High Explosive Bomb at Lansdowne Road

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lisa Butcher of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Len Taylor and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

In 1939 when rumours of war began to spread and the six month’s conscription started I was just too old to be included in that and before any of the chaos who were called up had finished their six months, war was declared on Sunday 3rd September 1939 by the Prime Minister broadcasting to the Nation at 11.00am.

As were most mothers with sons of the right age for call up, my mother was in tears, my father, who was an Overman at Whitwick Colliery, offered to get me a job down the pit. I told him I could not live with that, but promised I would not volunteer, but if called up for conscription I would have to go for my own conscience.

I was of course, soon called up and my first preference was to be in the RAF as a Rear Gunner, but I failed a very strenuous medical and was turned down.

In due course I was called up to the Army to be a Gunner in the Royal Artillery, along with a few other local chaps, one being Jack Walker from Heather.

We had to report to the RA Barracks at Oswestry, it was a dark day to remember, getting off the train at a small station near the Barracks. We were ordered to form three ranks on the platform, where a rather large Sergeant Major addressed us by saying he had seen a lot of recruits coming in but we were about the worst shower he had seen and promised to knock hell out of us until we became good soldiers – they certainly took great pride in making you feel uncomfortable.

We were marched to the Barracks and shown where and how we would live for the next three months. I will never forget the first dinner that evening – potatoes and cabbage were the strangest colour I had ever seen and tasted even worse than they looked, with all the eyes in the potatoes looking at you and daring you to eat them. It really wasn’t a grand welcome.

The next day we collected our uniforms, the only things that fitted were your boots. If any of the rest fitted, you were accused of being deformed.

Then came the first parade of this motley looking mob and the first thing was the order for haircuts, anything less than a crew-cut you were ordered back again, however we survived those first few days and got down to serious training of both our minds and bodies. I think our bodies probably suffered the worst.

That kind of training finished with a series of inoculations, I shudder to think what could have happened with these, judging by today’s standards. We were lined up and the “Doc” had one needle which he kept filling up and jabbing away as fast as he could. Some fainted and he just jabbed them where they lay, and for some hours later, slowly but surely everyone went down to the T.A.B. inoculations, which seemed to give you malaria instead of protecting you against it.

After those three hectic months when most of us had been knocked into shape and the rest left behind, we were sent to a firing camp on the Welsh Coast, to put into practise when we had been taught – anti-aircraft Guns.

We first had to go into a Gun Pit whilst anther Gun Team were firing the Guns, to allow us to get accustomed to the noise. It was an experience to begin with; some men couldn’t stand the noise and had to be taken off the Guns, but once we got going it was almost fun competing against each other for the best Gun Team.

On finishing our live ammunition gun training we were given seven days leave. I took this opportunity to marry the girl of my dreams. Getting all of that fixed up took half my leave, but I was a very happy man for a few days but reality came back and I had to return to the Army.

On getting back to my Regiment we were told that the Blitz on London had started, and we were sent to form the first Anti-Aircraft Division, whose task was to defend the capital. We had some very interesting and sometimes frightening experiences during that time.

One of the first things I remember about the Blitz was arriving on the outskirts of London, where we took over a gun site with four 3” Naval Guns and a Command Post. We thought these guns looked rather small, as we had done all of our training on much larger guns and had got familiar with the blast, so when we got called out on the same afternoon to intercept three Stuka Bombers, we manned the guns without our ear plugs.

The Bombers attacked the factories we were guarding, so we opened up with our ‘small’ guns but soon realised our mistake when our ears were badly punished. We had not realised that the smaller the shell in artillery the worse the crack of sound. As the guns get larger the sound from them develops from a crack which really hurts your ears to a sound more like a roll of thunder which is not so painful. We were very careful to wear our earplugs after that lesson.

We used to wear a special shoulder flash, which was a picture of a German Dornier Plane with a sword through the middle. Most Londoners recognised this flash on our uniform and so we received rather special treatment – cinemas either didn’t charge us at all or only a token charge, and we often had more free beer in pubs than was good for us in appreciation of our efforts to defend London.

We stayed in London all through the Blitz, but not in the same place for long. We were on Gun Sites across London, after getting bombed and set on fire with incendiary bombs.

One night I was off duty and down at the nearest pub for the kind of medicine that might have got you some sleep, when a bomb fell outside our pub and blew the front in. In the scramble that followed I picked up a tea plate with the pub’s name on it as a souvenir of that evening. I still have that plate, it even has the landlord’s name on it. I have considered for the last fifty odd years whether to own up to this theft and take my punishment, but I don’t even know if the pub still exists. Its name was ‘The Robin Hood’ in Anerly Road.

During this time the civilians were wonderful. Just imagine living near to a Gun Site with sometimes as many as sixteen heavy guns firing for most of the night. We used to see them open the front doors every morning and part of the routine of their cleaning was to sweep out all of the fallen plaster from their walls and ceilings, while feeling very pleased that they still had the building standing up.

When bombing first began on London it could be a little un-nerving if you happened to be caught on the Underground Tube Trains between stations under the Thames. This was because they stopped these lines and closed flood doors in case a bomb penetrated the river and flooded the Tube, in other words you were the sacrifice to stop the flooding becoming general. This practice was eventually dropped.

Of course, the Tube stations were used as Air Raid Shelters, thousands of people slept down there every night from September 1940 until May 1941 which was the worst time of the Blitz.

