Then in April I moved to an apartment at Crystal Palace Square. This is a famous landmark made of glass. It has one of the largest flower shows known. It was lucky during the war that there was not too much damage to it. It was on the highest spot in London, a very steep hill. When the flying bombs came over they were like pilot’s planes and when the engine stopped that’s when it crashed. They travelled across the channel and did quite a bit of damage. Crystal Palace had quite a bit of damage and then the V2 rockets came over. Both of them could travel during the daylight and planes couldn’t touch them.
By this time I’d found out I was pregnant, and Margaret Rose was born April 7th, 1944. In those days they kept you in hospital for at least ten days. While living in London during the air raids, when you were pregnant they would shoo you into the country for two or three weeks. Imagine living in a house with twenty pregnant women, all looking at each other at night to see who would be next. A doctor visited us with two interns about every other day. During the day we would go for long walks. There wasn’t much to do. The place was called Weybridge and of course we had a few air raids there. It was a lot better having a baby there. We stayed for two weeks. Margaret was born at night and weighed seven pounds 12 ounces. Then we went back to London.
In this house in Crystal Palace there were four flats (apartments) and each of us had a young baby. On air raid nights (every night) we would all gather in my flat and put them under the table for the night and we would sit as near under as we could. My flat was on the second floor, so we thought that was the best place. I don’t know where the landlady went. She lived there also, with two older children, and were later sent out of London. This part of the war seemed worst because we seemed helpless. Not like when we were single. Then, we never worried about air raids, we’d just laugh our way through it. Wouldn’t listen to the air warden who wanted to send us into the air raid shelters, like the underground.
My friends at that time, we all lived at Victoria in London. There were three Irish girls and two North Country. Mary, Sally and Moira were Irish and Kay and I were from Lancashire and Newcastle. They were all at my wedding. Mary had a boy two days after me. I had mine on Good Friday and Mary’s boy on Easter Sunday. She was married to an Irish Guard. Sally was my best friend; Mary was her cousin.
This is when I left Pall Mall at a club near Buckingham Palace. We all worked there and once we got married, Mary and I, we all separated and didn’t meet again. This is when I went to Crystal Palace Square.
After living there for two months, the war got very bad; guns trying to hit the flying bombs in daylight. The sky was one mess and I got very little sleep. I decided to go to Norfolk where one bomb in a field was a nine days wonder. They had to show it to me. The day I left London for Norfolk I sent a telegram to mother telling her I was coming to Norfolk. The post office was a distance away so I left Margaret with the landlady and dashed up the hill to send it off. The flying bombs were still coming and the sky was full of smoke from the guns, etc., that were trying to hit them. I was terrified, and a dog beside me was too. I don’t know where he came from, but we were both racing down the street, me to get back. The sky with smoke looked as if paratroopers were jumping out of the sky. Then a soldier, one of the girls’ husbands who had just arrived, thought they were paratroopers and yelled, “Oh my God, the Germans are coming.”
Catching the train, that was a job. Hundreds of people were fleeing, mostly to relatives I guess. The train was packed in the seats and in the corridors of the train. Naturally I got a seat, having a baby. It was hard trying to feed a baby on a train. We didn’t use bottles those days (very seldom, anyway) - there was a war on.
We arrived in North Lopham about 5:00 p.m. The station was about six miles from North Lopham and no one had a car except the armed forces. They allowed taxis and buses but petrol was rationed and very scarce. We only had a bus going to Dirs about five miles away once a week. Cars were not plentiful but if you had one it was used for the war effort. You were fined if you dropped a piece of paper on the ground, it had to be collected for war work. I doubt if England is as clean now.
Well, except for the visit I hadn’t stayed at home since school, and now it was a little different because I had a baby and now I could disagree. Like, mother is very superstitious and if there are thirteen at the table mother made me get the baby up to the table and didn’t do things exactly like her. Also, in the olden days one must wear a hat to church and especially on Sunday. Well, Margaret was to be christened [the silk christening gown is still in the family, an heirloom now] and it was at least a mile to the church. It was raining out so I put a scarf on my head and put my hat in the pram and walked to church. Well, mother was so mad at me, because the village saw me going without a hat to church, that she cancelled the christening cake, etc.
