Bombs dropped in the ward of: Regent's Park

Rita Savage (nee Atkinson)

A child’s view of the war.

In 1939 I was nine years old and living in Peckham, London S.E.15. It was 3rd September 1939 and I remember sitting on the back steps that led into the garden listening to my mum and dad discuss the advent of the Second World War. My parents had of course lived through the First World War. My dad served in the Army along with his brother and father; they were all in the same regiment I am told. My uncle Ernie was killed in France but my dad and my grandfather both survived.

This particular day as I sat on our back step, dad had switched on the wireless and we heard our then Prime Minister, Mr. Chamberlain broadcast that we were at war with Germany. A few minutes later we heard the distinctive wail of the air raid siren and I remember thinking that we were all going to die on this the first day of the war. All the tales I had been told about the First World War came back to me and I was terrified. My sister Doris would be about sixteen years of age then and she seemed to take it in her stride. My brother Brian was only about four years of age and too young to understand.

We didn’t have an air raid that day of course, the all clear sounded straightaway. We were simply being prepared for what was to come.

The first few weeks of the war went by and nothing significant happened that I was aware of except all the schools were closed in London where I lived anyway. I suppose all the teachers eligible were called up or they enlisted in our armed forces.

I got over my initial terror and enjoyed the freedom from school which I didn’t like very much anyway.

The next thing that happened was for me a very traumatic one — gas masks! I remember all the family going along to this large building, probably the Town Hall, I can’t remember now and waiting in a queue to be fitted for these horrible looking contraptions. My mother was very worried about my little brother Brian thinking that he would act up and cause a fuss. She didn’t worry about me; I was older and never made a fuss about anything.

Wrong! When it was my turn I did more than make a fuss, when they tried to put the mask over my face I remember becoming hysterical. I couldn’t bear to have my face covered; I have been like this all my life. Claustrophobia is the word of course but I didn’t know that at the time. My brother on the other hand wouldn’t take his off he wanted to keep it on. We were supposed to practice wearing these masks on a regular basis and I would always disappear and go into hiding.

My parents decided to move house at that time, only into the next road. Later on in the war the house we had moved from was flattened taking with it the house next door where some of our friends lived. There were five children in that family and they along with their parents were all killed. The house we had moved into was never bombed and had we known it then of course we could have stayed there throughout the war and gone to our beds to sleep every night and not to the Anderson shelter in the back garden.

The war had been going for about a year by this time with no air raids and the schools were beginning to open their doors once more when the blitz on London started in earnest.

That first air raid was a daytime one, I remember I was playing on the front with my friend and when I heard the siren I immediately ran to my mother who at the time was talking to someone at our front door. She hadn’t heard the siren at first and she was very cross with me for interrupting her, children were indeed seen and not heard in those days. I was forgiven however once my mother realised what was happening. We only just made it to the Anderson in time before we heard the enemy planes overhead and the bombs dropping all around us. My mother was in a state because my sister and my dad were at work. My dad and sister were all right thank goodness but they were both very shaken when they eventually arrived home.

That night the raids started in earnest. We spent every night after that in the Anderson shelter or as I will tell you later in other shelters. We would lie awake at night listening to the noise of the falling bombs and the noise of our ack ack guns and wonder if our house would still be standing in the morning.

My brother and I would lay either side of our mother and cover her ears with our hands. My mother was a complete nervous wreck after a few weeks of this bombardment of our city.

In retrospect I realise she was so afraid for us her children. In later years when I had my own children I would think back to these terrible times and only guess at her agony of mind and her fear for us her three children.

One day the lady next door said they were going away for a little while and as their shelter was a bit more comfortable than ours we could use it if we wanted to. So that evening off we all went with all the paraphernalia that was needed to take down the shelter with us, i.e. flasks of hot drinks, candles, matches, a torch etc, not forgetting the gas masks of course, making our way into next door’s garden and their shelter. When the door was closed we were completely sealed in and it was padded out so the noise wasn’t so horrendous. When we were settled later on and it was time to try to get some sleep dad blew out the candles. Fortunately for us my brother started to cry and complained of tummy ache so dad tried to re-light the candles but they just wouldn’t light. It was a few seconds before my dad realized they wouldn’t light because there was no air coming into the shelter. We got out of there pretty quickly and made our way back to our own shelter. But for Brian, my little brother, we could have all suffocated.

We next tried the cinema at the end of our road — I remember it was called “The Tower” — they had cellars underneath that were opened to the public at night to use as a shelter. We had quite a job to get somewhere to sit. They had these wooden benches covering the floor space and mum tried to make up beds for us children underneath these benches on the floor. We didn’t hear the noise so much but to my mother’s disgust a few of the older men sitting nearby every so often would spit on the floor quite close to where we lay. We were only there one night my mum wouldn’t go back again.

The next night mum dragged us all to the underground railway, the Oval at Kennington, the trains were not running at night and people made up their beds on the platforms. We thought we were early but when we got down there we had to step over bodies trying to find somewhere for ourselves. We had to give up as there was no room and we went back to our own shelter again. We heard later on that just after we had left the Oval a bomb was dropped at the entrance. Our guardian angel must have been watching over us that night.

My parents decided that we children should be evacuated as so many of the children were. Mum sewed our names in all our clothes and off we went to the railway station, I can’t remember which one it was, probably Euston, where daily trains would come in and children were packed in, gas masks around their necks, saying their goodbyes to parents left standing on the platforms. At the last minute mum couldn’t let us go — what a decision for a parent to have to make, not knowing where your child was going and if they would be treated well and looked after properly. This was probably just as well since my mum wanted my older sister to go too in order to keep an eye on us. This would not have worked of course for one she was seventeen and for another when the children got to their destination families were more often than not split up. My mum didn’t know this at the time though. So once again we all went back home.

I remember one morning in particular, we hadn’t been up from the shelter for long from the night before and the wail of the siren started up again. My mum and dad sent us children straight back to the shelter. Incidentally we had a dog called Trixie and as soon as she heard the siren she would make straight for the shelter, she was always in first. Anyway, the raid started almost before the siren had ended and bombs were dropping about us and our sister and parents were trapped in the house, they dived under the kitchen table for some protection. We children and our dog clung together praying that the rest of our family would be safe in the house but we both thought that they would surely die.

By this time my mother was so distraught she begged my father to give up his job so we could all move away from London together as a family. We had endured months of these terrible raids. My father was a milkman with the United Dairies and he would come home from work in a terrible state, collapsing into a chair and burying his face in his hands and really cry, at the same time trying to tell us how he had gone to deliver milk to his customers in the East end of London only to find whole streets wiped out and people he had known for years, laughed with, had cups of tea with, were all killed or made homeless their houses just smouldering rubble.

One night Brian had a very high temperature, he was prone to fits when he was a young child, my mum wouldn’t leave the house for the shelter in case it did him some harm so we all huddled under the stairs for some protection.

Later on that night the air raid warden knocked on all the doors in our road informing us that we had to get out of our homes because it was believed a land mine had been dropped at the end of our road. Mum would not leave, she said that if our number was up, so be it. She was not going to take Brian outside. Fortunately for us it turned out not to be a land mine after all just an unexploded bomb which was eventually defused by the bomb squad.

After this my dad did not need any persuading to leave London, he was ready to go. But where to! My sister Doris had a boyfriend called Ron who had been deferred from the armed forces because he was an electrician and had been sent by his firm to Stoke-on-Trent where he was engaged in electrical work at a munitions factory. He got us rooms in a house in Boughey Road, Shelton where he was also lodging.

The day we actually left our home in London is one I shall never forget because of the trauma and upheaval this move caused us. My mother had a boarder called John living with us and I remember him very clearly. He was always very kind to us children. He was a pharmacist and we thought of him as an adoptive uncle. He promised to take care of our dog and all our belongings until we could send for them. We also had a cat called Tibby and we all loved her very much but she was old and no one else wanted her so we had to say goodbye and sadly dad took her to be put to sleep. We also had a rabbit, pure white she was and so sweet. What a wrench to have to part with her as well, particularly for Brian who was only six at the time and he thought the world of her. We gave the rabbit away to friends who promised faithfully to look after her.

We packed everything we could carry of course and we were finally ready to go. All our neighbours came out to say goodbye and wish us luck with promises to keep an eye on our house and especially the dog. When I think back now, what wonderful neighbours they were, later on in my story they all rallied round and helped John with the removal of our furniture and belongings including Trixie, our dog. Anyway we eventually left and caught a bus taking us to Euston Station to catch the train for Stoke-on-Trent. As the bus moved slowly along Peckham High Street we heard the wail of the siren and the drone overhead of enemy aircraft. All of a sudden we heard an explosion and everything seemed to shake; we later heard that a bomb had been dropped not far behind us, if this had happened a few minutes earlier we would probably have been killed.

