High Explosive Bomb at Rossiter 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.

As I was only 3 years old when WW2 began, I have no memories of before the war. In about 1943 I was given a banana by a soldier on
leave from Africa, but I had no idea what it was or what to do with it. On being shown how to peel it, I then took half an hour to eat it, savouring every mouthful.
I wonder if the other local children who were also given a banana have similar memories.

These days bananas are so plentiful that younger people will not realise what aluxury they were in the 1940's.

On the rare ocassions when the greengrocer had a delivery of oranges, my mother would collect up the childrens' green ration books, walk half a mile to the shop and then join the queue to bring back some oranges.I probably stayed like a dog in the kennel in our Morrison shelter.

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.

This is my transcription of a letter which my aunt — Gray Harris — wrote it in 1940 to my mother (Mabel) in Peterborough, where we were all living during the war years. I have tried to proof-read it, and think I have got it right - but you must remember that Gray did not have a spell-checker (though I have tried to correct where I felt it was justified), and also her style is not quite what I would have said.
A few background notes - my aunt Gray (a short form of Grace) was an infant school teacher, and was married to my father's brother Vic. At the time this letter was written her mother and father were living with them in Streatham. Ken Harris was another of my father's brothers, and was a senior Barclay’s Bank manager in Victoria Street, London, while Arthur Hibberd was my father's brother-in-law. (Arthur, incidentally, was a cousin of Stuart Hibberd, a senior BBC newsreader during the war years.) Daisy seems to have been my aunt's live-in maid - how things have changed!
**************************

33 Thornlaw Road, S.E.27
Tues. Sept. 10th 1940

My dear Mabel,
I had intended to write to you in any case tonight because I thought you would be wondering how we were standing up to the strain of Adolf’s blitzkrieg. Of course I got home late because we have had 4 short warnings today — at 1.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0. The two last hung me up as I was having a cup of tea with a friend at a teashop when the first (5.0) one went, to be shortly followed by the “all clear”, but before we had finished our tea the next warning went, so we had to wait for that to clear up. Then when I tried to get home there was such a queue of people waiting to get home also (Why do people insist on living on my bus route? So selfish of them!). When I eventually arrived home I found your very welcome letter awaiting me, so, after exchanging news with Vic as to his day’s experiences, phoned my sister to see if they were all all right, incidentally learning that we have just brought down a 4-engine bomber. I am now settling down to ease your mind as to the morale of the Cockney after some days of hell with the lid off. Well, we have had 3 awful nights when the drone of Jerry’s planes was the most terrifying sound of the lot, and the wonder if the next bonk will be our house. Everybody thinks that Jerry is making a dead set at his own particular roof, and everybody thinks that each bonk is next door, or, at the farthest, two doors away. It rather takes the wind out of one’s sails when one learns that it was at least 3 miles away. Last evening, we had a short but very severe go at 5.0. We heard bangs, gunfire, the whistle of bombs, when we dashed as fast as Mother could go into our shelter (of which more anon) and then we distinctly heard a fight overhead, the rattle of machine guns, and the unmistakeable whiz of a falling plane. We were absolutely convinced that it must all be in the immediate neighbourhood, only to find later that it took place at Coulsdon, which must be about 8 miles away. Three planes were brought down in the field at the back of the garden of a friend of mine — 2 Messrs and a Dornier.
When all this fuss started a couple of weeks back, we used to go to bed and spend the night wondering if we ought to go downstairs, and after a night of this sort of suspense, I decided to put the beds all downstairs as a routine job. So now when bed-time comes, usually about 10.0 o’clock, the ceremony begins. We clear all the chairs away from a space in the lounge, carry our feather mattress in and make up our bed there. Vic has an arrangement of a screen balanced on two chairs and covered with cushions under which we put our pillows. The theory is that any falling plaster would hit the screen and not our heads. I hope the theory is correct. Then we make up Mother’s and Father’s mattresses on the floor in the dining room, with their feet under the table (a billiard diner). It would be better to have their heads under, but they don’t seem to like the idea of that. (There goes “Moaning Minnie” — she’s very punctual. She now goes soon after 8.0 and lasts until nearly 6.0.) Daisy sleeps in the kitchen, which is really a safe room because it is slightly basemented.
Interval while I do the usual stuff — fill the bath, all jugs etc., turn off the gas.
We haven’t got an Anderson shelter because they wouldn’t give us a free one, and we would have had to pay £9 to buy one. But as this house is on a hill, the garden is higher in the back than in the front, and Vic’s workshop which was originally a cellar, and in which we had two windows fixed, is reasonably safe. There is a trench outside it, and the earth slopes away from the trench. It has a concrete roof which is about a foot thick. We only go in there when the gunfire becomes too insistent, and so far we haven’t gone in there after we have gone to bed, no matter how loud the bonks are. Vic is amazing. He just goes to sleep. He wakes up occasionally when the noise is too insistent, but he promptly rolls over and goes to sleep again. This gift is a relic of his army days, and I am (touch wood) beginning to acquire a little of the same gift. I slept quite well last night, partly because it was colder, and I am told that last night was the worst so far.
The children are simply marvellous. They don’t appear to turn a hair. As far as I can make out, they all go down to their shelters and go to bed there. We have had very few at school this week. Yesterday we had to send them home in the afternoon because there was a dent in the allotment in the playground that might have been a time bomb, so we all stayed and got on with various jobs. We don’t go to school until 10.0 now if the all clear goes after 12.0, and our morning attendance is very small. I haven’t heard anyone say that they can’t stick it. They grumble, of course. They wouldn’t be English if they didn’t, but there is not the slightest sign of anyone wanting to give in. Everyone is mad at Hitler, but there is plenty of laughter and joking about it all. Some people go to the public shelters every night. You see a procession of them going to the local Church crypt with their blankets and pillows on a pram, and a bag of provisions.
Wednesday
I couldn’t go on last night because the gunfire started and became rather insistent, so we went into the shelter for a bit. Then by the time we came out and had supper, it was time to do the beds and it was too late for me to continue this letter.
It’s now about 10.0 o’clock — Moaning Minnie went about an hour ago, and we are being treated to a noisy battle overhead. I think there must be a mobile air gun in the near vicinity, and it’s cracking away (it sounds immediately overhead) and we heard a piece of shrapnel hit the window. As soon as there was a lull we crept outside to see if it was an incendiary bomb, but couldn’t see anything. The moon is as bright as day — I expect that is why there is so much gunfire.
We had a raid while we were in school this afternoon, and the big guns were making a terrific din. I was in the boys’ shelter (a large school-room that has been bricked up) and frankly, I began to feel a bit wobbly about the tum. But all the boys said when there were heavy bursts of noise “Guns”, and they were otherwise unmoved. And it wasn’t the quietness of ignorance, because the neighbourhood round the school has been treated to plenty of bombs, exploded and otherwise.
I wish you could see us all. Vic and Dad playing crib, Mother sitting in a chair, me writing this in an armchair, and all of us with cushions on our heads. Dad looks like Aladdin with a green cushion with a gold fringe on his head. I just looked up at him and had to giggle. He looked so funny. Wish I had your ciné to send you a picture! Daisy has just come in to clear the supper (we never use the dining room these days except for Vic’s office and the parents’ bedroom) and she has had a tooth out today, so she has a scarf round her head and face — she looks as if she has come out of a harem. Oh! We do look a crowd.
Well, I could go on for ages, but it is nearly 11.0 (as Daisy says) and we want to make beds, and I do want to post this in the morning. I hope this letter hasn’t been too raidy, but they are apt to take the foreground of life these days.
Oh! Arthur Hibberd’s boy John is a prisoner of war after all. So that is good news.
Ken Harris rang Vic yesterday. He is sleeping on hammocks among the coals! (Ken of all people). He said he was among coal, spiders and gas meters. A bomb fell outside and blew up the gas main, after which the smell of gas from the meter disappeared.
Yes please — I’d love the tea if you can really spare it. Are you sure you can?
Cheerio my dear. Love to you all,
Yours,
Gray

