大象传媒

Living in London during the Blitz was an experience printed indelibly on my mind. Even now, when I hear the wail of a siren in a play or documentary on television, I experience a certain amount of that feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. Although the memory of war fades with time, there are certain aspects of it which will always remain with me, and I shall certainly never forget being in London during the air raids.

We lived in a turn-of-the-century house in the suburbs in an area which, although not as vulnerable as the city, was certainly one of the targets for several bombs. We used to use our coal cellar as an air raid shelter and, in normal times, the coal was delivered through a covered hole in the front step and shot down into the cellar. My parents had all the coal cleaned out and the cellar was reinforced with solid pillars and whitewashed and initially we slept down there. However, it never lost the smell of coal and even now that smell brings back memories of air raids.

At the time, I was a teenager at boarding school and, luckily for me, only spent my holidays in London. My mother worked part time and I spent a lot of time on my own in the house during the daytime air raids. I was supposed to go next door if the siren sounded but I never did. I would sit in the kitchen, which was in the centre of the house, and wait until I could hear the sound of the bombers approaching. It was very scary. I could hear the noise of their engines getting nearer and nearer and, after a while, I could tell by the sound whether the planes were ours or the enemy鈥檚.

Somehow the German planes seemed to have a much harsher sound than the British ones. Initially, there was no defence when the planes came over, and we felt very helpless. But eventually, anti-aircraft guns were put in place all around London and when they started to fire, all hell was let loose. But at least we knew that we were being defended to some extent although I don鈥檛 ever remember hearing of a plane being shot down over London. These guns produced another hazard since the exploding shells showered bits of metal or shrapnel all over the streets. If you were outside when the guns were firing, it was prudent to slip into a shop doorway otherwise you were liable to be killed by the falling shrapnel. We did in fact have a shell cap through our roof which landed on my sister鈥檚 bed producing clouds of dust. Fortunately she was not in it at the time. After a while, our fighters were sent up to intercept the bombers and the fighters which accompanied them. There were often dog-fights between the German and British fighters and we watched them taking place above us.

The night air raids were something else. London was under an enforced black-out, the theory being that enemy aircraft should not be helped to pick out landmarks. This blackout involved having black or dark curtains at the windows in every household, building, bus or train. There were volunteer Air Raid Wardens who were responsible for seeing that their neighbourhood was properly blacked out. If there was even a chink of light showing we would hear the warden shouting from outside, 鈥淧ut that light out!鈥� Also, all our windows had to be criss-crossed with brown sticky tape so that, in the event of receiving a blast from a bomb, the windows would hold together and not shatter all over the occupants of the house.

Often we would be woken by the siren going three or four times during the night. In the beginning, we went down to the cellar to sleep, but later on we stayed in our beds and took our chance. Outside, the night sky would be filled with a trelliswork of searchlights criss-crossing each other like huge rigid white ribbons, trying to pin-point the enemy aircraft so that the guns could be trained on them. The racket of the anti-aircraft guns would be followed by an eerie echo around the night sky. Interspersed with this noise would be the occasional screaming whine of a descending bomb followed by its inevitable thundering explosion. You lived all the time in a state of tenseness, listening for the next sound. I don鈥檛 know how we all got up and went about our business the next day, but we did.

The incendiary bombs were far more insidious. You couldn鈥檛 hear these coming but, when they did, they exploded and scattered phosphorus all over the vicinity. This phosphorus would ignite anything it came into contact with and several fell on our local Church.

That night, after the all clear had sounded, I remember hearing people talking in the street and, when we looked out, they were all in their night clothes and moving towards the Church. Then we saw the flames leaping up about a hundred feet into the night sky. St Andrews Church was on fire. It was about a quarter of a mile away, but we all put on our dressing gowns and went up to watch it burn. It was spectacularly tragic. A high explosive bomb had also landed on a house about two hundred yards away from our house. Fortunately nobody was injured and the next morning they found, among the rubble spilling out into the road, a canary in its cage still singing and without a feather out of place.

As the war went on, year after interminable year, we became accustomed to the nightly raids but the thought that the next night or day might be your last, never went away. You had to be fatalistic. If your name was on the bomb, so be it. Otherwise you would never go out of the house. One of the great things to come out of the Blitz was the way that people became so close to each other in their shared danger.

People who had previously been very stiff and reticent would talk to each other in the streets and in the buses and trains. We all knew that we were in it together and there was a camaraderie between all sorts of people that has never been repeated. My one great regret is that my mother unwittingly threw away a diary that I had kept during that time. I would love to read it now.

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