High Explosive Bomb at Malwood Road

Mark arrived in England with his grandmother in November 1942 to join his parents who were living in Balham. His father, Witold Krymer, was a good linguist, had taught himself English, and, after a stint at the Patriotic School in Victoria, was working for MI6 while Mark's mother was completing her degree in Polish Law at Oxford University (a special arrangement). Later she worked for the Polish government in exile in London.

Although they had all left Poland in September 1939, Mark had not seen his parents for two years and at six years old he did not remember them. He had also forgotten Polish, and only spoke French.

No stranger to war

Living in London was obviously very dangerous, and Mark recalls well the various bombing campaigns. His mother always refused to go to air raid shelters. One house, which they had lived in, was subsequently bombed, so she was lucky not to be there at that time.

Mark was no stranger to war - he remembered the German bombers coming over Warsaw on 1 September 1939, even though he was only three - it was to change his life.

Paris and Warsaw babyhood

Mark had been born in 1936 in Paris to Polish parents studying there and they returned home to Warsaw, where Mark remembered his swing attached to the door-frame in the flat where they lived (the flat survived in bombed out Warsaw).

Once it was clear that the Germans had overwhelmed the Polish forces with their bombing and tanks, Witold Krymer (with Protestant-Jewish parentage) was keen to leave before the Germans arrived in the city. He managed to get his family into Lithuania (agreeing to take a couple of generals' wives so he could obtain petrol for the car).

Journey to safety

The family embarked on a fraught trek through the Baltic states to reach France. The most immediate problem was money to pay for living expenses and border guides. The Russians controlled the Baltic states, and a Russian officer in a cafe took pity on the little boy, ordering some food. Maybe he was missing a son back home.

Witold Krymer managed to obtain some cash by trading watches - desperate measures born of a desperate situation - and with considerable difficulty and danger the family made it through to Estonia and caught the last boat out to Sweden. They had planned to go to the USA, but Mark fell ill and, thinking it was scarlet fever, his father decided to join family members already living in France in 1940. That could have been a dreadful mistake.

Alerted to the German invasion of France, the parents made a dash for England, leaving Mark behind in the care of his grandmother. Mark's father, having joined the Polish forces in England, was eventually able to get Mark and his grandmother to England, via Spain and Portugal when the Germans occupied the Vichy area and it became very dangerous for refugees to remain in France.

Now in England and back to school

A few months after Mark's arrival, his mother was about to give birth to another baby, and his father asked a policeman to stay and look after Mark in the family home while he took his wife to hospital.

Mark first attended a French-speaking school, and then a Catholic school, where he felt rather isolated as a Protestant. After attending another local school, Mark went to a boarding school in Devon, where he remembers seeing the excercises for the D-day landings on the north Devon coast. Like most little boys are the time, he took great interest in the more evident aspects of the war, knowing about the different types of bombs and planes.

Home from school, Mark recalled the excitement of VE Day in London. With the momentous changes in his Polish home, his future life was to be in England and he became a British citizen in 1948.

Don’t tell Adolf about the wonders of country living for a small city boy. Don’t tell Adolf about the exciting playgrounds of the bomb damaged houses. Don’t tell Adolf about the excitement of the search lights and the guns and don’t tell Adolf how he changed my early childhood into an adventure often frightening, but with vivid memories I recall to this day.

My very first ever memories are framed by the war. It must have been sometime in 1940 when I was almost four years old. Our family, my Mum and Dad and my older sister Thelma, were living in a Victorian row house in Clapham, London. This area has now become quite fashionable with house prices equal to my father’s life time income. Then, it was a working class neighborhood, clean and respectable, populated by postmen, mechanics and lorry driver tenants like my father. The only thing I can remember about the interior of the house was the Morrison shelter in the center of the bedroom. There I spent many weeks of isolation with a severe attack of the mumps in uncomprehending discomfort, picking at the grey paint of the cage unable to take anything more solid than my mother’s blancmange and barley water, her remedies for all known human ills. I’m sure my parents were grateful the authorities provided us with a combination bomb shelter, table and sick bed, although I wonder was anyone actually saved by this contraption? This was a time when one’s betters weren’t questioned; my family rarely doubted they must know what was best for us. For those who know only about more serious bomb protection the Morrison shelter consisted of a bed surrounded with stout wire mesh and a steel top on four corner legs about the right height for a table. The idea was to prevent the occupants from being crushed to death under falling masonry, a small sanctuary to wait in, listening for the scrape of shovels and praying to be rescued before the air ran out. In addition to the ugliness and awful paint its major flaw was the assumption that we would all be in bed when the house collapsed, a family so stunted by food rationing that we were able to sleep together comfortably in a double bed. Did Adolf realize the Morrison was part of the propaganda war designed to show the Germans that we English were just as viral as the master race; a people that only needed a tin bed as protection from their bombs?

