大象传媒

Towards the end of my first year as a boarder at Epsom College, in the summer of 1944, the doodlebugs (German flying bombs) started coming over. Before there was any mention of them in the newspapers, one of the very early ones fell just across the road from the College. The class I was in, the Middle Fourth, were just about to start a French lesson in an upstairs classroom in a block standing next to College Road. The classroom was approached by an external staircase at the Longdown Lane end of the building, then by an iron passageway along the outside. Two or three boys, coming to class a bit late, stood outside to watch, thinking the falling object was a plane about to crash. The bomb landed and blew up in a field, throwing up clouds of soil and dust. The threesome dashed into the classroom, their faces covered in dirt. Meanwhile the French master, Mr. Dodgson, who in any case suffered from shell-shock as a result of his experiences in the First World War, was in quite a state, but kept control, ordering us to take cover under the desks as plaster cracked and fell from the ceiling.
The bomb dropped near Links Road, which forcibly reminded one of my class-mates, Robert McCormick, that his parents had both been killed when their house in that road was hit by a bomb a two or three years earlier. Robert and his elder brother now spent their holidays staying with various uncles and aunts, one of the uncles being Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb, who lived in Effingham.
It was quite eerie, in the weeks that followed, hearing the putt-putt-putt of the flying bombs as they flew overhead. It wasn't so bad so long as you could hear them, but it was when the engine cut that you knew someone was in for trouble. It was the deathly silence as the bomb slowly fell from the sky that really tried the nerves.
As a result of the doodlebugs it was soon decreed that all boys not taking exams were to be sent home early. Those of us in the junior house could not go home on our own, however. Each of us had to be collected by a parent. My mother, now a Welfare Officer in an armaments factory in Patricroft in Lancashire, managed to get time off and came down by train.
On being told she was coming to pick me up that evening, I took the opportunity not to do my Latin homework. Then, as time went by and she hadn't arrived, I started to panic. To my great relief she came at about nine o'clock. I was all packed up and ready to go, so we set off straight away on our return journey. We caught the train from Epsom Downs to Victoria and went by tube to Euston. The passages in the underground stations, particularly at Euston itself, were lined with bombed-out people who had to make their beds there for the night.
It had been a very hot and long-drawn out day, so before going into Euston station to catch the train, and having some time to spare, we called into the Euston Hotel. I had a long, cold, memorable iced ginger beer. The train to Manchester went from Platform 14 at twenty past midnight. It seemed a bewitching hour to be catching a train.

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