Bombs dropped in the ward of: Acton Central

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.

It was 24th June, 1940, and I had not long passed my eighth birthday. Today was a special day — the day I was to be evacuated! I was to leave London for an unknown destination in Wales, that mysterious land on the other side of the world. Mother and I rose early. I was excited fit to bust and could not understand why Mother was snuffling and dabbing her eyes as she tied to the lapel of my jacket a luggage-label bearing my name and address and our telephone number, Acorn 2552. My khaki haversack was packed with a specially-expanded 'lunch' of hard-boiled eggs, sandwiches and plums. I was to take with me only a change of socks and underwear, for the rest of my things would be sent on to my destination when I had finally arrived.

I was given a breakfast worthy of an intrepid traveller, then, together, Mother and I set off to school.

'I'm-going-to-be-evacuated!'I trilled as I swung my gasmask-case on my shoulder.

Off we went down the old familiar route to John Perryn’s School that I had taken most days that I could remember. As the school came into sight I almost stopped in my tracks. All was not right with the world. For there, parked outside the school gates, were three red double-decker London Transport buses. I could hardly believe my eyes. No buses ever came down this road, let alone stopped outside the school. Great events were afoot!

Inside the school there was an air of emergency. Teachers and other, unknown, people hurried around purposefully holding pieces of paper. None of the usual rituals was observed, no marching into the assembly hall, no hymns, no Lord's Prayer. Instead, we went straight to our classrooms, where there was much calling for silence and the reading out of names. How exciting it all was!
Then at last we trooped out of school and into the buses, the adults sedately, the children chattering excitedly like seagulls and, luggage labels a-flutter, rushing for the coveted front seats on the top deck. Parents conferred anxiously with one another. What was the latest on the destination? Had they heard anything? Did They know something We didn't know? In all this confusion the buses started up and moved slowly off in convoy down the hill. The squealing rose to a crescendo. We were off! In fact the buses did not take us very far. A short ride and we were at Acton Main Line railway station, where our parents and teachers shepherded us off the buses and down onto the platform. There an extremely long train awaited us, together with what seemed like another thousand schoolchildren, all shouting or laughing or crying or looking bewildered. A carriage was allocated to our party and in not more than ten minutes of organised chaos we were settled into it.

Then, as we were to do so often in the next couple of days, we waited. Children dismounted from the carriages to talk to their anxious parents and were shooed back in by harassed teachers. The platform was packed. It was like a painting by Frith or a scene from “Gone With the Wind”. There was an affecting little tableau in whichever direction you looked. Last-minute instructions were given through carriage windows.

'Look after your sister and don't let anyone separate you!'

'Remember to clean your teeth!'

'Stay close to Mr. So-and-So and do everything he tells you!'

'Be sure and write as soon as you get there!'

I endured my fair share of such exhortations from Mother until finally, with a whistle and a hoot, the long train steamed slowly out of the station. Handkerchiefs were fluttered and dabbed quickly to eyes, farewells and futile final messages were lost in the hiss of steam, arms were waved furiously. I lost sight of Mother in the crowd but continued waving until the platform had disappeared from view. We were off on the long road to Wales.

The atmosphere was one of some gigantic school outing. Packets of sandwiches meant to last the journey were opened and scoffed in five minutes. Boys ran boisterously up and down the carriage corridors, despite the attempts of the accompanying teachers to keep order. Games of 'I Spy' were organised. Sporadic sing-songs broke out:

Knick-knack paddywack, give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home...

The train headed westward, stopping every now and then to pick up more young passengers. Eventually it stopped no more but chuffed on through unfamiliar countryside. It was a long, tedious journey and children settled down to sleep or relieved the boredom by quarrelling or even fighting, making it necessary for a teacher to restore order. As the hours wore on, even this activity stopped and the tired, slumped little bodies lay still, apart from the gentle rocking motion of the carriage.

Often, for no apparent reason, the train would grind to a halt and stand hissing steam as if itself complaining at the delay. Then it would edge forward again slowly, gradually increasing speed as it went. It was not until late afternoon that, as though to emphasise the fact that we were being cut off from home and all things familiar, the train entered a long tunnel. Smuts and smoke entered the compartment from the blackness and there was a rush to shut the windows. After an eternity we emerged back into the light of day. There was no going back now.

Gradually the countryside became hillier and somehow more alien. The children were quiet, partly from fatigue and partly from apprehension at what lay ahead. Some time in the evening we reached Cardiff station and, with much marshalling and shouting of instructions, we dismounted from the train and in several long columns were marched to a hospital where we were to spend the night.

I had been fortunate enough never to have visited a hospital before and it seemed to me just what I imagined a prison to look like, with its towering brick walls, barred windows and spidery, zigzagging fire-escapes. There was the equivalent of an exercise-yard, a grey expanse of asphalt, devoid of plants or grass, walled in with spiked black railings. I have since wondered what they had done with all the patients to accommodate our swarming hordes, for the place seemed deserted.

After an indifferent meal, served cafeteria-style from trestle tables and eaten anywhere we could find room to sit or stand, we were led off to the places where we were to spend the night. I found myself with a lot of other boys in a huge, dispiriting ward containing dozens of tubular-steel hospital beds, more beds in one place than I had ever seen in my life, arranged across the floor in rows and columns. Even so, there were not enough of them to go round and so we had to double up, two to a bed, head-to-foot. I shared with a quiet and uncommunicative boy who clambered into bed and fell asleep without even saying goodnight. Indeed, the only sound I ever heard him make, ten minutes later, was a gently hissing susurration as he bathed my backside in a flood of warm urine.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by absolute pandemonium. A pillow-fight had broken out. It was dark and I could just make out dim shapes jumping around on beds and running around squealing and hurling pillows and anything else they could get their hands on. Remembering too late my haversack beneath the bed, I reached for it only to have it snatched from my grasp in the darkness. In the morning I found it at the end of the ward; the hard-boiled eggs, plums and sandwiches had been squashed into a sticky, evil-smelling amalgam.

There was worse in the lavatory. Either a blockage or, more probably, the primitive toilet-training of some of my little companions, had resulted in a mess the like of which I had never before encountered, even in the 'Boys'' at John Perryn's. Archipelagic turds were dotted around the floor in a golden sea, on which little paper rafts floated disconsolately. It was a vicious circle. Rather than paddle through the mess, one did what one could from the doorway, thus making matters even worse.

After breakfast we were taken out into the yard, to stand in rows on parade while a teacher shouted out names from a list held in her hand.

'John So-and-So!'

'Here, Miss!'

'Sheila Such-and-Such!'

'Yes, Miss, present, Miss!'

The little hands would shoot up and the children whose names had been called would run out to the front and form a little group around the teacher with the piece of paper. When the party was thirty or so strong it would be marched off, the teacher at its head. There would be a delay of some minutes until a new master or mistress, with a new piece of paper containing a new list, would take the place so recently vacated. Another set of names was read out, more hands were raised and more children were led away, never to be seen again.

I have never read Kafka but I know how he felt. All morning the calling out of names continued. Mine was not among them. I began to get depressed and worried, fearing that my name had been lost or overlooked in the bustle and confusion and that it would not appear on any of the lists that the teachers held. It could so easily happen in all this to-ing and fro-ing, I reasoned to myself; indeed, the longer I stood there the less likely it seemed that anyone knew I existed.

Some of the children did not seem to be present to answer to their names, as though they had disappeared somewhere en route. This worried me further. Would the same thing happen to me? Would I just vanish off the face of the earth, or get lost in some Cardiff street? Would I stay here in this place for the rest of my life, standing in this yard while children arrived, were called out into a group and departed, leaving me behind? For a while I was tempted to answer to one of the missing children's names but this would mean altering the luggage-label tied to my lapel. I decided that I might well be found out and could in any case be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.

After a break for lunch, the depleted throng lined up once more in the yard and the roll-calling continued long into the afternoon. I was by now sure that I was one of the damned, a lost soul. Suddenly I heard my own name called out:

'Terence Nunn!'