We arrived at Euston Station shaken but all in one piece and stood on the platform with our suitcases around our feet waiting for the train to take us out of the misery of living in wartime London which was once our home. The train was late and when it did arrive it was packed mostly with service men. We had to sit on our cases in the corridor of the train and we moved very slowly forward out of London and towards the Midlands. It was a terrible journey, the train kept stopping for no reason that we could see. It seemed to us children that we were on that train for hours. We finally arrived very tired and despondent and set foot for the first time on Stoke Station. We were met by Ron, Doris’s boyfriend. It’s such a long time ago now over sixty years, I cannot remember how we got from the station to Boughey Road, perhaps we walked. Anyway we arrived eventually and found that our landlady was very nice and very welcoming. We had the front bedroom upstairs, it contained a double bed which Brian and I shared with mum and dad and a camp bed at the foot of the double bed for Doris. We were okay with this arrangement since we had all been cramped together in the shelter in London. It was wonderful to be able to go to bed and go to sleep, what bliss! We did of course hear the siren some nights but we ignored it and stayed in bed, after what we had experienced the raids here were mild. There had been bombs dropped here locally before we arrived. The Royal Infirmary was hit and also a house in Richmond Street, Hartshill, I think it was Richmond Street anyway.

My mother, after a lot of tramping about in the Potteries, finally found a house in Princes Road, Hartshill which had not been lived in for ten years. In those days houses were all rented, no one bought a house, unless you were well off anyway. My poor mother had to scrub that house several times before we could move into it because of all the grime that had accumulated over the years. We had no choice really, we had to have this house, no other landlord would rent to us because we were from London and it was believed that Londoners did not stay long in the Potteries it was too quiet for them! Everything was so hard to get in wartime, when we moved in we had no electric or gas, we had to use candles for light and in the kitchen was a black leaded fireplace with an oven at the side which mum had to use until we could get a cooker. We did get an electric cooker eventually but if it had not been for Ron, who also came to live with us, we would not have been able to use it because the electricity board had no one they could send to install it. Ron fixed all our electricity problems, we were very lucky. Getting coal to heat such a large house was a very big problem, we burnt anything we could on that fire and in the evenings we all sat huddled together round it. We couldn’t get curtain material so we had to have black paper up at all the window because of the blackout.

The day when the removal van with all our furniture and best of all our dog eventually arrived was wonderful. The removal man wanted to buy Trixie from us he couldn’t get over how good she had been on the journey, never attempting to run away. She knew he was bringing her to us because she was with all our furniture and belongings in the van. We never went back to London after the war but made our home permanently in Stoke-on-Trent.

I would like to say to all those people in London and other towns who were so cruelly bombed how much I admire them for sticking it out. They were a lot braver than we were.

Written by Rita on 4 December 2003

When my son asked me if I should like to take part in this exercise, I said flippantly that my war could be summed up in two words, drink and promiscuity! However, it seemed to be a worthwhile project as so much of war does happen off-stage. I shall do my best to stick to the facts. Unfortunately, I have no records except a few old photographs.

During the 20’s and 30’s my friends and I mostly played at ‘War’ and it was always against the Germans. This is understandable because the First World War was fresh in people’s minds. Every house had its photographs, mementoes and stories of lost husbands, sons and relatives. The impressive one-minute’s silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is still with me. Walking with my father at Marble Arch and seeing the traffic halt and everyone standing by their vehicles with heads bowed was awe-inspiring to a young boy, and the silence so complete, on Remembrance Day.

I lived at 10, Capland House, Frampton Street, St. Marylebone, and my two friends ‘Pussy’ Hanlon and ‘Bimbo’ Jenner lived at flats 9 and 6. We often sat on the staircase and discussed which of the services we would join when war came. We assumed, quite naturally, that it would be against the Germans. In 1937, I joined the Royal Fusilier Cadets at Pond Street Drill Hall, Hampstead and learned how to drill and to use a rifle. We had .303 Lea Enfields and our own rifle range. There were trips to Shorncliffe Barracks, parades at the Fusilier memorial in Holborn and once, we took part in the inter-cadet shooting competition at Bisley. Because I liked the look of the red bandsmen’s uniform, I transferred to the band and became a bugle boy. In the summer of ’37, we went to Belgium as guests of the army. Every evening we ‘beat the retreat’ on the promenade in Ostend, which was appreciated by the holidaymakers. In the barracks, we also discovered that ‘Verboten Ingang’ means ‘Forbidden Entry’! When we visited the Menin gate, I played the ‘last Post’. This was a moving experience, especially after visiting the battlefields and extensive war-grave cemeteries with their endless crosses. The older men related their experiences to us, which made it all very real. We little thought that Belgium was soon to be overrun by the Germans once again.

I was sixteen when the war broke out, working as a motorcycle messenger boy, hoping to become a GPO telephone engineer. When it was formed, I left the cadets and joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), which eventually became the Home Guard. We wore our own civilian clothes with LDV armbands. One of our tasks was to guard the Telephone Exchange in Maida Vale. We had a variety of weapons and two or three rifles with little ammunition. I remember being on duty from midnight to 0200 hours when I was supposed to wake up the next man. He looked so old and frail that I was too shy to wake him up. The sergeant was not pleased to find me standing there in the early hours of the morning. We fully expected German parachutists to descend upon us in a variety of cunning disguises. They would not fool us because we would be able to see their jackboots! I think we were quite disappointed when nothing happened!

At home, we were busy filing sandbags to protect the fronts of our flats, sticking tape on the windows and making blackout curtains. We were issued with gas masks, which we practised putting on very quickly and sometimes walked around in them to get used to it. My two older brothers, Arthur and Bill joined the LDV and RAF respectively, Arthur to become a sergeant in the Home Guard and Bill a wireless operator/ air gunner. As I had to wait until I was 17 ½ before I could volunteer for the RAF Volunteer Reserve, I transferred to the Air Training Corps.Our Commanding Officer was an old Royal Artillery gunner who gave us lectures on spotting artillery positions from a tethered balloon that he remembered from the First World War. We had instruction in air-navigation, signalling and meteorology and spent a great deal of time over smartness and drill. One day we were visited by Claude Graham-White, the famous air pioneer, who lived locally. I was asked to welcome him by playing the ‘General salute’ on my bugle. He gave a most interesting talk about his air bombing experiments at Hendon before the First World War. He told us that he had marked out the shape of a full sized battleship in chalk on the ground, flown over it and dropped bags of flour. This was to show how aeroplanes would change the shape of war in the future. He was rather bitter because he said that the ‘brass-hats’ did not fully understand the significance of what he was so graphically demonstrating to them. Whilst in the ATC, I visited RAF Manston during the ‘phoney war’, when everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. They had a squadron of Hurricanes, a squadron of Blenheim Mk 1s, being used as fighters with four Browning machine guns fixed under the fuselage, and a squadron of Wellingtons, which were being used as magnetic-mine detectors. These looked extremely odd with large circular white electro-magnets completely encircling the underside of the aircraft. My ATC squadron was also engaged in helping a balloon barrage unit whose headquarters were in Winfield House, Regent’s Park. This was a grand palatial mansion which had belonged to Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress. The two sections with which I was involved were at Primrose Hill and Lord’s Cricket Ground. We mostly did guard duty but in rough weather and high winds, we sometimes manned the mooring ropes.
During the ‘phoney war’, air-raid shelters were being completed and were in place before the first air raids. These, once they started, became part of our lives and were so regular we knew when to expect them. We made our own fun, took out thermos flasks, sandwiches and blankets ready for a long stay down in the shelter. We had an old wind-up gramophone and a few records. The most popular were ‘In the Mood’ and ‘Begin the Beguine’. Quite often, we had a singsong with ‘Roll Out The barrel’, ‘Run Rabbit Run’, and many of the First World War favourites like ‘Pack up Your Troubles’. The older men seemed to relive the comradeship that they had known when they were in the trenches. My dad was always ready for the sirens with his shopping bag of food and drink and a pocketful of half-pennies to play his favourite game of ‘Ha’penny Brag’. In fact, he got quite impatient for the air raid to begin so that he could get settled in the shelter with his mates. ‘They’re late tonight son!’ was his regular critical comment of the enemy’s laxity.

We had two bombs on Frampton Street, one on a communal shelter next to the ‘Duke of Clarence’ and another on a block of flats next to ‘The Phoenix’. Many neighbours were killed. I particularly remember the ‘Clarence’ bomb. We heard it coming like an express train louder and louder seemingly meant for us, then a great flash and explosion, shaking and reverberations, then silence as if everyone was catching their breath. Then loud cries and screams. We were very shaken and shocked but blinded by choking smoke and dust and could taste dirt in our mouths. We had two stirrup pumps and put out some subsidiary fires in the street nearby. There were so many people helping or staggering about that the older men told us to keep out of the way. Another bomb fell, in daylight, at the junction of Luton Street and Penfold Street leaving a large crater. A local woman was injured and had to have her leg amputated below the knee. On another night, Mr Overhead, a friend of the family, was killed in his house in Orchardson Street near the fish and chip shop. During a very bad raid, we heard that Mann Egerton’s garage was ablaze so some of us went and pushed or drove out as many cars as we could and parked them in and around Church Street.

