High Explosive Bomb at Bewley Street

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.

Born in 1930, I was not really conscious of the events leading up to the Second World War but my memories of the war itself are very vivid. However I do clearly remember my father making a crude air raid shelter in our garden in Wimbledon in 1938. The shelter consisted of a deep trench (I can still see the yellow clay my father had to dig out to get sufficient depth) lined with wooden planks and covered with corrugated iron and a pile of earth on top. He made a small ladder for access. We were all issued with gas masks in cardboard boxes with a string loop on them so that they could be hung round our necks.
My first real war memory was being piled into our 1927 Austin 7 on the evening of September 1st.1939 and driven down to my grandparents at Didlington in Norfolk where my grandfather was the butler at the Hall. The car had no luggage rack so the back seat was removed to make space for the luggage and my brother and I sat on a suitcase together with our dog.
On the day war was declared there was an air raid warning at Didlington and I can remember standing on the front step with my grandfather looking for aircraft and brandishing my toy pistol.
For a few days it was just like being on our usual summer holiday but after a short time an elementary school from the east end of London arrived and was billeted in the villages and farms around Didlington. Some of the children were allocated to local village schools but in addition a two class school was set up in the unused tack room and the grooms' room in the stableyard at Didlington. My brother and I were allowed to attend this Didlington school along with the grandson of the head gamekeeper who had also been privately evacuated. He and I were the eldest boys in the school and we had interesting jobs like fetching a large container of hot water each morning break from the Hall kitchen to be used for making chocolate Horlicks which appeared to be issued by the government. Whatever happened to chocolate Horlicks ?- it was delicious! We also had to fetch bundles of kindling wood and help get the fires going in the two rooms. Apart from missing our father we really had a wonderful time. School seemed easy and I loved the country life. As a reward for collecting barrels full of acorns for feeding the estate's pigs, the owner of the Hall, a Colonel Smith, had a couple of swings and a seesaw made for the school. The winter of 1939/40 was particularly hard and we had several feet of snow which was great for the children. The lake in the Hall grounds froze over and we were allowed in once or twice to slide on the ice -nobody had skates.
I made my first contribution to the war effort that winter. I think it was the Women's Institute in the area which encouraged people to knit mittens for the North Sea trawlermen. My Grandfather and I took this up with help from my Grandmother and Mother and I produced 8 or 9 pairs of mittens and eventually graduated to socks. My Grandfather established some sort of record with his knitting and received an official commendation.
A few weeks after the birth of our youngest brother, my Mother went back to Wimbledon as there had been no air raids and the war was very quiet. My other brother and I were left at Didlington to avoid another change of school especially as I had to take the so-called Scholarship exams that summer.
Despite the fall of France and the very real prospect of a German invasion, we returned to Wimbledon, sometime in late June. I imagine it was a relief for our grandparents as they were 72 and 64 and it can't have been easy for them to look after us for that length of time. A large number of children evacuated in September 1939 had drifted back to London by the summer of 1940 .Many of my school mates from Wimbledon Park had been evacuated to Arundel in Sussex and it was probably as well that they had returned as much of the Battle of Britain was fought over Kent and East Sussex.
Before the new school year started (around the beginning of September), my new secondary School (Rutlish, of later John Major fame) was hit by a German bomb but only a small area was damaged and school started on time. This was the time of the Battle of Britain and we were frequently in the air raid shelters. At school these were brick constructions with thick concrete roofs set in the school yards. At home we had an Anderson shelter named after the Home Secretary of the Chamberlain government. This was like an igloo made of heavy corrugated iron though the floor shape was rectangular. It was intended to be half sunk in the ground. My Father excavated where our rockery had been and replaced the rockery on top to provide extra protection to the roof. Many people covered the roof with sand bags. He also built a sort of porch on ours to stop the rain coming in when the door was opened. Soon night bombing started so he made bunks for us in the shelter and we just went to bed there. My parents were very strict about our being in the shelter during air raids but I remember the day Croydon aerodrome was attacked and my father took me up to the top balcony of the block of flats close to our house to watch the dogfights over Croydon. In fact all I saw were a few black and silver dots milling around as it was all happening 7 or 8 miles away .
We soon learned to judge how close the raids were to us from the sound of the anti- aircraft guns. A particularly noisy one was mounted on a railway truck and used to move along the line which ran about 80 metres from our house.
The intensity of the night bombing increased through September and October. Locally a public air raid shelter received a direct hit causing many casualties. In October the government organised another evacuation. Although my brother and I were now at different schools it was customary for siblings to be evacuated together so one morning we found ourselves on a railway platform (probably at Wimbledon but I'm not sure) with hundreds of other children. On our backs were small khaki-coloured rucksacks which my Mother had made for us and hung round our necks were our gas masks and a name tag. I can't remember whether we had any other luggage but later when travelling from our place of evacuation to my grandparents in Norfolk I certainly remember struggling with a (to me) large suitcase across Peterborough en route from one station to another.
Neither we nor our parents had any idea where we were going but my Mother had given me a stamped, addressed postcard to be sent as soon as we had our new address. Sometime that afternoon we arrived at a small station and were told to leave the train. There were probably 15 to 20 of us but only one other Rutlish cap to be seen. I didn't know the boy ,who was about three years older than I was. He also had a small brother in tow. A party of ladies, some in WVS uniforms, greeted us and gradually, one by one, the children disappeared. We and the other pair seemed to be the last to be selected but eventually someone said they would have us and we were taken off .
Our foster home was with a teacher and his wife in Glapthorn road, Oundle, Northants. The husband taught German and I think, French, at the Oundle public school. The house seemed quite large and we had a bedroom on the ground floor in a sort of extension which also contained a bathroom. The family had a small daughter about 2 years old who was looked after by a nanny. We and the daughter always ate in the kitchen supervised by the nanny and rarely saw the parents. We never ate with them and never went into their sitting room.It was very different from the loving family surroundings we were used to and I'm sure my 6 year old brother was pretty unhappy. We weren't treated badly by them apart from one occasion when the mother beat my brother with the handle of the bathroom brush because he hadn't cleaned the bath properly. Thereafter I had to make sure it was cleaned. It was during this period that the habit of writing home once a week was established and it remained with me until my mother died in1972.
