Tomorrow, a two minutes silence will take place in respect for those who fought for Britain in the war. Poppy flowers flourish on coats year after year, yet today there are few survivors of both the First and Second World War. Ninety-three year old Milly Jones tells Sejal Kapadia her story.
After politely ringing the doorbell twice, small concentrated footsteps sounded, before she pulled open the door. “I did hear you. I was just down in the garden”, she says with a surprisingly gleaming smile. Amelia Jones lives by herself in her suburban home. Her husband has passed away and she lost her only son to suicide. With her age and tragic circumstances, I imagined meeting a reserved fragile woman, but Milly- as she likes to be called- is strong and youthful.
“Well I was a baby when the first war began. All I remember is this man came and sat on the fence at the end of the path, and he gave me a biscuit. He was my father, and I was seeing him for the first time.” Amelia Jones grew up in the Norfolk countryside and moved to London in her early twenties, to search for better work and a new exciting life away from her provincial background. She was living in Brent when World War II was declared.
“We didn’t know whether it was going to happen or not. But this particular Sunday morning I was in the bath, and heard the siren. We knew we were going to war. So I went up to Winchester (Avenue) to find my man and got married. We wanted to get married before the war”. It is a clichéd story, but this was how it was for thousands of woman. “My Mother In-law, Father In-law and I went to Waterloo station to say goodbye to him. I felt terrible. It was really dreadful. Girls today would be screaming (if it were them)”. She did not see her husband until five years later.
“He went to Italy, Egypt. All around those countries, but not on the German side.” I tried to get an account of what her husband experienced whilst he was at war but she said, “He never talked about it. I don’t think many men did, and I didn’t want to ask him. It’s something they would rather forget I guess”.
I think Milly felt the same. In response to the bomb that hit her local area, she said “I just lost a few windows and the glass cut my wardrobe down”. She briefly remembered the severe fires by the Docklands in 1940, which were caused by mass bombings. “You could see the fire from here. The sky was lit up”. Her face then tenses. “I’ll have to think about this now”, but her memory is vague.
She remembers a lot about the work. Roles switched during this period as “the women did men’s work”. Milly took up a role in the local factory. “We had to make shelter signs and red lights for the roads, cut glass, drill and weld.”
“The streets couldn’t have any lights, which made it like hell in the fog. Everyone had to have black curtains behind their normal ones for the blackouts, and we had to take turns to do the fire watching. You know, make sure nobody had their lights on. It almost felt like I was back in the country. Us townies became so used to having the light.”
“The hours were long, and we only had Christmas day off”. It was a time for sacrifices. “They took all our railings, gates, aluminium pots and pans, because we (England) were getting very low on material”. From this moment, I got a sense of the pride this woman felt for her country. I imagined the idea of giving away my hard earned possessions and my stomach did a somersault. However, people wanted to help in any way they could and Milly is in no way resentful.
“There was a great comrade spirit here during the war. Yes there was hardship and the ration, but everyone was here to help you. This is what I liked about it. Ask anyone who is old.”
If you are not wearing your poppy, run out and get one before Remembrance Day on Tuesday. Consider the heroes, those who lost their lives and the generation that endured those hardships with smiles, for we could not keep up with this Jones, even if we tried.