One site we set up at Wellington a few miles from Croydon Airport was a secret Gun Site that was camouflaged during daylight. Next to it was built a ‘Dummy Air Strip’ where fire was started at dark hour to make the German aircraft think they had set fire to Croydon Airport and drop their bombs on that and we would attempt to bring them down. It was terrible for the people who lived in that area as they were a constant target.

We had many lucky escapes. One I remember very well; a bomber approached our gun site and let go with a stick of three bombs. The first exploded about 100 yards short of our guns, the second bomb fell right inside the next gun pit to ours but did not explode. It buried itself in the ground and tipped the gun nearly on its side. The other bomb exploded some 100 yards further away from us-boy what luck!

After the raid was finished and not knowing when the bomb might explode, we took turns going into the gun pit carrying a round of ammunition weighing 56 pounds each. There were hundreds in the gun pit and lucky for us the bomb did not go off. When day-light arrived so did an Army Bomb Squad to diffuse and dig out the bomb, which was a large 500 pound bomb that fortunately did not have any of our names on.

After the bombing died down we had a rather quiet time waiting for something to happen. During this time the film industry decided to make a film record of events as they occurred. We were asked to help by becoming extras. Some of us dressed up as soldiers returning from Dunkirk and others dressed as Germans to take part in mock battles. The star was Jimmy Hanley. We didn’t get paid but it was some light relief for the normal duties of being a soldier.

We then began training for the D-Day landings. We had to learn to use our heavy guns not only against aircraft but against tanks, also as Field Artillery and as Coastal Artillery against any enemy shipping that might arrive anywhere near us. It was hectic training that took us all over Britain, and we eventually passed out as being ready for the Big Day.

During the first few days before D-Day we had to waterproof everything, which involved filling every nook and cranny with Bostik, which came in five gallon drums and was like a kind of sticky grease whose object was to keep the sea water out of vital parts of our equipment. We finished this filthy task and were ready for the action when out of the blue came orders for us to de-waterproof. It was a damn sight harder to get off than it had been to put on. However, we were given only a short time to complete this task, and we were rushed to the South East Coast. Of course at this time we didn’t know why but we were soon to learn the hard way.

Through the intelligence they had found out that London was to be attacked by a new secret weapon and with all of our experience during the Blitz we were called to put into practice once more against this new weapon. It soon arrived in the shape of the ‘Flying Bomb’ which was a pilot-less aeroplane timed to reach London and run out of fuel crashing down with a mighty explosion. It was a frightening thing to begin with, but became almost a competition to see how many could be shot down before reaching the coast line.

We stayed there for a few days whilst a new line of defence was established down the coast line, then we were released for the invasion of France.

This is a rough sketch of my first few years in the Army. New experiences were in store for us once we got into Europe.

I would like to add that during this time I had received some leave and as a result my wife and I were blessed with a lovely son and on embarking for France I left my wife behind, having done the same trick again. Good stuff these army rations!

During the war I worked as a lift boy at a large block of flats about 100 yards away from the sea and my boss was an ex army man, a quarter master sergeant in the rifle brigade.

He called me down to the flat on the Sunday when I was on duty and said ‘listen lad, this is very important’ and the message came through from Neville Chamberlain that we had started the war against the Germans. The first thing that happened was within the hour the sirens warning went off and there was an aircraft heard. We heard the aircraft around but obviously they were just flying around and I’m sure it was a German aircraft. It was seen over St Leonards, very close. It didn’t take long really, the all clear went and then he got on to explain what could happen. In this block of flats they were a very reserved type of people there and they were back to back. There was a boiler house there and they said ‘look the first thing we are going to do’ he said ‘is we are going to breed some rabbits, so if food is short, we’ve got rabbits’. I didn’t live here at the flats at that time but that was his first thoughts on how we were going to eat when the rationing would come.

It was very shortly afterwards, within a couple of months that we were invaded by young children from London, the evacuees. They arrived one morning by train, the residents were asked to take the children in and give them a home. So we, my mother and my grandfather who we were living with, decided that we had a spare room and that we would take two children. We had two girls who came along. They were about 13, they came from Greenwich in London and it was for me, the 16 year old, great fun to have someone share the house, and someone to play around. It was really good to have someone else in the house but it wasn’t for long because as there was no activity in London. There were no expected air raids, their parents decided — most of them did this — at Christmas instead of just going home for Christmas, they didn’t come back. But of course we all know it wasn’t that long after that things started to hot up all round.