I volunteered for the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve just before my 18th birthday (January 1941) at a recruiting centre off Euston Rd. Later, I had to go for various physical and aptitude tests. These took place at Euston House. Eventually, I received a letter confirming my acceptance for aircrew training enclosing a small silver RAF badge, which I wore proudly in my lapel. I continued with my ATC training and was made up to sergeant. It seemed ages but one day a letter arrived telling me to report to No 1 Air Crew Receiving Centre (ACRC) at Lord’s Cricket Ground on 3rd September 1941. This was just around the corner from my home and was nicked named ‘Arsey-Tarsey’! My dad’s advice as I left the house was ‘take care of your boots!’ This was because on his first day in the Royal West Kent regiment (The Buffs), someone had stolen his boots and he had never forgotten it.

When I arrived at the ground, I sat in the Mound Stand, which was marked alphabetically, and listened, with the other recruits to my first roll call. From Lord’s we marched to large blocks of luxury flats in Prince Albert Rd overlooking Regent’s park Canal. One of our first tasks was to take our oaths of loyalty to the King and to be given our official numbers, which we were told to memorise. On the second day, we marched to a large garage in Park Rd where we were kitted out. When we got back to our billets, we had great fun trying on our uniforms especially the long woollen underwear in which we sparred with each other like old time boxers. We were very proud when we walked out for the first time in our ‘best blue’ wearing the white flashes on our caps, which denoted that we were aircrew trainees. Whilst at Regent’s Park we used the Zoo restaurant for meals. As we queued up the monkeys greeted us with loud screeches and whoops, which we of course imitated to get them even more excited. Our time was mostly spent in drilling and learning about RAF regulations and expectations. We did some signalling with an Aldis Lamp and were introduced to Morse Code, which I fortunately had learned in the ATC. Aircraft recognition was given in Rudolph Steiner House in Park St. Some of us who needed it were given a crash course in mathematics, with particular attention to trigonometry. After 4 - 5 weeks, we were posted to Initial Training Wing (ITW) Torquay.When we arrived, my particular group were billeted in ‘Rosetor’ Hotel. Thus began a very vigorous and demanding programme of activities. Up very early jogging along the front, lots of physical training, marching, rifle drill until we were extremely fit and smart. We were given lessons in air navigation at Tor Abbey, signalling by buzzer and lamp, airmanship, aircraft recognition, gas drill, King’s regulations, administration and more mathematics. One day, we had to march in full kit with rifles about 10 miles inland to a small hamlet. We were told that this would be our line of defence if there were an invasion. When we had finished the course we ceased to be ACII’s (AC Plonks) and became Leading Aircraftsmen (LAC’s ) which entitled us to wear the propeller insignia on our sleeves.
From Torquay, we were posted to RAF Booker, near High Wycombe to be assessed as to our suitability for pilot training. The aircraft were Tiger Moths with open cockpits. We were taken up for air experience initially, but it wasn’t long before we were being thrown about the sky in a whole series of aerobatics to see if we could cope. After two or three weeks, we were posted to Heaton Park, Manchester prior to going overseas.

At Heaton Park we were billeted in private houses and had to report to the park for roll call every morning. We had one or two ‘pep-talks’ in the local cinema. One of these, I remember was by Godfrey Winn, the writer and broadcaster. After a couple of weeks, we were divided into groups destined to be trained in the USA, Canada or South Africa, which were all part of the Empire Training Scheme. We were not told of our destinations except for having to mark a code word on our kit bags. After embarkation leave, my group entrained for Greenock, Scotland where we boarded an American ship — ‘The George F. Elliott’. We were shown to our sleeping quarters, which were well below the water line, where we were packed suffocatingly into an area filled with five-tier bunks. I had a top bunk and could quite easily touch the men on either side and at my head and feet. I also had a hot pipe just above me on which I frequently burnt myself. Soon after embarking, we left the River Clyde and joined a straggle of ships. The Royal Navy gently shepherded us into some semblance of order and although they seemed to fuss and hoot around, gave us a great deal of confidence. This was greatly needed because the night before we had a religious service when we sung the hymn ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea' and we knew that this referred to us and our journey.

End of Part One

Of course, 'way back in the 1930's "teenagers" hadn't been invented. In those now far off days one remained a 'child' -dependent on, and obedient to one's parents for more years than is often the case now, and the age of 'Majority', supposed adulthood, was 21, when you got the 'key of the door'. So, in the early 1930's, having moved to Acton from Kensington, where I was born in the 1st floor flat of 236, Ladbroke Grove, I grew towards my 'teens, enjoying a secure and happy childhood, doing reasonably well at School (Haberdashers' Aske's Girls' School, Creffield Rd) making friends and with freedom to play outside, alone or with my friends, and with no thought of danger from strangers, or heavy traffic.

And so, in 1939, I was 13 years old, when the war began. We had been on holiday in Oban, Argyll, where I now live, and as the news became more and more grave, and teachers were called back to help to evacuate school children from London, and Army and Navy reservists were called up, we travelled by car across to Aberdeen on Saturday 1st Sept. After a night in the George Hotel, and thinking the Germans were already bombing us when a petrol garage caught fire and cans of petrol blew up one after another, we caught the 9am train to London, Euston. The car travelled as freight in a van at the rear of the train (no Motorail then). The train was packed with service personnel, civilians going to join up and other families returning from holiday.
All day we travelled South. On the journey, there were numerous unscheduled stops in the 'middle of nowhere', and a severe thunderstorm in the Midlands added to the tension. Our car, in its van was taken off the train at Crewe to make room for war cargo (as we learned later). In normal times, the journey in those days took 12 hours to London. With the storm, numerous delays, and diversions and shunting into sidings, it was destined to take 18 hours. As darkness fell, blackout blinds already fitted, were pulled down and the carriages were lit by eerie dim blue lights. Soldiers and airmen sprawled across their kitbags in the corridors as well as in the carriages, sleeping fitfully. Nobody talked much.

Midnight passed, 1am. At last around 2am, tired, anxious and dishevelled, we finally arrived at Euston station on the morning of Sunday September 3rd.

My Mother and I sat wearily by our luggage in the vast draughty booking hall while my Father went off to see if, or when the car might eventually arrive. There was no guarantee. There were no Underground trains running until 6am, and, it seemed, no taxis to be had. In the end we sat there in the station forecourt until my Father decided that he could rouse his brother to come and collect us and our luggage. And so we finally reached home, had a brief few hours' sleep and woke in time to hear Mr Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, make his historic 11am speech. Those who remember it all know the icy shock of those words, that - 'consequently we are now at war with Germany'.

The air-raid sirens sounded almost immediately, though it was apparently a false alarm, but my parents decided that we would go and live at our country 'bungalow' at Ashford, Middlesex. Ashford in those days was little more than a village. London airport was a small airfield called Heathrow.

The 'bungalow' was simply one large wooden-built room, set on brick pillars, and roofed with corrugated asbestos, painted green, with a balcony surrounded by a yellow and green railing. Three wooden steps led down into the garden. Two sash windows gave a view of our large 3 acre garden, curtained with floral -patterned chintz curtains. Inside at one end was a sink fed by a rainwater tank, and an electric cooker, a large table, chairs and a large cupboard for crockery. Normally, we had, pre-war, used it for summer evening or weekend visits, returning home at night. It was only a six mile journey along the Great West Road.

Now, though, with war declared hurried preparations were made to leave London, as my parents didn't know what might happen in the way of possible attack on the Capital. Several journeys were made by car with mattresses, bedding, food, extra utensils, clothes and animals (two cats and two tortoises). The cats roamed free, having previously been used to the garden when we went on holiday, when they were housed in the bungalow and fed and cared for by our part-time gardener. They loved the freedom and the tree-climbing and never went astray. The torties, though, had to be tethered by means of a cord through a hole drilled in the back flanged edge of the shell (this is no more painful than cutting one's nails) until a large secure pen could be made, and a shelter rigged up.

My Father's brother joined us, his wife and son having already left for safety, and to be near his son's school, already evacuated to near Crowthorne, Berks.

After sleeping on the mattresses on the floor for a few nights (all 4 or us in the one room, of course), bed frames were brought from home and a rail and a curtain rigged up to make 2 'rooms' for privacy at night. My Father and Uncle slept in a double bed, both being fairly portly (!) and my Mother and I shared a single bed, which was rather a tight squeeze. There was no room for 2 double beds, and I was fairly small. After a few nights my Mother decided that we would have more room if we slept 'top-to-tail' and so we did this.

The lavatory was about 10 yards along a side path, and had to be flushed with a bucket of water. We were lucky in that we also were able to tap a well of underground water, for which my Father had rigged-up a pump. So even if there had not been much rain to fill the house tank, we could always obtain pure water from the well. Later we were connected to the mains. The lavatory emptied into a cesspit which my Father had dug.

