High Explosive Bomb at Battersea Rise

A group of housewives were chatting together in the shade, sheltering from the fierce sun beneath the railway bridge crossing Battersea High Street that very hot day in May 1940.
We three twelve year old boys were approaching the bridge having come out of school an hour or so before. We had been enjoying the hustle of the shops and stalls of the High Street and were now making our ways home.
We heard the noise of an approaching train.

This was the West London Extension line linking the south of England with the midlands and north, here crossing the Thames from Battersea to Chelsea.
Normally there was little traffic and Battersea Station was closed for the duration, but for the last couple of days trains had been coming through regularly, but always from the south.
People along the route stopped, watched them go by and waved if a soldier happened to lean from a carriage window.
Yesterday a soldier threw some coins as we children waved. We scrambled for them in the gutter and I picked up the first foreign coin I had ever seen, a brass and shining 1 Franc piece. My pal found a coin with a hole drilled through it. He thought it had been shot, but at school our master said it was a way the French changed the value of coins.

There must have been a signal since the driver applied the brakes and in a flurry of dust and steam the train squealed to a halt. The engine now well over the bridge began panting and puffing as it paused in the sunshine reflecting the exertion of pulling a large number of carriages.
The housewives came out from under the bridge and with us lads and a few more passers by together we looked up at the stationary train.
The carriage windows were down obviously the passengers needed the cooler air, and to our surprise a soldier appeared. A head of unkempt hair, a grimey face and a scruffy army tunic. Eyes blinking from the sunshine he looked down on our silent group.
The youngest of the housewives called up to him, "Are you all right?"
The soldier looked at us, at the houses and shops as if in a dream. He struggled to reply, then said, "I'm gasping for a fag."

"Cigarette? Yes I've got one." The young lady opened her handbag and extracted a packet.
She lifted her arm as if to throw the packet up to the soldier but realised that it would be futile, the bridge perhaps 30-feet up, a lightweight packet could'nt be thrown that far. Thinking quickly she called, "I'll bring these up to you," and she walked over to the side of the bridge and tried to climb the steep embankment. A daunting task.
She looked at us boys. "You lads, come over here and help me up." It was a command.We moved quickly but then I paused since nailed to the wall of the embankment was a notice.

SOUTHERN RAILWAY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

"Don't just stand there. Come on." She was very determined and I obeyed.
But others had also moved over to the ypung lady. They were offering packets of cigarettes.
"Take these." A packet of Players thrust into her bag.
"And these." Woodbines, Craven A, Park Drive, a dozen packets for the soldiers.

So we heaved, pulled and tugged and to the cheers and encouragement of many soldiers now leaning from windows we got up onto the track.
That lady didn't stop, she moved onto the bridge with us lads in close pursuit, to where our first soldier was leaning from the carriage window. Taking a packet from her bag she reached up, he opened the carriage door and greatfully took the cigarettes.
The remaining packets were distributed in a flash.
A sergeant had jumped down onto the trackside and told us in no uncertain terms to go back down. He emphasised that it was dangerous and we began to edge away.
However the lady stood her ground and we heard her ask if there were any Air Force men on the train. "My husband was over there, I've not heard from him...."
"RAF," the sergeant snarled, "they flew home days ago."
Suddenly she looked helpless, miserable.
I felt somebody tugging my sleeve. My pal was pointing down the line of carriages.
Through the dust I could see he was pointing to a blue clad figure leaning from a carriage window.
"Look missus, RAF!"
Together we ran. Through the murk of the dust and steam, up off the track, on to the wooden platform of Battersea Station, past several carriages, and then....
this was blue but not RAF blue, it was the blue of the French Army uniform.
The lady moved over on to a platform seat and I think she began to weep.
I decided it was time to go home.

A chain of people now climbed the embankment from street level, passing the contents of shopping bags, cigarettes, drinks, food, for the benefit of the waiting troops. A policeman seemed to be supervising the distribution and as I passed he winked and said, "Well done, lad."