As I got better I was allowed to play in the garden at the rear of the house. I remember it as long and narrow flanked on one side by the windows of a small factory making parachutes, or bully beef, or some other necessity for killing the enemy. The weather must have been hot as I recall the young women talking to me through open windows. They seemed happy in their factory routine and the pound or two a day they earned which was probably the best money they had ever made. Or were their smiles just for the rather shy little boy they gave the small pieces of chocolate and orange segments then as rare and sought after as black truffles? If there’s a page in the calendar that can marked as the beginning of my generally good relations with the opposite sex it’s probably spring 1940.

There are many more memories that come to me clearly but they are mixed in a jumble of time. It must have been after the serious bombing of London started in summer 1940 that my sister and I were evacuated. We were all caught up in a great sea of events and
if the choice for our parents was having us with them so we could all be reduced to rubble together or safe country life for their children, it was not difficult to decide which train to catch. An adult knows the terrors and uncertainty of the world and has worries beyond tomorrow but a small boy knows only the moment and thinks of an hour as an eternity if an ice cream is promised.
We were sent to live with a Mr. and Mrs. Daniels and their two sons on their small holding at Gidcott Cross, a junction of narrow country roads about six miles from the market town of Holsworthy in the county of Devon. The surrounding country was divided into small irregular fields on a plan lost in antiquity, surrounded by tall hedges topped with thick bushes and occasional trees.

Many evacuees have grim stories to tell and we were very lucky to be in the care of a loving couple who treated us like their own. The Daniels had a few acres near the house and some additional pasture rented nearby. On this they kept a few milk cows, all with pet names, Daisy, Sadie and Jessie, a pig or two and a muddy barnyard full of chickens. A pair of ducks stayed most of the year in a narrow rivulet that ran around the house. A female dog Sally, always ready for a rabbit hunt, followed us around everywhere when she was not ensuring a new supply of terriers. The farm house had, or rather has, as it seems little changed over the years, thick rough walls yearly whitewashed, four or five rooms in two stories under a thick thatched roof. The Daniel’s house was at the foot of gently sloping fields set back from the road with a pig barn on the left and the milking shed and hay storage on the right of the heavy slab stone front path.

Mr. Daniels was a member of the local Home Guard, a group of tough wiry men too old for immediate military service. There were no blunderbusses or pikes, but modern weapons were in short supply. Mr. Daniels had upgraded to a worn double barreled shot gun a deadly weapon in his hands as all the rabbits knew. At lane intersections old farm wagons loaded with rocks were ready to be pushed into a road block. One clever ruse was redirecting the road signs, a confused German being thought better than a lost one. Any one advancing down the road to Holsworthy would find them selves in Stibbs Cross with only one pub, a much less desirable place to take over. The home guard met regularly near our cottage for drill and comradeship. It was so popular that the institution lived on well after the war as a social club. These men knew every blade of grass for miles around and would have caused any German paratroopers much annoyance if Adolf the military genius had ordered landings in this remote corner of England.

When they were not repelling German invaders the Home Guard kept an eye on the Italians in the area. Up the road was the Big Farm, big because it had a barn large enough to house a half dozen trustee Italian prisoners of war working the land. Riding on farm wagons pulled by huge shire horses, as petrol was very scarce, they would stop outside our cottage on their way to the fields. They looked like old men to me though they were just young boys probably not yet 18, endlessly happy to be out of the war, captured by a humane enemy and ending up in this idyllic setting. They carved wooden whirligig toys with their pen knives for me and the nostalgic Italian songs they sang I can hear in my mind to this day.

It was a wonderland for we city kids with farm animals, the open country to explore and no shortages of food. The farm was in most ways self supporting, if you wanted a stew you shot a rabbit or two, or cut the throat of a chicken. I helped with the endless farm chores collecting eggs every day from the nest boxes, when the chickens were good enough to cooperate. Many chickens didn’t appreciate the conveniences we provided and made the job into an adventure searching the hedgerows for errant layers. No tinned or horrible dried food for us, everything was fresh as the vegetables pulled from the ground within sight of the front door. When we eventually returned to London my sister and I were noticeably well fed and quite fat, the battle for my waist line probably goes back that far!

