Josephine “Jo” Pannell by anyone’s reckoning was a force of nature. Her seemingly tireless volunteerism which lasted for decades marked her as a “go-to” person in Mattapoisett when something needed doing. From the Girl Scouts to the elderly, from supporting the library to cherishing and preserving the town’s history, Jo was a woman for all seasons.
Jo’s good works were honored in many ways during her lifetime, not the least of which was receiving the 2016 Standard-Times Woman of the Year Award. At that time Council on Aging board member Liz Field said Jo’s efforts were instrumental in the town’s purchase of a wheelchair-accessible van.
But long before Jo came to Mattapoisett (1974) and long before she could focus 100 percent of her many talents and endless energy supporting various organizations and town boards, she was a daughter, a child living in England during WWII. Her memories of those years formed a narrative that she shared for decades with family and friends and then expanded to giving presentations at her children’s and grandchildren’s classroom “show-and-tell” and other venues. With her strong British accent, she charmed her audiences young and old alike.
One of the many things Jo left behind when she passed away in May at age 92 was a memoir of how she and her family lived through the bombing of London and surrounding areas during World War II. She speaks with the voice of someone who survived terrifying events, yet with the tone of a young child. It is through that child’s lens that we see a world turned upside down by war. We also hear from one sentence to the next that very British sentiment, “Stay calm and carry on.” Carry on she did. These are her words. No doubt she’d be delighted to know her story is being told once again.
“I grew up in the Borough of Romford in the County of Essex (b. December 1927). Essex is the county east of London that had a populations of about 50,000.” She describes a bucolic environment rich with fresh fruits, vegetables, and livestock. Market day was an event full of the sounds of clucking poultry and squealing pigs, layered with flowers and produce. The family lived in a semi-detached home near the town’s center. In that home were her mother, father, sister, and two brothers. Jo was the eldest.
“My first realization of what a war might mean was early in 1939 when the government delivered Anderson Shelters in sections of corrugated iron to each house on my street. A big hole had to be dug, cement poured for the floor and the molded sheets of corrugate iron assembled to form a rounded shelter 6 feet by 6 feet; steps and a passageway were cut down to the narrow doorway. The earth from the hole was then shoveled on top and the entrance was shielded by bags filled with earth. All of this was accomplished by neighbor helping neighbor over the summer of 1939. All the men dug and shoveled from one end of the street to the other. The shelters were placed at the bottom of the gardens as far away from the houses as possible. Our shelter housed six bunks in two tiers along the sides and back.”
“Next came the gas masks. We had to go to town hall and be fitted. This was scary to a child. Not that we worried or knew anything about gas, but the gas mask was awkward to get on, had to be pulled from the back until it was tight around our face, had a horrible smell of rubber. It was difficult to breathe in, the visor got steamed up so you couldn’t see out… their importance was impressed upon us.”
“The evacuation of the children from London started at the end of August (1939)… towns and villages in the country were assigned to a district and children went to live with people who had volunteered to look after them in their homes.”
Jo wrote,“…we lived quite close to the coast from which Germany would send aircraft. We were shepherded onto the underground and then a train at Paddington Station. The train stopped in Windsor. I still remember the wonderment of looking up the hill from the train station and seeing the fairytale turrets of Windsor Castle.” The family was split up with Jo, her sister, and mother staying in one home and her two brothers in another.
“On Sunday, September 3, 1939, at noon we were called into the sitting room to listen to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, on the radio as he declared war on Germany. The air-raid sirens went off … nobody was sure what was happening, for all we knew the Germans were overhead in planes. The people with whom we were staying suggested that everyone put on their gas masks. There we stood for about quarter of an hour until the all-clear was sounded.” Here she stops and reflects upon the adults in the room: “It seems amusing to me now, but it must have been so hard for adults, with the added responsibility of strange young children, to know what was happening and what to do.” That was the only time she ever donned the gas mask, she explained.
“Life for a child carried on as usual… Windsor is a beautiful town with the castle, parks alongside the serene River Thames. The Royal Family have a home there. One day I saw the King and Queen while I played in the park.”
The family returned home, however, given that “…there seemed to be a hiatus as regards any kind of bombing activity. My Mother decided early in December of 1939 that it was safe to go home to be with Father.”
Food rationing began in early 1940, she wrote, including candy, “…to a child that was when war really hit.” She goes on to talk about her mother’s struggles in feeding four children adequately. “It must have been hard on the mothers who worried whether their children were getting enough nutritious food … for those mothers it must have been a nightmare.” There would ensue nine years of food rationing. But nearly everything else that constituted living a good life was also rationed including clothing and shoes. “This was quite a hardship on growing girls who wanted to be in fashion with the movie stars.”
Summer of 1940, all hell broke loose as the Battle of Britain began. “We’d lay in the grass watching the dog fights, counting the hits and seeing parachutes fluttering down. Once the bombing had started the whole family slept in the shelter. As the nights got darker and colder, we children would be on our bunks by 5 pm.”
“October 10, 1940, our house was bombed. The bomb went into the ground in front of our house on an angle and blew up the whole insides. From the garden, the back of the house looked perfectly normal. As neighbors came to the shelter with the bad news, I remember my mother calmly saying, ‘That’s all right, now we can buy some new furniture.’” Jo said this conveyed to her and her siblings that everything was going to be alright if a little exciting at the moment. The family moved across the street to an uncle’s home where the children slept under the stairs in a cupboard. The uncle’s house would be bombed soon thereafter.
“Life went on. I don’t feel that I missed out on any normal growing-up activities. We went to the movies often, played tennis with Dad, I was a Girl Guard, hiked, picnicked, visited relatives, and as I got older went dancing and to plays and concerts in London.”
“June 1944 Hitler launched the V-1 (rocket) against the south of England. By this time I was old enough to be scared.” She recalled walking the busy streets of London with its hustle and bustle, “when a ‘doodle-bug’ (V-1) engine cut out overhead and it was as though every noise had ceased… like somebody breaking something in a crowded room… everyone took cover.” Jo dove into the nearest building pressed to the floor hands overhead. “The attacks were so frequent and horrendous that by July children were again being evacuated from London.”
V-2 rockets came next but those attacks were short-lived, she reported, but not before commenting that, “one either forgot about them till they hit or you became a basket case worrying about them.” However, the Germans were by then in retreat.
She recalled it all, Germans strafing civilians, Churchill’s speeches, recovering items from the family’s destroyed home, jitterbugging with the Yanks in Covent Garden Opera House, and especially poignant and delightful is the following recollection, “I was one of those young teens sitting on Queen Victoria’s Monument outside Buckingham Palace on May 13, 1945, chanting ‘We want the King’ who did appear many times on the balcony with the Royal Family.”
Jo ends her memoir this way: “On a very positive personal note, I feel that our family and many others in Britain developed an amazing closeness to each other because of the time we were forced to spend together. Communication was open and love and concern for each other was paramount. I never remember my Mother and Father leaving us in the evening, their job was to protect their young and they did a wonderful job for which I shall ever be grateful.”
Josephine Pannell’s memorial Mass will be held on Monday, September 26, at 11:00 am at St. Anthony’s Church, 22 Barstow Street, Mattapoisett.
By Josephine Pannell
Contributing Correspondent Marilou Newell