This was the period of the 'phoney' war. I was enrolled at Ashford County School, which I only attended for one term, as we returned home to Acton at Christmas.
My own school had been evacuated to Dorchester with about half its pupils. Many parents, like my own, had decided not to send their children away. Later, some of those who had been evacuated became very homesick and returned home. Soon the school in Acton re-opened, with many of the Mistresses who had also returned to London. The Dorchester girls shared a local school, with both sets of girls attending on a half day basis.

Ration books and clothing coupons, food shortages and tightened belts became the norm, as, at school, did gas-mask drills in which we donned our masks and worked in them for a short while to become used to them. They smelt dankly rubbery. However sometimes we had a bit of fun as they could emit snorting noises!

My Mother had lined curtains with yards and yards of blackout material, and our large sash windows were criss-crossed with sticky tape. A stirrup pump, bucket of water and bucket of sand stood handy in case of incendiary bombs. All through the war, wherever we lived, we each kept a small case ready packed with spare clothing, wash things, a torch, and any valuables.

Wherever we went we carried our gas mask in its cardboard case on a strap over our shoulder. We each wore an identity bracelet with name and identity number. Mine was BRBA 2183. Butter and bacon rationing began on Dec. 8th - 4 oz of each per person per week.

CHANGE OF LIFE

Born 1933 I turned 6 ½ on 23rd August 1939. At that age memories are not meant to span a period of over 64 years and those that do are faint, but a handful of them live with one forever. Like the memory of a gang of schoolchildren in caps, scruffy scarves and what passed as School Uniform attempting to board a smoke-shrouded train at the end of a platform on what must have been Euston Station (just like those old black and white films of troops boarding trains to go to the front being seen off by their loved ones, but with the people involved being a generation younger).

Ironically Euston Station is situated less than a mile from where I had lived since birth in Phoenix Street. Phoenix Street borders the area known as Somers Town which infills the space between Euston’s platforms and the marshalling yards of St Pancras, and is where my father’s shop (a tobacconist and confectioner’s) was situated (as No 54, later to be redesignated 58 Phoenix Road). Our flat was situated right above the shop, in one of the blocks of ‘buildings’ which characterise the area, so I suppose we were considered first in line for Hitler’s bombs. I believe we must have been evacuated before war was actually declared – if not it was immediately after September 3rd – and I recall my mother, among the crowd seeing us off, being upset and telling me not to worry as I would not be away for long. Away where? As it transpired later that day even she could not know.

This uncertainty certainly communicated itself to the rest of us, but we were far too young to realise what was happening, and my parents (perhaps wisely) had told me nothing other than ‘it would not be for long’. It was like not being warned in advance about the School dentist until the drill hit the nerve. A positive aspect was that we were all together as part of the same class – brothers and sisters in adversity, as it were – but next we were lined up in a field in Burton Latimer, a village near Kettering, facing what was obviously a group of the local families who were picking out the children on either side of me, usually in two’s or three’s (I suppose according to how many they thought they could cope with). This went on until I was the only one left. I imagine I must have been the least prepossessing of the whole bunch, and I certainly must have looked frightened. I can’t remember actually being led away, only that all my friends had been taken away from me and that I had been taken away from my parents.

There was a School in the village and I remember being somewhat crestfallen when I learned that most of my classmates were attending it, or some attached establishment but (and can you imagine regretting not being able to go to School!) not only had I been taken off alone, but the house of my new ‘keepers’ was so far in the middle of the countryside that I could not make the journey to School and in consequence saw none of my classmates (as it turned out I was never to see them again).

I recall being confined to this lovely house and enormous garden unlike anything I had ever experienced (I had only been away from Somers Town for about two ‘days out’ before) and thinking back I suppose I should have considered myself in paradise. The family looking after me were kindness itself, yet I was completely on my own – none of my own family, no friends – and feeling lost in that rather panicky sense of a young child losing his parents in a crowd. I spent day after day in this lovely house and garden (unlike anything I had been remotely used to) feeling distinctly ‘inferior’ (and very tongue-tied) in the presence of these delightful (and quite differently bred) people whose kindness I felt was beginning to turn to pity for this cockney urchin to which I am sure they found it difficult to relate. I have one distinct memory soon after arriving of the family members muttering one to another that ‘Germany had invaded Poland’ in a way which indicated that it was a matter of some concern.

My sense of desolation must have increased rather than diminished as time passed because I started bedwetting and, with the shame that this induces to a child, I hoped that each time it happened would be the last but then it happened again. This might have been the catalyst to what happened next which was that I was told that my mother could bear being parted from me no longer and was coming to collect me, which she did.

Meanwhile the problem of our living in central London had apparently been resolved by my parents moving from the flat above the shop to Pinner, in Middlesex. This, paradoxically, was still an area within range of Nazi bombs, doodle-bugs and V2’s, but Pinner was my Father’s favourite venue for a trip out to the ‘country’ (a definition for which in those days Pinner arguably qualified) and I was to live there for the next 43 years (I can’t imagine now how he thought it was so rural as it is situated these days in the heart of suburbia). Our first ‘home’ there was as lodgers in the house of a family in a housing estate north of the village. This lasted for a few weeks before my father managed to rent a semi-detached house on the opposite side, which was where I grew up throughout the remainder of the war.

My parents had to travel to town every day to run the family shop and they left most mornings soon after seven, whereupon I would clean the kitchen after making my corn flakes (that’s how long they’ve been going – and the same brand too!) and, when the house looked tidy I would set off alone to walk to school about three-quarters of a mile away (imagine a seven-year-old being trusted to set off alone to do this now). This I mostly enjoyed until the time we learned that a land-mine had fallen en route and had all but obliterated the whole area between three adjacent roads with considerable loss of life. I remember when I eventually saw this bomb site (it was in the middle of a relatively trouble-free area) thinking that it was the most horrific scene of destruction I had so far witnessed.

School was very different in Pinner. For one thing all my classmates seemed to come from what seemed to me to be ‘Upper Class’ families, which with my cockney accent I originally had some difficulty relating to. However, there is a chamelion in all of us, my life began to adapt itself, and I began to make one or two particular friends who invited me back to their beautifully kept houses to meet their (invariably kind) parents. I remember feeling too ashamed though to invite anyone back to our house (it seemed a hovel by comparison) until much later in the war when I had developed some confidence and independence. My parents had a small-town rather narrow-minded mentality which most of my friends’ parents seemed refreshingly free of and hardly spoke the same brand of English language. I suppose, to my own shame, I was becoming a little ashamed of my own parents, which was totally unfair to them as they doted on me and (I was their youngest child by 17 years) they loved me as if I was an only child. This was the norm then; these days children are considered favoured if they live with more than one parent at a time.

Meanwhile the war raged. Initially, conventional bombs and air raids, of which we had our share even on the north-west side of London, then the aforementioned land-mine and, towards the end of the war, V1’s then V2’s. Each time the tempo increased it become more frightening and the only place I felt safe was underneath a very solid-looking dining table awaiting the ‘all-clear’ so that, if the house crashed down in a pile of rubble, there would I be cocooned underneath, my only worry being whether anyone would know I was there or be able to get to get me out. I often wished I was grown up and in charge of my own destiny, like my 19-year-older brother away in the front line, instead of being so young and scared, and totally at the mercy of the unseen enemy.

I used after school to go to the back entrance of Pinner Station to await my parents’ return from town. They nearly always caught a particular train and I can’t describe how much I looked forward to that train’s arrival and my relief when the train door opened and they got out. (Perhaps that is why that climactic moment in ‘The Railway Children when the smoke clears and Rebecca chokes a cry as her father is standing there on he end of the platform never fails to move me to tears, and towards the end of my life to end up living now in the same village where the author lived when she wrote the book seems almost an act of fate).

One day, however, my parents failed to appear. I waited for train after train until there was virtually no-one alighting, and with an increasing sense of inevitability that I would never see my parents again. I knew there had been a bad air-raid and it grew dark so I thought I had better go home, not knowing quite what to do but I could not sit still and went back to the Station. The back entrance (much the nearer to where we lived) closed at 7.30 in the evening so I had to go round to the main barrier and wait there. Quite how it came about I cannot remember exactly but suddenly my parents were there, with the news that the shop had been hit by a bomb falling nearby, as they had discovered on their arrival that morning, so that everything had been affected by the blast. They had spent the whole day clearing the rubble and securing the premises and (no mobile ‘phones then) had no way of letting me know what was happening. My main memory of subsequent events is that the cat (which was my special favourite and much loved) was discovered three days later, shocked by the explosion, hiding under a pile of debris. We brought it home to Pinner where it was totally disorientated and survived just two months. Despite not being all that old and quite healthy he simply wasted away.

My main wartime memory subsequently was in 1944 when we all anticipated that the war would soon be over. Then one sunny day right overhead our house a descending V2 exploded in mid-air. Had it landed I would not have been writing this account. This was just about the time I took the 11-plus and I gained a free Scholarship to University College School, but my parents refused it on the grounds that they could not afford the train fare on the Metropolitan Line to Finchley Road. They may perhaps have thought I would be getting above myself if I attended UCS, but I ended up by receiving an excellent education at the local Grammar School instead.