Without modern conveniences it took most of the daylight hours to keep the house running and everybody was expected to pitch in. Another of my ‘helping’ jobs was to help fill the water barrel. With a small boy’s bucket and many trips I walked up the road a hundred feet, to the well hidden in a hedge tangled with wild roses, pushed the wooden cover aside and, after tapping on the surface to send the water spiders skimming out of the way, dipped in my bucket. This taught country ways very quickly and water became a precious commodity to be recycled for many uses until it was finally used to scrub down the flag stone floor. The water was heated in a large black iron kettle hung on a chain over a log fire in the inglenook fireplace the only source of heat in the house. Cooking had changed little over hundreds of years and savory stews and soups were made over the burning logs in large iron cauldrons. There was no electricity or gas in our cottage and finer cooking required Mrs. Daniels skillful fussing with a flimsy paraffin oven in the back room from where emerged a stream of delicious pasties, or covered pies, filled with a range of edibles that would have surprised even a Chinese cook. These pasties were brought out every meal covering the table with a smorgasbord of dishes from ham and egg, potato and wild berries, until finished. The men took them into the fields stuffed in their Home Guard haversacks and with a jug of local cider and after grueling days in the sun bringing in the harvest ate dinner sprawled against the hay stacks. The days ran with the cycle of the sun; the evenings were lit sporadically with a noisy pressured paraffin lantern and bedtimes were shadowy with the light of candles.

I remember my evacuation with the Daniels as an idyllic time although now I detect there must have been a feeling of abandonment and bewilderment long buried. One of my parent’s visits I didn’t recognize the lady with my father as my mother had just started wearing glasses. Later on, another visit, I wandered the lanes all day looking for them on a country walk they had taken and was tearfully relieved to find them sitting in a field eating sandwiches having no idea how upset I was at being left. Evacuation must have had a profound effect on many young children like me. My wife thinks that this experience is the cause of many of my strange ways and quirks of personality although I claim genius has its own rules.

My sister and I were returned to London after a couple of years in the country, the precise timing is vague in my memory. The aircraft bombing was much less now although the sirens still wailed for the occasional raid setting the guns booming on our local Clapham Common. I wish I still had my treasured collection of shrapnel from the antiaircraft shell bursts that rained down razor sharp fragments of torn steel and made being outside as dangerous as the bombing. These would be poignant reminders of this time so distant it feels like another life. Memories of my best friend Basil who always managed to find the pieces with serial numbers, the most coveted in our collection.

I recall one night the warning sirens sounded and the sky was lit by searchlight beams probing for the attackers. Within minutes the street was as bright as the sky, plastered with small oil filled fire bombs. They were everywhere causing small fires in the gardens and on the roofs of our street. One slid through the slates and wedged itself under the cooker of our upstairs neighbour, Mrs. Tapsfield. My father spent the night running up and down the stairs carrying buckets of dirt from the garden and spraying the cooked cooker with a stirrup pump. I can, even now 60 years later, see my mother next morning standing on a chair with a hat pin puncturing the hanging bladders of water filled ceiling paper from the flood upstairs. The fire bombs caused a lot of minor damage but they were all damped down and none of our neighbours lost more than a room or two. For many years after the sheet metal bomb fins would turn up when a new flower bed was dug deep. The trusty stirrup pump gathered dust in the coal cellar ready in case it was of need in another war in the new atomic age.

England was a very grey place with some rationing into the 50’s. For us kids Clapham was a wonderland of bomb damaged play houses and vacant rubble strewn lots. There were complete sides of buildings missing leaving the floors with wallpapered rooms precariously suspended. Bath tubs and staircases were stuck teetering to a wall with no apparent support stories up and the cellars were half filled with debris with only dusty tunnels for access. You can imagine the games these inspired for us boys. A special game was attacking and defending the half flooded abandoned concrete gun emplacements on Clapham Common and exploring the communal air raid shelters dug in the square. If only our parents had known!

How do you remember the events of a war time childhood? Memories are like a damaged film, occasional clear scenes separated by long stretches scratched and out of focus.
Through the often repeated stories distorted by their retelling; by today’s chance incidents that start a flow of thoughts to a half forgotten scene. Was it a page in a book or an E mail from a friend, who can tell the truth from imagination? I cannot be sure of the exact timing and the precise details of my experiences in WW2 they have been rounded off by time, and in this diary I have done my best. Although the accuracy may not be perfect and who can be sure in the valley of the shadow of memory, I hope to have conveyed the atmosphere of my experiences in these anecdotes.

My Grandfather was Flight Lieutenant Leonard Thomas Mersh and this is just a glimpse in his life during World War 2, like many of the pilots he has a number of log books, with many miles accounted for and the stories to go with them.

Len went to Woods Road School in Peckham and then on to Brixton School of Building, where he qualified as a joiner. In 1938 at 18 he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve. At Aberystwyth he made the grade to be a pilot and was then sent to Canada for further training in Montreal and Nova Scotia Newfoundland where he gained his wings on Havards and Ansons.

