LILY BLIN (NEE FENNER) - LOOKING BACK

Memories of my early life

By Lily Blin

My name is Lily Blin (née Fenner) and I was born in 1933 in Newhaven.  My father, Walter A. Fenner worked as a marine engineer on the Newhaven Dieppe run, and on hospital ships throughout the war.  He was decorated  1942.  He married my mother, SUZANNE LECUL, in Saint-Nicolas, near Dieppe in 1932.

I now live in Canada which is a long way away!.  I have recently been writing a sort of memoir and I wrote this piece called “LOOKING BACK”.  I include a part which refers back to Newhaven.

LOOKING BACK

“At times, I saw the little girl that I had once been,  the  little girl who had sat by her bed-room window in a house high up on the hill on Mount Pleasant, Newhaven.  It was her favourite place in the house.  From there she gazed out over the back gardens at the green double deck buses winding along the coastal road, her eyes drifting over to the swampy fields where she caught minnows, and beyond them to her favourite view of all, the harbour, the jetty, and the sea leading to France and her beloved French grand-parents.  She never tired of the sights and sounds of the ships coming in and out of the harbour.  Her favourite days were the ones when the whole scene disappeared in thick, dense sea fog bathing everything in an aura of mystery.  The eerie sound of the fog horn answering the ship’s horn as it tried to bring her father’s ship safely into the harbour wafted up to her bedroom.  She loved the storms with the waves hurtling themselves against and over the jetty, the strong iodine smell of seaweed on the rocks, as she inhaled the sea air, breathing it in deep into her lungs.

Every two days she said good bye to her father, handsome in his navy uniform and of whom she was so proud.  He worked as a marine engineer, crossing the sea between England and France.      “I shall miss you” he always said as he kissed her good bye.  Her arms encircled his neck.  She never wanted him to leave.   Her bed-room had been decorated by him.  It was very special.  Her bed - a ship’s bunk  in beautiful dark reddish brown wood, with 4 large drawers underneath - had been rescued from a defunct ship .  On the walls,  a yellow wallpaper, covered in wild animals - lions, zebras, elephants - so that every night she dreamed that she was sailing on the high seas to exotic lands.  But during the day, this small room enveloped her in a womb like feeling of safety.  From inside this wonderful world of her bedroom, she could look out onto the outer world with no fear.  She was unaware that very soon, her world and indeed the whole world would come crashing down.

But that summer, that hot summer before the Second World War, she spent as always with her grand-parents in Saint-Nicolas.  She was 5 years old. Too soon however,  the carefree days of that  idyllic summer came to an end.   On the 3rd September 1939, war was declared.  The Second World War had started.

Her life, that of her parents, and indeed of the world changed for ever.  Her father’s ship, immediately transformed into a hospital ship, did not go back to Dieppe until 18th May 1940. He would try his hardest to get his wife, child, and parents-in-law back to England, but, already embarked,   the family  would experience the bombing of the Dieppe harbour and would be unable to get back to England.  That little girl would experience the strafing of the  masses of people fleeing the German army in fear on the roads;  the invasion; internment for a while in a concentration camp in France; the death of all her grand-parents and above all separation from her father for the next five years, whom she would not recognise when she finally met up with him again at the end of the war.

I.