The next major thing happened that I remember is the boats coming over from Dunkirk and landing our troops back in this country who’d been serving in France. That is the first time that really things showed that there was something going on. The troops after landing, were in Bexhill, where the regiment were stationed. They stayed in some of the big hotels. Also some of the RAF came to do their training as pilots and aircrew. By the autumn there were notices up in the town that, (I think it was in mid-summer) that people, if they would like, they were encouraged to be evacuated themselves. My mother and grandfather went up and finished up near Trowbridge, away from the coastline. I didn’t want to go, so my boss said you can stay in the flats. We’ll fix up a couple of rooms down in the cellar, which was quite clear, nothing much in it. So we (his wife who died shortly before), so we both stayed down in the cellar in case of air raids. Mr Thatcher being an ex army man, he decided that he would invite some of the army boys on their evenings out or what not to come down into the flat we made in the cellar and play darts and cards and he would give them tea and coffee. So we had plenty of company. Most of the tenants had then gone and they just moved away keeping the flat on but they moved away to various areas in which they thought were safe in the country. One morning there were four or five of us, the postman had called in, Mr Thatcher and one or two of these lads and we were standing in the main hall, the siren went off and before we had time to move there was a terrific bang. Well it was never discovered exactly what had happened. Obviously there was a bomb dropped but it hadn’t hit anything. It had exploded before it reached the ground or it might have landed in the sea, but no crater was ever found. But it broke many of the plate glass windows in the flats and most of them were on the seaside of the building, so it could have been a blast bomb. But it meant a lot of tidying up for us to do to clear the glass away. That was a very fortunate thing for us, because it could have been very near. We often had hit and run raiders come in. They would fly in and by the time the sirens had gone they’d circle in on their way out so it didn’t give our aircraft, the Spitfires, time to get down from their airfield to keep them away before that, bombs had been dropped across the town. We had quite a few on the coast, Eastbourne, Hove, Hastings and I remember one particular occasion Bexhill had two or three bombs, one hit a local chemist shop and also one of the cleaners that were in the town. One of my friends who were at school with us, he worked in this dry cleaners and it was a direct hit so he was killed on that occasion. Blackey Barker we called him, he was quite a dark lad and it was a great shame. There were several other times hit and run raiders came in. One afternoon we had a Messerschmitt, the warning was on and we were down in the cellar and this Messerschmitt came in, or came through, obviously escorting some bombers and they were shooting their machine guns and I know I went up from the cellar and looked out and I was really torn off a strip for going out and having a look because later on when the all clear had gone we found some of the spent bullet shells and holes in the wall so I was very lucky. But my boss didn’t appreciate what I’d done and he really gave me the dressing down.

Another occasion, a little later on, I had to be home, to see if everything was o.k. and stayed the night and on the way back, there was an aircraft, a warning and an aircraft. We saw it was a clear morning, a clear moon up in the sky, it was quite early and I stopped and spoke to the milkman as I was going to work. We saw this aircraft circle round the moon and as we thought it was going away we both said ‘oh well it’s not dropped anything…’ we can hear bombs coming down. Well the nearest landed, to us, landed about 400 yards away and they dropped 13 bombs across the town. So it did quite a bit of damage. It just missed the town hall, there was quite a bit of damage there. There was several occasions when we had working in the town and living by the sea in this building that stood out, it was right next to the De La Warr Pavilion so several occasions that we had near misses around there.

One day there was a big fire next to the De La Warr Pavilion, the other side of where our flats were and it was the Metropole Hotel, which the air force had taken over. I still have pictures (small photos) of the fire at the Metropole but no one ever knew how it caught light. Whether it was carelessness by the forces or some kind of bomb but we never found out what caused it.

Of course being 17 there were several of us young lads who used to get around the place and I remember one evening, there were two of us just walking along the sea front and we came to the end, past the clock tower and to where what was called the flag staff where they put a siren up on the scaffolding. So in devilment we decided to climb the scaffolding not realising the problems we could have caused. As we were coming down the air raid warden was waiting for us. It was a very good job he knew us because he said we cold be blamed for trying to sabotage the siren that was up there so we got a good dressing down for that. He went up and had a look to make sure everything was working all right and I imagined it was working. It went off a few days later but when you’re young you do silly things and not realise what you’ve just done.

As I was then 17 ½ and not available, or not possible to go into the army or the forces because my eyes were not so good, I decided I would go to London to an engineering course and work in munitions so my boss wrote a letter to the minister for labour saying that I’d tried and nothing happened so he wrote to Aneurin Bevin and said that I wanted to serve my king and country and so within a week I was called to the labour exchange and fixed up to go on this course. I would be highly qualified to go into engineering. Well this I did and by November I went to Waddon training centre near Croydon and spent the next 3 months at this centre earning very little, just enough to pay some lodgings money. A lady and man that had this big house, there were about 20 people there lodging and most of the money that we earnt went to pay out for our digs. After going through the course, I got a good job in the company Phillips which was a big electrical engineering company and I thing it’s still going now, Phillips. That was only 3 or 4 miles cycle away from Waddon to Hatbridge, near Mitcham. I managed to get a job as an improver in their tool room, which was something well worth doing because I spent the rest of my life in engineering and doing tool grinding and tool making. So for me it was very good to do that but I still had one or two near misses when I was staying in Croydon.

I remember one day going to the cinema. I was on nights and going to the cinema on a Monday afternoon and my friend who had to work asked me if I could take his girlfriend to the pictures because he’s promised her that she would see this film and it was at the Davis Theatre in Croydon. In the middle of the film there was a terrific explosion, the siren had gone but nobody used to worry because we were inside. We didn’t think we would be any safer outside, the terrific explosion was in the front and fortunately for me I was fairly well back in the stalls and a bomb had gone through the roof down into the stalls but it didn’t explode but several people were killed on that occasion and I fell that, that was another life that I had had. I’ve been well looked after by someone above. So when I went out afterwards I realised that one of my friends daughters worked there as an usherette, so I looked around for her and found her and I went afterwards to see her father, saying that she was alright. But by the time I got back to the lodgings there had been a call for me from the Home Guard, which I had to join a few months before. This was to call me up into town with the rest and to patrol because there had been other bombs dropped and a certain amount of looting. I had quite a busy day that day. I didn’t go to work that night; well we were called out all night so we didn’t get away until the following morning.