Once back in England he went to Aston Downs and flew many aircraft across England, eventually he was posted to East Kirby in Norfolk attached to 57 Squadron Bomber Command. He flew many missions over Germany and France and as far as the Baltic. Missions included laying mines in the fjords where submarines and battleships where hidden. Dresden; Droitwich, Hamberg, Nuremberg, Brunswick and Gravenhorst were some of the places he bombed. Some times he carried the Grand Slam bomb.

In January 1945 he and his crew where sent to Stettin Harbour to lay mines at night. They where one of the lucky ones, as 350 planes had been sent and only 50 came back. Granddad’s plane was attacked by enemy fighters and was hit but they managed a second run over the target to release their mines.

In March 1945 during a sortie against Bohlen, his aircraft was attacked by a Junkers 88. The plane was hit but they made three bombing runs and then hedgehopped back to England.

On the 26th October 1945 Leonard was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, (DFS), for courage, determination and efficiency.

After completing operational tours and six mine laying sorties he was drafted to 31 Squadron, Transport Command at the end of the Dutch Indonesian Campaign flying VIPs. He flew General Mansergh to Bali being the first RAF plane to land on March 8th 1945 to accept the Japanese surrender.

In 1948 Leonard was drafted to Germany to help with the Berlin Airlift. The squadron reopened airstrips which had been closed at the end of the war, plot routes into Berlin and get them working, the Americans would move in and the squadron would move on to another station. They flew by day and night and were lucky to gain 5hours sleep, which was taken in Mess chairs, which is perhaps why he caught TB, which ended his career and he then spent a lot of time in and out of hospital.

First thing I remember of September 1939 is being told we must deny any Jewish family connections.

We lived in a fairly large house opposite Clapham Junction, South London. We quickly moved house to one further from the busiest railway junction in London, which was a prime target.

Our first Air Raid Shelter was the London Transport underground tube station. Bunks had been placed along the platforms and each evening, we would arrive with a few possessions and take our place in a two-tier bunk; the only privacy was a blanket suspended from the top bunk. At this time, my father was a fire-fighter so mum was alone in the Tube with two small children. If one wanted the loo, we all had to go, complete with any possessions - teddy bears and dolls! I was very nervous, not of bombs but of some of the weird people who we were living so close to.

If we were out during the day and a siren sounded, some of the shops would open the trap-door in front of their shop (which was used for deliveries) and we'd scuttle down the ladder. My favourite shop was David Greigs, us kids were spoilt there. I always dawdled outside hoping the siren would sound, never giving a thought to bombs! Then the Government installed the Anderson Shelter for each family. It was sunk into the ground for about 3ft and measured roughly 9ft by 9ft. It had two, two-tier bunks and accommodated our 6 family members with a squeeze. This was luxury after the Tube, but, being below ground level with no ventilation, it was damp and began to smell. Everything went mouldy and I still recognise the smell. I hated the toilet arrangements - a bucket outside for use during a lull, brought inside for use during a raid. During this time, my brother, aged 5, developed asthma and my father T.B., although he was not aware he had it. Dad got his calling-up papers and was turned down on medical grounds, but the examining doctor refused to tell him why or warn him of the Tuberculosis they'd found. I heard my parents worriedly discussing it and I was glad he wouldn't be going to war.

The evacuation of London began. I was ready to go with my gas mask, case and with a label tied to my coat. My brother was too ill to go, so, at the last minute, my mother decided to go also and take him away from London. So we set off for some vague address in Bakewell, Derbyshire. Families in safe areas were ordered to take in evacuees and, in this house, we were resented and made to feel very unwanted. Food, already scarce, was even more so for us. Our mean hostess fed her own family well with the rations intended for us. Within a month we had left and it was years before I ate a Bakewell tart or admitted Derbyshire was beautiful!

Next, we reached an old farm cottage in Bampton, Oxfordshire. Our landlady was a Mrs Tanner, a warm-hearted person who made us welcome with a full meal and a blazing fire - what a difference!

Mrs Tanner was the wife of the local Thatcher. They kept livestock for their own food, as country people did then. Despite being Cockneys, we had come from an immaculate home with electricity, hot water, a bathroom and an indoor toilet. We now found ourselves in this warm, well-fed friendly cottage with friendly bed bugs, kids with head lice, a tin bath hanging on the garden wall and a bucket'n'plank loo in the yard. The loo had a lovely picture of "Bubbles", the Pears advert, hanging on its wall - very tasteful.