My brother went to a local elementary school and I went to Laxton Grammar school which predated the public school but now shared some of the staff and facilities and had the same official headmaster . Having many of the advantages of the public school was a great plus in my parents' eyes and I think that was why they left me there for three years.
My Father came to visit us before Christmas (1940) and decided that my brother shouldn't stay. I can't remember whether he took him away there and then but he certainly didn't return after Christmas which we spent at Didlington. By this time my Mother and baby brother were living at Didlington again.
Whether it was just before or just after Christmas I can't be certain but the family I was billeted with were expecting another child and decided they couldn't cope with an evacuee as well. I was billeted temporarily with the manager of the local gasworks. This was a very kind and welcoming family and I was sorry the arrangement only lasted about three weeks. The house was lit with gas lamps which was a novelty for me. I remember being taught to play 'Bezique' by the family.
My next billet was in the centre of town with the manager of one of the main banks. The house was alongside and over the top of the bank with three stories so it was quite large. Close by was a large wooden ‘thermometer’ which recorded the town’s savings contributions towards paying for new Spitfires which I believe were reputed to cost £55,000 each.
This family treated me very well and despite a significant 'class' difference I was fairly happy with them. I was regarded as part of the family and received Christmas and birthday presents from them. They had three children, one already in the army, the second(17 in 1941) at the public school 'Blundell's' in Somerset and a daughter (about 13) who was at a boarding school a couple of hours journey from Oundle. I was given the 'boys' bedroom which had bunk beds and shared it with the second boy when he was at home. I got on well with him and looked up to him. I copied his habit of always washing in cold water in the morning and I still do. I can remember his scorn when he found that I wore my vest (woollen in winter) in bed and I immediately stopped ! He went into the RAF to train as a pilot whilst I was there and I can still see him flying over Oundle in a Tiger Moth and waggling the wings at the time he passed the first stage of training.
During the week I had my tea in the kitchen on my own or with the daughter if she was at home as the Laughtons had dinner in the evening but on Sundays we all ate together at midday. I only had two real complaints .One was that I had to use a bathroom on the top floor that was always freezing cold and the second was that I never had my butter ration and had to make do with margarine. For some reason it was decreed that the parents needed the butter - the children lost their ration too.
The bank manager was in charge of the local Observer Corps unit. These units were made up of civilians operating part-time who were trained in aircraft recognition. They manned posts all over the country and formed part of the air defence system. I was mad keen on aircraft and sometimes I was taken to the observer post. Eventually I passed the Air Spotter exam but was too young to join the corps.
I stayed with this family for two years except for school holidays when I went to my grandparents at Didlington. The journey there was an adventure for an 11/12 year old. Oundle station is some distance from the town and buses were few and far between so it was a struggle to get there with a largish suitcase. From there the train took me to Peterborough where there was another struggle with the suitcase as I had to change stations (about a mile apart) for the train to Brandon which is 9 miles from Didlington. The last bit was a great relief as I was driven in style by the Smiths' chauffeur.
During the Easter and summer holidays I worked on a farm on Didlington estate and received the special farmworker’s food ration which included extra cheese! Most of the work was pretty boring, singling sugar beet plants in the spring and hoeing out the weeds in the summer. However, harvesting the corn was much better. Mostly, it was stooking the sheaves dropped by the 'binder' but when a field was almost cut, there was the great fun of chasing the rabbits which had gathered in the centre. The farmer had a greyhound which caught most of them but I and the farmer's son usually got one or two. My weapon was one of my Grandfather’s walking sticks. Sometimes we were disappointed when men turned up with guns.
Sometime in 1941/42 the Army took over part of the Hall and estate as headquarters of Eastern Command and part of the 52nd (Lowland) division was stationed there in Nissen huts in the woods. My grandparents had a Major billeted with them. There was a Naafi hut and local people, including me occasionally, served chocolate and drinks in the evenings.
Overall, my time at Laxton school was fairly easy and enjoyable although in retrospect the education I received left much to be desired. For some reason the first form was called the third and I started there but after a couple of weeks I and another evacuee were promoted to the fourth form. This was good for the ego but bad because we were much younger than the rest of the form. The school was small with just four forms( 3rd., 4th., 5B, & 5A) and four or five 6th. formers who took all their lessons in the public school.The school plan was to get pupils to School Certificate (equivalent of "o" levels) in 8 subjects in 4 years and then for further subjects to be taken along with the chosen 'Higher Certificate' subjects in the public school. This was fine for pupils who stayed at Laxton but caused problems for those like me who changed schools .
Two of our teachers we understood to have been invalided out of the army with shell-shock. They were clearly disturbed , had no control of the classes and spent much of the time gazing out the window. I don't think it was coincidence that the two subjects (Physics & Applied Maths) I failed in my School Certificate were taught by one of these masters..
We had school six days a week and 'town ' boys had supervised 'prep' in the evenings except on Saturdays. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons were for compulsory games. Although we were associated with the public school we were very much second class citizens. We couldn't use their playing fields or games coaches and played soccer not rugger. We weren't part of the 'house' system and never played with or against them. As a consequence of this and the absence of most able-bodied teachers in the forces we had no coaching unless we were naturally good enough for the school team which the Laxton headmaster struggled manfully to help. The one concession we did have was one hour a week's use of the open air, unheated, swimming pool. Once the water temperature reached 52F we were expected to go swimming.
One exciting event for the small boys of Oundle was the arrival of the American Army setting up an air base near the village of Barnwell (I think). They seemed generous lot and for many years I cherished a baseball thrown to me from a passing truck.