One or two things I remember about being at Phillips. The first thing was that there was no proper air raid shelter in the actual company and not enough for everybody. So there were quite a few, it was all men in the department I was in and we used to go into one part where we thought it was reasonably safe when the siren had gone off. I was amazed all the young lads, most of them fairly young or less than 30’s anyway and we used to go down to this place and all the time that there was a warning on they would sing and it was really great friendship. It was good to hear all these men singing the popular songs of the day and some of the older songs such as Roses Are Blooming In Piccaddy and that type of thing as well as the popular shows at that time and the Holy City is another one that I remember. Another thing that I recall of the men in the tool room, on a Saturday before Christmas we always had the day off and we would go to Morden station but we all had to wear bowler hats which was great fun and travel up to London where we would see a show. Well before that we would go and have a meal and see a show and all the way up in the tube we would sing carols and it’s something to hear at that time anyway. We might have been noisy but we weren’t a rousy crew and people used to listen and laugh with us, then after seeing the show we would have something else to eat then go back to Wimbledon. Wimbledon Palais to a dance and that was an annual event that happened every year but of course some of the boys they lost their bowler hats. I know coming back and spending the day and not being used to hats like that many of them had to buy a bowler hat for the person that lent them their bowler hat.

After working at Phillips I had to do quite a bit of night work. So I decided a couple of times to cycle back down to Bexhill. Well it was quite a long journey, especially on a cycle without any extra gears or anything but the worst thing, I got lost several times because all the road signs were taken down because of the threat of invasion so it was very difficult unless you got to know the roads. You could easily turn off especially over the Ashdown Forest or somewhere like that but I know I was lost twice. The second time coming back I went on a slightly different road it was the weekend which they called the Big Fire in London and quite a few fire engines had gone up from the coast to help. The London Fire Brigade and on my way back on the Monday morning I met quite a few of them coming back towards the coast and it took me quite a while to get back and of course I had to go back to work in the evening so I made an early start getting back early afternoon and then going onto work about 7 o’clock.

Another memory I have of Croydon and the war. My landlady woke us up one night and said the sirens had gone and there were several aircraft about. While we were talking about it there was the sound of an aircraft as we thought and it suddenly went quiet and I remember saying ‘it’s alright it’s landed at Croydon Airport’ and then there was an explosion. What it was, it was the first night we had discovered that it was the fly bomb or Doodlebugs as they were called so I remember that first night and the bomb had only just landed 2 or 3 roads away. Shortly after that I remember particularly cycling home from work after doing just a Saturday morning and watching this fly bomb come over and what they did, when they cut out, it normally did a half circle turn back and then drop onto the ground. I remember this one flying across and praying that it wouldn’t cut out until it got past. Of course someone else would have got it and I was terribly worried at that moment that it could have done exactly the same and it would have been very much nearer.

One other very important thing happened quite late in the war. I met a girl at Phillips when I was working and she was working there and she later became my wife in 1946 and we were married for over 30 years before she died. So that practically concludes my wartime experience and I would like to say that VE Day or rather the day war finished, I spent at Phillips social club jollying it up with some friends. I went up to London and waved my flag and there were thousands of other people at VE Day and also I saw the big victory parade which they had after and when the generals of all the regiments paraded through the streets of London which was quite an exciting thing but that was a couple of years after the war.

There is just one other thing I have just remembered. It was while I was a Bexhill, it was about two years after the war had started. The first big raid by Germans on Croydon. I was going to see my friends at Sidley and the warning went and we could see in the clear sky it was a beautiful summers evening we could see clearly squadrons of German aircraft. The bombers flying in formation through to London we thought, well that was the beginning of the big bombing raids in London. They went in formation, they came back in formation but the only things we saw and know afterwards there were one or two of the fighters shot down not far from the coast. One near Catsfield so we know at least two were shot down and they still came back in that formation flight as they went out. I just remembered that when I saw it and I think that’s about all I can remember about the war.

This story was submitted to the BBC WW2 People’s War site by Mrs M A Nallen of St Benedict’s Catholic High School on behalf of Stephen Corsi and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.
SECOND WORLD WAR MEMORIES OF STEPHEN CORSI