On Thursdays, all doors and windows were tightly closed whilst we waited the coming of the Dung men; two gentlemen wearing leather aprons emptied everyone's buckets into their cart. What a job!

My brother was very much worse, skinny and weak with breathing difficulties. He spent time in hospital and mum stayed with him. Mrs Tanner treated me like yet another grandchild and I soon settled happily into my new way of life. Mum asked her if she would take me to the town, a bus ride away, to get new shoes and some clothes. Off we went on what was literally a shop-lifting spree. I was both frightened and excited and sworn to secrecy. Mrs T. kept the money and the coupons and mum was thrilled to have got so many bargains. I never told her! But, when I wore my new shoes or my finery, I always dreaded someone asking me questions. I laid awake at night rehearsing my answers. I was never tempted to try it myself. When I see Travellers, kids, I often think "that was me once". After a year of my idea of heaven, mum decided to return to London to see if the hospitals there could help little Eddie. We got back just in time for The Battle of Britain; I'm glad they waited for us. I was so homesick for Bampton that I even contemplated running away to try to go back. Although I settled down, I still think of Bampton as my home and, after 63 years, I still go back for holidays. Just one year made such an impression on me. It was so carefree and I enjoyed some of the jobs with the animals.

During the time we were away, my dad had carried on with his job and Fire-fighting in London. Our home had gone, so we stayed with an Aunt until we got somewhere to live. Empty houses were requisitioned by the Authorities, who then allocated them to those who needed them. My parents applied for a house, explaining that Eddie needed to be near a hospital, but they were told that, as the father was not in the forces, they did not qualify for accommodation. They were heartbroken as a doctor had informed them that, without a decent home, Eddie would not live long. My father insisted on volunteering for any of the forces, but was once again declared unfit. Eventually, after mum worried them every day, we were given two rooms in a small terraced house, sharing a toilet with another family. There was no bathroom and we were made to feel almost like traitors with frequent remarks directed at my dad. Even at school the teachers singled us out with "anyone who's father is not in the forces will not be getting this" - this could be milk or some other treat we regarded as a luxury. One teacher was so obsessed that today she would be considered mentally unbalanced. A project she gave us 10year olds was to devise tortures for Hitler or any German unlucky enough to survive a plane crash. I cheated and copied one from a book.

Our shelter was now a reinforced cellar. It was dry and spacious and, during heavy bombing, some of our neighbours joined us and we had what I considered to be jolly times together. Food was in very short supply; although we had ration books, there was not always enough food in the shops. I was sent to queue up, then mum would take over while I queued again at the next shop with food, where we repeated the pattern. I once reached the counter before mum got there; we were waiting for eggs. I got 4 eggs in a paper bag and, as I left the shop, I dropped them. Carefully carrying them back to the counter I told the assistant she had given me cracked eggs. I was shouted at and called a lying, nasty little girl but managed to obtain 4 replacement eggs. I just could not have told my mum I'd broken them.

A neighbour of ours was a fishmonger, poulterer and game merchant. He sometimes had rabbits for sale; they were always skinned and usually in pieces. After bombing raids, there were often cats straying where their home was destroyed, or dogs wandering about the streets. We think our fishmonger solved this problem. I believe most women realised the meat wasn't quite what they wanted but had to have some meat to put in the stew. Luckily we had a vicious wild cat I had taken in and being so spiteful, she lived a long and happy life, occasionally bringing home a piece of fish. How she managed this I don't know. Could it have been bait for a lesser cat?

School was rather a shambles. We had our classes in a shelter, that is 2 or 3 classes at a time; as there was insufficient room for all the children we had mornings or afternoons only. The other class we shared our shelter with always had such interesting lessons! I feel awful about admitting this but the education system was so easy to play truant from. If you didn't turn up they assumed you'd been bombed or sent away to safety. A couple of friends and I used to ignore the danger of air raids and go to the centre of London where we could be sure of meeting American servicemen. We begged for gum or chocolate from them, then had to eat or hide it before going home. At no time did we ever think of how our families would have no idea where we were if we never came back. It's rather frightening really. Our excursions came to an end when, on a very wet day, mum came to meet me from school with an umbrella. After waiting until all the kids had left, she went in to see our teacher who said I had not attended for some time and thought I had gone back to Bampton. Boy, did I get a beating! She was as vicious as my cat but not as lovable.