Mother, whose memory is rapidly getting worse, has just said naïvely “What are they shooting at? Are they shooting at one another?” Vic has a folded fluffy rug on his head and he just lost his way in it. He looks positively sinister, peering out of one eye, which is all one can see of his face. We keep getting the giggles as we look at one another.

My first memory goes back to the night when the docks were bombed with incendiary bombs and the whole sky was lit up.

My parents and I were walking our dog when the siren sounded and we turned to go back home. Immediately after the siren, we heard the German planes overhead and then, when we were almost home, there was a shrill screaming sound which was getting louder and louder. My father shouted; "It's a bomb" and we all ran as fast as we could to our front door, and as Dad fumbled for the key and opened the door, the screaming sound seemed to be chasing after us and we all fell into the hall in a heap. Then followed a tremendous explosion. The bomb fell not far from our home. My father gave me some sips of brandy to get over the shock. It was my first experience of a bomb and that kind of bomb, a screaming bomb was meant to terrify you.
I remember my mother putting up the thick black curtains at our windows to stop any light showing on the outside and my father putting sticky brown tape across the windows to protect them from bomb blasts.

At night everywhere was pitch black. No lights of any kind were allowed. We had a torch, which had a shade over the top so that it didn't shine upwards.

All the schools in London closed, and most children were evacuated. My mother didn't want me to go, so I stayed on in London. I didn't go to school for a whole year. Then one of our French teachers came back to London and she started giving French lessons at her home.

We lived in an upstairs maisonette, and during the blitz we spent every night huddled under our dining room table to get some protection if the roof fell in. I used to get stomach cramps from crouching under there for so long. Later we started sheltering, with our downstairs neighbours, in the cupboard under their stairs.

Eventually, brick shelters were built in the road with bunk beds in them. Each night at dusk when the sirens sounded, we made our way to the shelter with our blankets. I recall that the shelter had a leaky roof and, if you slept on a top bunk, you had to put up an umbrella if it rained.

My father was in the Police and was stationed in Clapham where we lived. He used to work four weeks at a time on night duty. Mum and I always worried for his safety as the bombs fell. There was also the danger of being hit by shrapnel from the four big guns on Clapham Common.