'Here!' I piped, flinging up my arm, glad to be back in the human race, to be somebody again instead of a nonentity fallen off the edge of everybody's list. The party I had been called to turned out to have a few fellow-members of John Perryn's, though I did not recognise anyone. Our group, a mere chipping off the block that had arrived, returned to the railway station where, after the now inevitable wait, we boarded another train. The final leg of our journey began. This time there were no scufflings and no songs about this old man playing knick-knack paddywhack. Instead, we stared soberly and silently out a ravaged industrial landscape. There was no fun here.

Eventually we entered a long, black valley, scarred with spoil-tips and the giant winding-wheels of collieries. Endless lines of coal- waggons on the adjoining track bore strange, complex words, the long, unpronounceable names of Welsh coal towns.

On our left we passed drab, grey stone cottages ranged in long terraces marching up the hill, one behind the other. On our right hung a dark mountain, its coal-mine perched at the edge, like a prison watch-tower standing guard over the village. The train slowed, clanking and hissing to a stop in a tiny station that was little more than a halt. DANNOEDD, said the board on the platform. We were ordered off the train. We had arrived at our destination.

From the little platform we watched as the train steamed off again and continued its journey along the valley, disappearing round the side of the mountain. Our party, some thirty strong, under the command of Mr. Ingleson, a schoolmaster who had come with us from London, hobbled into the village of Dannoedd like some diminutive defeated army returning from the front. There was nobody about. In the echoing main street my eye was caught by an advertising sign on the wall above a baker's shop: 'Turog Bread'. It was a brand I had never heard of in London; even the name itself sounded Welsh and alien. I was in a foreign country, far from home. The grim scene around me convinced me that I had been banished to some desolate wasteland, decaying and neglected by the rest of the world. Suburban niceties like roadside trees, kerbs and pavements, which I had always taken for granted, were unknown here; a mud roadway, dotted with embedded rocks, stretched unbroken from the front doors of one terrace of mean grey stone cottages to its facing neighbours.

The cramped back yards were partitioned off by dry stone walls which had collapsed in many places, letting in dirty grey sheep which browsed on the few miserable tufts of grass they could find among the upturned tin baths and fallen clothes-lines. I remembered the excitement with which I had set out to 'be evacuated' less than forty-eight hours before and suddenly longed with all my little soul for the familiar sights and sounds and smells of home. Doubtless my companions felt the same, for they all walked in silence.

We were marched to a building above whose front door letters of graven stone proclaimed it to be the Dannoedd Working Men's Club and Institute, 1926. Inside, we sat around, silent and apprehensive, on chairs and benches amid snooker tables and dartboards. We had been expected, for half the village seemed to be here. The miners and their wives, our prospective guardians, dressed curiously in their Sunday best, walked round the hall inspecting us, rather as though we had been cattle at a country market. It would hardly have seemed amiss had they wrenched open our mouths and started counting our teeth. The bidding started.

'I'll 'ave 'im, b'there!'

'Them two, we'll 'ave them ...'

''E do look all right, I don't want no-one too big ...'

'All right, sonny, ewe come with us, no, not ewe, ewe!'

'I'd rather 'ave a little girl, reely ...'

And so our little party was whittled down by ones and twos until only a handful of us were left. I began to panic once more, fearing that I would remain, alone on my bench, unwanted by anyone, sleeping on a billiard table until the war ended.

I was saved from any possibility of this fate by a middle-aged couple, who came and stood in front of me and looked me over. The man stood awkwardly in his dark blue suit and trilby hat, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. His wife, a worried-looking woman in a flowered dress, looked from me to the boy sitting next to me, as though unable to choose between us. I did my best to look appealing. The couple, speaking in low, diffident voices, exchanged words in an incomprehensible language which I took to be Welsh.

Mr. Ingleson sidled up with his list, like a shopwalker anxious to push his wares.

'We'll 'ave these two,' said the other man pointing to me and the boy next to me. Mr. Ingleson took everybody's name for his list and I learned that my little companion was named Kenny Everitt and came from John Perryn's, though I had not known him there. He was a small, thin, solemn-faced boy. Our new guardians were Mr. and Mrs. Davies, who lived just across the road.

We walked out into the warm dusk with Mr. and Mrs. Davies. Relief was tempered with nervousness as they took us the fifty or so yards to their cottage. We went into the kitchen, where we were introduced to their daughter, Haulwen, a brawny girl of thirteen with a shock of thick blonde hair. We were given a quick supper of bread-and-jam and tea and, as we ate, made desultory, embarrassed conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Davies, answering their questions about ourselves, our homes and our families, under the silent scrutiny of the girl Haulwen. To these people we were foreigners, strange little beings from a place and a way of life that they could hardly begin to imagine.

After the meal, Kenny and I were led to the sink for a quick wash in an enamel bowl filled from a kettle which sat permanently on the stove. Then we were taken up the narrow staircase of the cottage and put to bed in a small upstairs room, from the little window of which we could see the mountain looming in the twilight, with the pit-wheel jutting from its side.

'I'm gonner cry meself ter sleep. I don't like this 'orrible dump!' said Kenny, once the bedroom door had closed and we were alone.

'Me too!' I said.

But it was not to be. Two days of sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and scratch meals had made us wonderfully windy. Lying beside me in the double-bed, Kenny let out a long, sonorous bugle-call. We sniggered, half afraid that the Davieses must have heard. Then I replied in kind and there were more sniggers. Soon a full-scale contest was in progress. Our determination to wash the night away in tears was forgotten; instead, we flatulently giggled ourselves to sleep.

It was 24th June, 1940, and I had not long passed my eighth birthday. Today was a special day — the day I was to be evacuated! I was to leave London for an unknown destination in Wales, that mysterious land on the other side of the world. Mother and I rose early. I was excited fit to bust and could not understand why Mother was snuffling and dabbing her eyes as she tied to the lapel of my jacket a luggage-label bearing my name and address and our telephone number, Acorn 2552. My khaki haversack was packed with a specially-expanded 'lunch' of hard-boiled eggs, sandwiches and plums. I was to take with me only a change of socks and underwear, for the rest of my things would be sent on to my destination when I had finally arrived.

I was given a breakfast worthy of an intrepid traveller, then, together, Mother and I set off to school.

'I'm-going-to-be-evacuated!'I trilled as I swung my gasmask-case on my shoulder.

Off we went down the old familiar route to John Perryn’s School that I had taken most days that I could remember. As the school came into sight I almost stopped in my tracks. All was not right with the world. For there, parked outside the school gates, were three red double-decker London Transport buses. I could hardly believe my eyes. No buses ever came down this road, let alone stopped outside the school. Great events were afoot!

Inside the school there was an air of emergency. Teachers and other, unknown, people hurried around purposefully holding pieces of paper. None of the usual rituals was observed, no marching into the assembly hall, no hymns, no Lord's Prayer. Instead, we went straight to our classrooms, where there was much calling for silence and the reading out of names. How exciting it all was!
Then at last we trooped out of school and into the buses, the adults sedately, the children chattering excitedly like seagulls and, luggage labels a-flutter, rushing for the coveted front seats on the top deck. Parents conferred anxiously with one another. What was the latest on the destination? Had they heard anything? Did They know something We didn't know? In all this confusion the buses started up and moved slowly off in convoy down the hill. The squealing rose to a crescendo. We were off! In fact the buses did not take us very far. A short ride and we were at Acton Main Line railway station, where our parents and teachers shepherded us off the buses and down onto the platform. There an extremely long train awaited us, together with what seemed like another thousand schoolchildren, all shouting or laughing or crying or looking bewildered. A carriage was allocated to our party and in not more than ten minutes of organised chaos we were settled into it.

Then, as we were to do so often in the next couple of days, we waited. Children dismounted from the carriages to talk to their anxious parents and were shooed back in by harassed teachers. The platform was packed. It was like a painting by Frith or a scene from “Gone With the Wind”. There was an affecting little tableau in whichever direction you looked. Last-minute instructions were given through carriage windows.

'Look after your sister and don't let anyone separate you!'

'Remember to clean your teeth!'

'Stay close to Mr. So-and-So and do everything he tells you!'

'Be sure and write as soon as you get there!'