I left School at 16 after sitting ‘Matric’ and my parents thought insurance was the thing to be in. I remember being taken by them for interview dressed in an open-necked shirt and feeling very self-conscious when everyone I saw around me there was dressed in a suit and tie, right down to the filing clerk (especially the filing clerk). To my amazement I got the job (in those days we might have been food-rationed but a decent job was not all that difficult to come by). My interviewer was an Actuary and he suggested to me that, as Maths was my strong suit, I might like to study to become an Actuary (I think they were short of Actuaries – when I eventually qualified the profession still numbered less than 1,000 Fellows).

Well, I now live with my second wife and our sixteen-year-old daughter in the sort of house my Burton Latimer family might not have felt out of place in. None of the things I have described would have happened to me if I’d grown up in Somers Town, at least not in the same way. Things might have been better, things might have been worse – but, one thing’s for sure, they would certainly have been very different. And I owe all this to Hitler – undoubtedly, he changed my life.

Haystack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by Sarah Bateson on behalf of John Dyer.

I was 11 when the war broke out attending Wembley Hill School and often when the registar was call there would be no answer and someone would say 'he was bombed out last night sir'.The school had a direct hit one night just before I was 14 so that was the end of my education.I started work learning plumbing with R.J.Audrey of Kilburn Park Road.One of my first jobs was at Euston Fire Station,I would cycle there from Wembley in the blackout.The crews often worked through the night and would fall asleep on the floor still in their wet uniforms.Another job was at either Caledonian School or the Brecknock installing a sinks and slop hoppers for a mortuary.I often saw the bodies coming in,some had to be hosed down,there were mothers still clutching babies.Everyone had to have a post mortem.The school was still open and the children played in the playground around a pile of clothes from the
bodies.The mortuary attendants coped by being comedians and casual but when I was sent for the sandwiches and tea and gave them brawn they,not surprisingly threw it back at me.They used to try and frighten me with their tales of blood and gore.I also worked at Northolt Aerodrome which was a fighter command at the time.One airman crashed landed and his plane went 15 feet into the ground,I can still see the rescuer's tears when they dug him out.I stole some dark chocolate,a rare treat in the war,but unbeknown to me it was to keep the pilots awake on missions,I didn't sleep for a week.I was still just a kid witnessing unimaginable horrors. About 1940 the IRA bombed the reservoir supplying the water for the cooling station for the Bakerloo Line,it didn't do too much damage but all Wembley had to be evacuated.An aerial torpedo bombed the Grand Union Canal in Wembley where it goes over the road in a viaduct.It caused terrible flooding and many people lost their lives in Tokington Avenue,where I lived.They were drowned in their garden Anderson shelters.I did lots of war damage work in London and I was on a roof in Finchley Road when I saw the doodle bug hit the London Zoo.I worked at many British Restaurants which were subsidised by the government,you could get a good meal and a cup of tea for a shilling (5p).Well then my war began and I was called up and did my initial train ing at Whitby,I enjoyed that as I was trained to be a dispatch driver and had the moors to ride on.Although I had seen some terrible things I was still quite naive.One day,whilst queuing for dinner at the old Metropol Hotel,which was now our canteen,wanting to light my cigarette I asked a girl in the queue if she had a match.When she replied 'yes my face and your a**** I was quite shocked.It was VE day whilst I was there but I can't remember any celebrating,infact we were all quite disappointed we wouldn't be in the war.I was sent to India and had a wonderful tour of the country by rail,I witnessed the beginning of the riots in Calcutta and saw the British Flag come down over India for the last time.I can't leave India without mentioning Curly.He was an ol d soldier who couldn't read or write,he had no teeth but a lovely head of hair.He had lots of girl penfriends and he proposed to them all.We would write the letters he dictated and he even included samples of material for the wedding dress.He would sit on his bed roaring with laughter at the replies saying 'read it again kid'.He received lovely food parcels which he shared among us.If we went out in the evening we had to take condoms with us whether we wanted to or not.A very upperclass officer used to say to us 'if you don't go out with a pecket,you'll come back with a pecket'.I was then sent to Japan with the occupational forces,we had to guard the officers who were considered war criminals.The Japanese civilians were so polite and humble in defeat it wa s impossible to imagine the atrocities they committed.They were starving when we arrived,it wasn't the bomb that finished the war it was the starvation.We had to escort the prisoners to Singapore for the war trials.They were kept in the hold of the ship.One soldier closed his eyes in the heat for a moment and a Japanese officer threw himself on the soldier's fixed bayonet,the blade went through his throat.There was a big enquiry but I don't know the outcome. That was my war and all before I was 21.

Chapter 1 - Call-up to Northampton

On the 5th of January 1943 I was notified that I was to report for duty in the ATS. I was not surprised, as I had signed on at Southend some time before.

On the 15th of January, my brother Victors friend, Peter Savill and my mother travelled with me to Euston station to see me on the train to Northampton, where I had to report to No1 ATS training centre. We were met at Northampton by army lorries, which took us to the centre. I do not remember too much of Northampton.

It was a very cold January that year with snow on the ground for most of my three weeks training. I had chilblains on my feet and trying to break in new army shoes was very painful as there were parades, PE and marching everyday. My first breakfast was kippers, not quite what I was used to at home but when you are hungry you eat. I did go into Northampton once to look around and marched one Sunday to Church Parade but cannot remember the name of the large Church we were in. Training was mainly learning the dos and don’ts and regulations of army life and being assessed as to where I would be posted.

Chapter 2 — Posted to Greenford

I was posted in February to the RAOC (Royal Army Ordinance Corp) camp and depot at Greenford Middlesex. The camp was a short distance from the depot and we had to march to work each day. The camp itself was quite nice, we were in Nissan huts, I suppose about twenty girls to a hut. They were cold in the winter months, there being a coke stove in the middle of the hut. The depot was originally a factory owned by Heinz 57 Varieties, before the Government took it over. There were army and civilian personnel working there, the buildings were all numbered, some were offices and some warehouses. I worked in 409, which was an office. Major Bush and RSM Dumbleton were over the army personnel and Mr Melhuish supervised the civilians. We were all a friendly crowd and worked well together. Our main job was to issue stores to various places in Europe, India, Burma and Africa and to make sure that everything was available in the warehouses; it was interesting work.

Two civilians I remember were Mr Doughty and Jimmy Peach. Mr Doughty lived at Greenford with his son and daughter-in-law, he always seemed to have a supply of peppermints. I was invited to tea at his home one Sunday with a friend and we were made very welcome. After the war he visited my home at Lodge Lane and later after I was married came to visit me at my new home at Chadwell St Mary.

We had all our meals at the cookhouse in the depot; on the whole they were not at all bad. Sometimes when we were on night work and there were air raids. The air raid shelters were concrete, above ground and not very comfortable. Being near to Northolt aerodrome we were a target for the Germans. They did bomb the airfield and on one occasion dropped a land mine on one of our warehouses. It was quite frightening; there were casualties, but not anyone that I knew.

My old school friend Phyllis lived at Hanwell, not far from Greenford and my friend Ivy and I were invited to visit her home for a meal. It was lovely to see her and her parents but travelling was dangerous then, as you never knew when there would be an air raid. On one occasion we went to a dance at Ealing and there was an air raid, the military police took us back to camp.
I remember once, we had been on night work; we went back to camp to sleep and later that afternoon my friend Ivy took me to visit her home at Holloway London. Her mum made me very welcome and gave us a nice meal. We had to go back to camp early in the evening because we were working again that night.

I took Ivy home with me to meet my parents on a weekend pass. She also met my brother Vic who was home on leave; after that first meeting she came to see Vic and they later married and she became my sister-in-law.

In July 1943 I heard that my boyfriend Charlie would be speaking on BBC radio from Calcutta. Although I was working in the depot, I was given permission to walk back to camp and listen on the radio there, it was lovely to here him.

I was put forward for promotion and went before a selection committee of officers but declined the offer of a stripe. I could not imagine myself giving orders and I didn’t want the extra duties an NCO had to perform or to be moved from my friends. When we were unable to get home at weekends we would go into Harrow and on one occasion saw the film star, “Richard Green” live in, “Arms and a Man”. On another occasion, when we were coming home, Joan Creagh, Ivy and I accepted a lift to Park Royal station from some Americans in a jeep, it was a case of “hang on to your hat”, but it was a laugh and kind of them. Sometimes on the journey home there would be a raid and the train would stop at the nearest station. I remember this happening at Mansion House station and having to get out and wait; you never knew how long a journey would take. On another occasion the three of us came home on a weekend pass and decided to travel back to camp early on Monday morning instead of Sunday evening. Joan, who lived in William Street Grays, spent the Sunday night with us, so that we could get the first bus to Upminster. This we missed by a few seconds and had to run all the way to Grays station from Lodge Lane. The porter at Grays station practically threw us in the compartment and we were still out of breath when we got to Barking but we did get back to camp on time.

On January 20th 1945 Ivy and Victor were married and I had seven days leave. I missed her after she was demobbed.