Laxton school ran a small Scout troop which I joined and enjoyed very much. It was run by the English master who was quite young and had been invalided out of the forces but we never knew the reason. Under him a few of us became 'Firewatchers'. Once a month (I think) two of us plus the master spent the night in a room near the top of the highest building in Oundle and had there been an air raid warning we would have stood on the roof to watch out for fires. Of course there never was an air raid but it was fun for us to stay up late, play cards and drink cocoa. At the end of 1942 the bank manager and his wife decided they could no longer keep me (I never heard the reason) and I went back to the teacher and his wife.. There was a live in nanny to look after the two little girls and I resumed my life with them in the kitchen. To be fair I did have a reasonable bedroom to myself.I was well looked after but again saw almost nothing of the parents. I stayed with them until the summer of 1943 and then returned home to Wimbledon after taking the School certificate exams. I had failed Physics and Advanced Maths, the two subjects 'taught' by a shell-shocked teacher, but the remaining six subjects were enough to give me my 'Matriculation' which was essential for eventual entry to University.
I now went back to Rutlish school.I suppose I wasn't really happy with this first year back at Rutlish. I didn't know anyone there, all my class-mates were one to two years older than I and I was a small fish in a much bigger pond than at Laxton. Sport was a problem too because I'd missed the forms where one had general coaching and hadn't the natural talent to get into a school team without. Another problem for me was that my father refused to let me join the school Army Corps in which most of my class mates were active. My father’s expressed reason was that with Scouts and the Church Youth club which I Joined when I was 14, provided plenty to fill my time.
The consequence of all this was that I found my friends, recreation and sport largely through old Wimbledon Park contacts who either went to other schools or were two years behind me at Rutlish.
By the end of 1943 the tide of the war was gradually moving our way, at least in the west. There were very few air raids but on one occasion during that winter the Germans made a short but fierce night incendiary bomb raid on London during which a "stick" of bombs fell near us. Most of them fell harmlessly in the cemetery next door but one hit our wooden garage and set it on fire. We, apart from my father, were in our Anderson shelter in the garden and our main concern was for our dog who was in the garage with a litter of puppies. There was no car in it as petrol was only available for ‘essential purposes’ and my father had sold the Austin 7 for £11! My father was captain of the street 'fire-fighting team' and they held their practices in our garden because it was the largest in the street. This meant they knew where everything was and were able to tackle the blaze quickly and put it out without too much damage. My father had dived in at the beginning and thrown the box of puppies into the garden. I was very frustrated at being kept in the shelter and missing all the excitement. Apart from a hole in the garage roof the main damage was to our bikes. Father's was a write-off as it had a direct hit. My Mother and I lost our celluloid mudguards and saddle-bags and I had a jagged hole in the rim of my rear wheel caused by an anti-personnel bullet which fired out of the fin of that particular type of bomb. That was my trophy of war for several years - it didn't affect the running of the bike.
1944 was, of course, the year of the D-Day landings in Normandy and like many other boys I had a large map of the area on my bedroom wall and moved little flags on it as the battles progressed. However the more immediate event for us was the start of the 'Doodle -Bug' ( V1or Flying- bomb) attacks on London and the south-east of England early in the summer. I can remember the first day absolutely clearly as it was one of the two occasions during the war on which I was really frightened. It must have been a weekend as I was on Wimbledon Common with two friends when the sirens went . We didn't take much notice as there hadn't been a daylight raid for literally years and we thought it must be a false alarm. Then we heard a very odd aircraft engine noise and suddenly all hell was let loose. By this time London had enormous numbers of anti-aircraft gun and rocket batteries all over it, including a naval gun turret on the Common a few hundred yards from where we were. It seemed as though every gun and rocket in London was firing at this 'attacker' but the really frightening thing was the sound of the shrapnel from the spent anti-aircraft shells hissing through the air all round us. We dived into a ditch and lay there with our hands over our heads for what seemed ages. The strange engine noise became louder and then suddenly stopped. We looked up in time to see an odd looking plane dive into the ground a mile or so away with a huge explosion. We heard on the news that night that large numbers of people had been injured by shrapnel - many more than by the bomb. It was soon realised that it was no good trying to shoot the V1s down over London as they'd explode when they crashed anyway, so very rapidly all the moveable guns were taken to the south coast to try to catch them over the sea. The situation in London then seemed eerie when a V1 got through as we just had to listen for the engine to cut out and guess where it would crash and no-one could do anything about it. My second moment of terror was one evening when a friend and I were out on our bikes . We heard a doodle bug and set off towards the nearest public shelter. Just before we got there the engine cut and we were certain it was right overhead. We hurled ourselves through the door of the shelter on to the floor followed by a man with the same conviction. Fortunately for us the V1 fell about half a mile away and we were only shaken. Two V1s fell fairly near our house and both times we had cracked window panes and some roof tiles displaced.
Shortly after the second of these came my third evacuation and my brother Michael and I were once again shipped off to our grandparents who were now living at Abergavenny in Monmouthshire where the Smiths had rented a house following the total requisitioning of Didlington by the army in1943. (It had become the headquarters for the 2nd Army in the lead up to D-Day in Normandy). This gave us a three month summer holiday in idyllic surroundings and I was particularly pleased not to be with my class mates who were sitting in the school air raid shelters taking their School Certificate exams.
During the school summer holiday the Science block and junior form rooms at Rutlish were hit by a V1 and completely demolished and most of the windows in the rest of the school were blown out. There was no glass available to replace them and as a consequence we had to wear overcoats and gloves in the classrooms for much of the winter. We also had to share the science labs of the Technical School a few hundred yards away.
By this time the launching area for the V1s had been over run by our troops and the only danger to Londoners now was from the V2 rockets which arrived without warning and caused great devastation but were too few in number to have a serious effect on the population as a whole
The last wartime excitements were the VE day celebrations, especially the fireworks, though my personal memory of that day was dominated by a severe bicycle accident which nearly prevented my participation in any of the revelries.
My lasting impressions of the war are of exciting events. Even as fifteen year old in 1945, the horror of war didn’t strike home and none of our family or friends were bereaved or suffered serious injury.