I endured my fair share of such exhortations from Mother until finally, with a whistle and a hoot, the long train steamed slowly out of the station. Handkerchiefs were fluttered and dabbed quickly to eyes, farewells and futile final messages were lost in the hiss of steam, arms were waved furiously. I lost sight of Mother in the crowd but continued waving until the platform had disappeared from view. We were off on the long road to Wales.

The atmosphere was one of some gigantic school outing. Packets of sandwiches meant to last the journey were opened and scoffed in five minutes. Boys ran boisterously up and down the carriage corridors, despite the attempts of the accompanying teachers to keep order. Games of 'I Spy' were organised. Sporadic sing-songs broke out:

Knick-knack paddywack, give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home...

The train headed westward, stopping every now and then to pick up more young passengers. Eventually it stopped no more but chuffed on through unfamiliar countryside. It was a long, tedious journey and children settled down to sleep or relieved the boredom by quarrelling or even fighting, making it necessary for a teacher to restore order. As the hours wore on, even this activity stopped and the tired, slumped little bodies lay still, apart from the gentle rocking motion of the carriage.

Often, for no apparent reason, the train would grind to a halt and stand hissing steam as if itself complaining at the delay. Then it would edge forward again slowly, gradually increasing speed as it went. It was not until late afternoon that, as though to emphasise the fact that we were being cut off from home and all things familiar, the train entered a long tunnel. Smuts and smoke entered the compartment from the blackness and there was a rush to shut the windows. After an eternity we emerged back into the light of day. There was no going back now.

Gradually the countryside became hillier and somehow more alien. The children were quiet, partly from fatigue and partly from apprehension at what lay ahead. Some time in the evening we reached Cardiff station and, with much marshalling and shouting of instructions, we dismounted from the train and in several long columns were marched to a hospital where we were to spend the night.

I had been fortunate enough never to have visited a hospital before and it seemed to me just what I imagined a prison to look like, with its towering brick walls, barred windows and spidery, zigzagging fire-escapes. There was the equivalent of an exercise-yard, a grey expanse of asphalt, devoid of plants or grass, walled in with spiked black railings. I have since wondered what they had done with all the patients to accommodate our swarming hordes, for the place seemed deserted.

After an indifferent meal, served cafeteria-style from trestle tables and eaten anywhere we could find room to sit or stand, we were led off to the places where we were to spend the night. I found myself with a lot of other boys in a huge, dispiriting ward containing dozens of tubular-steel hospital beds, more beds in one place than I had ever seen in my life, arranged across the floor in rows and columns. Even so, there were not enough of them to go round and so we had to double up, two to a bed, head-to-foot. I shared with a quiet and uncommunicative boy who clambered into bed and fell asleep without even saying goodnight. Indeed, the only sound I ever heard him make, ten minutes later, was a gently hissing susurration as he bathed my backside in a flood of warm urine.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by absolute pandemonium. A pillow-fight had broken out. It was dark and I could just make out dim shapes jumping around on beds and running around squealing and hurling pillows and anything else they could get their hands on. Remembering too late my haversack beneath the bed, I reached for it only to have it snatched from my grasp in the darkness. In the morning I found it at the end of the ward; the hard-boiled eggs, plums and sandwiches had been squashed into a sticky, evil-smelling amalgam.

There was worse in the lavatory. Either a blockage or, more probably, the primitive toilet-training of some of my little companions, had resulted in a mess the like of which I had never before encountered, even in the 'Boys'' at John Perryn's. Archipelagic turds were dotted around the floor in a golden sea, on which little paper rafts floated disconsolately. It was a vicious circle. Rather than paddle through the mess, one did what one could from the doorway, thus making matters even worse.

After breakfast we were taken out into the yard, to stand in rows on parade while a teacher shouted out names from a list held in her hand.

'John So-and-So!'

'Here, Miss!'

'Sheila Such-and-Such!'

'Yes, Miss, present, Miss!'

The little hands would shoot up and the children whose names had been called would run out to the front and form a little group around the teacher with the piece of paper. When the party was thirty or so strong it would be marched off, the teacher at its head. There would be a delay of some minutes until a new master or mistress, with a new piece of paper containing a new list, would take the place so recently vacated. Another set of names was read out, more hands were raised and more children were led away, never to be seen again.

I have never read Kafka but I know how he felt. All morning the calling out of names continued. Mine was not among them. I began to get depressed and worried, fearing that my name had been lost or overlooked in the bustle and confusion and that it would not appear on any of the lists that the teachers held. It could so easily happen in all this to-ing and fro-ing, I reasoned to myself; indeed, the longer I stood there the less likely it seemed that anyone knew I existed.

Some of the children did not seem to be present to answer to their names, as though they had disappeared somewhere en route. This worried me further. Would the same thing happen to me? Would I just vanish off the face of the earth, or get lost in some Cardiff street? Would I stay here in this place for the rest of my life, standing in this yard while children arrived, were called out into a group and departed, leaving me behind? For a while I was tempted to answer to one of the missing children's names but this would mean altering the luggage-label tied to my lapel. I decided that I might well be found out and could in any case be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.

After a break for lunch, the depleted throng lined up once more in the yard and the roll-calling continued long into the afternoon. I was by now sure that I was one of the damned, a lost soul. Suddenly I heard my own name called out:

'Terence Nunn!'

'Here!' I piped, flinging up my arm, glad to be back in the human race, to be somebody again instead of a nonentity fallen off the edge of everybody's list. The party I had been called to turned out to have a few fellow-members of John Perryn's, though I did not recognise anyone. Our group, a mere chipping off the block that had arrived, returned to the railway station where, after the now inevitable wait, we boarded another train. The final leg of our journey began. This time there were no scufflings and no songs about this old man playing knick-knack paddywhack. Instead, we stared soberly and silently out a ravaged industrial landscape. There was no fun here.

Eventually we entered a long, black valley, scarred with spoil-tips and the giant winding-wheels of collieries. Endless lines of coal- waggons on the adjoining track bore strange, complex words, the long, unpronounceable names of Welsh coal towns.

On our left we passed drab, grey stone cottages ranged in long terraces marching up the hill, one behind the other. On our right hung a dark mountain, its coal-mine perched at the edge, like a prison watch-tower standing guard over the village. The train slowed, clanking and hissing to a stop in a tiny station that was little more than a halt. DANNOEDD, said the board on the platform. We were ordered off the train. We had arrived at our destination.

From the little platform we watched as the train steamed off again and continued its journey along the valley, disappearing round the side of the mountain. Our party, some thirty strong, under the command of Mr. Ingleson, a schoolmaster who had come with us from London, hobbled into the village of Dannoedd like some diminutive defeated army returning from the front. There was nobody about. In the echoing main street my eye was caught by an advertising sign on the wall above a baker's shop: 'Turog Bread'. It was a brand I had never heard of in London; even the name itself sounded Welsh and alien. I was in a foreign country, far from home. The grim scene around me convinced me that I had been banished to some desolate wasteland, decaying and neglected by the rest of the world. Suburban niceties like roadside trees, kerbs and pavements, which I had always taken for granted, were unknown here; a mud roadway, dotted with embedded rocks, stretched unbroken from the front doors of one terrace of mean grey stone cottages to its facing neighbours.

The cramped back yards were partitioned off by dry stone walls which had collapsed in many places, letting in dirty grey sheep which browsed on the few miserable tufts of grass they could find among the upturned tin baths and fallen clothes-lines. I remembered the excitement with which I had set out to 'be evacuated' less than forty-eight hours before and suddenly longed with all my little soul for the familiar sights and sounds and smells of home. Doubtless my companions felt the same, for they all walked in silence.

We were marched to a building above whose front door letters of graven stone proclaimed it to be the Dannoedd Working Men's Club and Institute, 1926. Inside, we sat around, silent and apprehensive, on chairs and benches amid snooker tables and dartboards. We had been expected, for half the village seemed to be here. The miners and their wives, our prospective guardians, dressed curiously in their Sunday best, walked round the hall inspecting us, rather as though we had been cattle at a country market. It would hardly have seemed amiss had they wrenched open our mouths and started counting our teeth. The bidding started.

'I'll 'ave 'im, b'there!'

'Them two, we'll 'ave them ...'

''E do look all right, I don't want no-one too big ...'

'All right, sonny, ewe come with us, no, not ewe, ewe!'