Chapter 3 — move to Donnington

I had another leave in April 1945 and was then posted to Donnington Shropshire Section 92 E Company ATS Camp. Audrey Hale, who was also at Greenford, came too, along with other girls from the depot. The camp at Donnington was mainly a men’s camp and we were crowded into Nissan Huts with very little room but later we were transferred to a new housing estate. This was luxury, there were orderlies to keep the houses clean and we only had to worry about our own personal things. I worked in an office on an industrial site the army had taken over and once again there were civilians too and I made many friends. We were about eight girls to a house and we were all good friends, Irene, Audrey, Dorothy, May, Doris, Joyce, Rene and myself. Whilst posted here at Donnington I attended a Housewifery course, I enjoyed this very much; we were shown how to do everything in the home from window cleaning, polishing, washing-up, cooking; everything you would have to do in your home. We finished the course by cooking a meal. I passed and did get a certificate but cannot find it now. I did get to meet Billy Wright, who played football for Wolverhampton Wanderers; his desk was in front of mine; he later married Joy out of the Beverly Sisters. I could only get home on a long leave as my army pay was 26/- (£1.30) and it would have taken all that for my fare. So on weekends Audrey and I went to Wellington, Shrewsbury or Derby and stayed in YWCA. Audrey had two maiden aunts who lived in Birmingham and we had a weekend with them, which was very nice, on the Sunday we went to Church in the Bull Ring.

In December 1945 when Charlie came home from Burma, I borrowed Dorothy Stapleton’s engagement ring and pretended I was engaged, in order to get twenty-eight days compassionate leave.

Audrey met her husband Sam at Donnington. They were married in August 1946 and I was one of her bridesmaids.

I enjoyed my ATS days and in 2005, still write to some of my friends.

I was demobbed in July 1946 and married Charlie on the 26th October 1946.

I don’t think I will return to this delightful little Northamptonshire village situated about 5 miles from exit 16 (Daventry ) and about 1 mile from the A5.but Norton and I go back 64 years to the time of the blitz on London.
We had already been evacuated once before at the outbreak of war with somewhat mixed results and like many other kids at that time were brought home by the first Xmas because nothing was happening, this period would become known as the phoney war, little did we know!
France was attacked via Belgium in May 1940 and within a few weeks the British Expeditionary Force who had gone there to bolster the so called impregnable Maginot line was outflanked and forced to retreat to Dunkirk and the miracle that followed.
Former French airfields were now occupied by the German Air Force and it didn’t take long before the Luftwaffe began attacking shipping in the Channel and then RAF Airfields in the South with a view to softening up our defences before launching an invasion. This then was the start of the Battle of Britain.
September7th was beautiful day weather wise but that didn’t stop me going to the pictures in the afternoon. My Mum had said that if the sirens sounded I was to come home immediately even though the cinema was only 150 yards away. As sure as the Good Lord made little apples and at the beginning of the climax of the film the warning went off and being the dutiful son out I came. But even then dogfights were taking place miles up in the sky. I stood watching enthralled before I was hauled indoors by my braces! And a neighbour. There was a lull, the all clear sounded but it wasn't long before they started up again, that then was, as far I was concerned the start of the London Blitz. Night after night the German bombers came over dropping their high explosives and fire bombs, firstly on the docks and warehouses, and then all over the Capital.
My parents then reluctantly decided that my brothers and I were to go away again. I felt more saddened than scared because not only there was a good chance that my Mum and Dad could get killed but in addition my Father was due to be called up for the Army and at that time things did not look too rosy for our services.
So, in the latter part of September, 1940 there I was on a train with other kids heading out of Euston going to goodness knows. About an hour and half later we pulled up at a deserted station except for one railway man on the platform. One of the girls in the carriage put her head out of the window and asked where we were. He said something, she put her head back in and said, "I think he said Sweden".
Now I was no great shakes at Geography but I knew where Sweden was and I certainly had no recollection of crossing any water. Of course it turned out to be Weedon, quite a busy little Northamptonshire rail junction in that far off day but later closed by Dr Beeching in his savage purge on British Rail Stations.
"All off" was the cry, and of course we dutifully obeyed. On to coaches and less than ten minutes we were at our next destination, the Army Cavalry Barracks. Here we shown into a large mess hall where we sat down to a smashing meal served by sympathetic soldiers who no doubt had children of their own. We spent the night there sleeping on bunks without mattresses, on bare springs but with two blankets. However we were so tired having had very little sleep over the past few weeks because of the continual bombing we had to be woken up at 8 am where a substantial breakfast awaited us. Lashings of eggs, bacon. (yes, we all ate it!) beans, tomatoes, and toast, washed down with milk or tea. After this wonderful meal back on the coaches and about twelve minutes later we pulled up at a little village school, and thus became my first acquaintance with Norton.
I, and my youngest brother were to be billeted at Manor Farm run by a tenant farmer, Fred Robinson, and his wife Eleanor.They had no kids of their own. And although quite firm (she had been a teacher in her younger days) they were very fair and indeed kind.
Now the village consisted of about 45 houses, a pub, The White Horse, a small shop known as the Co Op and an equally small Post Office selling everything run by the formidable Mrs Yates. I use the word "formidable" because while she was a very big lady. her husband Jack was diminutive, but in his favour he was also one of the two handymen in the village.
The whole village and surrounding farmlands were owned by the Bath dynasty, their representative was Lady Beatrice Thynne, a small woman always dressed in black who lived in a stately home called Norton Hall. She had this habit of calling in at the various households always at tea time where the ladies felt obliged to make her a cup of tea even though tea was in short supply or rationed, when ever she walked through the village people doffed their hats with a "Good Morning" or "Good Afternoon milady", the villagers were in fact as far I could see at times terrified of her.
Not so the evacuees, when they asked why they should grovel, Nelly Radcliffe, the Headmistress said that Lady B was a lady, the girl who said we were at Sweden replied that her Mum was also a lady but no one raised their hats to her, Nellie replied that
We did things differently in London
The vicar of Norton Parish Church was the Rev. William Slater Hills, a throwback to the nineteenth century as far as I was concerned who suddenly found himself with what in his own words was probably one of the finest choirs in the area .Now although there were local kids, neither he nor they seemed to get organised as a choir and it was left to the evacuees to unofficially get one going, the amazing thing was that approximately 75 per cent of the kids were Jewish and a number of them were being trained for Barmitzvah
(Confirmation) at the age of 13. I should have had mine on September 7th but because of the war situation it was abandoned. Incidentally, at a nearby village called Badby a Jewish lad had his ceremony in the local church where practically the whole village including of course the vicar attended and the ensuing festivities took place in the evening at the local pub where everyone was invited!
However back to our choir, as most of the girls and boys had learned quite a few of the hymns at their London schools they took the rest of the service in their stride but they never wore surplices. Of course most of them went to church at the request of their foster parents, in any case there wasn’t much to do otherwise.
Now Nelly, the headmistress was rather sweet on the Rev and although there were times when the pair would disappear I personally do not think anything untoward took place, in any case his Mum lived with him at the vicarage and he was extremely fond of her, she was in fact much nicer and kind to the evacuees.
There was one other teacher, a Miss Gulliver who taught the infants, she was about 23 and rather attractive, some of us older ones who were feeling the first awakenings of youth rather fancied her but of course she probably couldn’t have cared less about us, in any case she was engaged to a sailor so forget it!
So, there we were a total of about 60 kids with three teachers all in one room trying to learn, or trying to listen. This situation couldn’t last long and within a few weeks many of us olduns were sent to one of three senior schools in Daventry, just over 2 miles away. As there were only 2 buses a day serving the route it was "walkies" both ways. My problem was that the stuff being taught I had learned 2 years earlier and although the education authorities appreciated this there was no room for me at the localGrammar school. This situation continued until it was decided by I dot know who that I would return to my old school in the Rugby area, this took place about October, 1941 but thats another story. Now within a week or so of arriving at Norton I was in bother, what had I done? Well, old Sue Major had lit her oil lamp (no gas, electricity. or in many cases no running water so no flush toilets) and had not drawn her curtains, her window was almost about a foot above ground level so I banged on her window and shouted "put that light out", after all it was an offence to have a light showing at night as it could be easily seen from the air. Next day a queue formed down at the farmhouse complaining of my action. I was told in no uncertain terms that I should have knocked at her door and asked her politely to draw her curtains! I'm damned sure if any German aircraft had been flying overhead they wouldn’t have waited!
The Major dynasty was like the Mafia in of course a harmless way, there were so many of them, and many other villagers were related to them, so if you upset one, you upset quite a lot but they were like most of the villagers good people.
I saw my first harvest "safely gathered in" and when some of the veg was auctioned I was able to buy a load of spuds, carrots, etc for next to nothing and send them back to Mum.
A few weeks after my arrival and in bed one night I was wakened by the sound of aircraft flying over the house. I recognised the drone of the engines and leaping out of bed saw what I knew to be German aircraft making their way somewhere, it turned out to be Coventry, about 20 miles away and although we could not hear the explosions we did see the glow of fires in the sky. Of course this was something entirely new to the villagers and even Fred Robinson who had served in the trenches in the last war had net seen anything like that. Whilst on the subject of war I should mention that the farm was the headquarters of the Home Guard whilst Fred was "Captain Manwering" only much more efficient even though his rank was only Sergeant. His Corporal was Bill Blencowe, another first war veteran, my middle brother was billeted with the Blencowes, again a very nice family, incidentally one of the daughters finished up with 14 kids!. Later Fred was made up to Captain and Bill to Lieutenant, but if you remember "Dads Army", that indeed was Norton's Home Guard! One disadvantage was they had no "wheels" but Alf Yates, brother of Jack did! He was a Private, so they gave him a stripe, problem solved Now every evening two members would come to the farm and pick up two rifles and go to a small hut nearby and keep watch, each rifle had one cartridge case, some weeks later they found one cartridge missing, it would appear one of the twits had taken a shot at a rabbit and probably blew the thing to pieces! But they never found out who the culprit was. T hat was the only time they ever fired a shot in anger!
As the months came and went I began to immerse my life into the village and of course the farm and what I had originally took to be simple folk realised they just thought differently to us townies.I saw the planting of the grain and later helped with the harvesting of same, perhaps sometimes taking the tea and sandwiches to the helpers, many of them working after they had finished their own jobs, it was after all extra income. It was at that time I began to realise what a wonderful thing nature was. I used to look forward to Saturdays where I was able to help to work on the farm, clearing the stables, feeding the horses, and changing their straw. I was taught how to milk a cow, no electric milking in those days. I brought the cows in from the fields for milking and then led them out again I also helped feed the pigs, a much maligned creature who pound for pound gives more edible meat than any other. Because of the wartime restrictions they were only allowed to slaughter a pig for home consumption once or twice a year but that was something to see, this was done by a butcher from Daventry, and what a master he was especially in the cutting up.The carcasse was then hung on the wall and pieces cut off as required. For those who appreciate bacon I can assure you there is in nothing like a piece of home cured bacon, mind it has to be hung up for months before it s dried and cured.
During my stay my Father was called up for military service so the Robinson's invited Mum up to stay for a while which she did, later she volunteered for war work and went to Rugby where she worked at a factory (BTH) which produced electrical parts for weapons.This later became part of General Electric and later still my old school colleague Arnie (laterLord) Weinstock became M.D.and a large shareholder. Because of lack of transport facilities at Norton she moved nearer to her place of employment but we were still able to see her often.
Whilst at Norton some of the epic happenings of World War 2 took place. The flats that I had lived in all my young life were bombed and over 200 people were killed, ironically enough in an air raid shelter under the flats. On the world stage Hitler made his most fatal mistake by attacking the Soviet Union, remarkable advances into that country at first but eventually stopped at Stalingrad and at the gates of Moscow and what in those far off days was called Leningrad (now St Petersburg), the tragic loss of one of our great leviathans, H.M.S.Hood and the ensuing chase and sinking of the German battleship, Bismarck, later again the destruction of another German giant, Scharnhorst, the battles that raged in the Libyan and Egypt Deserts etc.
Another happening but this time much more localised was the decision of 2 evacuees, Charlie Sifford and Victor Bradford, known as Nelson on account of his one eye to run away back to London. They got as far as Weedon before they were "caught" and brought back but within a few weeks their respective parents brought them home. An amusing incident happened when Nelson was fitted with a glass eye. He boasted that the glass was so hard it could not be broken and he kept throwing it into the air and letting it hit the ground to prove it. One day he invited me to have a throw, I did, it hit the ground and smashed into hundreds of pieces, once again he was known as Nelson!
It was a sad day when I finally left the village but Mrs. R.said that whenever I wanted to come back and stay for a while I would be most welcome. I had by this time required a bicycle, the same one that the old man did the knowledge on before the war, and which I, and later my two brothers (not at the same time of course) used and so most weekends would find me cycling the 10 miles or so from Rugby to Norton. Later when I returned to London to start work and Mum was back having managed to get a transfer I would spend a week or so back on the farm and meeting up and swapping stories with the local kids who by now had grown up. I told them of my "conquests" (mostly made up) with the fair sex. When I joined the RN the invitation still held good but it was not until I had been demobbed that I spent a few days there and it coincided with that terrible winter of 46/47
But I like to think I was able to assist in some way even changing the straw in the cowshed and feeding hay to the cattle as the snow was too deep for the beasts to get to the grass.

