High Explosive Bomb at Hazelwood Road

From WW2 I have hundreds of memories. In many cases the adults were distressed but growing up with war, many children accepted much of it as normal. People’s experiences depend so much upon where they were.
Born in February 1936 I have just a few pre-war memories from 1939. One is of a sunny lunchtime in our Walthamstow (London E.17) house, another is of our Anderson air-raid shelter being constructed at the end of the garden (most winters it needed baling as it would get several inches of water in it, being deeper than the adjacent sportsfield ditch).
A great trench was dug by steam shovel across the middle of that neighbouring sports field (and through our local Epping Forest) as defence works. Concrete blocks about a metre cube were prepared where the trenches met the main roads, ready to be moved into position and block the road if we were attacked. For the next 10 years us kids loved to play on/around the blocks and the spoil heaps lining the muddy trenches.

In 1940 my father’s employer moved from Smithfield to Brasted near Sevenoaks (Kent) where I started school. With the call-up of most male teachers, my huge class was for 4~7 and the other class was for 8~11.
While there, I knew of the rationing, so one day while my mother was shopping I picked, then boiled buttercups on the kitchen range hoping to make butter.
My mother went to First Aid classes and I was used as a child subject for bandaging. One spring day we walked up our lane to the top of Toy’s Hill to see the remains of a German plane shot down the previous night.
Our cottage was on a hillside so when the warehouses near to Tower Bridge were badly blitzed one night, we all stood in the garden to see the big red flickering glow.

Quite a few times in 1940 we travelled back to Walthamstow and I particularly remember several times walking from London Bridge station to Liverpool Street station after a previous night’s bombing. On one occasion we were allowed to walk along Gracechurch St. while the buildings on the other side of the street were on fire and the firemen using their hoses. Other times we had longer diversions to avoid fires or buildings in a dangerous state (some remained propped up till the 1950’s).
Platforms carrying pumps were built around the piers of some bridges so as to pump Thames-water into the city via cast iron mains in the gutter or on the pavement (or both). Where the mains were in parallel and pedestrians needed to cross them there were wooden boards across. Branching off the mains were lots of hoses.

When dad had been called-up, mum and I returned to our Walthamstow house There were about 45~50 in my class and my school held about 600 on three floors but the air-raid shelters weren’t ready. If the air-raid sirens went during school hours we would all squeeze into the cloakrooms and onto the staircases to avoid any flying glass from a blast as there were only tiny slit windows there.
My teacher’s mother had gone to the window in the middle of the night to look at the searchlights, but died from lacerations when a bomb fell nearby.
Many buses had blast netting on their windows and some had blackout curtains.
Some double-decker buses had a bag on top containing gas as fuel instead of petrol and others pulled a little trailer for their gas.

When paper became short at school, many of us took our 4 page (1 sheet) newspaper to school and wrote our sums and spelling tests in the margins. The papers were then gathered up and some went to the local fish shop for him to wrap his customers fish in, while the rest was torn into squares and issued by teacher from a cupboard if you needed to use the toilet.
Quite often while in the playground we saw fighter aircraft in dogfights at altitude weaving condensation trails. The alert seemed to go only if there was a risk of bombs.
By 1944 we often saw squadrons of 27 allied bombers heading for Europe. Sometimes 5, 10 or even 20+ squadrons would fly eastwards in succession presumably navigating by the white concrete of our local North Circular Road (A406) and then the Southend Road and the railway to Harwich much as the airliners heading for Heathrow still do (in reverse) in 2003.
(Not built with tarmac as concrete gave employment in the early 1930’s depression.)

There were about 6 phones in our street of 56 houses. One day in 1940 a neighbour came to say my dad had phoned her that he was moving camp and would be at Kings Cross station till 2 pm. Mum got us there in time and found the special train loading about a thousand men. She asked a corporal at the gate and the word was rapidly passed up the platform that AC2 Wakefield’s wife was at the gate and he was allowed to come and speak to us.
In early 1941 we got away from the bombing for a week to see dad in training at Bridlington. I remember Flamborough Head and the passing convoys of colliers and steamers hugging the coast.

In January 1942 the bombing got mum down again so we went for a break to Helston (Cornwall) and took the bus which was full of airmen to Mullion. Mum got plenty of attention as the only woman and I was passed from father to father to briefly sit on their knees as they were missing their own children. Mullion Cove and the Lizard Point featured in many of my school compositions thereafter.
A similar scare later in 1942 took us to Bath unannounced. While mum went to contact dad that we had come and to find overnight accommodation, she told a porter what was happening and left me for a couple of hours with our suitcase (and a luggage label on me) by the water crane on the platform where the London to Bristol trains would stop to refill. Most of the engine crews spoke to me. You wouldn’t leave a 6 year old like that now !