'I'd rather 'ave a little girl, reely ...'

And so our little party was whittled down by ones and twos until only a handful of us were left. I began to panic once more, fearing that I would remain, alone on my bench, unwanted by anyone, sleeping on a billiard table until the war ended.

I was saved from any possibility of this fate by a middle-aged couple, who came and stood in front of me and looked me over. The man stood awkwardly in his dark blue suit and trilby hat, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. His wife, a worried-looking woman in a flowered dress, looked from me to the boy sitting next to me, as though unable to choose between us. I did my best to look appealing. The couple, speaking in low, diffident voices, exchanged words in an incomprehensible language which I took to be Welsh.

Mr. Ingleson sidled up with his list, like a shopwalker anxious to push his wares.

'We'll 'ave these two,' said the other man pointing to me and the boy next to me. Mr. Ingleson took everybody's name for his list and I learned that my little companion was named Kenny Everitt and came from John Perryn's, though I had not known him there. He was a small, thin, solemn-faced boy. Our new guardians were Mr. and Mrs. Davies, who lived just across the road.

We walked out into the warm dusk with Mr. and Mrs. Davies. Relief was tempered with nervousness as they took us the fifty or so yards to their cottage. We went into the kitchen, where we were introduced to their daughter, Haulwen, a brawny girl of thirteen with a shock of thick blonde hair. We were given a quick supper of bread-and-jam and tea and, as we ate, made desultory, embarrassed conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Davies, answering their questions about ourselves, our homes and our families, under the silent scrutiny of the girl Haulwen. To these people we were foreigners, strange little beings from a place and a way of life that they could hardly begin to imagine.

After the meal, Kenny and I were led to the sink for a quick wash in an enamel bowl filled from a kettle which sat permanently on the stove. Then we were taken up the narrow staircase of the cottage and put to bed in a small upstairs room, from the little window of which we could see the mountain looming in the twilight, with the pit-wheel jutting from its side.

'I'm gonner cry meself ter sleep. I don't like this 'orrible dump!' said Kenny, once the bedroom door had closed and we were alone.

'Me too!' I said.

But it was not to be. Two days of sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and scratch meals had made us wonderfully windy. Lying beside me in the double-bed, Kenny let out a long, sonorous bugle-call. We sniggered, half afraid that the Davieses must have heard. Then I replied in kind and there were more sniggers. Soon a full-scale contest was in progress. Our determination to wash the night away in tears was forgotten; instead, we flatulently giggled ourselves to sleep.

Kit reversed the motor and then crept forward to an odd little landing stage. When we made fast, the engine was turned off and I found I jumped off the cabin quite automatically and walked round the gun whale with no thought of it at all. Kay disappeared into our cabin, changed hurriedly into slacks and went off to pack up her flat with 'my dear, you will be all right won't you!', she vanished. The explanation about her legs became obvious. I decided I needed a wash. It seemed an awfully small bowl to wash in and I was awfully tired. I just sat for quite a long time looking. Behind us the enormous warehouses towered silent and still and very black. Beyond them a bridge spanned the Cut, a bridge with sides built high and a window in the centre like a Venetian bridge. The towpath past beneath it and by the warehouse rising steeply over the entrance to the private dock of the building. It was all so very still, warm, so very silent - the sky behind the bridge was green and above was very deep blue with one or two twinkling stars. A smell of cooking and an invitation to supper called me to Kit's cabin - I woke up and went. Later that evening I tried to boil a kettle on Kay's oil stove, I wound the wick the wrong way and had to wash in cold water. I was too tired to wait up so I went to bed. Kay eventually came in filling the door while I explained about the stove. She was very sweet about it. I decided to myself that I definitely preferred her to Miranda but I'd better be careful and went to sleep. I slept like a log, woke up very early, heard myself say 'hello' to Kay in devastatingly bright tones and went to sleep again. I woke up later and heard Kay put the kettle on. I struggled out of my cupboard and dressed in relays with Kay. It was all so cramped and cold. We bolted tea, bread and marmalade. Kit gave us a cry for action and we leapt and watched them start the engine. Cries from the lock 'a barge coming up'. It came the horse plodding slowly - the barge deep in the water and enormous. We moved gently into the lock bumping the sides. Kit took me to buy sterilised milk from Pink's dairy, as we came back clanking bottles and by the deserted streets I realised it was only just seven o'clock. No one at home would be stirring for another hour. Down to the next lock, the same little cockney lockkeeper, joking and laughing an orange scarf round his neck and everything at such speed. Given instructions on how to wind a paddle (to let the water out of the lock) I found I couldn't move it and was ignominiously reduced to opening the gates pushing with my behind! Then horror of horror I had to jump down onto the cabin top, a drop of about four foot no steps no nothing, "Quick!" cried Kit in peremptory tones and I gathered my fears and jumped - astounded to find I was still whole! It was still very early, misty, cold and noises close at hand were exaggerated while everything else seemed muffled. The warehouses loomed dark. The waterway seemed a white clammy river of mist. Suddenly the sun rose into being and it all became fairyland. The gold tinged mist - the cranes, buildings everything very black against a radiant sky. Our boats, brilliant blue and cherry red - the brass that Kit cleaned busily, winking in the sun - the water turning rapidly into fire. Now and then more plodding barges dark and sidling slowly up stream - their owners, as they walked the deck with the vast tiller sometimes talkative - sometimes glum. More locks - the same routine for each. The lock keepers cheery "Need more pudding afor you can wind these locks you will"! Kay laughing and joking with all of them. Miranda, quiet and efficient it seemed to me. Not so to Kit who mothered me and yelled at all of us with equal vigour. Sounds of London waking and stirring. Then that shrill whining sound that grows and grows and then dies into silence, then a crackling crash. My first buzz bomb. "Bastards bloody bastards" commented the lock keeper and took no more notice. They came about every fifteen minutes and about nine o'clock ceased. “Just the rush hour" explained someone. Locks, more locks - swirling water, shut the top gates, drop the paddles, fun to the end raise those, watch till the water the foaming water stills beyond the gate. Reverse, the boats breasted at the stern - open the gates abreast, jog the motor out, pick up the butty straps, lurch while she picks up speed and onto the next - Hampstead Road, City Road, Sturts, Mile End, Acton, Johnstone's, Salmonds, Commercial Road. Pause at the City Lock. Query about the tug - an absolute queue of barges at all angles, horses standing and snorting lazily while their drivers gaze into space or joke and spit amongst themselves. The tug - square in the beam and exactly like a water beetle sidles busily into view, her orange funnel bright and cocksure - does a sort of shuffle and a brisk reverse. The barges poll themselves into an order of sorts, lines and ropes are thrown and the tug is off, the barges swinging at angles behind. The horses are led away to the City Lock Stables. It's an endless business - first the tunnel, very slowly, then a pause while all the barges get themselves sorted out and attached to their fresh respective horses. Then they have to go down which means two fillings each Lock; then when you get through you pass one or two but are ham sandwiched at the next lock. With comments of every kind on one's method of getting through the locks from the irate arrivals behind and so on. However it was only eleven by the time we cleared the lot and sailed out of the bottom lock with instructions that "I think they want you young ladies round that comer". Boats were breasted and we swept out into brilliant sunshine - whirling seagulls and 'London Docks'. Empty boats breasted look lovely travelling on deep water - the engine gives itself a little shake and a gurgle and goes like an angel. The boats themselves are so light they seem to skim the water. Breasted they have a trim appearance of perfect timing as they swing and curve like the gulls themselves. There is a feel about the Docks that they are the end of your world and the opening to the sea and great adventure beyond. There, to us, the enormous length of our seventy foot boats are dwarfed by a tramp 'Norge' from Stockholm that lay mighty in her berth; unloaded by at least half a dozen cranes and a swarm of lorries. Great shining area of water- a sharp tang of salt in the air barges and mighty lighters from the Thames everywhere. Warehouses, cranes standing idle like hooded monsters or dipping and swinging bales of things and long bars of steel, men shouting, the incredible way the lighters progress round the docks with no motor at all, only a shaft, the lighter man hooking himself first onto one thing and then another, running and pushing with the shaft the length of his lighter, unhooking himself and sailing off merrily till he reaches some other grab able craft which will help him on his journey. I gazed and gazed, as usual there wasn't enough time. We whisked round half a mile of dock and suddenly found three or four pairs of Grand Union boats lying alongside a high wharf and in the shadow of "Norge". Here after some shuffling, we hitched ourselves onto the next pair. A plump old dame, with her black hair in plaited earphones, a felt hat pulled well over her eyes, a white apron, a long light coloured frock and black woollen stockings and shoes, said "Allo Kitty how are you Dear?" They started talking earnestly and Miranda with the help of the lady's silent son tied our bows to theirs. Kay said something explosive and disappeared into the motor cabut reappearing in a few seconds with a string bag and a silver one, "Come along, get your ration book, we will go shopping. Kit having waved violently to a little sandy haired man on the dock, after an incomprehensible conversation said that we shouldn't be loaded till the afternoon so we shopped in Lime house and I was amazed at the quantity of fresh food, at the extreme dirt and poverty of the area, Kay's ability to get things done and her determined manner, which could suddenly be suddenly be sunny, joking loudly with the shopkeepers. One or two smiled "Wondered whether you would be down again missy, liking it?" We talked about bombs. "You'll get some tonight, shouldn't be surprised, it’s the docks they want". We greedily ate onion pies and sauce with mugs of coffee and thick slabs of bread and margarine when we got back. They loaded us, a filthy uncomfortable job at three by four pm, we were finished. The boats had their breasting loosened, their beams and planks on the roofs of the cabins they proceeded to tilt and tip wildly, while the cranes swung steel gently down into them.