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Pre-War

I was born in Melton Mowbray, a small market town now famous for pork pies and Stilton cheese, on the 19th August 1917. The Great War was in its last stages, leaving many families without fathers and sons. My father was an agricultural engineer and he spent his days going around the farms and great houses in the area mending farm machinery and servicing central heating installations in the large halls. Mother always stayed at home, she was a wonderful cook and as food was plentiful, we lived well. My brother was born two years later and a sister when I was ten. My father was always happy with his life but my mother was ambitious for us to improve our station.

The chance came in the form of my father’s sister, who had married a local builder and had two sons. Their business was doing well but in order to be really successful the expanding South was the place to be. By coincidence, as I was leaving school at the age of fifteen my Aunt was moving to London. Her condition for moving was that I became her companion and the daughter that she had always wanted.

In London I attended many social gatherings, tea dances and functions. To be seen in the right places meant contracts and they were coming in thick and fast.

We lived in Southfields and on a Saturday afternoon we would go to see the local team play football, Fulham. My best friend Betty, whom I’d met at a dance, invited me to her house and I was surprised to find that she lived next door to Joe Edelston who was a former Fulham player and was now in charge of the reserve team who seemed to be winning everything. He was one of the first coaches to gain qualifications and his methods were seen as too revolutionary in many quarters, but much more importantly he had three sons, all good looking and unattached!

I soon started going out with Joe, the eldest son. We had little money but when we did we would go to the local cinema to see the latest release. My favourite was Humphrey Bogart, “a real man”. At night we would listen to the radio to hear the latest play or short story. In summer we would go for long walks by the river and during the tennis tournament at Wimbledon we could always get in for free when the doors were opened in the afternoon. Life was always easy paced and gentle.

The big crisis pre-war was the abdication of the king. At the time everyone was confused as to what was really happening. When Edward finally gave up the throne, everyone was very sad and Mrs Simpson was the most hated woman around. The new king was seen as being weak and not groomed for the job, but everyone loved his wife. However, during the Blitz they really came into their own, touring the bombed out areas and talking to everyone they came into contact with.

I remember going past Croydon airport one day, on the runway were two large planes with black swastikas on them. The sight sent a shiver down my spine and made many of us fear for the future as we watched the growing emergence of the military power of Germany once again. It was no surprise to any of us when they marched into Poland, as no-one believed that Chamberlain and his piece of paper could halt the military machine that we had witnessed in action in Spain. On a brighter note just before the war started uncle bought a television, the first one in our road. Everyone came around to have a look at the new invention and the reception was really very good. However, when war started programmes finished, much to the annoyance of the family.

1939-1940

The winter of 1939-1940 was long, dark and very cold. Joe was one of the first to be called up as he worked for Shellmex and was an expert on petroleum. He was sent at once to France with the British Expeditionary Force and so began a long and anxious time. Prior to him going we had become engaged as so many of our friends had done. He wrote to say how cold it was and how ill prepared the troops were, not all of them had the proper equipment and some didn’t even have a gun, but they survived with the help of the local wine and goodwill.

Back home the criticism of the government had grown to alarming levels and it was a great relief to everyone when Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister. At last we had someone to look up to as a leader, a fighter who would never give in. In June Dunkirk was turned from a disaster into a national triumph as the troops were evacuated. Joe came home on a barge and was taken to Aldershot. It was a great relief when I got a call from him to say he was Okay. I was desperate to see him and got the train to Aldershot as soon as I could. He looked so well but he had changed, he was much harder and more worldly wise but after witnessing so many tragedies, I couldn’t expect anything else.

In August the bombs started to fall. Joe was posted to Swindon and because women were not allowed to stay overnight with their boyfriends, we decided to get married. I had to make all the arrangements and we were married in Wandsworth shortly afterwards. Joe’s unit was moved to Yorkshire and the lovely couple whom he was billeted with said I could go back and stay with them to be near him. Soon afterwards he was moved to just outside London at Hadlow Down and after moving back to the capital I would see him every Sunday.

At that time the Blitz was on and from dusk until dawn we would spend our time in the underground shelters. We would do our shopping in the daylight and hope that there was no air raid. We did our shopping in Clapham and how I admired the stallholders who carried on as normal even though they had been up all night because of the raids. On the bus you could see the bombed out ruins of houses and flats but somehow we never thought that a bomb would actually hit us. At night the noise was terrific with the sound of ante aircraft guns and the mighty explosions of bombs landing. Many times we put out incendiary bombs that had landed in the garden.

My luck was in when Joe’s unit was moved again, this time to Hatfield. He had met a lovely lady in the village who had been evacuated from Cardiff. She had a lovely house and needed help in looking after eight little girls who had been evacuated from London. One of the girls was only three and was totally bewildered after leaving the city. She became my special charge.

The Blitz was still on and on many nights we heard the planes on their way to bomb London. The country was a refuge for the girls and we would go for long walks in the woods that surrounded us. One day as we were walking I found a pheasant’s nest with eight eggs in it. It was a great temptation to take the eggs as we had no such luxuries but I let the pheasant have her babies and upheld the law of the countryside.

On the whole we were a happy lot and I was able to see Joe frequently. He would bring his army friends to see us and they always brought gifts of sweets and eggs, which were considered luxuries and strictly rationed. It was a sad day for everyone when the unit was moved once again to Dene Park in Horsham, a lovely place with abundant wildlife and a herd of deer. It didn’t take Joe long to find me a new billet close to him, with a family who had been evacuated from Portsmouth. They lived in a cottage on top of a hill with no bathroom, no running water and an outside toilet. If we wanted a wash we had to draw water from the well and heat it on the copper boiler. To do this we had to light a fire under the copper, which, at times, was much easier said than done. Washing day was always a Monday, which was easy, compared to keeping the deer off the washing line as they continually tried to eat the wet laundry.