One winters night in 1942 the bombing was worse so mum and I went to the communal shelter at the end of our street. Only families without husbands were there. One lady realised that she had slammed her front door without her keys being in her handbag so, during a lull in the bombing at about 4 am, I ( as the oldest male) and the ladies 2 daughters (all of us under 10) were sent to see whether their back door was unlocked. It wasn’t, but a fanlight was open so the girls pushed me through to get the keys off the sideboard and bring them out via the front door.

As our Anderson shelter was so often wet we mostly sheltered in the small cupboard under our stairs. We could just squeeze in 4. (1930’s houses used substantial timber.)
On rare occasions with daylight raids, passers-by would shelter with us, e.g. our milkman, leaving his handcart outside (he had a struggle to push it up the local hill).
If we went by tube in the evening, then in some central London tube stations you would have perhaps only 3 feet of platform edge to walk on, the rest being occupied by scores of families in sleeping bags or blankets on the platform. Sometimes you had to step over a persons legs or belongings. Some stations had bunks 2 high lining the wall. It was very good-natured. Pushing would have been so dangerous !
If we were caught out in an air raid in the evening I would be fascinated by the searchlights scanning the sky as we walked through the blacked out streets. Even the cars had their headlights covered with only a 4x2 cm slit (and a 1.5 cm shield above).
Sometimes the searchlights would latch onto a German aircraft, then the guns in our neighbouring sports field would fire. One day I had to hand in my collection of shrapnel (supposedly to help the war effort by recycling, but perhaps because of my blisters from the phosphorous on the tracer bullet remnants).
Tilers were often needed in our street because so much shrapnel was falling, breaking the rooftiles and then the rain would get in and damage ceilings, etc..

Around town, bomb damage was common. Perhaps 2 houses in a terrace gone but bits of a bedroom hanging there on an adjoining wall. In one case an upright piano up there on a small piece of bedroom floor. Blast would blow out shop windows so they would be boarded up and they continued to trade, often by a single lamp bulb
Our nearest bomb obliterated the tennis court at the end of the street, so it was turned into an allotment garden. We dug up part of our garden so as to grow vegetables. Our fox terrier had to be put down in 1940 because there was insufficient food and he was upset by the noise of guns and bombs.

Letters from dad meant so much, especially with his sketches of his colleagues. Sometimes he sent a biscuit tin of blackberries, etc. picked from around his camp.

By 1944 convoys of troops and equipment mostly eastbound along our narrow North Circular Road passed almost hourly and some took a rest on the ground allocated for the second carriageway. Local ladies would offer up tea etc. to the lads. I remember seeing a convoy of tanks move off while the lads were pouring their tea, they handed the teapot to another lady up the road who brought it back to it’s owner. With rationing, I don’t know where they got so much tea from. There was so much goodwill, especially to those who were travelling.

The doodlebugs started in 1944, often coming without the air-raid siren sounding. Their chug-chug was alarming but while they chugged they were not falling. The terror was if their motor stopped before they had passed over you, then you waited what seemed ages for the bang. Again, the adults were more worried than us kids.
I only heard two V2’s. Falling from up to 70 miles above they were supersonic, so first you heard the bang and then you heard the approaching scream getting fainter, then you knew that you had survived ! Out one day, one fell a quarter mile away.

Late 1944 we moved to Bretforton in the Vale of Evesham (Worcestershire) and then Badsey village bakery before moving into the servants half of a 14th century manor house that hadn’t been occupied since it held German prisoners of war in 1919. The dark solitary confinement cell was upstairs with the regulations in german. The kitchen was stone flagged and some 40 x 15 feet while the door key was iron and weighed almost a kilo. It was unheated so we lived in the buttery (lined with copper to keep out the mice we were told). Sanitation was a bucket.
3 feet outside the back door was a wooden cover over a 4 foot diameter well.
The farmer in the main house once moved his large table to show dad’s colleagues a large slab that tilted and a tunnel below that went out under the orchard.
The villagers still talked about the one bomb that had fallen in fields 3 miles away a couple of years earlier.
The day we moved there, while my mother looked after my newly born handicapped sister, I was sent 3 miles to the butcher in the next village (past an airfield) with our ration books to sign on with him and bring back some meat to cook. Would you ask an 8 year old these days.

One day in 1944 while walking home from school, I met an American sergeant, the first negro that I had seen. He shared his packet of chips with me while showing me some pictures of his own wife and kids back home in the USA.
At Xmas 1944 many local children were taken by Air Force lorries to a party in Evesham Town Hall where we were given toys (mostly of wood and painted with aircraft dope) made by the servicemen at various local camps.