Remembering the War

I have recently been told about this site initiated by the BBC.so that peoples memories of that great conflict can be recorded for posterity.
It is hard for me to know where to start being unused to doing this type of recording fro other people to read, and whether the items that I am writing about will be of interest to this web site.

First a brief introduction.: My name is Raymond and I was born in London England, but after being “Demobbed” couldn’t settle down and moved to Canada a few years later where I have lived ever since. My home is in a town in an area known as “The Greater Toronto Area” or GTA for short which is in the province of Ontario.
So where should I start with my reminiscing? How about this as a beginning?

In August 1939 I went on holiday to Herne Bay in Kent and one day walking along the front I heard the sound of aircraft engines and being interested in aircraft I looked up and saw what I identified as a Lufthansa Junkers tri motor passenger plane coming in over the coast it was quite low all silver in the sunlight and I noticed the red background with the big black swastika on the tail fin, and seeing it I thought (which I suppose at the time a strange thought for a fifteen year old boy though again maybe not with all the talk of war going on) I wonder how soon the pilot of that plane would be over England again but this time dropping bombs.
I watched until it disappeared in land then I forgot about and went to the local cinema and saw maybe appropriately a film called“Fire over England” with Laurence Olivier though the action took place in Elizabethan times

Another memory
September 3rd 1939 : Living in Finchley in north London I was with my friend (also named Raymond) who lived on the same road as me but at the opposite end of it; and for some reason I was at his home instead of my own listening to Mr Chamberlain’s speech declaring “That Britain was now at war with Germany“.
At the end of the speech not be sure what to do as his family were in a sombre mood we left the house and decided to walk down to the end of the road back to my home to see how my family were taking the news, and I suppose also to see if anything was going to happen that we had been warned about, we just reached the end of the road and the sirens started to sound, we both stood stock still for a moment and then did a mad dash back to his house ,I swear we covered that distance in less than 30 seconds and it is a long road, at his house we both suddenly stopped and then strolled very nonchalantly inside only to find all his family sitting in a cupboard under the stairs.
Of course the “All clear” sounded soon afterwards. We again went outside Ray’s house and outside several houses people were standing and looking up and wondering most likely like us what the warning was all about, and I am not sure how long after the All Clear sounded this event happened, that we heard this loud explosion, naturally we wondered what it was and whether bombs had fallen.It was rather a mystery and it
wasn’t until some months later that I heard a rumour that an RAF plane had crashed,
I was told at Hendon aerodrome which was not far from us, but at the time this was never confirmed.

When I was in London on a visit a couple of years ago I went to the RAF museum at Colindale the site of the old aerodrome and was looking through its history records and there I did find an entry which confirmed that rumour of a plane crash Apparantly a student pilot on a training flight was coming into land, miscalculated his approach and crashed into a house in Colindale, unfortunately killing not only himself but several people who were in that house.
.
ARP Experience:

Naturally as a young boy all that was happening was very novel and exciting for me, although my parents did not think the same, especially my father who served the Middlesex Regt. in the first war.
He became an Air Raid Warden, so I thought I would the same but would only be accepted as a messenger which was fine for me, I was issued with a steel helmet and a respirator, and was told my duties would be relaying messages from the District Wardens office to the various Wardens Posts in the district.
At the beginning my job was rather quiet until the raids on London started and the things started to happen. and I felt a bit apprehensive riding around on a bike with messages especially during a raid with the ack-ack firing away and bits of shell coming down, I could hear the pieces hitting the ground. One time I heard some splinters came down and I think one must have hit my front wheel while I was riding as all of a sudden I had a flat tire which gave me a scare..
One of my most chilling experiences happened one night while I was out delivering messages during a raid. I heard this strange whistling and shushing sound that seemed to be coming down, the sound eventually stopped but I couldn’t see anything and it obviously was not a bomb, no explosion.
I continued cycling up the high road to point where there was a boulevard with some very high trees, and I saw something white hanging from one of them naturally I stopped to look and saw it was a parachute with something very large and black hanging from it I immediately had a good idea what it was A Land Mine ! Luckily it got snagged in the trees as I hate to think what would have happened if it had landed on the ground.
,I didn’t wait to look any closer but took off like the wind back to the local police station that I had passed, when I got there it took me a couple of minutes to calm down and then I managed to tell the police what I had just found. They got in touch with the army bomb disposal squad and in short time the area was evacuated and roped off. The army I was told later defused the mine and took it away.
Apparently this strange noise had also been heard by someone nobody was sure what it was and if it was some sort of bomb that had come down where it had landed, but everyone was very pleased that I saw the mine and reported it. I was quite excited about what had happened and told my parents afterwards, my father said you did a good job, but my mother naturally was horrified

A Home Guard experience
:
As soon as I was old enough I joined the Home Guard and went through all the training in what we were expected to do should the Germans invade Britain.
One exercise I went on was to do with house to house fighting, which we were doing in a partly finished housing site in Mill Hill, I was detailed to give covering fire with a grenade firing rifle and had to camouflage myself, there was a grass ditch at side of the road so I dived in there and as there was a lot of loose grass I decided to cover myself with just my head showing, a perfect covering I thought.