Joe had a friend who asked if I could find some accommodation for his wife in the village. The people in the village were only too willing to help and from then on many wives would come down and stay for short breaks. The only problem the men had in getting here was petrol for their bikes. I don’t know how they did it or where the petrol came from, but the local pond was soon full of submerged petrol cans. At the back of everyone’s mind was the fact that the men would soon be going overseas and some of them would not return. Life at Dene Park was much easier than elsewhere as we had a plentiful supply of eggs, milk and cheese from the farms and game from the abundant wildlife, duck and rabbit.

The air raids continued and several German planes were brought down close to us. The dog fights in the sky above us were breathtaking. The spitfires seemed to be more mobile and faster than their foes but our admiration for the pilots was unlimited, they were the true heroes of the hour.

The winter soon came and brought with it short frosty days and long cold nights but we were tucked up in our cottage with warm log fires and time to ourselves and time to entertain the children with a game of cards. At Christmas the cottage was cut off by snow and it seemed that the war could not touch us, but always at the back of our minds was the thought of how much time we had left together. The family we stayed with had two children with whom we have stayed in touch to this day, exchanging letters and cards throughout the years. Sadly, their parents died many years ago but we have treasured memories of their kindness and friendship in our time of need.

1941

The war was going badly for Britain throughout the year with the Axis powers taking over most of Europe, Africa and the Far East. At home even Churchill was coming in for criticism. The Japanese took Hong Kong and Singapore, pushed into Burma and started to threaten India, my worst nightmare was coming true, Joe was going to fight in Burma.

At the start of the year I had wondered how long it would be before we would be separated and the thought of having a child and a bit of Joe forever had grown and grown. In the spring I knew that I was with child. The doctor advised me to move back to Melton Mowbray to be with my parents. Back at home I kept very well. My mother, who was still a young woman, was eligible for war work and had a job looking after the local doctor. This meant that I looked after the rest of the family. I was kept busy making clothes for the baby out of any piece of cloth I could get hold of. My father was kept very busy looking after all the farm machinery in the area. This of course meant many perks; a sack of potatoes, a sack of swedes, eggs, a rabbit, an old hen and if one of the farmers killed a pig, a bit of offal or even a roast. We had so little meat and many times the only ration was corned beef, so it was corned beef hash with plenty of vegetables. It is no surprise to anyone who lived through the war that nowadays they can’t abide the taste of corned beef.

At the end of 1941 there was a brief hint of better things as America came into the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbour and Germany invaded Russia, thus opening up another front.

I was eight years old at the outbreak of WW2. My father worked as a driver for a laundry in Merton and was in the Auxiliary Fire Service part time. Mum started some homework from P.B Cow of Mitcham, cutting out rubber grommets which I used to help in the evenings. It wasn’t long before I was evacuated to Eastbourne with my mother and my one year old sister. I cannot remember too much about that event apart from us all living in one room and my father visiting us occasionally from our flat in Streatham, London. Dad turned up on one visit with a huge cod over his shoulder to help out with the rations.

It wasn’t a very happy time in Eastbourne though. I can remember my mother often being in tears at the conditions we were living in, the three of us huddled together in that one tiny room near the sea. This, together with the shortage of food and mum missing dad coming home in the evenings soon made us return to London.

I stayed with my family in London during what is now known as the Battle of Britain, and watched the daily contrails of the dogfights over Croydon. Days then seemed to be always clear, with warm sunshine and blue skies and with the sound of the planes and gunfire overhead and in the far distance. All very exciting to a lad of ten and his gang members.
I remember helping dad to build the Anderson bomb shelter in the garden. A corrugated iron shelter, half buried in the ground and covered with earth. Dad seeded ours with grass and grew flowers on it and fitted a strong wooden door. It had a concrete floor with a hole in one corner so that the condensation could run away. Also an electric light on a long lead was run from the house to the shelter. I nearly electrocuted myself playing with the lamp on one occasion, it was only my mum's quick reaction that saved me. Mattresses and blankets served as our beds over wooden slats. Later on we had an indoor ‘table’ shelter with wire grills around the sides called the Morrison shelter. Our beds were permanently made up and we slept under this shelter during the blitz.

I was evacuated again to a small picturesque village called Bishops Hull in Somerset just outside of Taunton. All the new evacuee arrivals were ushered into the local village hall to be fostered to local families. I was exceedingly lucky to be fostered together with Charlie G from Tooting in London, a friend I had made on the journey from Paddington. We were billeted with the local builder Mr A and his wife who had a wonderful covered side entrance full of ladders and all sorts of interesting things to explore for kids of our age. I will always remember the hand grenade that was used to keep the back door open and the war games we used to play with it - it was not live of course. We had the occasional rumble of German aircraft at night and once found a live incendiary bomb on the front doorstep which soon had the local Wardens arriving to cover it with sandbags. I believe some planes just dropped their bombs anywhere.

Our days in the village with its cobbled pavements and the smell of fresh bread from the local bakery were always new and exciting. There was so much to do, it was all so new to us as we had never been in the countryside before. Climbing the huge oak tree in the field next to the bakery (it’s still there), go fishing down at the river where there always seemed to be a whirlpool that we were so frightened to go near. Running away from the cows in the field and the local farmer giving us rides on old snowball - a huge, to us, white cow. We once sampled a jug of cider that we found buried in a haystack. Although we searched, we never found it again! Many a time Charlie and I were in trouble at night. We shared a bed and were always laughing and making a noise until we were scolded and told to sleep.
The letter writing was somewhat of a chore in those days as we were always told to write home at least one evening a week.
Our school was just around the corner by an alleyway at the rear of the house. An old fashioned hand pump was in the alleyway. A small school hall that, in retrospect, was possibly a disused chapel. I can’t remember much about the schooling, but I can remember helping to whitewash the walls inside. I am sure I never learned too much there. I was also friends with Jack and Jill, brother and sister who lived next door at the local butchers. The butchers shop is also still there.
Those happy days came to an end when Mrs A, our fostermother, broke her ankle while playing football with us in the street. I was then fostered with somebody new and very soon asked to return home as I was sharing a bedroom with one of the elder sons who I didn’t like.

