大象传媒

I was living in South London when the war started for me in August 1938. I was 10 years old. Mr Chamberlain the prime minister came back from Germany saying he had done a deal with Adolph Hitler and that there would not be a war. Of course no one believed him and from that time on, Anderson air raid shelters, identity cards and ration books were delivered to every house.

My father was about 13 years old when WW1 started in 1914 and he was petrified of another war so much so he had a nervous breakdown. On September 1st 1939 my father sent my mother and I to friends in Newport, S Wales. Paddington station was crowded with all the children and their school teachers who were being evacuated to the West Country.

The war started on Sept 3rd 1939. We received a telegram to say my father was very ill and we should come home. I was then to stay in London until the war was over.

As most of the schools were closed because of the evacuation my mother found a Catholic Church where some nuns were teaching in the mornings and charged 3d per week.

The children began to return to London after a few weeks, so some of the LCC schools reopened and I attended school one week mornings and the next afternoons.
Everything seemed to settle down by Jan 1940 and I was lucky to be chosen to sit for a scholarship to go to a Grammar School.

Of course we knew the war was going on and we heard that the soldiers were being evacuated at Dunkirk. Unfortunately my father became very much worse. He committed suicide and finally died in June 1940. My uncle took my mother and I to a large house in Crouch End.

The raids began in Aug 1940. I remember seeing the Spitfires chasing the German Bombers during the daylight raids, which was the beginning of the Battle of Britain.

We had an Anderson Air-raid shelter at the back of our garden and by early Sept we were sitting up all night from about 9pm until the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� siren sounded in the morning. There were rotas for fire watching and everyone had a stirrup pump and kept a bucket of sand and water.

I won the scholarship and began the Grammar School in Sept 1940. The air-raid shelter was the cloakroom where the wash basins and toilets were. We spent most of our time dashing in there and back to our classrooms. We had a school playing field at the back of the school and there was a barrage balloon stationed there. The air force men who looked after it lived in part of the school, which had been blocked off for them. The barrage balloon went up in the air like a hot air balloon. It stopped the German fighters from machine gunning the area around.

My grandparents lived on the Isle of Dogs and they sheltered under the reinforced Railway Arches, which are now part of the Docklands Light Railway. The night the docks and the City of London were fire bombed they went home to find their house had been demolished. My uncle who was their son brought them, together with the few belongings they had salvaged, to live with us in Crouch End.
By then the bombing carried on with a vengeance, every night and day for 71 days. We had a permanent blackout everywhere. Over the country everyone carried a torch. We had something called 鈥渄ouble summertime鈥� which meant it was daylight until 11 o鈥檆lock at night. During the summer, it was to help the farmers to gather the crops before it got dark.

In early Oct a landmine dropped by enemy bombers floated down to the ground and exploded in the playing fields adjacent to our house. We lost all the windows, doors and ceilings. The windows were boarded up until the war ended 5 years later.

Our air raid shelter filled with water and we were unable to use it. As our neighbours were away for the duration my grandparents went into their shelter to sleep every night. My mother took them their supper and cocoa when the anti aircraft guns and the bombs stopped for a few minutes. The guns were a problem for us too as the shells exploded and the razor sharp pieces fell on the ground. We picked them up on our way to school and kept them for souvenirs.

We kept a tuck box at school with some sweets, biscuits and chocolate in case we could not get home in an air raid.

Everything was rationed even clothes, we were allowed 8oz sugar, 2oz butter, a little meat, 2oz tea and 2oz cheese. There was a points system for other foods so we could choose some things. Foods like offal, rabbit, fish and whale meat were in short supply so when it was available a queue quickly formed.

I remember going to school after the nights raid and there were gaps in the rows of houses where certain ones had been bombed and caught alight. One particular morning there was a local pub with all its doors and windows blown out. Someone was playing 鈥淩oll out the Barrel鈥� Next door to it had been flattened by a bomb. The air raid wardens and the civil defence men were digging out the survivors, the injured and the dead.

One afternoon I was on my way home from school, a Dakota bomber came through the mist with half of its wing shot off. It was trying to find somewhere to land. I read in the newspaper the next day, it had landed safely in Hyde Park.

By about 1942 the raids on London had stopped. At that time we got an allotment so we began to grow our own vegetables. We gave up our egg ration and instead were allowed a ration of meal which we mixed with our vegetable peelings to feed the chickens which we kept in the back garden. We also had ducks, rabbits and a pet turkey.

D Day began on June 6th 1944, the flying bombs, christened Doodlebugs began. You could hear them coming but when the engine stopped it was best to take cover as we did not know where they were likely to fall. We were given a Morrison Shelter by the government, which was made of steel and looked like a cage. It was bigger than a double bed so several people could sleep under it. Its purpose was to protect from being buried in the event of your house being bombed and collapsing around you.

The worst were the rockets, which followed on. There was no warning they were coming, the fighters couldn鈥檛 stop them because they were so fast. In December 1944 my best friends father was going to work at 7.45am and he and many other were killed by a rocket which landed on Hornsey Station. Several others were dropped on London but then the army over ran the launching sites in Germany so we were now safe.

On May 7th we were told not to go to school the next day if Mr Churchill announced the end of the war. I will never forget that day, it was very warm, the sky was blue and cloudless and the local swimming pool was opened and everyone was jumping in with their clothes on.

Sadly the war was going on against the Japanese and that finished in August 1945.

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