After D-day I learnt my geography of Europe by putting a map out of the Daily Mail onto the wall and inserting pins joined by wool to show the state of advance as it was reported on the radio. Pathe-News at the cinema supplemented newspaper reports.

I helped pick fruit in a market garden in 1945 and went with the horse and cart to the local single siding alongside the London to Worcester line and helped load the wagon.
On VE-day everybody celebrated, especially the Canadian airmen (who had a giant bonfire of unwanted aircraft bits).
By VJ-day we were back in London. I had attended 7 schools between 1940 and 1945.
Most classes I had been in had over 40 pupils (two had 70+ with the walls folded back) and some classes spanned several years. One school had a lady teacher for the beginners and a man for a huge class of up to school leaving age.
Teachers were mostly women and with the class sizes, were friendly but strict and were backed by parents. A slap, hands on head, stand outside, lines, ruler or cane depending upon the offence. Once I couldn’t hold a spoon at table for 2 days.
Teachers often selected the abler pupils to assist those finding a subject difficult. I was o.k. at reading and arithmetic but useless at crop rotation and recognising plants, i.e. what was taught to 8 year olds varied around the country.

In 1946 my father was demobbed. He found a way into the Mall for us for the Victory Parade. The crowd was thick, but as usual us children were passed to the front (some over peoples heads) and sat in front of the policemen. Afterwards the crowd helped us to rejoin our parents. It was a memorable view of the service contingents and those on the Reviewing Stand including King George VI, Winston Churchill and General Montgomery.
So, as I started out by saying, for a child it was a fascinating time if sometimes scary, but for the adults there was so much worry, fear, suffering and loss of possessions and loved ones. An uncle’s ammunition convoy blew to bits.

I was born in Prince Regent Lane, London E16 in 1933. My father, William Johns, managed a small grocery shop with my mother Olive assisting him and we lived over the premises. It was about half a mile from the Victoria and Albert docks and this was to have profound consequences when war was declared in 1939.

Things began to hot up in the autumn of 1940 when the Luftwaffe began their raids on London. The docks were a prime target and every night the family took refuge in the Anderson shelter in the garden behind the shop. Though only six-and-a-half at the time, I can clearly remember the nightly fall of bombs close by. One night in particular was different when a new explosive sound punctuated the crash of the bombs and the banging of the anti-aircraft guns sited in the recreation ground just up the road. An almighty barrage of a different nature made us wonder what was happening. The next day we learned that HMS Cossack had been moored in the docks and had contributed its gunfire to the assault on the enemy bombers. This was a tremendous morale booster to everyone.

As the Blitz reached its heights in September, it got too hot in West Ham and my father decided to move us to my aunt Rose's house in Aveling Park Road, Walthamstow. Even this got rather fraught after a while and the two families decided to pack suitcases and get out of London. They had no real idea of destination, but the men decided to get tickets from Euston and go to Bletchley. Why they decided this I do not know.

Suffice to say, we ended up at Bletchley railway station and my father, my Uncle Ernie Young and his teenage son Ken walked off down the road to find somewhere for us to stay. We were refugees in the truest sense. Finally, after a very long time, the men returned and told us they had found an old couple in Fenny Stratford who would give us lodging for a few days.

A long walk ensued and we finally reached the home of Bill Busler and his wife. The 'few days' extended to a couple of years for my family (my uncle and family returned to Walthamstow when the Blitz quietened down). My father commuted to the business in West Ham coming home at weekends, only to find one Monday morning that the shop had received a direct hit the night before.

My sisters were called up for war work. Marjorie, the eldest, ended up at the famous Bletchley Park working with the code-breakers whilst Eileen, my younger sister, joined the ATS and was stationed at the RAOC depot at Bicester.

Our war culminated in a most amazing coincidence. Marjorie's husband, George Alexander, was a Bombardier in the Royal Artillery serving for a time in Iceland. As D-Day approached his unit was billeted in the old West Ham speedway stadium just across the road from dad's shop.

One of George's officers, a Lieutenant Pepper, happened to say that he was short of cash and needed to cash a cheque. Although the stadium was sealed off, officers were allowed out at this time and George said to him 'I can help you there'.

He suggested he visit the shop at the top of the road and say to the shopkeeper (my father) that George had sent him. The cheque was duly cashed and dad told the glad tidings to Marjorie. Despite tight security George managed to wangle a pass out of the stadium for a brief but emotional reunion with Marjorie.

Not long after, the unit embarked at the docks for their journey to Normandy a few days after D-Day, landing at Arromanches Gold Beach.

