By Gregory Gower
My Mother and I were coming back from Yorkshire where we had been evacuated for a very short period. We met my Auntie Joyce, who had brought with her a pram which she had bought for a happier event which would be happening in about six month’s time. The pram would be used to convey our luggage and other items of clothing etc.
We met outside Waterloo Station and then proceeded to the nearest Underground Station. As a Toddler I found it very exhausting and there wasn’t any room in the pram for me to rest my weary legs. All I know is that the stairs seemed endless and the slopes were equal in length and you had to hang on to the pram to stop it rolling away, which took a lot of doing. I was only six years old at the time, but it seemed I was nominated by war to become an adult to look after my Mother.
So there we were, making our way towards a station when all of a sudden the pram slipped from my grasp and went and a greater speed than any of us could muster and we could see that a disaster was about to happen. Don’t ask me how it happened, but a train at that very moment came into that station, the doors opened and the pram went in through the doors, the doors slid shut as we raced onto the platform and we all looked with dismay as it disappeared into the tunnel.
We rushed up to a Porter and told him what had happened and his response was to my Mother ‘Don’t worry love! That train is on a loop line, it will be round here again in an hour’s time and if you stay at this spot when it comes in, it will be waiting for you!’
We had to wait one hour and fifteen minutes, but sure enough it was there, it hadn’t been disturbed by anybody. When you think it had my Mother’s handbag right on top of the pram.
My Mother is still alive today, and at 101 years old remembers every moment of the war and often relates to different stories that happened in our lives during that sad time.
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Revised 15th June 2014