The noise was unbelievable with the sound of the aeroplanes, the bombs, and the gunfire, which shook our house. After one air raid, when we came back in the morning from the air raid shelter, we found a hole in the roof. A lump of shrapnel had come through and was embedded in the seat of my father's armchair!

The next day, after the night raids, I often went out picking up shrapnel from the streets.

My father would come home with awful tales of his rescue work. I think he needed to talk about it to relieve his stress. One night, when a bomb had fallen quite close to us, he told us that they had been taking arms and legs out of the trees.

He would come home with burned out incendiary bombs for us to see, and he had cut a cord off the parachute of a de-fused land mine and brought that home.

When the London blitz was on the siren would sound every night as dusk fell. It was a sound that tied one's stomach in knots with fear.

One night when Mum and I were crouched under the table, we heard a crash as something hit our guttering. We fled downstairs terrified, and when we opened the front door the whole street was lit up with houses on fire from incendiary bombs. The one which had hit our guttering had luckily bounced off into the garden.

During these raids there was also the constant worry that there would be a gas attack and so, of course, your gas mask went with you everywhere and we would often put it on to practise using it. I remember being very upset because my dog had not got a gas mask and I decided he would perhaps be protected if I put him in my wardrobe during a gas attack. I put a blanket in there and hoped the door was a tight enough fit to stop any gas getting in.

In the next road a large empty house had been taken over by the bomb disposal squad, known as the "suicide squad". The garden of the house was full of de-fused bombs and land mines.

As I said earlier, I had no school to go to for a year during the heavy raids, but when things quietened down a little St. Martins in the Fields High School opened up in Tulse Hill. It was a fee-paying school, but I and four other children in the area were told to go there. As we were scholarship children we were the only children whose parents did not pay fees, which made me feel a bit of an outcast. I was there for over a year.

Then my old school was opened under the new name of South West London Emergency Secondary School and all the children from quite a large area who had not been evacuated went there. I was then fourteen years old.

To get to school I had to cycle across Clapham Common past those four big guns. I used to pray that there would not be an air raid when I was anywhere near them.

The memory of the school dinners remains to this day. Mainly we had salads consisting of grated raw cabbage, raw turnips, carrots and dried potatoes; and at almost every meal the pudding was semolina and jam!

When the sirens sounded we had to go to the sandbagged cloakrooms.

During this time another empty school in Clapham had become a billet for French sailors. On our way home from school my friend and I used to chat to them to try out our French.

American soldiers occupied a small block of flats near the common and several times we spotted one of our teachers on the arm of one of them.

Everyone had allotments at that time to "dig for victory" and part of the common had been allocated for allotments.

My father had one, and my friend and I took one on. We had to dig up the turf first which was a hard job. We worked on the allotment after school and at weekends.

Homework was quite a problem. Many times during air raids I sat on the doorstep doing it until the German planes were overhead, and then I would dash into the shelter.

One night a bomb fell in the High Road between Clapham South and Balham Underground stations making a huge crater. A bus came along and fell into the hole.

That was bad enough, but even worse, the bomb had penetrated the underground tube which ran along under the road and also burst the water main. The water flooded the Underground between the two stations drowning hundreds of people who were sleeping on the platforms believing it to be very safe down there.

My father helped in the rescue operation and bodies were being brought out for weeks afterwards.

My father had tried to persuade my mother to spend our nights on the Underground platforms. I wouldn't be here today if I had!

Later came the flying bombs also known as "buzzbombs" or "doodlebugs".

My first experience of bomb blast happened when I was walking down Balham High Road one day with friends. I looked up and saw a flying bomb above us. We prayed the engine would not cut out. It did, and it started to dive towards us. We flung ourselves flat on the ground and waited for the explosion. It landed very close by and the blast took my breath away, and glass was flying everywhere from the shop windows.

We took our School Certificate or Matriculation, as it was known in those days, during these attacks. We had desks lined up in the aisles of the sandbagged cloakrooms and we did all our exams in there.

It was very hard to concentrate. When the siren had sounded you were listening for the droning sound of a flying bomb and hoping it would pass over. The wait seemed interminable, hoping the engine wouldn't cut out. While writing one of my exams there was a tremendous explosion and my pen went right across the page crossing out all I had written. Afterwards there was the extra worry that my home could have been hit - and were my mother and father safe?

I don't think anyone passed those exams, not surprising under the circumstances!

I won a music scholarship and moved on to the sixth form at Mary Datchelor School in Camberwell where I re-sat the School Certificate exams & was successful that time because things were a bit quieter then.

At about this time the V2 rockets started falling. There was no warning with them so life had to go on with the terrible fear always with you that at any time one could fall on you or your family.

There was one outstanding occasion when, before coming home from school, we had heard a big explosion. When I got off the bus and started walking home there was broken glass and debris along the streets and the nearer I got to home there was more and more debris and damage. I dreaded turning the last corner in case it was our home that had been hit and I knew my mother would have been at home. Luckily we escaped with just blast damage.

Then came VE day. I think I was at school when it was announced that the war in Europe had ended.

We didn't have any street parties but what excitement and mainly relief that all our worries were over at last.