I was born in Navarino Road, Hackney, in 1929 and my first home was in Clifden Road, Homerton, where we lived until 1933. Then we moved to Firsby Road, Stamford Hill, where I was attending Northwold Road School, Stoke Newington in 1939.

The day before war was declared I was evacuated. There we all were in a crocodile clutching our cases and as we walked to the station, I saw Mum crying, frantically looking for me to say goodbye. The first time I had ever seen her cry and I was desolated. Goodness knows how long the train journey took from Upper Clapton Station or how we got from there to Old Warden in Bedfordshire

Then started the worst seven weeks of my life. Somehow or other, I finished up with
about twelve others from another class, none of whom I knew and they were all very
tough. We were billeted on the Lady of the Manor, Lady Shuttleworth. Sounded fine
but it wasn't. We were in dormitories and it could not have been more wrong for me - the first time away from home, apart from having my tonsils out in hospital. I still
shudder to think of the dinners in the village hall. Stewed rabbit twice a week; rice
without milk which they cut with a knife and added some unsweetened prunes. The
only good meal was sausages with delicious gravy. The village school was good and I soon became a member of the church choir, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Mum and Dad used to travel by coach every Sunday but had to walk a couple of miles to get to Old Warden. However, most fortunately I caught mumps after seven weeks and had to come home. I remember I had a bed down in the dining room and although the
mumps were painful, it was worth it to be home again.

Then it was a problem finding a school. The only one still operating was St Thomas's in Upper Clapton. But there were so many children wanting to go to it and so few teachers that I only went for an hour a day to start with. Then it was a day a week and increased from there. Despite that, I was one of the three who passed the Junior County Scholarship, having taken the exam at Millfield Road School in Lower Clapton.

So was I to be evacuated again? Fortunately not, because I was one of the lucky six
who got a place at Mercers' School, and whilst Mercers' was evacuated to Horsham, in September 1940 they decided to start operating from Holborn again as well, and that's where I joined them.

With the bombing, the journey to and from Holborn on the 643 trolleybus was quite
hazardous, so in the early days my mother took me to and from Holborn on the bus.
On one occasion, the 643 could not get through to Holborn so we took a bus to
Moorgate and walked through to Holborn from there. Fires were still burning and
there were firemen’s hoses everywhere. Another time, as I came out of school, the
sirens went, so we dived down into Chancery Lane Tube Station but had to get on a
train as they closed the station. So we returned home via the Central and Piccadilly lines to Manor House Station and took a 653 trolleybus home from there.

Around that time, nightly air raids began. So each night was spent in one of our cellars
in our basement, with me on a camp bed and Mum and Dad sleeping in deck chairs.
Later on we had a Morrison shelter in the basement and decided to stay in our beds
until the sirens sounded, when we came down the stairs carrying pillows and got under
the shelter until the all clear. It became such a routine that, on a couple of occasions, I
was found sleep walking with pillows under my arm at the bottom of the stairs.
When the bombs fell we used to count "one two, three ..." because I believe after a
certain number, it couldn't be you who was hit, so you were waiting for the bomb to
strike. Several times we had our windows blown in. One night an incendiary fell in
our front garden and Dad was busy dealing with that when a neighbour told us there
was another one in our back garden so we all had to dash there and put that out too.
The biggest fear was one on the roof.
Then there was one night we heard shushing which meant there was a landmine
coming down. In fact there were two falling on Clapton Common. One destroyed St
Thomas's Church and opposite a number of shops in Old Hill Street were destroyed
and about ten people were killed including our butcher Mr Bosley.
Immediately the vicar of St Thomas's, Father Dachtler, where I was a regular attender,
started the New Church Fund, and services moved to St Thomas's Hall, next door to
the Swan public house. Sometimes there was an ack-ack gun on the forecourt of the
Swan and throughout the War there was a barrage balloon on Clapton Common.
Because of the bombing, people were firewatching at home and work. Dad used to
firewatch once a week with two other Firsby Road residents, each of them, I think,
doing two hour shifts between midnight and 6am. However, in addition, he also had to firewatch at his factory in Hertford Road behind Kingsland Road Hospital once a week too. Whether they got a chance to sleep or whether they kept watch all night I am not sure. Whilst before the War, Dad made and repaired gas meters, during the War he was making fuel tanks for aircraft.

Other memories of air raid precautions were always carrying a gas mask wherever we
went, the blackout when, as there were no street lights, everybody needed a torch, and
vehicles had masked headlights and all homes had blackout curtains over all windows
so no light escaped. Even interior bus lights were put out when there was a purple
warning, when a raid was expected but was the stage before the siren actually went.
Later in the War, flying bombs, which we called doodlebugs appeared. You could see
them quite clearly, and when the engine cut out, they dived to earth and you dived for
cover. Later the V2 rockets took their place, but as they were completely silent you
received no warning. In the Summer of 1944, during morning school break, one fell
on Smithfield Market killing many people and showering us with glass in our Holborn
playground. The Headmaster decided to close the school for the rest of that term, and just brought in one class at a time to take exams in the shelter.

