardens and we kept chickens, plus my dad brought rabbit home once a week. There were long queues at all the shops for rations.
“Mum made our clothes and taught us how to sew. My sister made a blouse from an old parachute that she bought in Tooting Market and then dyed it with red ink. We slept in bunk beds in our air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden every night. My dad had a projector and every night we watched Laurel and Hardy.
“The heavy bombing meant I was evacuated to Birmingham to live with the Collins family. I was very happy to have my own bedroom and proper bed after years in the shelter.
“When mum brought me back to London after almost two years, I shall always remember the day we got off the bus and saw six houses at the end of our road had been bombed. Mum stood there frozen, not knowing what she would see when we walked around the corner. But we were lucky, our house was still standing.
“There were parties in the streets when the war was finally over in 1945. I was no Vera Lynn but I sang my heart out. When I was 18, I met my husband-to-be Vic at an Old Time dance club, where we danced the Gay Gordon. We were married for 66 years until he died last year.
“Mum lived to 92 and her passion was bingo. She would play once a week in a local working man’s club in Carshalton which was actually built on the site of my old school. I now live in a lovely bungalow with my son Bill by the sea. I have three children, seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, including a new addition to the family, baby Oscar-leo.”
If you would like to donate to St Barnabas Hospice who looked after Betty’s husband Vic, go to justgiving.com/fundraising/bettykness.