I came home in time for the blitz on London that was pretty frightening, although really exciting to us youngsters who didn’t realise the dangers. My father was now permanently in the London Fire Brigade or maybe it was the National Fire Service, and I seem to remember he was on duty most nights. He told me of walls collapsing around him in the docklands and of going round with an enamel bucket picking up body parts.
My uncle lived in the flat above us and worked on the railway as a shunter at Clapham Junction. He kept his bike in the front garden. I was in the Life Boys (a junior sea cadets) at that time and wore the hat with a saucepan lid underneath as protection! One night we were both at the front door seeing all that was going on, he in his tin helmet and me with my saucepan lid. Suddenly among all the noise, there was a loud clang as a big piece of shrapnel went straight through the spokes of his bike. He had to catch a bus to work the next few days until his bike was repaired.
I will always remember that I was up the top of my road in a friends house during one of the daylight raids. It appeared pretty quiet so I decided to go the several hundred yards to my house. I was halfway there when aircraft were heard, so I started running as bombs were whistling down. I managed to get the key, that was hanging from inside of the letterbox on a piece of string, and opened the door, threw myself on the floor of the passageway as I had been told to do in such circumstances, and the front door fell on top of me with the blast. I was unhurt, but the bombs destroyed several houses in the next street.
After the ‘all clears’ had sounded during the daytimes, we used to go out on our scooters shrapnel hunting. You got to be leader of the gang if you found a shell cap, but that was a rarity. The scooters and barrows we made ourselves out of wood collected from bombed sites. The wheels of the scooters were large ball races with a lump of wood hammered through the centre for an axle. The noise they made going along the road and pavements wouldn’t be allowed today. The pram wheels of the barrow or trolleys were also collected from the bombed sites - a great source for what is nowadays called do-it-yourself. There were often big fights over the collected spoils. The barrows had four wheels, a box to sit in, and were steered with a bit of string tied to the front wheels that were on a swivel.

I was then again evacuated. To South Wales this time. A mining village called Pentrebach near Merthyr. It seemed as if the war was far away and over. Us kids had great fun sliding down the slag-heaps on trays and getting covered in coal dust. I used to help the local milkman -Jones the milk of course - on the weekends putting the cardboard caps on the bottles of milk in the dairy. I think I was given tuppence for doing this. I confess here, that I stole rolls of these caps to share with my friends for a game at school where we flicked them up to a wall. The nearest to the wall kept all the other caps. Needless to say I always had plenty of stock!
On Sundays it was a local ‘hobby’ of the men of the village to go ratting. Either down the disused coalmine or the river. The rats were either shot or put in a ‘tram’ (a small wagon for carrying coal from the mine) and dogs were introduced for, what was called sport in those days. If it wasn’t ratting, then it was going up in the hills with friends to pick blueberries for a pie.
Schooling is not a thing I remember while in Wales, I was having too much fun. I do remember coming home from school and sitting down to a plateful of runner beans for dinner several times a week. Probably the reason that I don’t like them now.

As the blitz appeared to be over, I once more returned home to Streatham. The doodlebug raids started soon after. We watched them from the back garden flying past toward the centre of London. On occasion the engine would stop early and it would dive down and black smoke would appear a mile or so away. We were always ready to make a rush for the shelter when they appeared, sometimes with a spitfire chasing it.
I was sitting on the front wall at a friends house a few streets away one late afternoon when there was an almighty bang followed by a rushing roaring sound, and we all looked at each other wondering what it was. We were all used to the bangs during a raid, but there was no raid on at that time. The warnings were getting fewer. It turned out that it was the V2 rocket for which no warning could be given. It was much more powerful than the V1 doodlebug (or flying bomb). The V2 came from the stratosphere and travelled faster than sound. The roaring noise after the explosion was the sound it made coming through the air, a frightening noise. Although many V1s and V2s fell on London and caused a great deal of death and damage, I feel that I was fortunate to live on the outskirts of the City and in the suburbs.

The war in Europe came to an end soon afterwards with much celebration and street parties. Lots of food was found for these in spite of the rationing that went on for several years afterwards. Flags and bunting was brought out, even pianos were on the streets with lots of music and dancing. Soon afterwards, small prefabricated houses began to appear on what we called the bomb-dumps. We used to listen to the interesting stories the nightwatchman could tell of his war, while we were sitting around the fire that he lit in the ‘prefabs’.