One enjoyable feature of the war time summers was going to school harvest camp for a month to Minster Lovell each year between 1943-1945. Quite a new experience and hard work too. In 1945, when the end of the war with Japan was announced several of us hitchhiked to London for two days to join in the VJ Day celebrations. Another school activity was being a member of the Honourable Artillery Company cadet force which met in Armoury House, City Road. That really was most enjoyable because you really felt you were contributing something to the War. Besides the military activities, we used to play football and cricket against local teams and also marched in the Lord Mayor's Show and took part in the Remembrance Day services at St Paul's Cathedral.

Of course, rationing was with us throughout the War and even continued into the first half of the 1950's. To help our food supply, Dad used to keep six chickens which ensured we were well supplied with eggs but I was not that amused trudging home from Stoke Newington High Street with a heavy bag of chicken balancer meal. Normally we did not eat many sweets, but because food was so short generally, we made sure we had our full sweet ration and there was always great excitement every Friday night to see what Dad had bought at the sweet shop. Two ounces of butter, a similar amount of cheese and ten pennyworth of meat a week really had to be stretched. Cooking and heating were difficult too, because due to the bombing, electricity, gas and water supplies were often cut off. Paraffin heaters were a real boon for cooking and heating but getting the oil was not easy.

How wonderful it was when the lights came on again and the blackout curtains came down. I remember celebrating VE Day in the West End with boys from school. It had been a long war!

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Justine Warwick and has been added to the site with the full permission of the author. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I was born on the 29th May 1930 and was brought up in North East London as an only child. On the First of September 1939, two days before war, I was evacuated to Bedfordshire. Our school was shut and parents had received a letter to say they had to send me away if they wanted me to get an education. So there I was with my suitcase and label! Off we went, through the recreation ground, and much to my surprise there were all the mothers, lined up to wave us goodbye. We went from the local train station to one of the London termii. I don’t know which one it was, but I do know we were on the train a long time! My parents had been told to provide us with food for journey, and I remember that one of the things they were told to give us was dried fruit — so we sat in the train eating raisons and sultans.

Round about tea-time we arrived at a station, which may have been Bedford, and were put on a bus. We were all very tired. We were taken to a small village called Farndish, and people were quickly dispersed, although not all in same village. Together with two girls in my class, we were taken into the care of a lovely childless couple. He was the village postman and they lived in a thatched cottage. There was an earth closest at the end of the garden — and because we were used to all the mod cons we thought it was dire! The lady gave us a postcard to write a message on to our parents and she wrote something to comfort them too.

They put the three of us in a huge bed in the attic. The first night though we just could not get to sleep — we were very over tired and excited. The lady of the house had pointed out that there was a wooden commode so we didn’t have to go out in the night. When we couldn’t get to sleep though she sent her husband in to talk to us. We eventually settled down. On the Saturday we wandered around the village and in the field across the road we watched the shepherd counting his sheep.

On the Sunday the man of the house had us all in the living room. He had the radio on told us to be quiet as we were going to hear about whether we were at war. We heard Neville Chamberlaine telling the nation about we were at war. I didn’t really know what it meant I suppose, I just knew it was something serious. For a few days we had lessons (our own teachers were with us) and they were given in the kitchen of the big house of the village. But then they told us we were going to a school and we had to walk. It seemed like miles and it probably was. It was September as well so it was starting to get cold and wet. I remember that that was the first time I realised that people in authority were capable of plane speaking. I came from Walthamstow, and one day before we went to the school, I heard someone say “That Education Officer from Walthamstow is a bloody fool”. I was nine.

I think for about three weeks we went to this school and then they realised it was too far for us to walk in winter. They couldn’t find another school nearby so they moved us to another village, not far away across the fields called Wymington. We were all assembled in the village hall and all the other children went off with somebody and was left sitting by myself — it was dreadful. I heard these two fellows saying “Oh she’ll make a nice companion for Mrs Rich”. Before long, Mr Rich came in with his bicycle. This couple had agreed to take an evacuee but the lady was not very well so we had to wait for her husband to come. I remember walking up the hill to their house with him pushing the bike. I discovered they were a lovely family and until earlier this year I got cards from their daughter. They had a daughter, Dorothy who was 23 and a son, Herbert who was 21. Dorothy had to share her bedroom with me. How kind. There were quite a lot of us in the village from my school.