Kit asked for some of the steel to be moved to write a list we were developing and then we were ready. We trailed wearily round to the other side of the docks and tied ourselves to some lighters and proceeded to sheet up. It's an exhausting business. For one thing the planks and beams are dirty and heavy and awkward. Each one has one place and the right one only - the order in which they are put into place is a ritual. Secondly, you are now gun whale level with the water. Thirdly you have to erect a cobweb like frame of planks and side cloths over which the top cloths may be thrown. To do this one crawls along the planks, one has just laid so daintily onto the stands, screw them firm then throw the side strings from the side cloths' over the planks, thread them through holes in the side cloths in the other side and back over the top planks where they are strapped up tight. The object of the side cloths is that they prevent a heavily loaded boat from sinking in a lock where the water may foam over the sides. We always referred to them as corsets. My heart remained in my mouth throughout the operation. I don't like heights - I don't like water and the water was very green, if it wasn't the water, it was the steel which looked equally unpleasant and much more edgy! So on the whole, as I crawled, oh so slow, to strap up the strings behind Kit I decided I detested sheeting up. We were still sheeting up when once more came that shrill wine and for the first time I saw a buzz bomb pass across the sky and take its fateful crash. There certainly wasn't any point in moving and somehow after, even the unfolding of the tarpaulins and the walking backwards with them along the top planks didn't seem quite so bad. We finished about half past six, I for one was done. The docks were still now and had the golden peace of a Canaletto painting - away in the distance a tiny pair of boats were sheeting up. In the silence a sailor hung out his washing on the "Norge". Kay suggested I sat on the deck where it was warm while she cooked supper. Bacon and beans and coffee - always coffee - fried bread and cake for afters. We ate till we could burst and then just soaked up the remaining sun, ached and talked about Jerome, Kay's fiancé and Kay's former husband, a young very attractive medical officer who had lost his life in the China Seas. Kay went off to get a beer. I washed and finished my letter home and went to bed with Dickens "Great Expectations" and a mug of cocoa. Suddenly I thought of Bob, dwelt on the thought for a moment hastily despatched and read G.E. till I went to sleep. Kay came in latish, we had a muttered conversation and then slept like logs. Suddenly - a God almighty crash, Kay and I leapt simultaneously out of bed and sat shivering in our nightclothes - the boats bumped each other gently and the sky went red. Kit came over wrapped in her coat 'Just behind the sheds" she said, "Look, are you all right?" We were, but startled so still shivering we gazed at a mounting red glow and heard shouts and running. The watchman standing on the wharf behind us muttered "Some poor bloody swine - God and what a time of night." A nameless voice added "Better than the winter". " Well, your right there". Another came over and another, you could just see them: one went into a searchlight and pitched with a blinding light as it crashed. Suddenly anther note in the sky, sturdy note of fighters their lights full - snarling off into the distance. It was so darn comforting - although neither of us expected that they could actually make much difference. Kay said "Any more of this nonsense and we'll make some coffee," The threat was enough - nothing else happened. We woke about six fifteen to a mist-covered world, out of which "Norge" with much hooting was slipping otherwise silently away to the gigantic lock leading into the Thames. She looked impressive, tinged with the first sun. Her engines suddenly filled with the air with a throbbing pulse which one felt rather than heard. Thin little voices shouted across the dock. An old man climbed down the ladder to our boats, untied a barge from the midst of the others we lay against and quietly poled himself away. The great cranes, which looked in the mist, like great prehistoric monsters, began to bob and disappear from the skyline. The docks were awake. The roar of the water cascading over the "Bottom" gates of the locks sounded ominous - the gates dim under the timber bridge - the swirling white foam and green water at their foot even more ominous. The tollhouse, but Kit didn't risk it and we were at the foot of the lock by five to seven.

At seven, the cheery little lock keeper appeared, slipped the: chain off the end gates and got the lock ready for us. In we went, our loaded boats low and heavy now to steer - but at least one could see over them. We filled water cans - had the boats "gauged"" and were off. I learnt the art of taking the butty. The routine for locks, jump off checking strap in hand over the gate, round the stump, three turns, hold it checked, move rope to a forward stump and tie her up, to prevent her slipping her Elum under the beam of the gate and sinking when the water rose. Shut your gate, go and wind a paddle. Loose your boat as soon as she is beyond the danger line. Wind your rope neatly in coils on the cabin top. Lay the end on your water can and round the chimney. The end ready to be seized next time. Most difficult was the timing of the jump off; one hall to take one's tiller out which one couldn't do until one steered one's butty into the left of the lock. Then before the narrow brick ledge was passed one had to hop out, strap in hand and tear up the steps to check. The windlass jabbed my ribs, where it rested in my belt - my arms ached with the stupid paddles I couldn't move. Lock after lock, between locks, the steering. "Steer the opposite way that you want her bows to go" I repeated to myself. Nearly repeated once too often, for on finding myself heading for a brick wall I steered frantically into it instead of away. Kit on the motor gave a wild cry - made animated gestures to steer the other way. Which I did, avoiding complete disaster but getting a very healthy bump. Practical lesson number one!

Away from the locks at last steering was easier and more time to think. I went on the motor with Kit. Fun this, as I was relieved on the butty by Miranda, had to hop off at the next bridge and tear off to the motor, wait for her at the coming bridge and step neatly onto the gun whale as she slowed down to pick me up. Kay disappeared for a rest and I had my first try at motor steering. She was going nicely and evenly and I found I could steer naturally and hadn't a tendency to over steer like Kay. It seemed like pie. I stayed for an hour feeling absolutely blissful. The butty way at the end of the "Long Snubber". The forty-foot very thick rope used in long pounds (stretches between locks) seemed another world of difficulties unremembered. Kay produced tea and we sipped large mugs of condensed milk and tea. I sat art the cabin top - talking to the other two chewing bread and jam. All of us shouting greetings to the workmen at the factories who whistled and waved. It was all perfect. Boats passed, beating down to the docks; we all slowed down. So that our boats should not be sucked together.

Teenage Memories of World War Two
(only then they were NOT called teenagers!)