One night we were in our shelter when a neighbour called us to come out to see the incredible amount of German planes that our boys were shooting down. We stood outside in the street and cheered, linking arms and dancing. The next day we heard on the radio that they had not been shot down but were a new weapon - the Doodle Bug. From then on I understood fear. I don't know what triggered it but I joined the ranks of the old dears who swore they recognised one of ours or one of theirs. I henceforth scrambled to get my pets into the shelter as soon as we heard the siren. My dog soon learnt this and was first down; her hearing being keener than ours, she could hear the siren in the next town before ours. Soon we had Rockets. There was no warning with them. The first one we saw was on a summer's evening when my friends and self were practising the Tango on the street corner. We were singing "Pedro the Fisherman" as a whine came from above our heads, followed by a cloud of dust and then the impact and sound of the explosion. Four screaming dancers rushed for shelter. We knew many of the people who had been killed or injured and it seemed too close to us. It never had been safe but we hadn't noticed it before, now I did, worrying, "where did that one land?" "Is it near dad's shop or near our relations?" I guess I'd grown up but it was so quick. I was twelve, learning to tango and worrying about our family. I decided I would join the Land Army as soon as they would let me; I'd heard one no longer needed parents' permission. This was not anything to do with the war effort. I simply wanted my life back in beloved Bampton. My feelings were mixed when the war ended, no more terrifying Rockets but trapped in London with no chance of getting away until I married!

Memories of growing up in the London blitz

During the doodlebugs raids, I was Winston Churchill Sunday paperboy.

On one Sunday morning I had knocked on the door of No 10, the door opened. I was just about to hand over the papers when a flying bomb engine cut out. Now this could have meant a lot of things one of which was it coming straight down. The attendant threw the papers in the hall and shut the door, with me inside no.10. Well only just. There was a muffled bang, which meant the bomb was about a mile or so away. In one movement the attendant opened the door had me by the collar then threw me out with a ‘Now f**k off out of No.10’.

So my invitation into a tiny part of the corridors of power was ignominiously short lived.

Another time much about the same period doing the same paper round I had just delivered papers to a big house off Hyde Park corner, opposite the old Bell grave hospital. Again a doodlebug cut out. I dived off my bike into the gutter straight into a dip puddle. I lie there with my hands over my head, elbows over my ears.
After about couple of minutes I could hear laughter. I looked up where three nurses were leaning out of a window, who thought I was funnier than the Marx Brothers. I got up, the front of me soaked. This caused even greater laughter. I got back on my bike peddled over Vauxhall Bridge toward the Oval cricket ground. Yet another flying bomb cut out. I’m not getting off this time to make an idiot of my self the next thing I knew I was peddling with no ground be nigh me. Next the bike hit the ground I came off in a heap but I was all right. When I got to the Oval it was a dreadful scene. Archbishop Tennyson School, which was being used as an Auxiliary Fire Service station had a direct hit. There were many bodies. Much too bad to try to describe The A.F.S were considered a joke at the beginning of the blitz, but not at the end. They were some of the bravest men and women in a time of a lot of brave men and women!

My mother, Nora, was the bravest person I ever met. Lots of people were afraid in the London blitz but my mum was truly terrified in spite of the fear she never and I mean never let it interfere with the ordinary things she had to do she went work, war work which meant her being away from home for at least two days and nights.
There were quite a few examples of her near schizophrenic attitude to the blitz but the best, I think, was the night we both went to see a film called ‘THE RAINS CAME’ Nora loved going to the pictures.
We got into the Odeon; at Camberwell Green about 5pm saw the first feature then the main picture came on about 6.30.
Now while the ‘The Rains came’ was in black and white it was a big picture, good music and loud. Half way through the film the familiar side came over the picture that the siren had sounded and any one wishing to leave could do so and come back for any other performance, if they held on to their ticket. Mum started to get up to go. I persuaded her to stay, until the very loud earthquake scene.
She dragged me out of my seat saying she thought the cinema was about collapse. When we got out into Cold harbour Lane there was quite a lot going on. The ack-ack was trying to hit the planes and the planes were dropping bombs, luckily not close to us but the shrapnel from the guns was pinging away every where. We sheltered in the Odeon exit door way. In spite of all the chaos that was going on an old 34 tram came chugging up from Camberwell Green. Out ran mum waved down the tram, the driver slowed down enough for us both to get on. We got of at Loughbough junction. As soon as she was off, Nora started to run towards our flats, down Loughbough Road,
There was no way I could keep up with her. When I got to the door of our flat the door was open. I called out to her ‘I’m under here’ She was under a very small kitchen table. Nora felt safe. Rodger Bannister was supposed to have done the 4 minute mile in the fifties, I reckon my mum did it in 1943!