Mum asked me where I had been when I got home.
I told her.
She put on her hat. Checked her bag for cigarettes.
"Where are you going mum?" I asked.
"Down the High Street."

We were utterly exhausted most of the time as we were continually confined to a communal air raid shelter at night, especially during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941. Strangely enough my brother Ken, sister Margaret and I experienced a mixture of fear from the bombs, together with the excitement of being able to stay up each night in the shelter with other families. With our mother we used to take our cheese sandwiches (which always seemed scrumptious) and Smiths crisps containing little blue bags of salt, together with a bottle of Tizer in the shelter and have midnight feasts with the other children which was exciting and alleviated some of the fear. We got very little sleep on our hard bunk beds, but no one did as we were usually woken up by the screaming, wailing air raid siren. We only had candles in the shelter so it was dimly lit and also damp and musty. The boy on the bunk below me, Sidney, complained that I was always dropping lumps of cheese from my sandwiches on to his bunk which he strongly objected to as he loathed cheese. Later in the war, sometimes at night when the air raid siren sounded, neighbours came along and bedded down in our hall. There was one man who always wore his tin helmet and Ken and I could never stop giggling about it. All the poor man was trying to do was to be prepared and to protect himself in an emergency but it was a huge joke to us. One night there was a bomb which exploded very near to us, the blast of which shattered a number of our windows. The heavy fanlight over the hall door became dislodged and was hanging on its side only a few feet from where Ken was sleeping. He had a lucky escape and may well have been glad to wear the man's tin helmet after all!

When the dreaded air raid siren sounded suddenly wafting through the air, screeching out its deafening high and low wailing, warning sounds, we were full of fear and trepidation. Wherever we were, we immediately stopped what we were doing, snatched up our few belongings if they were nearby and dashed to the nearest air raid shelter, wondering if we would ever come out alive. It was a nightmare for my mother having 3 young children to worry about all the time. There were 3 types of air raid shelter. Those which were concrete or brick-built and were outside for the public, the corrugated, galvanised iron Anderson shelter which was partially sunk in people's gardens away from the house, and the Morrison which was like a steel box indoors.

We lived through the London Blitz in 1940 and 1941 and many nights we went through hell with fires blazing and bombs raining down. The sky was continually lit by the glare of the fires, some of which were caused by incendiary bombs which had been extinguished by stirrup pumps. Air raid wardens were equipped with these for such an emergency. Also searchlights illuminated the sky. The wail of the air raid sirens and the drone of enemy aircraft, the bang bang of the anti-aircraft batteries and the shrill whistles blown by the Air raid wardens were deafening. Many people were left homeless and exhausted and often experienced long term shock. They used to pick their way through debris after a raid and had nowhere to go. Dazed families were accommodated in rest centres, in school buildings and church halls all of which were staffed by volunteers. However, despite all the adversity, people relentlessly soldiered on. We were all in it together and helped each other whenever we could. We had one thing in common and that was the will to survive which was all that mattered. Although tea, like almost everything else, was rationed, there were endless cups of tea to soothe shattered nerves.

Bombs continued to rain down, criss-crossing searchlights lit up the sky at night and the anti-aircraft fire was fearsome. Firemen and air raid wardens did what they could to protect the city. Large balloons appeared in the sky which were called barrage balloons. They were elongated, grey shapes like inflated elephants attached to thick wire ropes to trap unwary, low flying enemy aircraft. In 1942, all railings in front of houses and surrounding parks were removed for their metal to be used for ships and tanks. There were strict blackout precautions and windows were taped against damage from splintered glass and, on the ground floor of large buildings, windows and doorways were protected by walls of sandbags. Also, there was no street lighting or friendly lights from windows and we were forced to use torches. There were blackout curfews after dark, which caused many accidents, but the blackout was an air raid precaution and saved many lives. During the long, dark ,winter nights it was an absolute nightmare. We lived very near to Clapham Junction station, a major railway system, which was bombed continuously but despite the desolation it was like a cat and had 9 lives and managed to continue limping along.

Nothing was like the onslaught on London when they repeatedly dropped their tonnage of destruction and bombs fell incessantly resulting in relentless nights and days of terror and hell.

