大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by a volunteer from CSV Berkshire, Amy Williams, on behalf of Doug Bukin and has been added to the site with his permission. Doug fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

When the war was declared on 3rd September 1939 I was 10 years old. We all immediately thought that we were going to see Germans in the next day or two in this country but that didn't happen. There was quite a long time before there was any activity in the skies or any bombing. Soon after this, we were issued with our gas masks in a cardboard box on a piece of string and our identity cards. I went with my mother and father to Bristol. My father worked for the Air Ministry, and he went to the Bristol Aircraft Company. We lived in a little village some ten miles outside of Bristol. Some months later, some bombing started in Bristol; we could see the glow of the fires in the evening. The bombing was mainly at a distance from us and we weren't really involved.

A lot of my school friends were evacuated before we left for Bristol, but I never was. Going to Bristol with my parents was not an evacuation as such but it worked in that way. When we came back to London, it was fairly quiet for the time being. And then in the summer of 1940 the Battle of Britain started, although at the time we didn't realise that it was going to be called the Battle of Britain. Through the eyes of a ten year old the Battle of Britain was actually quite exciting. The aircraft seemed about the size of a swallow on a summer's day, high up in the sky. They were wheeling around. Sometimes you'd see something coming down on a smoke trail. Another time it would look like a big white mushroom, and this was obviously the white parachute of a pilot baling out. You could only see it far away in the distance, but of course the parachute would come nearer and nearer to the ground and come right down to the ground. You would never know whether there was a German or a British pilot in there. The smoke trails were quite exciting as they looked almost like scratches in the sky. There was, surprising enough, no noise. The aircraft were so far up that you wouldn't hear the machine gun noise or explosions or anything like that. To see all these planes wheeling about was exciting. As a child, and I expect that this is also true of the majority of people watching, I didn't realise the drama and seriousness of what was actually taking place up there. It was just exciting to watch it. You realised in a way what was going on, but you didn't think significantly that there's a British or a German pilot possibly facing death through the firing. The newspapers would say for example that sixty-nine German aircraft came over the English Channel and twenty-eight planes were shot down. They would also tell you how many of our aircraft were shot down as well. They wouldn't necessarily say, for security reasons, where the aircraft reached. This ensured that the Germans didn't know if they were on target. That was the major part of the Battle of Britain for me: the vapour trails. That was our involvement in the Battle of Britain. The poor pilots, unfortunately many of whom didn't come back, they were very much more involved.

I was living with my parents in the northern part of the east end of London when the heavy bombing started. We used to hear all the explosions, the 'ack-ack' fire of the anti-aircraft guns. We could see the fires started by the bombing: some close, some glowing in the sky in the distance. At the end of our house on some waste ground there was a searchlight battery. Searchlights were very big. I'd had no idea that they were so big before this one was placed near to our house. The searchlights had their own generator to supply this tremendous current for this big arc light. The beam would obviously go right up into the sky and they'd sweep the sky. It was quite exciting to suddenly see one or maybe two or three searchlights latch onto a German bomber so that it looked like a white ghost in the sky. Then all the anti-aircraft fire would start bursting around it. It was a strange thing but when the German aircraft were coming over they had a different engine note to British ones. We could tell whether it was a British or German aircraft in the dark. "That's a jerry!" we'd say. The German plane had a pulsing engine noise - apparently this was due to the fact that their engines were different to ours. The German aircraft could be reasonably identified by their sound.

During the bombing you felt a nervous excitement but you weren't quivering like a jelly in a heap. It's amazing how you became almost immune to it as life had to carry on. When the bombers were coming over the chances are that you would then be going into your Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden or into the Morrison shelter inside the house. At first we all went down to the Anderson shelter. After a while we started poking our heads out and it was just like a gigantic firework display. There were orange and green tracer bullets going up and down, all the explosions of the shells and it was exciting! It was dangerous too. You'd pop outside and there was a greater danger not from being bombed but from our own shrapnel - shell caps and things like that coming down from our own anti-aircraft guns. They were lethal. You could be hit by anything at any time. It could be a bit dangerous but there was a fair gap in between the bombs so you could a bit cautious about that. But after a while we got a bit blase about it. We'd come out of the cellar and then sometimes we'd probably go back to bed in our house. When the bombs came down they would emit a screaming sound. The Germans put a screaming device on their bomb, especially their dive-bombers.

I would walk to school in the morning with the other children - although a lot of my friends had been evacuated. We'd walk to school with our gas masks around our necks. We'd be pick up shrapnel mainly from our own anti-aircraft guns: shell splinters and anti-aircraft shell nose cones which were big brass caps with a timing mechanism on them about the size of a teacup. When the brass caps are coming down from about a couple of thousand feet they are lethal to anyone on the ground. We used to collect them, and then at school we would compare what we'd collected on the way. We would say: "I like that one!" "I'll swap you that one for this one" "I've got two shells" "I've got an incendiary bomb". The bombing was frightening but somehow you survived that and you made the most of it and quite enjoyed it.

