This week we had to take ourselves back to the war years. We had to write a letter from a child who stayed in London, rather than being evacuated, to a friend in the country. We have researched what it was like to stay in a big city during the Blitz, using books and the Internet, and had to include our findings in our letter. Our SUCCESS CRITERIA was to use the information we had researched to make our letter authentic, to use punctuation correctly and to organise our letter into paragraphs.

Did Maria meet her SUCCESS CRITERIA?

16th November 1940


Maria Rowley
53 Derwen Road
London
CE82 9GE

Dear Sophie,
I am writing this letter to tell you and your new family about my scary life in London. I guess I’m lucky I didn’t have to evacuate and leave my family like you and your sisters had to. But you live far away from London. Where I live it’s like a target for the Germans. Any way, there are a lot more things that are making my life a misery, and these are just some.
A few weeks ago my friend Sarah passed away in the night, but the really sad part was that she wasn’t bombed or anything to do with another country, she fell off a bridge in the black-out. I don’t know many details but I do know that she was walking home from Bethan’s (my friend) house, it was pitch black and she walked over a bridge, fell off it and drowned. It was horrible to see her name written on the black board. You know that feeling you have when you get home from school and just want to jump into the bath? Well here in London you need to dream on because me and my sisters (Christine and Ella) have to share a tin bath once a fortnight. That’s right, all three of us squeezed into a tiny tin bath by the fire place. We had to sell our bathroom (knock it down for bricks to sell) so we could afford a blanket each to bring down to the nearby station. Our toilet? A shovel and a nearby field.
It was my birthday on the 12th of November and guess what I did? Look after my sisters! I turned 12 and I was forced to look after my baby sisters although we did get to collect shrapnel (the remains of weapons from the last bombing). My dad (John) left last year to help out in the war and I really wish he hadn’t because then he could have looked after my sisters while I went out with my friends or what’s left of them. I haven’t heard from my dad since he left and the only word that pops into my head when I think about him is DEATH. He loved us all and promised he would contact us. My mum says he is probably busy but we all know. Ella has to wear this glass thing on her head it’s like a gas mask but for babies and my mum has to pump gas into it when the alarm goes off. I only have half a day of school and I can hardly read, luckily my mother taught me how to write when I was four years old. Please don’t write me a long letter because I can’t read much. I have carrot and other cooked vegetables for my tea but on a Sunday we all have a big stew with all the neighbours. My sister Ella has mushed up vegetables for her tea. The other day I found an elastic band on my street and my mum can now do a braid in my hair. For my birthday my mum bought me a skipping rope from a charity shop down the road. I need to keep it for a long time because it cost half of my mother’s week allowance! My sisters and I always skip now and we are pretty good. I can’t wait until you and your sisters move back and we can all skip together!
Anyway, my mother says I need to finish off now because there will be an alarm in half an hour and in twenty minutes we need to put on our gas masks and start walking to the under ground station. Please write back soon, so we can stay in touch, soon we will be the only ones. I hope people come to their senses and stop wars for good, so you can move back and we can skip together and go to school for a whole day. We keep praying things will change over night but it will take a few years for that to happen. Well, there goes the alarm, speak to you soon.

Yours Faithfully,

Maria Rowley.

Here is a letter written by Ebony Nottage

16th November 1939 Ebony Nottage
10 Plum tree Walk
East London
CF64 WW2


Dear Poppy,
I’m writing this letter to you to say how terrifying World War two is. Every night when I lie on the cold hard floor of the underground station I think what it would be like to be evacuated to the countryside like you. The only people I have left are my older brother and younger sister. We can’t afford anything but we have to keep on going. Anything we do find to eat we give to our younger sister as she doesn’t have much to survive on.

But apart from that it is an extraordinary experience, finding all different pieces of shrapnel and having fun playing in the rubble, but it isn’t as much fun without you being around. It gets really emotional sometimes when you hear a bomb go off and then the sound of people shouting and screaming. We are lucky we are still alive. But the scariest part of the war is the blackout. When the sky goes black all the lights go off including lamp-posts, you can’t see a thing. The other night I got up and felt my way towards my brother and I walked straight into the wall it really hurt. The weird thing is they have started to paint the pavements white and even the cows! I couldn’t believe it all because of the black out.

You might be wondering why its only me, my brother and sister - its because they died (my parents). My mum died because she breathed in poisonous gases and it and it….. I’d rather not talk about how they died if that’s ok?

I wish you were here I miss playing hide and seek with you there are loads of good hiding places around the town now!

I have to go now
From Ebony
Hope to see you again one
day.


P.S
I will always wish you were here.