We Londoners bravely responded to the onslaught of London with defiant good humour. 'Jerry' (one of our nicknames for the Germans), 'will never get the last laugh over us.' was our taut reply, and they definitely did not. We were not labelled the 'Bulldog Breed' for nothing. We were in a permanent state of alert and were constantly living under a cloud of violent death but despite the ferocity of the relentless raids we survived even though utter exhaustion clung to us day and night.

There were many horrifying experiences but the noise of the VI flying bombs will haunt me forever. This was one of Hitler's secret weapons and was first launched in 1944. It was called a flying bomb, a doodlebug or a buzz bomb. It was essentially a pilotless plane packed with explosives whose rocket engine cut out over the target area so it glided to the ground and exploded. The gliding and cut-out mechanisms used were crude, but a large number still fell on London despite the fact that the RAF bombed some of the launching sites and also shot many down over the English Channel. Their engines made a distinct roaring sound which I shall never forget. One could hear them approaching from a distance and as the droning became louder and louder we were more terrified by the second. It was even more devastating when the noise stopped and there was an uncanny stillness whilst we held our breath. This I can remember so well. We had no option but to sit there helplessly in the shelter and pray whilst waiting for the noise to stop and a deathly silence prevailed. Were we destined to die that night? We were terrified if the engine cut out before it was overhead since that meant the flying bomb would glide and probably hit us. If it stopped directly overhead, we knew we were relatively safe, because it would continue for a couple of miles before crashing to the ground. Finally when it landed with an immense explosion, we all felt a great relief that it wasn't us this time, but a tremendous sadness for the poor victims that were involved.

Eventually the all-clear siren sounded which was a steady tone and the sweetest sound on earth. We were free again and dashed out of the shelter to see who the unfortunate victims were and if we could help them. There was utter chaos verywhere. Houses were completely demolished, others had walls that had collapsed with furniture leaning at bizarre angles from upstairs rooms. Glass was missing from all the windows, and even houses half a mile away from the blast had lost chimneys and tiles. Pavements were littered with tiles, glass and bricks. The slaughter created maximum terror with massive explosions resulting in shrapnel and debris falling all around us. It was pitiful what we repeatedly saw which we will never forget as there were so many sad and sickening sights. We lived near to the mainline railway station of Clapham Junction, a major German target, which was constantly attacked to disrupt the rail transportation system of the country. Ken and his friends spent a lot of time collecting shrapnel from exploded bombs which many boys did including Peter my husband. Ken also gathered wood from bomb-sites to make stilts and carts (to which he added wheels and an orange-box) and chopped some of it up to make little bundles which he sold for firewood.

My brother managed to avoid being hit by a doodle-bug when he couldn't get to a shelter in time after the air raid siren had sounded. He and his friend, who were in the street, saw it coming towards them and suddenly a man grabbed them from behind and flung them down on the pavement behind a wall. There was a tremendous explosion as it landed in the nearby cemetery with debris everywhere, he was terrified. Another time, he was in a swimming pool when the siren sounded and all the swimmers dashed upstairs to safety. There was a terrific explosion and the glass roof shattered and fell directly on to the pool. It was a miracle that they were not still in the pool. The bomb had fallen at the nearby Clapham Junction railway station and one of Ken's friends, who was helping in a local butcher's shop was killed. Ken immediately dashed home as we lived near the station and he was very worried about my mother, but despite the fact that she was in shock, fortunately she wasn't hurt.

My father was serving in the Royal Navy on the guns of HMS Warspite on convoys to Iceland and Russia. He experienced some bitter battles but when he came home on leave to see us in London, he always said that he would sooner be fighting for his country in the Navy than be poor helpless civilians like us just praying that we would be safe and being unable to do little to defend ourselves. All we had was faith and hope.