The next memory is a maybe, only a maybe be cause, at times; I can hardly believe it happened.
One dark and cold Sunday morning on my celebrity paper round I had handed in Winston Churchill’s papers at No. Ten and was coming down the stone steps of the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden’s papers, the Foreign Secretary at the time.
I was half whistling half singing and doing a dance down the steps, a song and dance I had seen in a film the afternoon before at the Astoria Brixton. I got on my bike about to ride off when a loud voice shouted’ Stop that infernal row’ I shouted back ‘ You can shut your bleeding ears cant you’ and rode quickly off.
About twenty years later I was in a pub in north London I was telling that tale when an unknown, to me, looked at me and said ‘You lying toe rag’ the bloke accused me of reading a book, he had just read by, Churchill in which he said an errant boy had once told to shut his ears. For all my insistence of innocence the bloke turned nasty, so I never got to find out the name of the book. I got a black eye though.
I swear that it happened. Not that anyone will believe me!

My father has not featured so far because he was in the army.
I think the only funny thing I remember, I’m sure there were others but I can’t remember, was the night before he left to join his unit.
It was a time of a lull in the air raids. I was just going to bed in our flat. My dad told me to sit opposite him. I was expecting him to tell me to be a good lad and look after mum. No!
The whole of the paternal side of my family, men and women were avid Arsenal football club supporters had been since the club arrived in North London, an uncle had actually been a shareholder!
He started: “ You know that Highbury has been bombed and the ‘Gunners’ now have to play all their games at White Hart Lane, (Tottenham Hotspurs ground) now I don’t want you going over to Spurs more than twice a season, home and away, it wouldn’t be right.” He gave me a hug. “ Off you go to bed, you’ll get a good nights sleep to night”. In the morning he was gone

Next memory One has to remember that even in the doodlebug raids very few ever got more than four hours sleep a night, I wonder now how any body kept up, with going to work at 8oc doing eight hours work then starting the whole thing over again and having a good time in between. On the night in question I was down the shelter with my mum and a good mate Ken, he slept in the bunk above me. We had taken to going down the shelter again, it was the start of the flying bombs and it was a bit dangerous up above at night. It didn’t seem to matter so much during the day.
The usual banging could be heard in the shelter but I was tired and went to sleep. A loud bang woke me also Ken. “ That was a close one, lets go and have a look”. It must have been after 3am. “Na I got to be at work early tomorrow, I’ll leave it”. Ken went off to explore. After a couple of minute’s I started to smell moved earth, earth that had not been moved in a long time, even down the shelter you could smell it.
I got up, went out to look for Ken. I went towards Loughbough junction, half way up Loughbough Road I heard singing. It was Ken pulling half a doodlebug out of the fair size hole, it was still warm. “This beats the usual bit of shrapnel” We managed to get it up to Ken’s balcony, outside his flat. When Kens mother came up from the shelter and saw half a flying bomb. She told Ken in no uncertain manner to get ride of it. Which to Kens great regret we did. We put it in Loughbough Road outside the flats where it soon disappeared.

Finally these are quotes from a great Lambeth Walk personality called John Shannon a truly funny man I could go on for an hour with his stories, he has a son also called John Shannon who became a very successful TV actor. I hope the younger John doesn’t mind my telling just two of John senior tales.
On September 3rd 1939 when the first siren of the war sounded at about 11.15. that Sunday morning. John shouted to his wife “The sirens have just sounded, come on”. She shouted back “I cant find me teeth”. To which John shouted back “There going to drop bombs not ham sandwiches”!
After, they ran to Lambeth North tube station for shelter. John told me he had his gas mark on.” I had to take it of Monday after noon”. Foolishly I ask why? John said, “I was hungry”!!!!

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My best mate's in my growing up were Ken Power and George Gear. We shared a massive amount of good times, and not many bad ones.
There were four blocks on the Loughbough estate; sixty flats in each block, with an average of two kids a flat! About 500 boys and girls.
I hope I have captured, into the story, the 39-45 feeling, London had at the
time. It was a very special emotion.