1939-1945
Aged 10 years 8 months at outbreak of war; 16 years 4 months in May
1945.
THE PERSONAL WAR
On 29 August 1939, I was sent back from Italy by train in care of sleeping car conductor to Paris, where I was met by my father and flown to Croydon, stayed one night in London then on to the country by train. This was the first time I had ever travelled entirely on my own on a main line railway with having to change of trains. However, I had been using the London Underground system regularly for 3 years by then.
Then on Sunday 3 September at 11:00 everyone listened to the radio to hear the Prime Minister say that the country was at war. Actually, it would have been a greater surprise if he had not said it, because it had seemed inevitable, since Poland had been invaded 3 days before.
Life seemed to be normal all through the war as everything developed slowly. By 1941 it felt as if we had had identity cards and ration cards all our lives. This was particularly true in the country where rationing was very well supplemented by local produce.
In the cities, you could eat in restaurants without ration cards up to a value of 5 shillings per meal. Expensive restaurants overcame this with a “cover charge”. People who were very hungry sometimes had 2 lunches in different restaurants to fill up.
Ration cards were issued for food, clothing and petrol. Food and clothing was adequate but not generous. With the help of unrationed food you could get by quite comfortably and the gardens of houses were turned into vegetable plots, tennis courts were dug up and many open spaces ere rented out as allotments to people who had no gardens.
Many houses kept pigs, chickens, goats and other livestock which were fed on leftovers from cooking or from growing vegetables.
Everyone was issued with gas masks but after a few months hardly anyone carried them.
At first, cars received petrol rations but later only essential vehicles were allowed to have petrol. Paraffin for farm tractors was coloured red to stop people using it in their cars. You could fill the carburettor with a few drops of petrol to start it and then a car would run on paraffin. Some cars were adapted to use town gas and had large silvery balloons fitted on their roofs to carry it.
At night all the curtains had to be shut tight to prevent even a chink of light getting out. Cars had special covers over their headlights so that they only shone downwards.
I rarely went near any major cities for next five years, merely passing through when necessary.
I watched the red sky above Coventry when it was being bombed but was too far away to hear the explosions. By contrast to the devastation of Coventry and Birmingham, it is said that only 1 bomb fell on Leamington throughout the war on open space between 3 possible targets.
For the first year of the war, some of my London School were transferred as a group to Arnold Lodge, Leamington, sleeping in the family home of our former headmaster, in Jury Street, Warwick.
As a boarder at school in Dunchurch (1940-1942) we went down to the cellars whenever the sirens sounded. One night a land-mine (large bomb on a parachute) landed near the middle of the village and when I came back upstairs after the all-clear my bed had moved a foot away from the wall.
Our home, in London, was a six-storey town-house and one night a bomb landed precisely on top of the wall dividing it from next door, knocking down some 5 metres of wall. The top two floors were later found to have moved about 3 centimetres sideways. The building was shored up and my father continued to live there except for the top floor and I would sometimes spend the occasional night there.
The house had been built just after the 1914-1918 war and the first owner had thought that there might be another war and had built it with a cellar which was designed to be used as an air-raid shelter.
One night, when in London for a couple of days I went across the river by underground to visit friends but when returning was caught on the wrong side of the river during an air raid and had to spend the most of the night in the tube train.
One day when he1 on a farm, the farmer and I heard a German aeroplane approaching and we hid behind a haystack but we must have been seen because the tail gunner fired off his machine guns at us but without effect.
Towards the end of the war the Germans started to use flying bombs (Vi), which people affectionately called “doodlebugs”. These were planes with ram-jet engines and no pilots and no remote control. They were started up pointing towards southern England and when they ran out of fuel they came down. There was a very eerie period of about 10 seconds between when the engine stopped and when the explosion came. Those ten seconds could seem like hours. Fighter planes used to be sent up to shoot them down over open ground and sometimes, if they were found near the coast, the fighters would get under a wing tip and ease them round so that they would fly back to France.
After these came the rockets (V2) . In some ways these were an improvement because the first thing you heard was the explosion, which meant that you had escaped as it must have fallen some distance from you.

I had two paternal uncles both of whom had been born in London and had British passports. One uncle (Edward) was a doctor but had been practising in Italy at the start of the war (15 June 1940 for Italy). He was interned with his brother (Tino) but being a non combatant was exchanged and came back to England. After which he joined the army medical corps (RANC) and worked in field hospitals in France. My father (Henry) was too old to be called up in 1939 but he had worked in field hospitals in 1914-1918.
The other uncle (Tino) was released in July 1943, when the Italian government stopped fighting, but the Germans more or less took over Italy for the rest of the war and he became a partisan for some time before escaping to Switzerland where he was interned for the rest of the war. This was in a hotel in Lugano, which happened to be owned by friends who had been allowed to stay in the top floor flat. His wife (Bice) and son (Carlo) had escaped to Switzerland earlier and were living as refugees with other friends in Lugano.
The end of the war came twice, once on 8 May 1945 and then on 15 August 1945. Most people remember the first date more than the second and certainly bonfires were lit on 8 May and everybody celebrated but there was probably as much joy in August when it really was all over. However, life went on afterwards much as before, rationing continued and later on bread was rationed for the first time. In some ways it did not feel as if the war had really ended until ration cards were abolished in 1951.
In 1946 I visited Guernsey, which had been occupied by the Germans. However, the Senior Officers in the Channel Islands, being mostly professional soldiers past retiring age, had always seen that their troops behaved correctly. The one thing that I remember is that all the schools were full of furniture. The soldiers had moved the furniture around between the houses that they had commandeered and returning householders had found these pieces in their homes and were displaying them for the real owners to find and collect.

THE REAL WAR
The “real war” hardly seemed to affect daily life in England. There was no television so news came by radio or in the newspapers. Everyone followed the progress of the fighting but at no time did the population believe that the Allies could lose in the end. When Hitler invaded Russia, repeating Napoleon’s mistake of 130 years earlier, everyone in Britain heaved a sigh of relief as the end then seemed to be inevitable.
The war in North Africa was seen as a purely professional operation in which the tanks merely replaced the medieval knights in armour. It was followed with interest but with a certain amount of detachment as if it did not really affect us.
People became rather depressed when Singapore fell in 1941 and also on the occasions when we lost major ships like the “Hood” and the “Prince of Wales” but otherwise the reverses were taken in one’s stride and the victories were considered to be our due.
After the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, interest became more intense but by then, with both the Americans and the Russians fighting on oour side, the only question was “How long will it take to get to Berlin?”