After the Easter holiday in 1938 I began my second year at Ensham Central School in Tooting in South London. The need for a bicycle to get to the school from Streatham had given me the opportunity to widen my little world. One of my expeditions the year before had been to find out where the great biplanes of Imperial Airways landed. So I found Croydon Aerodrome, there in front of me was a square brick building that was the terminal and control tower all in one. On top of the tower was a radio mast, which made it look really modern and up to date. I rode my bike up to the side of the building where there was an iron fire escape up to the flat roof, so I climbed up, there being no one about to say no. Once on the roof I could see the whole grass field. The huge biplanes Horatius and Scylla were parked right up to the building and I could see the people working in the control tower. I returned many times. So that when at the end of September I sat by the wireless in our kitchen, listening to the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain speaking on his return from talks with Hitler, I felt part of the event as he was standing just below my roof top position. His words are now history, ‘I believe it is peace in our time’ he said waving a piece of paper. Foolish people have ever since said that he was guilty of appeasing the Dictator, but it was quite clear, even to a thirteen year old schoolboy like me that he had bought us much needed time to prepare our forces. I explained to my Mother just what the scene was like after the broadcast, forgetting that my visits to the aerodrome had been part of my private life. She was not pleased, how dare I go to such a dangerous place. The PM’s message was forgotten.
I began my third year at Ensham after Easter in 1939, during the first term I was elected by my classmates to be their representative in the school elocution competition, they thought that I spoke BBC very well! Preparations for a war went on quietly all around us. At my school our parents were summoned to an ‘important’ meeting about evacuation in the event of war and were asked to say if they agreed that their child should go. My father said no. On his return home he gave no reason for the decision, but I was very grateful. A few weeks later there was a full scale dress rehearsal of the future evacuees. They had to bring all of the things that they would take with them including any smaller brothers and sisters. The inspection took hours with the school playgrounds covered with six hundred excited pupils. We no-goes looked on in amusement.
People busied themselves learning Civil Defence, First Aid, gas masks were distributed, future air raid wardens going from house to house fitting the strange devices. Another group of people went from door to door registering the occupants and issuing identity cards, my card was number AXGB/122/3.
At the end of the term we broke up for the summer holidays. I put away my green school blazer with its gold Viking ship badge and went off for the last golden summer of my childhood.
It was a blazing hot summer and I enjoyed making an outdoor model railway track in the garden of a friend. Near the end of August I was invited to stay with some of my cousins at the seaside bungalow that an Aunt and Uncle had taken for the last month of the summer holidays. I think that the bungalow was in Rustington, anyway it was right on the South sea coast in a lovely little sleepy town. There was a nice sandy beach, a stretch of grass, then a road and on the other side their bungalow. Off I went on the Southern Electric train and the next few days on the beach in the sun were idyllic, time stood still, we had no wireless, no newspapers, but the suddenly a week had passed and it was Friday and my Uncle would be arriving for the weekend. We went over to the beach as usual in the morning, it was to be the last ‘usual’ that we were to experience for many years.
Time for lunch said my cousin Joyce and we gathered up our things and walked back to the road. When we got there we just stood and stared. Parked all along the road were red London buses and they were full of children. We stared at them and they stared at us. We’re being evacuated they shouted. But, we said, evacuation was only supposed to happen if there was a war. There’s going to be a war they shouted back. We ran back to the bungalow to give the news to my Aunt, but of course she knew and had telephoned my Uncle, they had decided that I was to go home. So next morning, Saturday 2nd September 1939, I was put on the train back to Streatham. It was a nice green liveried train of three carriages which stopped at every station before reaching Victoria in London. I got off at Streatham Common station, 10 minutes walk from home. There were only a few people on the train and I was the only passenger that got off. I walked out of the station, it was quite eerie there were no children and the road was strangely quiet. I walked along carrying my small suitcase and didn’t see anyone. I went through the little tunnel under the railway and along the wide path next to the allotments where there would normally have been a dozen children playing, still no one. A few more solitary minutes and I was home to find my Mother rushing about in a state of excitement, this always set the dog rushing about. It may have been quiet outside but it wasn’t at home.
There had been a great deal of advice for householders from the government about air raid precautions or ARP as it soon became commonly known. One suggestion was to apply adhesive paper tape diagonally across all the panes of glass in the windows of your house. This was the basic task of the day in our house and in that of our neighbours. Everyone kept running out of the sticky paper and I was kept busy going up to the shop at the top of the road to keep them supplied. The idea behind taping the glass was to try to prevent pieces of broken glass flying about if a bomb should explode nearby. We also had advice on how to protect ourselves if there should be a poison gas attack. The men of our little group of houses were busy making blanket covered frames to fit the kitchen windows. The idea being that if gas was dropped, someone ran out and drenched the blanket with water, thus keeping the gas out! Looking back I wonder if some of the advice sent out was more to keep people occupied than useful.
Although there was plenty of information available from the events of the Spanish Civil War and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia it was either ignored or wrongly applied. All the advice given out was based on the havoc wrought by short range dive bombers attacking small towns in Spain from nearby bases. London all 400 square miles of it and a long way from Germany was thankfully rather different. But everyone was happily employed all day and we all went to bed exhausted.

