Constance Cresswell was born in 1924 in Nutfield, Surrey, England. When she was about six years old, she moved with her parents and younger brother to London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. The country was still suffering from the leftovers from World War 1, and work was hard to find. When she was about ten, she was awarded a scholarship to attend a convent in Alston [Annotator's Note: Alston, England], on the outskirts of London, and she was happy there. The girls were taught their lessons and also taught to be ladies. On 1 September 1939, just before World War 2 in Europe was declared, Constance remembers having to report to school with a suitcase carrying a change of clothes and the gas mask she had been issued. She had also been instructed to carry a rubber eraser in her pocket. She later learned that she was to bite on the eraser when the bombing started, to prevent from accidentally biting her tongue. Mothers were not allowed to see their children off as they boarded trains wearing a little tag that stated their names and addresses. Along with other children, she was taken from St. Pancras railroad station [Annotator's Note: now London St. Pancras International] and evacuated to Northampton [Annotator’s Note: Northampton, England]. All of the signs at the stations, as well as all the directional signs on the roads had been taken down, in order to thwart any enemy parachutists that might land in the countryside. The children were parceled out to various households in the town. Cresswell and a friend were taken in at a very strange place. They reported to a convent school the next morning and the headmistress reassigned them to a more acceptable situation. Cresswell stayed there for a year, and as it turned out, she found that her brother had been evacuated to the same place.

Constance Cresswell knew a little about the ongoing political situation and the war in Europe, but she was anxious to get back home [Annotator's Note: after being moved to Northampton, England when war was declared in 1939]. She returned to London [Annotator's Note: London, England] in 1940, just in time for the beginning of the Blitz [Annotator's Note: German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941]. That Fall, every home was issued a corrugated iron Anderson Shelter [Annotator's Note: air raid shelter] that was installed in the garden. The Cresswell family’s shelter was just big enough for four people. It had a bench on both sides. The outside was covered with dirt. Her family would go into the shelter at six in the evening and stay until seven the next morning because of the bombs, as well as shrapnel from the antiaircraft guns, were falling almost every night. She had returned to London in hopes of attending university, but she was conscripted by the government, and had to report to work. It was a cold and brutal five months. One night a land mine fell on a young men's youth hostel in their immediate neighborhood, taking out the backs of numerous houses, destroying the hostel, and severely damaging the Cresswell home. It was amazing how everyone checked to ensure the safety of their neighbors. She was asked to help find a gas line in a dark house, and while she was doing so, something flew by her that was making a noise like a chicken. Bombs were very strange things. Everything was a blur after that. She was terrorized, and in a form of shock. Her mother was not very well at the time, and her father decided they should all go to stay with relatives in the country near Bedford [Annotator's Note: Bedford, England]. On the second night there, the Germans bombed Coventry [Annotator's Note: Coventry, England] all night long, destroying the Coventry Cathedral, which was supposed to be off target. Cresswell gives Willy Brandt [Annotator's Note: German statesman, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1974] his due for bringing volunteers to rebuild the edifice after the war was over.

When the Americans began arriving in England, Constance Cresswell attended a reception for the 92nd Bomber Group [Annotator's Note: 92nd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] at an airbase outside of Bedford [Annotator's Note: Bedford, England] called Podington [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force, or RAF, Podington in Bedfordshire, England], in November 1942. She was among six young ladies who were invited to go. Cresswell chuckles to remember that she and her companions were far more interested in the plentiful food than they were in the meeting the men. Regarding the night raids, Cresswell’s family could no longer live in their home after the neighborhood was hit. She cannot remember where they stayed until they left for Bedford because so much of it is a blur to her. The family was in Bedford for about five years, and the labor department found her there. When she cheerfully told a government official that she didn't want to work for an aircraft company that was making parts for the Spitfires [Annotator's Note: British Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft], he told her she was anyway. She worked in an old manor house that the government commandeered and made the headquarters of a company that built aircraft components in other parts of England. She was good at mathematics and made the biggest mistake of her life when she came out at the top of her class in the operation of the comptometer [Annotator's Note: first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator], a forerunner of the computer. She traveled between the company’s various plants to teach people to use the machines. Dealing with conscripted labor, including old gentlemen coming out of retirement, and ladies of the night, was challenging. Cresswell was returning from an assignment when an explosion hit near her train. All of the glass of the train car was blown out. The train kept going, and she learned when she reached London [Annotator's Note: London, England] that the explosion was the result of the first V-2 rocket [Annotator’s Note: German Vergeltungswaffe 2, or Retribution Weapon 2, ballistic missile] fired from the French coast.