THE DOWNSIDE AEROPLANE CRASH
The following is based on a letter to an old school friend dated 11 May 1994 about a crash by a fighter aeroplane on a bank where most of Downside School was gathered to watch a cricket match on Saturday 15 May 1943. The pilot and 9 boys were killed and 14 boys were injured.
“I read your account of the crash in the Raven with interest and until then I had no idea that the full picture of what happened that afternoon was unclear. It is now a very long time after the event but I think that it is still not too late to record what I remember seeing.
I was playing cricket on the upper field and at the time was fielding in a position facing the pavilion. My concentration was not entirely on the game and I was watching the antics of these two aeroplanes with some interest and even trepidation as they were flying lower than any I had seen before.
As was always the case, the instructor was in front and the pupil was flying behind and some ten to twenty feet below his leader. The final pass was very low and over some very tall fir trees at the edge of the field. The first plane cleared these but the second one just touched the tallest tree, probably with its tail, so that its nose tipped downwards. At that height there was no chance for Sub-Lt McCracken, the pilot, to do anything and he ploughed straight into the crowd on the bank.
There is a tree with a dead section at the top at approximately the point where the aircraft touched and it would not surprise me if this was the actual tree that was struck and that the dead section had resulted from a partial fracture of the trunk.
Everything that happened after that moment is a blur and the only things that I can remember were that we were all given sandwiches the next morning and told to go out and not come back before teatime. I also remember seeing the shrouds laid out in the squash court and only half-believing that underneath these were the bodies of my friends, particularly David Lowndes whom I had already known for seven or eight years. My most vivid memory is of his brother Michael coming back from hospital with his terribly scarred face. On the Monday everything returned to normal and life continued exactly as before being only interrupted for the joint funeral of the dead pilot and boys.
I ought to have been in one of the Junior House dormitories with all the other first year boys but had been moved up into the Smythe dormitory at the beginning of that term so I have no recollection of the empty beds on the Saturday night. This might also explain why I was playing cricket when most of my friends were sitting in the crash area.
I hope that this helps to clarify the actual sequence of events and I would be very pleased to know whether there is any evidence to support (or disprove) my memory of that terrible event.”

I had just turned 18 in the summer of 1940 and was working as a junior Civil Servant in the Public Trustee Office in London, when I was transferred to a Dept. of the War Office dealing with casualties to Army Officers.

After a period of training I was informed that the Dept. was re-locating to Liverpool and I would be based in the Blue Coat School in Wavertree, the children having been evacuated to a safer place.

We were to be billeted in private houses nearby and duly arrived in about mid-August, to find that the School had been adapted to the needs of a busy office and was all in readiness.

I was taken by the billeting officer to meet my new landlady - a Mrs Eadie Grayson. She and her husband, Bob, were a middle-aged childless couple with aa spare bedroom and so were 'pressed' into taking a Civil Servant as a lodger. They were very kind to me and we got on well together. My new address was Daffodil Road, Wavertree, L15.

Eadie received from the Govt. an allowance type of book and was paid 25/- a week in return for my bed, breakfast and evening meal. She told me later that some of the "press ganged" landladies (and there were many locally) would sometimes mutter as they collected their 25/- at the Post Office that the Civil Servants had a cushy life being kept by the Govt. She was quite surprised when I told her that her 25/- was deducted from my pay of 32/6d a week and that I was 'hard up' most of the time!

Going to Liverpool was the first time I had left my home in Croydon. I had been at school until the summer before. The 'times' were dangerous and my mother was worried about me. As a keepsake she gave me one of her most treasured possessions - a thin gold-plated bracelet given to her by my father on her wedding day. Taking it with her, she had gone with him to India on two separate tours of duty and sadly he had died there 9 years before. So it was indeed a precious gift she gave into my care, the day I left home.

I never did dare to wear the bracelet, but kept it in it's box in a drawer of the dressing table in my front bedroom at Daffodil Road.

Air raids were frequent and heavy all through the winter of 1940 and the Liverpudlians felt quite hard done by and felt their sufferings were minimised by the Press in comparison to the publicity given to cities like London, Coventry ect. The name of the city of Liverpool was never mentioned, but raids were just reported as having taken place on a "North West" port.

I think it turned out that it was a deliberate strategy for intelligence purposes.

Nothing prepared the city though for the German onslaught of the first week of May 1941 when they made a determined effort to put this vital port out of action. It was our life line for food and supplies from the U.S.A. and for troopships to and from the Middle East. It was a long and weary week sitting in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden for hours on end and then stumbling out at dawn to wash and change and go to the office.

On the night of 7th-8th May 1941 when the siren went, I decided that I had had enough, could take no more and would sleep through this one.

However, Eadie kept calling me to get up. She said Bob was on Fire Watching duties and she would be alone. At her insistence I got up, pulled a jumper and some trousers over my pyjamas and went downstairs.

It was bright moonlight as Eadie walked down the garden path carrying the budgie in it's cage. I followed and remarked that it was what folk called "a bombers moon". She reached the sheler, opened the door and began to walk down the steps into it, well below ground. I was following her, when suddenly I was blown in on top of her, the shelter door was blown off it's hinges and hit me in the back. It turned out that quite a few neighbours had also come into the shelter and there was also a little boy there.

Panic and pandemonium broke out in the cramped darkness and after what seemed an age, we heard voices and saw dimmed torches and we were all helped out by Air Raid Wardens, one by one. As we stood on the grass in the moonlight, a policeman came and took a roll call. Bob Grayson came rushing up, to see how we all were. It soon became evident that although he was some distance from the explosion he had been made totally deaf. He took out his cigarette case and offered one to the policeman, who took one. It turned out to be a perfect paper tube, there was no tobacco in it, or any trace of the case. The policeman said he would keep it as a souvenir.

Some while elapsed before the extent of the blast damage dawned on the stunned people of Daffodil Road. The air was filled with strange smells of plaster, brick and dust and explosive etc. It seems a parachute mine had landed in the centre of the road outside our house. The houses must have taken the full force of the blast and we were spared at the back. I learned after, that about 11 houses were demolished. Neighbours were killed and colleagues also from the office, living opposite, were killed in bed.