There was one instance that may give an insight into ordinary attitudes of the time. This true happening is not meant to show me as an exceptional human being. Any one else would have done the same, which is the point I am trying to make. I was fifteen in 1944. I worked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6 p.m., Saturday's 8am to 12.30 p.m. for which I received 18/6d a week. On Sunday mornings, at 4.am I did what was known as W.H.Smiths Roll-ups, Sunday papers for the famous. I was the Prime Minister's Sunday morning paperboy. The Right Honourable Winston Churchill together with, Anthony Eden,
Lord Beeverbrook, AV Alexander, Lord Halifax and many others. I do not write this to show off...............,well maybe a bit, but to say that I got the unbelievable amount of 25/6 for just the Sunday morning, which was collected before starting our rounds, and the whole round only took one and a half hours.
Bear with me, please.
On Sunday morning the 28th of May 1944, I turned off Whitehall into Downing Street to deliver the last of the papers, to the Foreign Office and Mr. Churchill. In those days there was a sandbagged barricade, manned by the brigade of guards, at the entrance to Downing Street. Whenever I cycled into Downing Street in the dark there was always a cry of 'HALT WHO GOES THERE'. I would slow the bike down and shout back, 'PAPER BOY ' then there was a 'PASS PAPER BOY.' The barrier was lifted and into the street I rode.
On that morning in May, the papers delivered, I started to cycle home. I went to cross Westminster Bridge. It was about 5.30, just beginning to get light. As I passed the wonderful statute of BOADICEA in her chariot, I saw a solider, an American soldier, standing on top of a parapet looking down at the water, his tunic was undone, flapping in the wind, he didn't look much older than me, about nineteen.
I got off my bike to lean it against the bridge.
"What you doing up there?" I asked. The Yank, a sergeant, gave me an obscure, vague look.
"Why don't you f**k off kid, cant you see I'm busy."
"I can see you are going to fall into old father Thames, if you don't watch it. " I replied.
To slice a very extended tale, it turned out he had lost all his money in a crap game, at the time I did wonder what any one would be doing playing with shit for money, any way he was skint, also he was AWOL, absent with out leave, I didn't know what it meant at the time either, but more importantly he was scared, scared about the coming invasion into Europe, which he would be a part of.
He thought he might let his mates down. We had a talk.
He asked me about the blitz and was I in it? Well, after a bit he perked up. He said he would go back ' To his outfit '. I gave him 10/- for the fare to Portsmouth, out of my mornings wages. It never occurred or mattered to either of us how I was to get my 10 bob back. It was like that in the war, you always thought, it could be someone you loved in trouble. My Dad was in the army at the time.
I thought about the American sergeant when I heard of the invasion on the wireless.
I have always hoped that Yank, I didn't even know his name, made it through the war.
The invasion he was worried about took place nine days after our meeting.
I don't know if that story helps to explain the superlative feeling of togetherness we had at the time. I hope so!

I was 10 and a bit on 3rd September 1939, I would be 11 in November,.

I had been evacuated to Hove, near Brighton a few weeks before.

Kevin McCarthy and I were walking along, what we thought was, a disused railway line when the air-raid siren sounded, we knew what it was for they had been practicing that dreadful sound for months in London. An unknown man shouted to us to get off home as WAR had been declared. The woman with him started to scream, loud.” There coming, they’re coming” she went on.
“Shut up you silly cow” The man slapped her face.
“Who’s coming?” I shouted.
“Stop taking the piss and f**k off back home”
“What all the way to Brixton” laughed Kev then added “Bollocks”
The man started to move towards us. We started to run stopping every so often to give him two fingers.
He threw a big stick, which hit Kev on his head. We got off the rail track just in time for a steam train to pass us.
Kevin had blood coming from his head, so I reckon I was present
at the first casualty of the Second World War.

I got back to London just in time for the start of the blitz, Saturday the seventh of September1940, about tea time, been a glorious day.
We really didn’t know what hit us. There were hundreds of planes. The barrage balloons didn’t seem to make any difference. From memory that first raid seemed to go on for about twelve hours. South London wasn’t so bad but East London got it very bad.
I don’t think us kids knew what a great time we were going to have. I know that sounds daft and insensitive to all the families who had love ones killed and injured. But for some kids of my age it was a freedom and ‘not give a shit time’ we never could have imagined, those boring, able to do nothing Sundays, had ended.
It became an every day a new adventure, school became a joke, half a day afternoons one week, mornings the next.
So a few memories, it was a long time ago so dates and times could be a bit out.
One Saturday, early evening I had been to Brixton market with my Mum, shopping, for a reason I cant remember Nora, my Mum, was carrying a neighbour’s small baby, who in latter life became ballet dancer at Covent Garden, I had the shopping. The sirens sounded, funny but that sound could turn my stomach more that the actual bombs.
We heard the sounds of the planes then the ack-ack guns that most have been on the railway line at Loughborough Junction, cause they were loud. We started to run towards our flats and a shelter. We got to the first block and dashed in the nearest porch we came to. Sheltering there was an air-raid warden in his tin hat. By now the noise was immense. It was always a great sock to anyone experiencing the blitz for the first time, the great, great, noise, the never before heard of sounds, the echoes that hurt the chest.
Once in the porch the warden shouted to Nora “Give us the baby I’ll hold it for you, you look all in” And with all that was going on Nora Shouted back “No that’s all right you got glasses on if he wakes up you might frighten him” Only Nora!