While I was lying there the local milkman came by with his horse and cart and stopped in front of me to deliver his milk (he could not have noticed me lying there for which I was pleased about) while he was gone the horse decided it was hungry and started to eat the grass that was covering me, not only that he also relieved himself at the same time which splashed all over me, I gave a yell and jumped up scaring the horse which took off at a great speed down the road with the cart , all the bottles rattling, some falling off, and. with the milkman who had just returned after his delivery, running after it calling the horse all sorts of names to stop which he eventually managed to make it do, then coming back to me to say some rather nasty things at what I had caused..
My platoon sergeant who came by to see what the ruckus was about and saw me rather wet and smelling not too good into the bargain, couldn‘t stop laughing neither could the rest of the platoon when they found out what happened and saw me all wet with bits of grass stuck to my uniform.
My mother told me to keep out of the house when I returned home until I changed in fresh clothing. The odour would not go away and I had to get a new uniform from the QM stores where again to my embarrassment I had to explain what happened to me. It took a long time for me to live this episode down! .

1942 I was still studying to be a mechanical engineer at and was possibly in theory exempt from military service, but on turning eighteen I decided to volunteer for the RAF. I was accepted and soon after orders came for me to report to Euston House to collect my travel documents for Penarth in South Wales for Primary Training , When I reported in with the rest of the intake we were told we were being put on Deferred Service as the RAF now had too many volunteers to cope with
So after all that excitement I was back in “Civvy Street” waiting for a recall which I hoped would not be too long in coming.
.
What I did get a few months later much to my annoyance was my call up for the army ,I immediately went to the RAF recruiting station at Euston House to complain and found some others like me there. We were told too bad that although we were on deferred service technically we not in the RAF so into the army you go!

Reluctantly I went to Canterbury and did my 6 weeks basic training again ,then posted to the East Surrey regiment for my Corps Training after which I posted to my battalion in the 3‘mortor platoon of “S“ company.
Until I went overseas it was the usual round of training, route marches, schemes etc
When we received our overseas postings we were issued with tropical kit including Solar Topees, so we all thought it’s the far east
.

My father had a shoe repair shop in Somers Town during the war and we lived over the shop.
One night during the blitz the front windows and door were blown out and there was a scramble of looters helping themselves to shoes, polish, lasts, anything in fact that they could carry away.
My father and the air-raid wardens put a stop to that ! But, even with the house boarded up my dad would not go down to the shelter although my mum, my two brothers, my sister and I went every night to the tube with our 'bundle' consisting of an a small eiderdown to lie on, we slept on the floor on the platform until, later on in the war we were allocated bunks.
The station we sheltered in was Leicester Square because Mum said our nearest one, King's Cross, was too rough !
We also took a large flask of cocoa and some mugs.
I was five when the war started and, to this day, the sound of the air-raid warning sends a chill up my spine.
Later us four children were evacuated to Northamptonshire but only stayed a few weeks because we were so homesick and afraid Mum and Dad would be killed in the blitz.
So Dad came and took us all home again, there was a lull in the bombing and we moved to Kentish Town but unfortunately a doodlebug fell nearby, in Clarence Way, many of our friends were killed.
My worst memory was going to school and one of our teachers turning up dressed in her fur coat. which was all she had been able to salvage from her bombed out house, I can still hear her sobs. Us kids were bewildered because we did not know what to say.
There are so many memories of the war.
The night the incendiary bomb came down the lift shaft, but luckily the lift was up at the time. We were covered in black smuts and debris but unhurt.
My second evacuation later on in the war, this time to South Wales, my Mum running up and down the platform pleading with the guards to find out where we were going !
Taking my 11 plus in the air-raid shelter.
Watching goggle-eyed as neighbours were dug out of the ruins of their houses.
The fun we had down the tube, singing songs. the cameraderie.
Catching measles, being taken to the Tottenham Fever Hospical, being put under the bed there when the warning sounded, we could not go down the shelter because we were infectious.
The Nurse running in screaming 'they have invaded the Balkans' (As a kid I had no idea what the Balkans were)!
When nearby houses were bombed people shovelled up their coal from the cellars, figuring that the occupants would have no further use for it.
The night Holy Trinity Church spire in Kentish Town took a direct hit and I think can still be seen with hald its spire missing.My father had a shoe repair shop in Somers Town during the war and we lived over the shop.
One night during the blitz the front windows and door were blown out and there was a scramble of looters helping themselves to shoes, polish, lasts, anything in fact that they could carry away.
My father and the air-raid wardens put a stop to that ! But, even with the house boarded up my dad would not go down to the shelter although my mum, my two brothers, my sister and I went every night to the tube with our 'bundle' consisting of an a small eiderdown to lie on, we slept on the floor on the platform until, later on in the war we were allocated bunks.
The station we sheltered in was Leicester Square because Mum said our nearest one, King's Cross, was too rough !
We also took a large flask of cocoa and some mugs.
I was five when the war started and, to this day, the sound of the air-raid warning sends a chill up my spine.
Later us four children were evacuated to Northamptonshire but only stayed a few weeks because we were so homesick and afraid Mum and Dad would be killed in the blitz.
So Dad came and took us all home again, there was a lull in the bombing and we moved to Kentish Town but unfortunately a doodlebug fell nearby, in Clarence Way, many of our friends were killed.
My worst memory was going to school and one of our teachers turning up dressed in her fur coat. which was all she had been able to salvage from her bombed out house, I can still hear her sobs. Us kids were bewildered because we did not know what to say.
There are so many memories of the war.
The night the incendiary bomb came down the lift shaft, but luckily the lift was up at the time. We were covered in black smuts and debris but unhurt.
My second evacuation later on in the war, this time to South Wales, my Mum running up and down the platform pleading with the guards to find out where we were going !
Taking my 11 plus in the air-raid shelter.
Watching goggle-eyed as neighbours were dug out of the ruins of their houses.
The fun we had down the tube, singing songs. the cameraderie.
Catching measles, being taken to the Tottenham Fever Hospical, being put under the bed there when the warning sounded, we could not go down the shelter because we were infectious.
The Nurse running in screaming 'they have invaded the Balkans' (As a kid I had no idea what the Balkans were)!
When nearby houses were bombed people shovelled up their coal from the cellars, figuring that the occupants would have no further use for it.
The night Holy Trinity Church spire in Kentish Town took a direct hit and I think can still be seen with hald its spire missing.My father had a shoe repair shop in Somers Town during the war and we lived over the shop.
One night during the blitz the front windows and door were blown out and there was a scramble of looters helping themselves to shoes, polish, lasts, anything in fact that they could carry away.
My father and the air-raid wardens put a stop to that ! But, even with the house boarded up my dad would not go down to the shelter although my mum, my two brothers, my sister and I went every night to the tube with our 'bundle' consisting of an a small eiderdown to lie on, we slept on the floor on the platform until, later on in the war we were allocated bunks.
The station we sheltered in was Leicester Square because Mum said our nearest one, King's Cross, was too rough !
We also took a large flask of cocoa and some mugs.
I was five when the war started and, to this day, the sound of the air-raid warning sends a chill up my spine.
Later us four children were evacuated to Northamptonshire but only stayed a few weeks because we were so homesick and afraid Mum and Dad would be killed in the blitz.
So Dad came and took us all home again, there was a lull in the bombing and we moved to Kentish Town but unfortunately a doodlebug fell nearby, in Clarence Way, many of our friends were killed.
My worst memory was going to school and one of our teachers turning up dressed in her fur coat. which was all she had been able to salvage from her bombed out house, I can still hear her sobs. Us kids were bewildered because we did not know what to say.
There are so many memories of the war.
The night the incendiary bomb came down the lift shaft, but luckily the lift was up at the time. We were covered in black smuts and debris but unhurt.
My second evacuation later on in the war, this time to South Wales, my Mum running up and down the platform pleading with the guards to find out where we were going !
Taking my 11 plus in the air-raid shelter.
Watching goggle-eyed as neighbours were dug out of the ruins of their houses.
The fun we had down the tube, singing songs. the cameraderie.
Catching measles, being taken to the Tottenham Fever Hospical, being put under the bed there when the warning sounded, we could not go down the shelter because we were infectious.
The Nurse running in screaming 'they have invaded the Balkans' (As a kid I had no idea what the Balkans were)!
When nearby houses were bombed people shovelled up their coal from the cellars, figuring that the occupants would have no further use for it.
The night Holy Trinity Church spire in Kentish Town took a direct hit and I think can still be seen with hald its spire missing.