My father had been sent to work in the aircraft industry in Coventry. The bombing got heavier and more and more bombers were coming over. That's when we decided to go to my aunty Eva's house in Walthamstow about 4 miles from our house. We went there by tram. We went to my aunty's house because there was a big cellar under the house so it was safe to be there during the bombing.

We used to settle down in there and try to get to sleep. The greatest noise during the bombing was from our own anti-aircraft guns; they went "bangbangbang" all the time. Aunty Eva's husband, my uncle Harry, owned three garages. He couldn't get much petrol in those days, although he managed to get some petrol as he owned a car hire business. Once or twice a week he would take us out to the countryside in one of the big Buick cars that he had as a hire car. We wouldn't go far, just into the countryside where it was peaceful and quiet so that we could get a night's sleep. It was only about ten miles into Epping Forest. We'd all sleep in the car. You could still see the bombing going on. You really couldn't get a good night's sleep during a bombing raid as it was very disturbing. I don't know that we slept that much but at least it was peaceful and quiet, and that was quite a relief.

My uncle didn't get any real amount of petrol to keep his garages going so he opened up a horse meat and whale meat shop. Now, not a lot of people nowadays have heard about the sale of whale meat and horse meat in the war. At the time, there were queues outside my uncle's shop. This was fit for human consumption horse meat, which we would never ever have thought of touching once upon a time, we'd always had beef steak. The business went very well. My uncle made a lot of money and kept his garages going anyway. And then the whale meat came in. We tried that; it was a little on the fishy side but it was quite edible. People were queuing up to buy this horse meat and whale meat. You just queued up for it and there was no rationing on horsemeat at all. I thought that it was quite a good move on my uncle's part.

On a clear night during the blackout there was total darkness. It's difficult to visualise a complete blackness, but there were really no lights at all. The only lights were masked headlamps on the few number of vehicles that were moving around. It really was black; you might as well have been in the middle of the Spanish mountains where they have beautiful dark skies. It was like that. And on a clear, say a frosty night, the stars were out in thousands. You'd never see them like that now with the light pollution. It was like that then. One night, on one of these clear nights, it must have been about November time, we were coming back from the local cinema. The Odeon cinema was more or less at the bottom of our road and I was walking home with my mother and father. We saw the aurora borealis, the northern lights, in the sky above us. You'd never see that sight today. Strangely enough my wife also saw them - although I didn't know her at the time. There isn't any question that it was an illusion. It was this wonderful, unforgettable, beautiful light, a pale-coloured moving curtain of light. I've never ever seen it since. I know if you go up to polar or Arctic circles you can see the northern lights but we saw them in London, in east London, which was most unbelievable.

My grandfather, a lovely old man, took me to the shops in Walthamstow on a Saturday afternoon during the war. He gave me sixpence to buy a torch in Woolworths. The torch was made of green mottled Bakerlite with a bullseye lens. I loved it. Everyone carried a torch in those days due to the blackout. We all had torches; it was the only way you could get about. The sale of batteries must have been terrific. On the way home we called in to collect a pair of shoes my grandfather had left at a little cobblers' shop, a shoe repairers'. In those days you called a shoe repairer a 'snob'. A 'snob' was the name for a cobbler. I don't often hear it used now, but in those days they were snobs. The shop's owner was a poor little stooped chap. We went in through the front door of his little cottage. His shop was the front room of his cottage where he did his repairs. He worked by a gaslight, not a very good one, because he couldn't afford electricity. I showed him my torch, and he'd never seen one before or such a bright light. My very kind grandfather suggested that I gave it to the cobbler. He was delighted and kept on putting it on and off. My torch had gone, but I felt quite happy about this. It was a nice gesture and even at that age I appreciated it. Although I missed my torch my grandfather was right to give it to the poor old chap. It was a nice gesture. This shows the difference in the way that people used to live then. The cobbler was working away with his shoes, repairing them in the poor light, one little gaslight, and he sees this torch and it's like something amazing to him. That's just how we would react if we saw a laser beam today. I was so pleased to see the pleasure on this little stooped man's face to get hold of this torch. Whether he ever bought batteries for it I've no idea.

We loved the barrage balloons. They arrived on a lorry-driven winch. They looked like great big silver whales in the sky but they protected us from low dive-bombers who if they dived low and close could have a wing cut off by the cable. They were probably about three or four hundred feet up. Occasionally the actual barrage balloon was shot down. Although they were full of hydrogen they didn't explode but gradually burst into flame and then slowly drifted down like a burning smouldering tissue paper. They just slowly came down. When the cable came down, there was about three or four hundred feet of cable falling to ground, that could be quite dangerous to those who might be underneath it so you had to watch out for that. I always liked the barrage balloons. There were lots of them around. They'd go up and down during the day. They'd quite often drive them to another location. You might find that you had a barrage balloon one day and next day it's gone or you might have three, depending on where was vulnerable to attack. They were probably about three or four hundred feet up. They were a protection for us too.

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