In 1939 I was working in a semi-underground building on a machine where my foot depressed a pedal and punched .303 calibre bullets into blued steel clips which my hands linked together. The end product was a measured ammunition belt ready to feed one of the eight machine guns in the wings of a Hurricane or Spitfire fighter aircraft.
By an ironic twist of fate, and a year later, I stood in a busy London street on the periphery of Shepherds Bush listening to, and watching, those same fighter aircraft spiralling vapour trails and firing their guns at attacking German war planes. I couldn’t help thinking:” I wonder if I filled those machine gun belts?” It was 1940 and I was now seventeen years old. The Battle of Britain soon escalated to the indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities in Britain.
I didn’t know it at that time but I would not return to my previous place of work until many decades later. Then it would be only to see the monstrous crater and mourn some of the victims I once knew who were killed in the terrible explosion at 11.10am on the morning of the 27th November 1944 at Fauld in Staffordshire. Then, thousands of tons of high explosive bombs that had been stored in the excavated caverns of Ford’s Gypsum Mine, blew a gigantic hole out of the hill at Hanbury causing death and devastation.
But I digress and deviate from my situation in 1940. I lived with my family (father, mother and younger brother) in a flat off the Uxbridge Road in Shepherds Bush. On that road, towards Acton, I had found work at a factory that made Aircraft controls.
Up above, in the wide blue yonder, fat, floppy, grey blobs of the Barrage Balloons dotted the London skyline. Sometimes these Blimps, as we called them, would break away from their moorings and dance erractically in the sky, dragging their distructive cables across the rooftops.
At the factory they formed a section L.D.V. an abbreviation for Local Defence Volounteers but better known at that time as Look Duck and Vanish. Later they became the Home Guard.
That autumn of 1940 saw many daylight air raids. When the warning sirens wailed we stopped work in the factory and crossed the busy Uxbridge Road to the shelters. These were the standard type resembling a long concrete tunnel buried half way into the ground with the excavated soil piled up on top. Hard, wooden slatted seats extended the length of those cold, damp musty smelling ovoid walls.
The daylight raids became so frequent the firm decided to employ men as spotters to watch from the roof. The siren was then ignored until the spotters sounded the internal alarm for raiders overhead. Then we could all go to the shelters. The sound of droning aircraft was very clear. Then the anti-aircraft guns stationed in Hyde Park and Wormwood Scrubs would open up forming a ‘Box-Barrage’ (a big square of exploding shells to divert enemy aircraft and perhaps assist our fighters). On one memorable occasion I watched fascinated as a big square was formed by many puffs of smoke from the exploding shells in the clear blue sky.
Well, as you know, what goes up must come down. Some people call it shrapnel but it wasn’t. The large, jagged slivers of metal, some about six inches or more long and maybe an inch wide were the exploding cases of the anti-aircraft shells. In this incident a shower of these shards clanged musically and frightfully on the road and pavement amongst us only to bounce high once more before coming to rest with a reverberant echo. Naturally I picked one up to add to my collection which included a nose cone and later a number of tail fins from incendiary bombs and a durolumin shaft and base of a container used for dropping clusters of incendiary bombs. None of these souvenirs were kept very long.
When the night air raids started, a multitude of searchlights stabbed at the dark sky. Most were white light but a few coloured ones mingled with the illumination all highlighted by the enforced blackout. No anti-aircraft guns were fired, and after several days of obvious inaction people began to ask why. Nobody bothered whether the guns were accurate at night or not, they wanted to feel that we were fighting back. When, without warning, it suddenly came the action was deafening. Every anti-aircraft battery in London seemed to be firing in unison. After that I saw no more searchlights piercing the night sky. There was a new noise to get used to though. It was the shrill screech of falling bombs. The blast of those near ones shook the house and the light bulbs danced erratically on the hanging flex.
Perhaps you’ve seen films of the so-called Blitz with families moving out to their cold and damp Anderson shelters? If so, spare another thought for those people who had no gardens to dig them in. I don’t remember anyone who had a metal in-door Morrison shelter. Queues would form long before dark with shadowy figures clutching bed rolls and personal belongings to enter the cellars of larger buildings. There were, of course, the brick-walled pavement shelters with a thick concrete, flat roof. These were notorious for collapsing like a deck of cards from an adjacent explosion. So, like many others, we made sure the black out devices were in place and just stayed put. When the night raid was really bad the family in the only flat above would join us and we would sit in the hallway. Under the stairs was supposed to be the best place. The hall or passageway from the front door was the nearest we could get. It was almost under the staircase of the upstairs flat.
Most nights the all clear would wail before daylight. The way I walked to work would reveal the tragedies of the night. The acrid smell of burning or the odour of premature demolished buildings would tinge the air. Deep craters in the road, some with ignited gas pipes flaming powerfully like an angry dragon in its lair. Houses reduced to debris. It was pitiful to see baths and lavatories hanging from broken walls and half collapsed floors. Churned up in the shattered bricks and mortar were the possessions of people, who for a while anyway, you wondered how fate had treated them. The cinema on the main road was one day a pile of rubble except for the entrance at the front. Ludicrous in a grotesque sort of way the still standing front wall advertised the film ‘Forty Little Mothers’ starring Eddie Cantor. Sometimes the air raid warning would sound again before I got to work and sometimes we could have a day or two’s respite without the wailing siren. On one such day, as brother and I returned to work at mid-day, a Heinkel bomber flew very very low over Shepherds Bush green and then opened up with its machine gun along the Uxbridge Road. Then, after we got over the shock, the siren on the green wailed its late warning.
But we were lucky really. Apart from a shard of metal smashing the back room’s sash window and an incendiary bomb which crashed through the roof. Yes, we nearly got it hot that night.
With no near explosions we decided to go to bed and catch up with some sleep. Startled, I heard a bang hitting the roof of the flat above us and then the hammering on our front door by one of the older girls from upstairs who was shouting that we were on fire.
When the fire-watchers arrived with their bucket and stirrup-pump they couldn’t get any water. Seemingly, in a panic, the bloke upstairs had turned off the water and the electric supply. Stupid as it may seem now, both brother and I dashed up and down the dark stairs carrying water in pots and pans to fill the fire-watchers bucket. We spilled more water over ourselves in the process. Eventually the fire was extinguished; but not before the bomb had burned its way through our ceiling and into our water logged front room. A burnt out sofa was pushed through a smashed upstairs window onto the pavement below. The horrible smell of burning lasted for days. There were many fires in the city that night but the worst was still to come.
It was Sunday evening and December 1940 had only two days left. Brother and I decided to walk into Acton and go to the pictures. The film was nothing special but it was somewhere different than sitting at home listening to the wireless. Halfway through, and superimposing itself on the mediocre black and white picture, a notice read:-
THE AIR RAID WARNING HAS SOUNDED.
THOSE WHO WISH TO GO TO A SHELTER
SHOULD LEAVE NOW
THE SHOW WILL CONTINUE.
Not many people left. There wasn’t many in the cinema anyway. We stuck it out for another half an hour then, bored stiff, we decided to walk home.
Once outside in the cool of the night air we got the shock of our lives. The sky towards Shepherds Bush was blood red. We watched in amazement as the crimson sky swirled in what looked like agonized torment to the accompaniment of screaming bombs and the roar of anti-aircraft guns. Overhead, the intermittent drone of enemy aircraft engines seemed to follow us on that long, terrifying walk home. Houses that we had walked past on our way to the cinema had disintegrated into ruins. A long wooden fence beside the pavement we had earlier walked upon was pitted with the jagged holes of bomb fragments. The horrible thought that if we had left the cinema when the warning flashed on the screen we would probably have no legs now, hurried our homeward steps. A row of terraced houses in the street leading off to our right looked completely demolished and the vehicles of the rescue teams stood in silence, waiting.
The air raids continued into the new year of 1941. By March of that year my father's job had transferred him to the North of England. They called it Cumberland in those days. Mother, brother and I were left in London awaiting a letter to say a new home was available. When that day came we saw our furniture and belongings loaded into the van. With insufficient money for train fares, arrangements were made for us to travel north in the back of the van; but not that day. The furniture van was scheduled to set off at first light from a lorry park somewhere in Chiswick. We had to find the place and the only way to do just that was to walk.
As the evening sky darkened to night the wailing siren heralded another raid. That final night in London, as the whine of bombs preceded the house shaking explosions, we made tea from an old kettle and drank our fill out of glass jam-jars.
It was still dark when we left our flat in the very early hours. The raid had ebbed and flowed all night and the guns still blasted their shells into the sky. I think we turned left into Uxbridge Road where luminous strips on the forever darkened lamp post glowed in guiding light through the dreary blackout.
From Goldhawk Road I think our aim was to find the Chiswick High Road. As dawn broke over Chiswick the all-clear sounded. We were more relieved to have located the van and a disgusting and distasteful smelling lavatory than to hear the sound of that long, wailing note we had heard so many times before. The conventional air raids would continue for another couple of months.