Unlike the doodle-bugs, the V2 rockets which came afterwards streaked stealthily across the sky without warning. There were no wailing air raid sirens to terrify us and although we were completely unprepared, we were spared the dreaded anticipation of another bombing raid. However, on reflection, it was better to be prepared as we could at least find a nearby air raid shelter for protection. Also when the all-clear siren was sounded we knew that we could probably safely carry on with our lives until the next air raid.

One V2 rocket experience which I can remember vividly was sitting in the local cinema with my friend Rita and like everyone else were completely absorbed in the film. Quite suddenly, a massive V2 rocket fell just behind the cinema and there was a huge blue flash from the screen which collapsed and the entire cinema was shrouded in choking, blinding smoke and debris. As it was a V2 rocket we had no warning and if it had been a few yards nearer, the cinema would have got a direct hit. The noise was deafening and was coupled with the screams from the audience in their shock and panic to escape. We all crowded to the emergency exits which were flung open and we eventually staggered out into the clean, fresh air. We were breathless from the choking smoke and also from blinding fear. Did I hear a voice in the distance calling "Joan", or was I dreaming? Yes, it was my mother's desperate voice screaming "Joan, Joan, where's my Joan." She knew that I had gone to the local cinema, the Granada, and heard the massive explosion. She dashed out of her house immediately and, to her horror, saw the cinema shrouded in smoke. As we lived nearby she didn't have far to run and finally found me amongst the devastation and confusion. The sense of relief was utterly indescribable.

However, we did get used to continual reprisals including the V2 rockets, as a familiar scene which we saw, when we walked to school each morning, was distraught residents in utter turmoil clawing at the wreckage of their homes which were destroyed the previous night and clutching their pathetic belongings but at least they were still alive.

Our neighbour, Mrs Greenaway, a quiet lady who had a husband who was on a night-shift at the Tate and Lyle sugar factory at Wandsworth, had a very sad experience. One night when he was at the factory, it was hit by a V2 rocket and everyone was killed. As this was a V2 rocket there was no air raid warning and his wife knew absolutely nothing about this until the next morning when she heard some women talking about it in the queue at the local butchers. They said that Tate and Lyle had had a direct hit in the night and she immediately dashed over there on the bus, a distance of about 2 miles, only to find that it had been completely demolished. She staggered about desperately on the rubble until a policeman came over to her and asked her what she was doing. She explained that she was looking for her husband and was told that tragically there were no survivors. She was so helpless and, in utter shock, blindly found her way home. She must have been completely overwrought which resulted in her immediately gassing herself without even stopping to think about it. Her 12 year old daughter Joan discovered her body on returning home from school that day. Sadly when she left for school in the morning, she thought that both her parents were alive. Poor distraught Joan had no alternative but to go and live with her devastated grandparents. This was one of the many tragic statistics of the war. Another one was when I was at school and my art teacher, Mr Carpenter, went home for lunch one day which he did regularly, only to find that his house had been bombed and his wife and young son had been killed. Such was the misery of war.

Huge crowds sought safety and invaded the London Underground every night having claimed an early pitch in the afternoon. They slept with their clothes on, clutching family documents including their identity cards and personal treasures. The Underground at night was a massive picnic with rows of men, women and children all huddled together eating and drinking tea and soft drinks. The air was always stale and there was often a stench of smoke and brick dust in the air which was frequented by mosquitoes. Apart from this however, my mother strongly objected to sleeping in the Underground for fear of being trapped. In the Underground station at Balham which was a few miles from Clapham Junction, over 600 people were killed and maimed from a bomb and some were suffocated in their panic and struggle to get out.

Although London was continually bombed day and night and all we ever heard was people saying: "Poor old London copped it again last night. ", other large cities suffered too but not so relentlessly. Nevertheless I was a Londoner and was proud of the spirit that pervaded the city day and night. In those dark days people determinedly got on with life despite the continuous doom and gloom. Life was grim and heartbreaking and the hardship was extremely severe. Despite Hitler's obsession to ultimately invade Great Britain which was only 22 miles across the Channel, it didn't materialise. How different our lives would have been today if the Germans had succeeded in invading our island.