Various officials came and went as we stood around waiting - some to help, some at rather a loss as to what to do. One girl with vague memories of her First Aid lectures said "shouldn't we be tearing up sheets or something?" A swift reply from a neighbour soon scotched that idea. He said in his lovely scouse accent "Tear oop sheets, ain't there been enuff bloody destruction?" In any case there probably weren't any sheets.

Eventually we had all been assigned to various Rest Centres and walking still in bright moonlight, I followed a Warden till we reached this Church hall. I was given a cup of tea, and was shown a spot on the floor where I could lie down. 'Bombed out' people were all around me, wide-eyed and sleepless with shock. I too lay sleepless, thinking of my family and how upset they would have been had they known of my plight.

I left the Rest Centre at about 6 a.m. and made my way back to Daffodil Road. Something drew me to it, and I had nowhere else to go at that hour. The bombed part of the raod was roped off with a notice to "KEEP OUT". I slipped under the rope and located the rubble that had been Eadie's and Bob's house. Climbing over some bricks I disturbed some which moved with a clatter. The noise brought a policeman as if from nowhere. He asked me what I was doing there and hadn't I seen the notice. I explained that I had lived there and I wondered if I would find anything of mine. I wasn't thinking of anything in particular, though I did recognise parts of my bed!

We began to talk about the night before, and emboldened by my presence, some other people also slipped under the rope and began to poke about. The policeman lost patience and jumping up on a mound of bricks be called everyone over and said it was dangerous to be there and they must go away at once.

With that, he hent down and picked something out of the rubble. He held it up and said "does this belong to anyone here?" I looked ant couldn't believe my eyes - it was my mother's bracelet. I couldn't get the words out quickly enough "Oh it's mine, it's mine" I shouted.

He handed it to me, not knowing what a miracle it seemed to me - the much travelled bracelet had survived a parachute mine with just one small dent.

Then a second miracle happened. As I turned to go away, I saw a Postman standing by the roped off section, with his bag and a bundle of letters in his hand. I said to him "have you anything for Miss Hickie?", he replied "you are in luck, you have a letter from America". It was from my brother in Tennessee - a card for my 19th Birthday.

I sat down on a pile of bricks and opened it, and pondered on the fact that my letter had been safely brought across the submarine infested Atlantic, had been sorted in a city under siege from the air for seven solid nights and had been delivered to a house demolished by enemy action.

Most of all I was struck by the sheer coincidence of events, that I was there, when I could so easily have missed both the bracelet and the letter.

I got up and made my way to the office where I was able to wash and borrow some clothes from friends. I was taken to a doctor who gave me a sick certificate for a month off work. He wrote on it "Shell-Shocked". I then collected a travel warrant to my home station and to home I went, owning nothing but the bracelet and the birthday card.

I had nothing to put in a case, so travelled light. There was no one to counsel me, no one to give me a lift, so I got a tram from Penny Lane to the Pier Head and walked to Lime Street Station and so to Euston and my home in Croydon (where I was just in time for the heavy Air RAid over Croydon and London of May 10th).

The Office had contacted my Mother through 'Official Channels' so she was expecting me.

I returned to Liverpool after the month at home fully 'kitted-out' by my mother and was billed this time in Mosspits Lane, where I stayed until 1943 before being transferred back to London.

Having been sent to different Rest Centres, I was separated from Eadie and Bob that night. I never did find them again and never knew what happened to them.

By the grace of God and Eadie I survived to live a long a fulfilling life, and I would like to have thanked for even as she was urging me to get up, the mine must have been floating down in our direction.

It has always puzzled me why I have no recollection of ever hearing the explosion, yet I was so near to it.

I went back to Daffodil Road some years ago. The house had long since been re-built and the quiet air of suburbia was there again, as it was when first I saw it. Newcomers to the road would need a huge leap of imagination to appreciate the horrors of that night so long ago.

My story starts during the First World War. My father, Lieut. James McCready was awarded the Military Cross for extreme bravery. He returned to Livpool but there was no work to be had in this brave new world. He married his sweetheart and they emigrated to Canada to make his fame and fortune. I was born in April 1921 weighing 2 lbs only and my Mother promptly died. A Dutch family looked after me until I was 6 months old when my father brought me across the ocean wide to Liverpool. I was happily looked after by my paternal grandparents until, I was 4 year old when my father married again and I went to live with my "new" mother and her son. Fast forward to March 1939.

I had passed a written and physical examination to become an Established Civil Servant. I was allocated to a typing pool in the Office of Works, at Dean Bradley House, Horseferry Road, London. I was therefore entitled to A MAT and to start work at 10 am every day. The Government had employed a great number of temporary staff due to the possibility of war. These poor temps. had to start work at 9 am and were not allowed mats. When the only other established Civil Servant was absent, I was in charge although the other girls knew much more about the work than I did. Can you imagine this division happening today?

I can remember seeing the King and Queen and the two young princesses, Elizab eth and Margaret opening the new Westminster Hospital opposite the office.

I lived at a girls' Hostel in Warwick Square and I had to walk a few miles there and back. I had very little money for transport, lunch or entertainment but I felt I was in the centre of the world walking gauntily down Victoria Street and gazing longingly at the goodies in the Army and Navy Stores.