People in England came out of their shelters to help sort things out after a bombing raid, according to Constance Cresswell. They just lived the best life they could. Cresswell was fortunate in that she did not lose any family members during the war but two of her cousins went through prisoner of war camps in Germany. The people in England liked the Americans. She worked with the American Red Cross, usually manning the desk at a club the organization operated for the troops where she met some fascinating people. Cresswell met Emily Rae [Annotator's Note: Emily Harper Rae; American Red Cross], who helped establish the Red Cross club in Bedford [Annotator's Note: Bedford, England]. Rae accompanied American servicemen on a food foraging trip to the Isle of Man [Annotator's Note: Isle of Man, British Crown Dependency], where there was no rationing. Rae was one of 26 killed when their aircraft [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber named "Combined Operations"] crashed into a mountain [Annotator's Note: on 14 April 1945]. Rae was laid to rest, among the soldiers who perished on that flight, in the cemetery in Madingley, England. Cresswell attended the funeral services, and began a correspondence with Rae's parents. After she came to the United States, she spent four days with them in their home.

During the war, rationing was a way of life in England, according to Constance Cresswell. Each person was allotted two ounces of margarine and one egg per week. The egg was the subject of high-level conferences in the Cresswell home; they debated the day they would eat it and how it would be prepared. Mothers went out every morning scavenging for food. Clothing was also rationed. People repurposed clothing and marketed hand-made items. When the Americans came to the United Kingdom, they began bombing in the daytime, and the English continued bombing at night. Women who were too old to go out to work would stand in their gardens and count the American bombers that left each morning, and repeat the process in the evening, thereby determining how many planes were lost each day. On their approach, the planes would drop colored flares to indicate if there were wounded or dead onboard or to alert the field as to other situations. War was so real to those living near the airfields. Following the progress of the war was very important. The night before the Allies landed on Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] was the most nerve-wracking night in her memory. Her family shared a house with a woman whose husband was a navigator on an English pathfinder aircraft. He went out on assignment to Belgium that night, and never returned. On D-Day, Cresswell could not see the sky for the multitude of airplanes. Everyone was so anxious. Cresswell, along with her fellow British citizens, thought Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] was a wonderful man. Most felt the same about Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945].

There was excitement at Constance Cresswell's officers' club when Glenn Miller [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Major Alton Glenn Miller; American musician and big band leader] and his band were stationed around Bedford [Annotator's Note: Bedford, England]. He was a delightful man and terribly homesick. After Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] was liberated, Miller's band was wanted there for Christmas. He talked some young pilot into flying him to Paris on a miserable, foggy day in December 1944, and the plane mysteriously disappeared on its way there. A young naval officer, on duty in the Channel at the time, eventually came forth to say that he had witnessed a little plane dive into the water, coincidental with the disappearance on that day. Returning to D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], Cresswell says it was sad because they knew a lot of people were going to die. When she was on duty at the Red Cross club, she knew a pilot who took his dog, Scraggs, up with him on his flights. She got to know him fairly well. She promised to bring him a harness for his dog, but when she did she learned he had been killed. On V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] everybody went mad. She was glad that her brother was finally back in the country.

In December 1944, Constance Cresswell married an American who was stationed at a supply depot in England with the 8th Air Force. She immigrated to the United States in December 1945. Her parents visited her in America in 1949. She went back to England in 1951 for her brother's wedding. She had three daughters, and didn't return for 15 years, but has been back many times since. When she thinks back on the war now, she feels people in America can be complacent about the war because they did not live through the bombings. She recalls a near-miss while she was on her way to work one day, and a bombing raid left her with a piece of shrapnel in the nose of her gas mask. It is not possible to describe how it felt. Her countrymen were being so kind to one another. The railway undergrounds in London were often used as shelters during the raids. They were rough times.