Sunday the 3rd of September was a brilliant day, Mr.Yarnold our next door neighbour, who was a warden of my church, told me that as so many people had gone away and that all of the choir except me had been evacuated, our church had closed and I should now go to the Parish Church, but I didn't on that day as we all just stood around the wireless waiting for news. There had been an announcement by the BBC earlier that the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain would speak to the Nation at noon. When after what seemed like an age, we heard his voice, it was to say that Britain had delivered an ultimatum to Germany at 9am that morning, they were to cease the invasion of Poland by ll.00am, or a state of war would exist between us. His thin quavering voice went on "I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received and that accordingly a state of war now exists between us." Just a year before I had stood in the same place before our wireless and heard him say on arriving back at Croydon Airport from his visit to Hitler, "I believe this is peace in our time." I believed then, and still do that he had worked so that we had the means to defend ourselves. Now here he was declaring war on Germany on behalf of a nation we could not possibly defend. With the knowledge of time it is interesting to note, that Poland was not restored to its pre-invasion boundaries at the end of the war. So the initial object of the hostilities was never achieved.
Within minutes of Chamberlain's words the air raid warning sirens started their stomach churning undulating wail, both our neighbouring families were in our kitchen, the men rushed about getting the antigas blanket screen up over the window and my mother rushed about all over the place blindly, with the other ladies trying to calm her down. Our dog Scamp, ran all over the place bumping into everyone and everything, thankfully the all clear sounded after a little while. We were told later it was a false alert. I walked up the road after all this for some peace and quiet and to get more tape, halfway along the way I stopped abruptly, suppose we loose, no we can not possibly loose I assured myself. I'm glad that I did not know just how close we were to come to loosing and how soon. Monday brought more turmoil, my Mother declared that so much upset had been caused by the dog the day before, that he had to be `put down'. It never occurred to her that it was she who stirred him up and she was adamant. So my poor Father had to take the dog off to the vets. I should write that I am sorry to say that I caused quite a scene. But I'm still not. In the way that young boys', do I loved my dog, I had seen him born, helping his mother when she was uncertain how to break the bag that he was in, we played for hours together once he was grown. I just stayed in my room rejecting all blandishments, doing nothing for several days, until I realised that I could not bring him back, but I made up my mind that `when I grew up' I would not use a pet as a possession.
Once we were at war a transformation took place in daily life. Everyone you met had a brown box hanging from a shoulder on a piece of cord. This held their gas mask. Such was the danger of a poison gas attack, we were told, we were never to be without our gas masks, as such an event, we were solemnly instructed, could happen at any time. The tops of pillar boxes had been coated with a greeny paint, which, so we were told, would turn red if there was poison gas about. Small comfort if you did not live near a post box and as we were used to seeing red tops on pillar boxes not likely to be noticed anyway. Soon the shops were filled with covers of all types and prices to embellish your gas mask box. Later as the boxes and their covers fell apart more sturdy containers were on sale. I acquired a metal cylinder, which was much more practical.
The mask itself was an unpleasant thing, a small metal cylinder that contained the material alleged to filter out the poison gas, to which was attached a thin sheet rubber face mask, within which was a celluloid sheet vision panel. The contraption was held onto your head by a rubber harness. As you breathed in air came through the filter but, when you breathed out it had to be with sufficient puff so as to move the rubber sheet next to your cheeks, away from your face. There was no other air exit. There were also Mickey Mouse gas masks for small children, all enveloping bags with a small air pump, to be worked by their mothers, for babies, ARP Wardens had a stronger version in a canvas sack and soldiers had a totally different arrangement that allegedly allowed running and jumping about. The gas mask industry really excelled itself, quite a feat really when no one was going to use the repulsive things
Cars at first took on a strange appearance, being required to have their front mudguards painted white and have light deflectors on their headlamp's and the reflector's within them painted black, which meant that they were useless. This did not matter because soon there was no petrol to be had. The papers carried long articles on how to lay up your car for the duration of the war. Little did owners know that it was to be at least Seven years before they could again use their cars. Traffic lights had masks that showed a semicircle of light during the day, by nightfall the beat policeman had flipped over the other part of the mask so that during darkness only a small cross of light showed. Very effective, I was amazed how brilliantly they shined out into the overall consuming blackness. A bit pointless really there wasn't any traffic.
Odd patches of ground all over London, almost overnight, became home to groups of earnest young ladies in WAAF uniforms. They had a Nissen hut to live in, beside which stood a trailer with about Thirty long gas cylinders with an octopus of tubes leading off to the object of their care, a barrage balloon. It sat within a circle of mooring points next to a firmly secured winch. The balloon itself was a smaller but plump version of the ill-fated airships of previous years. Made out of a silver coloured fabric it had built in fins at one end to keep it pointed into the wind. As they rode in place in the sky the wind blew in the rounded nose of the balloon giving the appearance of it having a face. There were hundreds of them over the whole built up area of the Capital and at an unheard command they all rose into the air, up and up until they looked like characterised children’s’ playthings. The object, of course, was to raise a barrier of wires and so force hostile aircraft to fly higher than they wanted to.
More secluded pieces of ground became home to a few anti-aircraft guns or a searchlight whose operators became very skilled at illuminating a marauding bomber. Later I often sneaked up into a freezing bedroom to view the night sky to see if the searchlights had found an aircraft. Their crews were in a very dangerous situation. They were the only people on the ground whose position was exactly defined to the bomb aimers. We were all keyed up for the promised air raids. Each night when I went to bed as I took off my clothes I laid them out carefully so that when the sirens howled I could dress quickly in the dark. I could not put the light on as we had no blackout screens or curtains in the bedrooms, my Mother declared that we could not afford them. We waited and waited but no air raids and everyone slowly fell back to their old routines. The ever vigilant ARP Wardens kept up their patrols of he streets and instead of the street traders cries there was a new one to be heard and obeyed `Put that light out'. The darkness was unbelievable, instead of a glowing sky over London there was just the moon. On moonless nights the blackness seemed to possess you. We soon learned the techniques that blind people use to protect us as we moved about.
Our cosy wireless programmes changed radically. There were no more broadcasts from France or Luxembourg and the BBC woke up from its slumber, no more National and Regional, but Home and Forces. Broadcasting now started at six in the morning and went on to eleven in the evening. Announcers and news readers were no longer anonymous, but named themselves at the start of each pronouncement. This, we were told, was so that the crafty Germans could be recognised if they broadcast imitation BBC programmes and as a great innovation, regional accents began to be heard coming from our loudspeakers.
The summer spread from September into October, I had no school to go to and no friends to play with. Although, fed up with my moaning my Mother had agreed that I could accept an offer from the greengrocers of a dog, a young black and tan terrier named Dusty. I busied myself model making and reading and in sign of a future life, I measured our house and made drawings of it. The middle of October was my fourteenth birthday and I became one of the last generation to be subjected to a strange ritual. Most schoolboys of my day wore a school blazer on top of a grey shirt, grey flannel short trousers, long wrinkled down grey socks and scrubby black shoes. Oh yes and a school tie, a stripy thing of basic colours. But, on your fourteenth birthday and thereafter you wore long grey flannel trousers.
During the first week of October I was taken by my Father to Gamages, a shop in High Holborn that seemed to sell everything. We went upstairs to the men's department, it was completely panelled in mahogany and the atmosphere was like being in church. I was put into and out of several pairs of trousers while my father and the tailor discussed the problem of fitting me, while allowing for my future growth, in sepulchral tones. At last they were satisfied and we carried off the carefully wrapped box containing the important garment. Once home, I had to go through the fitting process again for my Mothers benefit. This all successfully achieved I thought that was it. Not at all, you take those trousers off and hang them up, there are still 10 days before your birthday, on with the shorts! My 14th birthday came and went, I can't remember it at all, so I suppose the change into long trousers came as an anti-climax.