There were horrendous battles on land, sea and in the air and our losses were disastrous, but despite the terrible degradation, we triumphed against all the odds. I can remember us all anxiously crowding around our radios each night when we could, to listen to the news bulletins at 9.pm on the BBC Home Service which constantly kept us in touch although, most of the time, the news was unnervingly daunting. Sir Winston Churchill was our great inspiration and we all anxiously awaited his stirring broadcasts to the nation.

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

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

No stranger to war

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

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

Paris and Warsaw babyhood

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

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

Journey to safety

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

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

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

Now in England and back to school

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 1938, as Chamberlain flew to Munich I was evacuated to Wiltshire together with two of cousins. We were to stay with my auntie's sister. However, the crisis passed and I was back in Earlsfield a week later. But in 1939 as it became obvious that war was inevitable I was sent again to Wiltshire. This time I stayed for 3 months but I came home for Christmas and stayed home.

I can't remember whether it was just before my first or second evacuation that I witnessed the Irish navvies in Earlsfield digging the foundations for the shelters. However, a lot of the shelters including ours at home flooded and had to have a concrete wall built around the inside which made them smaller.

My cousin Ruth who had been evacuated with me returned to London a little later and she began work at Arding and Hobbs Department Store at Clapham Junction. She witnessed one of the early bombings at the back of the Store. It was terrible and very frightening.

The bomb which affected me most was probably a small one. It damaged a wall at the back of the former Workhouse in Swaffield Street in Earlsfield. The vibration knocked over a broom by the back door and the noise seemed to go on through my head.

Where there is now a block of flats, between Dingwall and Inman Roads in Earlsfield, a time-bomb fell and went off at about 2.00 a.m. This was in the middle of the Blitz on London. At one stage
a mysterious hole appeared in Inman Road near the junction with Wilna Road. The whole area was roped off as far as Dingwall Road. I think this turned out to be a shell.

One of the worst incidents was a direct hit on an Anderson Shelter at the corner of Bassingham Road, almost opposite the School. My father and our immediate neighbour, (one of the old-time railway guards), and his son who was home on leave from the Air Force went to help the local Air Raid Wardens to dig people out but alas - all dead. I don't think the Wardens got enough recognition for their work during the War.

After tbis incident my father insisted that my mother and myself be evacuated and my father telegraphed to my aunt's cousin and all the country-folk were on standby to receive us. As we left there was a time-bomb in Brocklebank Road, where the block of flats and modern houses now stand. While we were away yet another bomb wiped out houses in Earlsfield Road between Brocklebank and Dingwall Roads, (where the flats now back onto Dingwall Road.)

When I was back in London, one of the most terrifying nights was when a German plane was hit by our guns and we could hear it getting lower and lower. It came down in Merton Park. The younger generation now would no doubt think first of the pilot and crew but our first thoughts were that it was one less 'B' to bomb us. My father knew someone in that direction and we acquired a piece of metal from the plane. We kept this with a lump of jagged metal(shrapnel(?)), which fell with a thump in our garden one night. Both were kept for many years in our hall-stand until they smelled and went mouldy. Sometimes, I wish I had kept them to show my great-nephews or to give to the Wandsworth Museum in Garratt Lane.

At one stage during the War I was attending night-school on West Hill. As we left one evening the sirens sounded. My cousin Ed was going to Cadets nearby. With a barrage of guns sounding, Jerry appeared to be coming for us from the Richmond direction. I flew down Wandsworth High Street, followed by my cousin until I saw the Warden and asked where was the nearest shelter. We found it and tumbled in. Ed said: " I never knew you could run like that!" - but that is what fear does.

I belonged to the girl's club at my church, (Congregational), at the foot of Earlsfield Road. As we left one evening a Raid was hotting up and at first we ran to one of the girl's houses in Algarve Road. I think it was the grandmother who opened the door, but understandably, she did not want the responsibility of all of us, so several of us made for the main road and for a time took shelter in Earlsfield Station but with Jerry overhead this was not a good place to be, so we took our chances with the shrapnel and raced to one of the basement shelters below the shops in Garratt Lane.