So after I had been there for six months Ernie asked me to go to Canada. So I applied to Canada House in London to move to Canada. I certainly did not think straight to go to Canada while the war was on, but I thought it would take a while. Well, by the time November came I was getting ready to leave and of course everything was a secret because of the enemy. So on December the 3rd I was told to take the village taxi to the train station. Nobody was to go with me. No books, no photographs, nothing that would give the Germans any information. Just a small trunk that went before me to London and a few diapers and a handbag. No letters, addresses, etc. in it. The taxi took me to the station called Diss. I arrived in London, met by the Red Cross, who stayed on the train to Birmingham and left us alone for about fifteen minutes when a new lot of Red Cross workers arrived. They didn’t want the Red Cross to meet. Then we continued on to Liverpool where the Red Cross left us and after a while a new lot met us.
It was stormy at sea and our boat could not come into the harbour as it was the Mauritania, which won seven ribbons for fast crossing in the Atlantic Ocean. No other boat has done it since, not even the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth. They won only once and then other countries like France beat them. But we did not know it was the Mauritania, they told us in Liverpool. She couldn’t come in for three days and we slept on the floor of a large building and had to wash our four or five diapers on the radiators around the room. I managed to get a stroller to walk around until the boat could come in. They had signs everywhere during the war about no talking, the enemy might be listening, but going out into the streets people were telling us where we were going and that the big boat that had camouflage was the Mauritania and if it couldn’t come in we would be going on a smaller boat. This was supposed to be a secret, so you can imagine what secrets could be found out.
After three days this large camouflaged boat arrived in and the new Red Cross escorted us onto the boat. There were also wounded soldiers going home to Canada. The boat was owned by the British but the Americans were in charge, so the food was beautiful, all the butter we could eat, etc., after five years so can imagine a lot got seasick. The round table that I sat at held about eight people but by the time the meal progressed most of the women and children were seasick, leaving only a couple of tables left with people. I was one of them.
We were told that if an alarm sounded, we were all to put our life jackets on and head for our life boat stations. We never knew if the alarm was true or false, but everyone, even if they were ill, had to be up on deck with life jacket on. It happened quite a few times.
We arrived in Halifax and then took a train. Women with babies had the lower bunks and were allowed to leave the bunk down all across Canada. One of the war brides in my cabin on the boat was coming to Windsor. She had two young children (boys), two and four. Her husband was in the Essex Scottish, same as my husband. He was a sergeant. Their name was Horstead and later both boys became firemen in the Windsor Fire Department with my son Allan.
Coming across Canada in December 1944, we found snow and were quite cold with our English clothes, but quite hot on the train. Not knowing what the weather was like outside I tried to take the double windows up because I wanted some cool air, but the conductor thought I was crazy.
After arriving in Windsor we went to live with Ernie’s parents at 1537 Howard St. It was a big house. I found beside his mother and father they had a fourteen year old daughter and an eighteen year old one. Two brothers were in the Essex Scottish, four in the navy and four sisters. Quite a family.
What a time I had trying to find my way about. The buses go the wrong way in England and they’re flat both ends, you couldn’t tell which way they went, you would stand one way to go home and find out you were on the wrong side. Here, you buy your ticket and put it in a slot beside the driver, and in England the conductor gives you a ticket and you throw it away.
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So ends her story, and yet it was only the beginning of a new one. After living with Ernie’s family, she moved to a one room apartment on Highland Avenue, then Ernie returned to Canada and they took up residence first at 1467 Labodie, from 1946 to 1949, then 1816 Olive Road where they spent most of the rest of their lives. After Margaret was born in England, they had three more children, born in Canada: Ernie, Allan, and Diane. They subsequently had eight grandchildren they both lived to see, and Dorothy was alive to witness the birth of one great-grandchild. Ernie died in 1994 of a stroke, and Dorothy died in 2001 of heart failure.
Dorothy did not wish to continue writing her autobiography because she felt that “nothing interesting happened after that”, and she always despised the city of Windsor. Although her family would disagree, their stories are theirs to tell alone, and I, her granddaughter Sandra, would not presume to tell them. I have transcribed her story from the original handwriting and created this web site as I feel is it an important piece in the puzzle of history, especially for the Martin and Oldham families. I hope you have enjoyed it.