Mr & Mrs Rich invited my parents for Christmas and gave up their room. Herbert had to give up his bed. Dorothy was a talented knitter and knitted me woollies.

At Easter nothing had been happening in London so more and more children had been going back. Because we had our own teacher with us and there were so few of us, we had a really good education and I did well in my 11+. But my mother was missing her only child, and not in good health so my father came for me in the Easter of 1940. Later that year that was when the blitz started.

We had an Anderson shelter and slept in it most nights. But when the two nearest bombs came we were in the house asleep — I think we were all unwell with flu.

The war just seems like a long succession of bombs, rationing, and bad news. A couple of lads from our street were killed in service.

I can remember going to school after air raids. Where the houses had been destroyed there was plaster in the road and we used to use it to mark out hopscotch grids. There were some very big bomb sites.

After I’d taken my 11+, I had to go to a school that was the other end of the borough called The William Morris School, for two years. The one I should have gone to, George Gascoigne, had been damaged. The little girl that sat next to me was killed in an air raid and I imagine her family too. I think her name would be in the book in West Minster Abbey.

Then they patched out school up and I was very releaved. While we were there we had the doodglebugs and eventually the B2’s. The B2’s were the most frightening of the lot — suddenly out of nowhere there would be this enormous explosion and then several seconds later a noise would come like an express train — it was very odd. You would wait for the next noise of an explosion but of cause it had already happened as they travelled faster than the speed of sound.

Whilst we were at school during air raids, if there was still an air raid by the time we were due to leave school we could only go home if our parents or someone else’s took responsibility for us and took us home.

I remember things about the campaigns, about AlAlemain and Italy and obviously D-Day — John Snag of the BBC who announced the opening of the Second Front. And then there was Arnham which was a tragedy. I remember Richard Dimbleby going into Belson and the accounts on the radio. There were two magazines at that time — Illustrated and Picture Post I think. One had the first pictures of Belson. I remember my mother saying to my father that she didn’t think I ought to see it, but he was happy for me to.

The two occasions when the house was most damaged and one was where it wasn’t a terribly big bomb, but just around the corner from us a whole row of terraced houses disappeared. The other was further away between my grandma’s and mine - and it contained 2000lb’s of explosive and the whole of the crossroads disappeared. And I can still remember the furniture moving.

For all those years I have exchanged Christmas cards with Dorothy and this year I sent a card and didn’t get one back. But not long after I had a card from her nephews and they said that she died last year. She was well into her 80’s. They said she had always spoken of me affectionately and was very pleased to get my cards. A few years ago I went to my Great Nephews wedding. His mother lives in Northamptonshire and she took me to the two villages I had stayed in. The first one with the house with thatch roof now had a slate roof. And where we had watched the shepherd was now a housing estate.

The other one was very much the same. We didn’t call, but we did visit the school.

We were too young to understand,
Each battle fought, the bitter cost,
So many husbands, fathers, sons,
Before our innocence was lost.

