大象传媒

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Adult and Community Learning, Woodstock, on behalf of Ron Bicheno and has been added to the site with his permission. Ron fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

I was 9 years old and one of a family of thirteen children when the war started, and was evacuated with some of my sisters to the Isle of White and then to Christchurch. It seemed a bit daft because you would have thought any location on the South Coast would have been a target for the Germans.

When we arrived the local parents simply picked whoever they fancied, trying to match age and gender with their own children. I was left standing on the platform until a woman with 2 girls took me home.
This did not work out and so I moved in with the family next door who had one son. As an only child the boy had been spoiled because he had all sorts of toys. I was thrilled to be able to play with them all, especially a large 鈥淣o 10 Meccano set鈥�.

I joined the boy scouts and collected many achievement badges and I was a member of the Christchurch Abbey Choir.

The boy鈥檚 dad worked as a water bailiff and so I was able to go to all the fishing areas in the rivers Avon and Stour.

We came home after 2 years, even though the war continued and the area was still dangerous. One night I was in the Eastney Boys Club and there was a particularly heavy air raid. It started so suddenly that we did not have time to run to the air raid shelter so we crouched under the snooker tables. When the raid stopped at about 4 am, I had to try to make my way home, in total darkness, climbing over the ruins of bombed houses, the air filled with the stench of cordite. I fell into what turned out to be a large bomb crater. When I finally arrived home I was told off for being out so late.

After the air raids we used to wander round the bombed houses, not realising the danger of building collapse, looking for any useful bits and pieces we could take home. We used to throw tennis balls up onto the roofs to dislodge pieces of bomb shrapnel to keep as souvenirs. You got used to the dust, dirt and red glow in the sky. You got used to the noise. You had to or you would never have got any sleep. Portsmouth was under constant attack.. You know the sound of a violent thunder storm?. An air raid sounded like that, all night long. My brothers were in the service and whenever they came home they used to say it was worse here than at the Front.

I got to know the difference between the sounds of the planes and knew when they were German bombers. Ground guns were fired at them from moving lorries, so that it would be harder for the planes to target them.

I helped in the church and if there were any candle left-overs, I would take them for the air shelter. We stayed in the shelter from 10pm to 6 in the morning.

My father was on ARP when Lake Road School was hit and school kids were killed. It really upset him as he found himself going around picking up arms and legs.

Once I was going towards the brick air raid shelter in the park and I saw a doodlebug, about 100 feet in the air gliding towards towards it. I stopped, transfixed, glued to the spot, watching it.Then ground guns hit it and knocked it off course so that it floated down into the asylum wall. A warden lunged at me at pushed me head first into the shelter.

I will never forget the sight one morning when we woke up and went out to see lorries and tanks, nose to tail, spread along all the roads through the town, stretching from the north end all the way down to the sea front in the south, as far as the eye could see. There were thousands of them. Of course, we later learnt it was D Day! The next day they were all gone.

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