My father worked in the Sorting Office,then at the High Street end of St. Anne's Hill. He cycled to work on his old bike. One evening he reached as far as Swaffield School and the frame of his bike split and he came off, shedding all his pens and pencils needed for his work. This in the middle of a Raid and in the Blackout!

Between short raids at night everyone used to go up and down the road looking for incendiaries. There was a contraption the Germans used, known as a 'Molotov Bread Basket'. This shed hundreds of incendiaries as opposed to High Explosive Incendiaries, (H.E.S.) The Church was damaged by one of these.

The German planes sometimes dropped Verey Lights earlier than the main night raids. They lit up the area. The Garratt Lane area towards King George's Park was a big factory area and therefore a target. There was a quieter period after I started work, between 1942-43. However, in one of Jeffrey Archer's books about a London Store one would think the war had ended as far as air raids were concerned but this was not the case.

Alas, there were even more terrifying times to come. In 1944 came the Flying Bombs, V.I.S. or Doodle Bugs, ( a nickname which stuck). I believe that Wandsworth together with Croydon, Lewisham, New Cross and Catford had the highest rate of V.I.S. No one could forget the terrible rattling sound and the engine cutting out. One counted to ten and if you were still alive you knew someone else had 'copped it'.

As the raids went on the piles of debris in the streets mounted higher and higher. One night, together with a friend I arrived at our stop - Brocklebank Road at Garratt Lane on the 77 bus. As we dismounted we could feel the silence that came after a bad attack. We feared the worst and asked someone: "Where did it fall?" The reply: Wilna Road. Our road. Fearing the very worst, my friend and I joined hands and turned the corner. Thank God! Our houses and folk were safe but at the bottom of the road all we could see was a mass of white helmets as the Wardens dug for any survivors. The windows in our house were all blown out but as I recall later replaced by the Royal Navy (?). My mother who had been at home at the time the bomb fell and who hated the Anderson Shelter had taken cover under the stairs. Her friend, Mrs Dell had just left the house when the raid started and only just made into her own home in Vanderbilt Road. I shall never forget that homecoming.

There was a big incident in Clapham Junction when a 77 bus was blown to bits. My father, then Assistant Head Postman at the West Central Post Office just missed catching this bus but caught the one behind and narrowly missed being killed himself. Apart from the bus and its passengers the bomb also destroyed Battersea Sorting Office at Lavender Hill and I believe, a gas main. My father said he would never forget it as long as he lived. He was asked to return to work - at the Lavender Hill Sorting Office and was back on duty even bfore they had finished clearing away the bodies - some of them no doubt his former colleagues.

Later during a lull and when I was working in the basement of the Music Shop in Holborn, I was about to go laden with the post to the Post Office further down High Holborn. I got as far as the foot of the stairs of the shop (all shop basements were shelters as well), when a V2 rocket landed further down the street. It blew in the windows of the shop. I was helping my manageress clear the window when my father came rushing along to see if I was safe, having heard where the incident was. I think it actually landed on an already bombed site. I remember going to the Post Office later that day,(life had to go on), and passing someone bleeding and in state of shock.

It was a good job that the Germans did not have those weapons at the time of Dunkirk, which the younger of my two brothers survived - just. He was missing for a few days. My elder brother, who had not passsed the forces medical tests acted as fire warden at the White Horse Whiskey premises underneath Waterloo Station, and Dad at Store Street Post Office, off Tottenham Court Road.

I feel my experiences of the War at Home are few compared to those of my sister-in-law and her sister. They used to travel from Peckham to Perivale,( a bomb alley), every day to the Hoover factory for war work all through the Blitz and the blackout. People talk about stress nowadays but I think those who worked in London or any big city during the War certainly had their fair share of it!

Before the bombing began the Council had been trying to move people if there was severe overcrowding in the house. A friend, one of a family of 10 was moved to then new Henry Prince Estate off Garratt Lane. He was killed in India on the last day of the War. He was training to be a fighter pilot.

Eileen Bicknell
Silver Circle Reading Group
Wandsworth Libraries