You don’t want to know that somewhere near ‘Rutland Water’ the half-shaft of the dilapidated van broke with a loud crack followed by a big skid and a stink of burning rubber, or that a year later I received a four shilling postal order (which I still have) and a leaflet which said :- ‘YOU ARE ABOUT TO BECOME A SOLDIER’. That’s another story.

In 1939 I was working in a semi-underground building on a machine where my foot depressed a pedal and punched .303 calibre bullets into blued steel clips which my hands linked together. The end product was a measured ammunition belt ready to feed one of the eight machine guns in the wings of a Hurricane or Spitfire fighter aircraft.
By an ironic twist of fate, and a year later, I stood in a busy London street on the periphery of Shepherds Bush listening to, and watching, those same fighter aircraft spiralling vapour trails and firing their guns at attacking German war planes. I couldn’t help thinking:” I wonder if I filled those machine gun belts?” It was 1940 and I was now seventeen years old. The Battle of Britain soon escalated to the indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities in Britain.
I didn’t know it at that time but I would not return to my previous place of work until many decades later. Then it would be only to see the monstrous crater and mourn some of the victims I once knew who were killed in the terrible explosion at 11.10am on the morning of the 27th November 1944 at Fauld in Staffordshire. Then, thousands of tons of high explosive bombs that had been stored in the excavated caverns of Ford’s Gypsum Mine, blew a gigantic hole out of the hill at Hanbury causing death and devastation.
But I digress and deviate from my situation in 1940. I lived with my family (father, mother and younger brother) in a flat off the Uxbridge Road in Shepherds Bush. On that road, towards Acton, I had found work at a factory that made Aircraft controls.
Up above, in the wide blue yonder, fat, floppy, grey blobs of the Barrage Balloons dotted the London skyline. Sometimes these Blimps, as we called them, would break away from their moorings and dance erractically in the sky, dragging their distructive cables across the rooftops.
At the factory they formed a section L.D.V. an abbreviation for Local Defence Volounteers but better known at that time as Look Duck and Vanish. Later they became the Home Guard.
That autumn of 1940 saw many daylight air raids. When the warning sirens wailed we stopped work in the factory and crossed the busy Uxbridge Road to the shelters. These were the standard type resembling a long concrete tunnel buried half way into the ground with the excavated soil piled up on top. Hard, wooden slatted seats extended the length of those cold, damp musty smelling ovoid walls.
The daylight raids became so frequent the firm decided to employ men as spotters to watch from the roof. The siren was then ignored until the spotters sounded the internal alarm for raiders overhead. Then we could all go to the shelters. The sound of droning aircraft was very clear. Then the anti-aircraft guns stationed in Hyde Park and Wormwood Scrubs would open up forming a ‘Box-Barrage’ (a big square of exploding shells to divert enemy aircraft and perhaps assist our fighters). On one memorable occasion I watched fascinated as a big square was formed by many puffs of smoke from the exploding shells in the clear blue sky.
Well, as you know, what goes up must come down. Some people call it shrapnel but it wasn’t. The large, jagged slivers of metal, some about six inches or more long and maybe an inch wide were the exploding cases of the anti-aircraft shells. In this incident a shower of these shards clanged musically and frightfully on the road and pavement amongst us only to bounce high once more before coming to rest with a reverberant echo. Naturally I picked one up to add to my collection which included a nose cone and later a number of tail fins from incendiary bombs and a durolumin shaft and base of a container used for dropping clusters of incendiary bombs. None of these souvenirs were kept very long.
When the night air raids started, a multitude of searchlights stabbed at the dark sky. Most were white light but a few coloured ones mingled with the illumination all highlighted by the enforced blackout. No anti-aircraft guns were fired, and after several days of obvious inaction people began to ask why. Nobody bothered whether the guns were accurate at night or not, they wanted to feel that we were fighting back. When, without warning, it suddenly came the action was deafening. Every anti-aircraft battery in London seemed to be firing in unison. After that I saw no more searchlights piercing the night sky. There was a new noise to get used to though. It was the shrill screech of falling bombs. The blast of those near ones shook the house and the light bulbs danced erratically on the hanging flex.
Perhaps you’ve seen films of the so-called Blitz with families moving out to their cold and damp Anderson shelters? If so, spare another thought for those people who had no gardens to dig them in. I don’t remember anyone who had a metal in-door Morrison shelter. Queues would form long before dark with shadowy figures clutching bed rolls and personal belongings to enter the cellars of larger buildings. There were, of course, the brick-walled pavement shelters with a thick concrete, flat roof. These were notorious for collapsing like a deck of cards from an adjacent explosion. So, like many others, we made sure the black out devices were in place and just stayed put. When the night raid was really bad the family in the only flat above would join us and we would sit in the hallway. Under the stairs was supposed to be the best place. The hall or passageway from the front door was the nearest we could get. It was almost under the staircase of the upstairs flat.
Most nights the all clear would wail before daylight. The way I walked to work would reveal the tragedies of the night. The acrid smell of burning or the odour of premature demolished buildings would tinge the air. Deep craters in the road, some with ignited gas pipes flaming powerfully like an angry dragon in its lair. Houses reduced to debris. It was pitiful to see baths and lavatories hanging from broken walls and half collapsed floors. Churned up in the shattered bricks and mortar were the possessions of people, who for a while anyway, you wondered how fate had treated them. The cinema on the main road was one day a pile of rubble except for the entrance at the front. Ludicrous in a grotesque sort of way the still standing front wall advertised the film ‘Forty Little Mothers’ starring Eddie Cantor. Sometimes the air raid warning would sound again before I got to work and sometimes we could have a day or two’s respite without the wailing siren. On one such day, as brother and I returned to work at mid-day, a Heinkel bomber flew very very low over Shepherds Bush green and then opened up with its machine gun along the Uxbridge Road. Then, after we got over the shock, the siren on the green wailed its late warning.
But we were lucky really. Apart from a shard of metal smashing the back room’s sash window and an incendiary bomb which crashed through the roof. Yes, we nearly got it hot that night.
With no near explosions we decided to go to bed and catch up with some sleep. Startled, I heard a bang hitting the roof of the flat above us and then the hammering on our front door by one of the older girls from upstairs who was shouting that we were on fire.
When the fire-watchers arrived with their bucket and stirrup-pump they couldn’t get any water. Seemingly, in a panic, the bloke upstairs had turned off the water and the electric supply. Stupid as it may seem now, both brother and I dashed up and down the dark stairs carrying water in pots and pans to fill the fire-watchers bucket. We spilled more water over ourselves in the process. Eventually the fire was extinguished; but not before the bomb had burned its way through our ceiling and into our water logged front room. A burnt out sofa was pushed through a smashed upstairs window onto the pavement below. The horrible smell of burning lasted for days. There were many fires in the city that night but the worst was still to come.
It was Sunday evening and December 1940 had only two days left. Brother and I decided to walk into Acton and go to the pictures. The film was nothing special but it was somewhere different than sitting at home listening to the wireless. Halfway through, and superimposing itself on the mediocre black and white picture, a notice read:-
THE AIR RAID WARNING HAS SOUNDED.
THOSE WHO WISH TO GO TO A SHELTER
SHOULD LEAVE NOW
THE SHOW WILL CONTINUE.
Not many people left. There wasn’t many in the cinema anyway. We stuck it out for another half an hour then, bored stiff, we decided to walk home.
Once outside in the cool of the night air we got the shock of our lives. The sky towards Shepherds Bush was blood red. We watched in amazement as the crimson sky swirled in what looked like agonized torment to the accompaniment of screaming bombs and the roar of anti-aircraft guns. Overhead, the intermittent drone of enemy aircraft engines seemed to follow us on that long, terrifying walk home. Houses that we had walked past on our way to the cinema had disintegrated into ruins. A long wooden fence beside the pavement we had earlier walked upon was pitted with the jagged holes of bomb fragments. The horrible thought that if we had left the cinema when the warning flashed on the screen we would probably have no legs now, hurried our homeward steps. A row of terraced houses in the street leading off to our right looked completely demolished and the vehicles of the rescue teams stood in silence, waiting.
The air raids continued into the new year of 1941. By March of that year my father's job had transferred him to the North of England. They called it Cumberland in those days. Mother, brother and I were left in London awaiting a letter to say a new home was available. When that day came we saw our furniture and belongings loaded into the van. With insufficient money for train fares, arrangements were made for us to travel north in the back of the van; but not that day. The furniture van was scheduled to set off at first light from a lorry park somewhere in Chiswick. We had to find the place and the only way to do just that was to walk.
As the evening sky darkened to night the wailing siren heralded another raid. That final night in London, as the whine of bombs preceded the house shaking explosions, we made tea from an old kettle and drank our fill out of glass jam-jars.
It was still dark when we left our flat in the very early hours. The raid had ebbed and flowed all night and the guns still blasted their shells into the sky. I think we turned left into Uxbridge Road where luminous strips on the forever darkened lamp post glowed in guiding light through the dreary blackout.
From Goldhawk Road I think our aim was to find the Chiswick High Road. As dawn broke over Chiswick the all-clear sounded. We were more relieved to have located the van and a disgusting and distasteful smelling lavatory than to hear the sound of that long, wailing note we had heard so many times before. The conventional air raids would continue for another couple of months.

