FEATURE
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Photography by Scarlet Bowe
e asked what a typical day looked like
for Grieve as an air raid warden. ‘If
there’d be an air raid, then you’d have
to get up whether it was one, two in
the morning, and with a bit of luck
you might get back to bed for a couple
hours at about five o'clock!’ she says
with a chuckle, adding: ‘there wasn’t
any excuse for not being on duty on
time, even if you’d been up all night’.
We were keen to hear about Kathleen’s
social life during the war, as we
navigate a summer of social distancing.
‘Nothing was shut. People were still
out and about,’ she says explaining the
regular London commute with her father
to buy things for his shop. But, she
adds: ‘You’d always come out of London
by six o’clock, because the sirens would
go and there’d be a raid on the way’.
With many individuals comparing the
current crisis to the War, Grieve told
us: ‘You have to experience it yourself,
don’t you, to really appreciate it.
It is frightening. You’d go to bed at
night and never knew whether you were
going to be bombed or not, and that
fear hangs over you. This (pandemic)
has affected everybody really hasn't
it, all the countries at once. It’s not
pleasant at all,’ she says.
Kathleen Doreen Grieve worked at St Albans fire
station, on the commuter belt just north of London.
It was her responsibility to make sure people were
safely in their shelters during an air raid.
‘So, you were more at risk
than everyone else?’ asked
her granddaughter, Emma
who was facilitating our
interview
‘Well I suppose, but at the
time you didn’t think about
it. You didn’t think about
your personal risk so much.
You were doing your job',
Grieve tells us.
We asked what memories stood out for her
the most, and she explained lack of sleep
being one but moreover, an overwhelming
sense of 'pulling together', which has
stayed with her over the decades.
'We had a laugh, we all had to get on.
The sessions with the fire brigade
were quite fun’, she reminisces. Even
during the War,there were many times of
enjoyment. ‘Everybody pulled together,’
she echoes.
In the brief interview with Grieve,
we were struck by her stiff upper lip
mentality, describing her years of
service with such stoicism. As someone
with first-hand experience of protecting
others in a crisis, at 101 years young,
she celebrated VE Day not too long ago
with her family in Yorkshire.
When asked if she had anything to impart
to those facing our current crisis, she
advised simply to ‘get on with it’,
as if reminding herself of the mindset
needed in such uncertain times.
Grieve left us with a sense that ‘pulling
together’ may be the driving force
behind ‘getting on with it’, whatever
‘it’ might look like this summer.
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