The train from Tottenham Hale station took us to March, Cambridgeshire, where we were met at the station by some very nice WVS ladies who gave each of us a warm welcome, a packet of digestive biscuits, a bar of chocolate and a tin of corned beef to tide us over the weekend. Once again we were loaded onto coaches and paraded round endless council estates trying to offload us onto anyone willing to take us in. No-one seemed to want my sisters and me, either they didn't like the look of me or, being unwilling to separate, we were too much to take on. It was quite late in the evening when they managed to persuade a Mrs Saunders to have us ''just for the weekend, but they must be gone by Monday". I remember thinking "that's all right; we are going home on Monday". Poor lady, that night she put us to bed, all three of us in one bed and I, who had scoffed a whole packet of biscuits, a bar of chocolate and a tin of corned beef, was heartily sick over the bed clothes and just to cap it I wet the bed. Mrs Saunders was delighted when Monday came; that was the day the war started so there was no way we were going home, London was far too dangerous. I was getting a bit fed up with the whole thing by then until we were taken to our next home, 29 Peashill Road, where a wonderful lady named Rosetta Harley lived with her husband Ted. Mrs Harley was a lovely cuddly lady whose two daughters, Cynthia and Barbara had joined the WAAFs, a third daughter Dora lived round the corner with her husband Ernie so she had a spare room in her house and in her heart. She and I took to each other at first sight; I think she had always wanted a son and the sight of me, scruffy little urchin, must have re-awakened her maternal instincts. Then there was little Joan with her golden hair and Anne who was old enough to lighten the load. We were going to get along fine. Unfortunately, a few weeks later Joan was fretting for her mummy so, under the pretext to me that they were only going home for a few days so that Anne could go to the dentist, off they went. Oh the lies; they never came back and for the next four years I was on my own. On my first night without siblings I wet the bed, and in the morning I was mortified, desperately trying to dry the bed but of course it was hopeless, I lay there awaiting my fate, Mrs Harley would be furious, but no; all she said was "I think we had better get a rubber under sheet". It must have been traumatic because from then on I wet the bed with monotonous regularity, each time with the same sense of shame. Did I mention school? No? Well school was the most fun I'd had since arriving in March, on my first day all the evacuees formed a motley crew on one side of the playground while the local boys lined up opposite us calling out "cor blimey mate" while we retaliated with "moo, baaa, oink". Of course we all tired of this after a while and started to make friends. My favourite teacher was Mrs Powell, who tried to teach us to sing songs from 'Merry England' with spectacular lack of success. The line, 'which like the ever hungry sea howls round our isle,' in particular seemed to upset her. We kept singing' ahls rahnd ahr isle', then the local boys who couldn't help laughing, joined us, and it was our version which was sung at the school concert, much to Mrs Powell's disgust. Another source of entertainment was inventing new noises from our gas-masks, a treasure chest of rich, fruity raspberries, which went down a treat during assembly, when we had gas-mask drill, the head master had to shout to get us to stop, and for some reason he had me spotted as the ring-leader, but I have a feeling he didn't mind too much. The school was a mile or two from Peashill Road which I always walked with three local boys, Ted Hills, Brian Strickland and Michael Nottingham. Our route took us along West End, a narrow lane which ran alongside the River Nene so often we would do a spot of fishing with cotton and bent pins, sometimes we caught eels. In those days there were otters which we loved to watch playing, are they still there? I hope so. Before too long Mrs Harley introduced me to her church, Saint Mary's, I don't think I had ever been in a church before and I loved it, the church was so lovely and the hymns and psalms were the most beautiful music I had ever heard, quite a change from 'Cherry Blossom Lane'. I became a regular and soon I was asked if I would like to join the choir, well after the fiasco of 'Merry England' I was somewhat doubtful but I was very keen to wear a cassock and surplice and sing those lovely hymns so I threw myself into it with great enthusiasm. To conserve electricity, the vicar decided that the organ would be pumped by hand, which would be done by choir boys in rotation? This meant squatting behind the organ in a tiny cubby hole and wait for the organist to knock on the screen, when we were supposed to start pumping to power up the organ. One Sunday I was so engrossed in a comic that I didn't hear his knock, when the music started the organ just died with a horrible groan, this roused me to start pumping like fury but the damage was do - I was in disgrace and had to forfeit my share of the collection, all tuppence ha'penny of it. My high point came though when I was chosen to sing a solo part in the Christmas carol service, I was Melchior in 'We Three Kings', I was so proud, my Cockney twang was fading fast, my family wouldn't know me. I spent nearly four years in the choir and the memory of all those hymns remains with me, I still tingle whenever I hear them. News of the war was a source of endless interest to me; I knew where each battle was being fought, all the advances and retreats, and the names of each general and their commands. My brother Harry was in France with the 51st Highland Division so when the news came of the Dunkirk evacuation; I knew that as a machine gunner he would be fighting a rear-guard action so one of the last to leave. Suddenly the war became serious, no longer quite the game it had been to us kids. When I heard that he was home safe I was overjoyed. Soon afterwards he was discharged from the army with a heart problem, not serious but it prevented further military service. He started work in a munitions factory where he met and fell in love with a girl named Jessie, being wartime they were soon married. A few weeks later, running for a bus, he tripped on a kerb stone, banged his head on a concrete gun post and died instantly. I was broken hearted and I ranted and raved at God for a long time. The vicar and Mrs Harley did their utmost to console me but it took quite a while. The blitz passed us by in March; they had a couple of goes at the marshalling yards but soon gave up. I did go back home in 1942 for Lucy's wedding; she