You don’t want to know that somewhere near ‘Rutland Water’ the half-shaft of the dilapidated van broke with a loud crack followed by a big skid and a stink of burning rubber, or that a year later I received a four shilling postal order (which I still have) and a leaflet which said :- ‘YOU ARE ABOUT TO BECOME A SOLDIER’. That’s another story.

I was 18 years old when war broke out I was living in Dulwich, I had one sister who is in Bexhill on Sea now. Dulwich was very posh. My father was a Manager of a Forward Agency firm for a Shipping Company. When he died three Shipping Companies brought him wreaths, I was very proud. My mother was a housewife.

I went to evening classes when I left school and learnt Pitmans shorthand and typing. I was working for a firm called Cadishes Red Lion Square an Electrical firm, typing quotations. I was commissioned to work for the Ministry of Supply.

We heard that we were at war on the wireless and the first thing I thought of were the gas masks and dashed upstairs to get them. My father had been through World War 1, but he was an optimist and thought we would be fine as he thought we had had enough. We lived in a flat in my grandmother's house. We had a lovely garden and an outside toilet. My aunt lived there too with her child. My aunt was a very lively person. My cousin was an outside messenger. I was rather excited when war broke out, I was too young to realise how terrible it would turn out to be.

During the war my father worked for the Army Pay Corps.

I got married when I was 20, I met a man while I was working for Chadishes, he came from Acton. One of his brothers was in the Army, he was a prisoner of war. He had another brother who was at home and delivered telegrams, eventually he was called up too. One brother was in the Queens Royal Rifles and was killed, the other was in the Kings Royal Rifles. When my husband was called up he was stationed in Aldershot for training, then he went to Barry Island in Wales and then to Scotland, in Lanarkshire. He was at Scarpa Flow doing exercises.

He had embarkation leave of 72 hours, he came home from Kilmarnock and we got married in Dulwich in a little church called St Augustines. I bought my wedding dress in Richards it had a bow on one side and I bought a dress for my sister who was my bridesmaid. We bought them with coupons, my father gave me his coupons he had saved them up. He wasn't very tall 5'4", but he was very smart and everyday his shoes shone and his collar starched. After we were married we went up to Kilmarnock, but were told that all the wives had to go home. After a while I got a letter to say my husband was being drafted away, I was very sad when my husband left. I had to leave Scotland and go back home with my parents. They weren't allowed to tell us where they were, but afte the war I found out he had been in South Africa, Italy and Tunisia. I wrote to him every day. We had special forms we could write on. He sent me a lot of parcels, we weren't able to get much fruit and he sent me some dried bananas, they weren't very edible. I told him I wanted a handbag and he sent me a big red one with a white bow on it. He used to say my handbag was a toolbag.

We used to go to the Adelphi Theatre and saw Ivor Novello musicals, our first date was the pictures, he pulled out a dirty ten shilling note and I hoped he would have enought to pay. We saw The Dancing Years and Perchance to Dream.

He did have some leave it was called LIAP and we went to St Ives, Cornwall for a fortnight. It was a belated honeymoon and we had a lovely time, it was 1943. When we got back he went back to the Army and I went into Civil Service, to an RAF Recruiting Centre at Paddington. I then worked for the Ministry of Supply. It was very boring work we use to type stencils called ITP's and the Supervisor use to clap her hands and say "ITP's Girls". Then we were asked if we would like to do Audio Typing and I said yes. One of the men I used to work for used to talk with his pipe in his mouth which made it very difficult. I then got another job working for NALGO and I stayed there until I was pregnant. I had a pension and bought a pram it was a Harris pram and was a great big one. I shouldn't have got it because the flat that I got had stairs that were difficult to manoeuvre. My son was a big baby and delighted in turning the pram over. In this flat we were right up the top and all we had was a butler's sink and I use to have to go down a flight of stairs to get and empty the water. My friend was looking for a flat and the people below moved out. So we moved into that one and she moved into our flat. We had running water then.

My husband got a job at SOAG after the war and it was within walking distance of our flat. My father who had been a Manager helped my husband with the forms and then he became Manager of the SOAG.

In London I had friends that I use to go out with, I used to meet a lady who's husband was in the Army with my husband. We used to go to the Lyons Corner House in Marble Arch and catch up on what our husbands were up to. While you were in the Corner House you used to have music playing and that was lovely. I used to go to the Fire Service dances.

I remember the Blitz but it never bothered me. I didn't think anything would happen to me. When I was walking in Holborn I used to pass by the Elephant and Castle, there were fires still burning and I used to climb over the hoses to get to work.

Every night we heard the bombers coming over, we used to have an Anderson shelter in the garden, but I didn't like it, too claustrophobic. I use to go under the table. Some people used to go down the tube station, I used to get on the tube to Chancery Lane which was close to where I worked.

I remember the black-out, we used to carry torches, but they were not very good. I was told I was making for the duck pond once.

My sister had a baby during the war and she worked from home. She use to do outwork basting skirts to keep pleats in place. She tried to persuade me to do it, but I wasn't having any of that.

I gave up work when I had my first son, but I was unable to feed him myself and the midwife was so horrible to me because they were fanatical about feeding babies yourself.

After the war we thought will we buy a house or a car. We chose a car and it wasn't really very good because the petrol was rationed you couldn't get tyres and my husband had learnt to drive in the Army and it was very different driving an Austin 7.

I used to queue for things, we used to have stalls outside our flat and queue for rabbit. One joint was made up with corned beef, and lamb was very small, sweets were rationed. Rabbit, bacon on top of chicken and we used dried eggs. There was dried fish which was whale meat, I didn't like it very much. I got ideas for recipes in magazines but I was very busy looking after my son.

We had a bomb go over the road from where we lived and that was obliterated. We used to hear the V1's go over and cut out. We were told it was more worrying if you didn't hear them. St Giles Church had its windows blown out and that was where I was christened. They were eventually restored.

I have been back to Dulwich since the war as I have a friend who still lives there.

On VE day I had german measles, so I was confined to my bed, and I was working on VJ day. I was working for this man who asked if I would like to go out for a celebratory drink, I did not think there could be any harm in it, but he got fresh and I was glad to get back to the office.

When I went to Brighton with a friend we stayed with a lady called Miss Binyon. I booked for two ladies but she had not realised how young we were. We asked about how late we could stay out and she said "Lights out at eleven". On the last day we knew she could not send us home so we stayed out later, when we got back she was at the door with curlers in her hair and a candle in her hand. We had to get undressed in the dark. We had lots of American boys to dance with they had all the things we wanted, nylons, sweets, but they didn't do anything for me. They upset people by saying "Where is this phoney war?" when they came over. I met an Australian soldier and I think he was from the outback because he came over and gave me an enormous bear hug and I didn't like it.

Whilst the war was on we just had to get on with it, we accepted things as they were.