I can vividly remember the outbreak of war. I was in Church when the MINISTER stopped the Service to announce the news. We all trooped outside to hear the first air raid warning. Nothing happened but we were all pretty shocked. I had joined the Rangers and we had to deliver notices - for what I cannot remember. It was quite hard work and I really appreciated toe postmens' taskes for the first time. By the way I had moved from the hostel as I had a nightly battle with the French, and Belgium girls in the dormitary. I opened the windows and they promptly closed them etc. I was well looked after by a kind landlady in digs near Parsons Green Station. She provided me with a packed lunch so I could afford to go to the office by tube. The office was evacuated to anunknowndestination "up north". It turned out to be Rhyl in North Wales. I was much better off financially - no fares, rent subsidised (the Civil Service couldn's have cared less about their young provincial staff when in expensive London) I had enough money to see a new play every two weeks at the Pavilion Theatre performed by the evacuated Manchester Rep. Company. I bought a second hand bike for £3 and took long cycle rides into the beautiful Welsh countryside; swam, flirted and danced my way at the Royal Corps of Signals camp at Prestatyn most Saturdau evenings.

I did voluntary work at a Soldiers' canteen at Rhyl
on Saturday afternoons. This was run by the local W.I very snooty ladies who told me I must wear stockings as it was not proper to have bare legs. I was not prepared to have my precious silk stockings snagged - bar e legs or no me. Can you imagine this happening these daysa.

The war did not impinge on us until theLondon blitz hit the headlines. My life also changed. A boy at the Rhyl office had invited his Selhurst Grammar school friend up to Rhyl. Len's parents, little brother and dog were in the garden shelter; Len asleep on the settee in the house when it was bombed in August 1940. The family were all killed in the shelter. Len was physically unhurt but very shocked. To this day he has never talked abhout it. I was formally introduced to him - he was so different from my many soldier friends. I volunteered for Air Crew training and was accepted. Air Crew trainees wore a white flash in their caps. I was so proud to be with hi9m when he came to Rhyl in his leavews. He was then post ed to Canada for further training asnd proposed to me at the top of The Great Orme, Llandudno.

The Establi8shed staff had to return to London in 1943- the temps were left in Rhyl - much envvied by mee. I hated it back in London - there was veryn little bombing at that time but the Office of Works accomnmodated me in a Girls' Hostel near B\rons Court Station. EThe Manager was a prissy Scosttish "lady". She dictated how we were to make our beds, sit for meals etc. I tolld her I would make my bed how I wanted it as I was paying the rnet. We were at daggers drawn so I applied for promotion - got it and was sent to Nottingham - the youngest Supervisor in that area. I got on quite well with the much older women when the work that had to be completed each day was evenly apportioned and the slackers received the wrath of the workers if they did not pull their weight.

By this time Len was operational with the 69th Squadron of the 2nd Tactical Airforce. We were married on the fourth day of the fourth month of 1944 + so he would never forget the date.

When he managed to get leave in England, he would phone me at the offic e. I would take the first available train from Nottingham to London - no luggage - Wem would spend a few hours together before I took the milk train back to begin work by 9 am in the office.

He finished 35 ops safely flying the Wellington Bomber and was posted to be in charge of a bombing range on the borders of Shropshire and Wales. I therefore got a transfer to the Birmingham officee to be nearer him. This was the first time I had to cater for myself and realised how hard it must have been for my previous landladies to eek things out. I was clueless - asked in a shop for 1 lb of pepper. I was literally taught to cook by my latest landlady. Len was due to go out to the Far East when peace was declared. Icidentally his eldest brother ddied in a prisoner of war camp so he was the only remaining member of his family.

He was demobbed and we were allocated a small flat in Shirley, Croydon - due to his loss of home etc.

The war, therefore, was "lovely" for me because I met my future husband through it. Strangely I may have met him in Gretna, near Napanee. Ontario if my mother had lived as he was posted for training to Hamilton, Ontario - comparatively near in Canadian terms. However, I did realize that for many people, friend andn foe alike, it was a horrible war.

I saw flattened Coventry soon after the bombing. Len and I spent 3 days in St Petersburg the yearf after PERESTROIKA. We were recorded on
m.v.Kareliya - a Russian Cruise ship - by BBC interviewers from the Charlie Chester Show about the reactions of the Russianss to this new regime. I told them that the Go-Getters embrac ed it but the conformists and timid ones hated it. My dulcet strangled Liverpudlian vowells were heard over the air maany weeks later. Perhaps the BBC has stil got a re3cording ot it?

My 80th birthday treat was a visit to see our Grandaughter attending Berlin University as part of her German degreee course. Even as late as this Berlin still looked like a builders yard in many parts. The people must have gone through very hard times.

I also remember seeing a half thatched summer ghouse in a Toronto Park and was informed that it would never be completed until there were no wars anywhere in the world. WILL THAT EVER BE?

Len and I hope to celebrate our 60th (diamond) wedding anniversary on the 4.4.2004. We still play badmington and tennis with our Austrian, German, English and Rumanian friends. We have also motor caravanned and met many people from all over the world.

*********

I have a book called WELLINGTON THE GEODETIC GIANT BY MARTIN BOWMAN. There is aphotograph of the crew in it - he looks very handsome. It gives a story of their exploits and you may borrow it if you like. If you would like to contact me MARY AYN SLEY by phone 02088656,2644 or mail (no home computer) 12 Gladeside, Shirley Croydon, Surrey CRO 7RE I would be ;pleasdd to tell you more about our exploits in meeting so many people from all over the world in our Motor Caravan.