was marrying a Grenadier Guardsman named Dick. What a shock! Instead of our lovely house in Peabody Cottages we had a three storey slum with outside toilet, no bath and in a really grotty neighbourhood. Some rotten swine had dropped a bomb on our lovely house so the family had no choice. Then I had my first taste of real bombing, it was terrifying, but everyone seemed to take it in their stride; all the neighbours ignored the Anderson shelters, which were holes in the ground covered with corrugated iron, in the back garden, nasty damp miserable things. When the siren went, they just grabbed their treasures which were left handily situated in the hall and hot-footed it over to the communal shelter over the road, handily situated in the back yard of the Queen Vic pub. No wonder they didn't mind, it was just one big party, a sing-song, with someone on the accordion, crates of beer, and they didn't seem to hear the bangs outside. After a few days we left for Cornwall to visit the boys and Joan, they were at the Lizard, Joan at 4 Coronation Cottages with a Mrs Johns, Sid and Billy were on a farm nearby with Mrs Johns' mother-in-law. It was great to be with my family again although they teased me no end about my country accent, and I teased them back about their ridiculous haircuts, close cropped all over except for a tassel of hair over the forehead. We spent a week or so there then back to Tottenham. Soon it was time for me to return to Mrs Harley so I was put into the guards van of a train in the care of the guard, like a piece of luggage, but he was very kind and put me off at March which was a good thing because all the station signs had been removed to foil Nazi spies; Mrs Harley welcomed me back with open arms; I think she had become quite fond of me by then. Although I missed my family, I soon settled down to what was a very pleasant life in the country. One thing always puzzled me though; my parents never came to visit me in four years and for some reason I never questioned them about this. The only visitor I had was my uncle Len who turned up out of the blue one day having cycled all the way from Bedford, where he was stationed with the RAF, what a very nice man! My friends and I used to play in a field at the back of the houses, we would dig for clay, which we fashioned into model planes, ships and guns, normal toys were very rare in those days. Then there was fishing and roaming the countryside, especially at harvest time when we could help, I don't think we were much help though. there was too much fun to be had, haystacks can be wonderful things to play on but too easily wrecked, that's when the farmers dispensed with our services, ungrateful, these farmers. As March had a large railway marshalling yard there were lots of goods trains carrying all kind of military supplies being transported to the war zones and we were fascinated to watch them go past with tanks, trucks and guns. We would count the wagons, sometimes there were up to a hundred and seemed go on for ages. By 1943 the bombing had subsided sufficiently for me to go home for a holiday, Sid and Billy were home from Cornwall, I think Billy had disgraced himself by setting about the barber with a stick after a particularly hideous haircut. Blood being thicker than water, I begged mum to let me stay, the worst decision I ever made, she agreed so I never went back to the lovely Mrs Harley. Tottenham was fun for a while, there were bombed-out buildings to explore, more mischief with my brothers and each weekend we all went to the T L and R Club, where dad was entertainment secretary. There were dances and concerts which I loved. It made my life in March seems dull by comparison. Of course someone had to go and spoil it eventually, Hitler again, he started sending us V1s (Doodlebugs) which were absolutely terrifying. We could hear them going overhead with an engine noise like an old motor-bike and we held our breath in case the noise stopped, which meant that the thing was about to drop on some poor souls and it could be us. One dropped on Fladbury Road, very near us which killed a lot of people and demolished about three hundred houses. Lucy was living in a flat above a butcher's shop in that direction and I was praying that she was alright. I ran out of the house to go to her, slates were falling from the roofs but I hardly noticed. Lucy was alright but I got a real roasting from mum. It was shortly after this that the subject of evacuation came up again and before I could argue I found myself in Leicester with dear Billy. He was two years older than me and he led me a dog's life, always teasing me and stealing things from me so I was not very happy. We were billeted with a Mrs Gamble, a short, roly-poly woman who loved to tell naughty jokes when she came home from the pub, she would often pass wind and go into Henry V mode exclaiming "Hark, I hear a distant peal of thunder, quick, quick the closet key, too late, too late, I've gone and done it". We slept on canvas camp beds in the parlour; we were not allowed to sleep in proper beds as we had Scabies, a skin disease which was rife at the time. I don't think we were there very long, Mrs Gamble couldn't put up with our Scabies so we were put into Roundhills Sick bay, a large old house filled with evacuees, all with similar complaints. There were just two nurses to look after all of us completely, which was almost impossible, so we were kept in bed like sick patients while the poor nurses did their best to cope. Inevitably disease was rampant and one of the nurses caught Scarlet Fever and I caught it from her. I was taken to Markfield Sanatorium which was a great improvement, and put in a children's ward with lovely clean beds, nice food and being pampered. I was the only evacuee there and in six weeks I had no visitors so the other children's parents felt sorry for me and brought me fruit and little gifts. I ended up with more visitors than anyone else, but not my own parents. In the next bed was a boy named Charlie Pickering, whose parents owned a garage at Measham, they made quite a fuss of me and Charlie and I became good friends for a while. When I was discharged I went back to Mrs Gamble as I was now clean, only to find that Billy had escaped from Roundhills with another boy by climbing through a toilet window then made his way back to Mrs Gamble who would not have him so he nicked my Saving Stamps, 12/6d worth to buy a ticket home. Mrs Gamble agreed to take me in and let me sleep in a proper bed as I was now free of the dreaded Scabies. I had to stay there for a while longer as the Germans were now bombarding us with V2s, which were similar to the Doodlebugs except, being jet propelled, they were silent until the explosion when they hit.