大象传媒

Residing in Leyton, East London, I was evacuated as a boy of ten at the end of 1939. My parents were divorced and I was living with my mother, brother and grandmother. My brother stayed with my father in Newbury, which was considered safe. The rest of us went down to a farm in Wales for a year.

On the farm I would go around and collect eggs for the farmer; he had chickens running free all over the place. He would pay me a few pence for doing this. What I didn't like was when he used to slaughter pigs in the shed.

As nothing seemed to be happening in London at that time, it was decided that we would return home. Soon after we got back, the bombing started.

We had two shelters; a Morrison, which was at the bottom of the garden, was where we stayed overnight. There was also an Anderson shelter, which was really just a reinforced table with a steel top, inside the house. Anybody indoors would sleep beneath it. Both shelters were named after cabinet ministers. The Morrison, being undergound, was much the safer.

We used to sleep in the Morrison shelter night after night. There were bunks; one on top, one underneath and one on the floor. We would take food and drink with us. I can remember looking out and seeing barrage balloons in the sky which weren't very effective. Planes would try to shoot them down and they would have to be replaced.

I would get sick of the shelter and smuggle myself back to the house. My mother would come and fetch me and bring me back down again.

There were ARP wardens. They would make sure people were off the streets when an air raid was due. They would come banging on your door if there was a chink of light showing through the blackout curtains. The air raid sirens had two different sounds. The all clear was a constant noise but when there was a raid it was a wind up sound. If this happened at school, we were sent to the school shelter and lessons carried on as usual. Nearby was the Essesx County Cricket ground. They had a couple of bombs fall on them.

Although there was rationing I have no memories of being hungry. We had lunch at school and these meals were always substantial. My grandfather had a butchers shop that got hit by a bomb. He opened another a few yards along the same road. Meat was rationed but we were all right because of him. The milkman still came round every day though. We never saw a banana until after the war.

As I set off for school one morning, when I came to the end of the road I saw police and ARP wardens. There was a landmine, which they used to send down from enemy aircraft, suspended on a lampost. It was waving in the wind and only 8ft. from the ground. If it had touched the ground the whole street, including my house, would have been blown up. Bomb disposal people came with a lorry and picked it up. They took it to a nearby area of common and exploded it.

I remember going to school with shrapnel laying all over the place. I would pick up pieces and keep them as souvenirs. There weren't raids every night, but if it was cloudy the planes would come more often as they couldn't so easily be picked up on the searchlights.

The only thing that really worried me was towards the end of the war. That was when the Germans started using rockets. They used to come out of the blue with a bang. This went on only for three or four months, as by this time we were in Europe and our forces tried to capture the rocket sites as soon as they could.

There were the V1s, which were the doodlebugs. These had engines that would cut out, so you had some warning of their approach and you could see them coming. One day I was at the open-air swimming pool just outside Leyton. I was on the top diving board when I could see a doodlebug coming over. Suddenly its engine cutout, so I knew it was coming down. I dived into the pool and stayed there It went off a mile away.

The V2s were the silent killers. You never knew when they were coming. My family was very scared, my grandmother in particular. Theyprotected me and I saw it all as an adventure. The firemen were marvellous, trying to get people out of bombed houses. I saw a body being dragged out one morning, which was very upsetting.

There was little or no entertainment. We listened to the radio a lot. Once mother took me to London Zoo. There were hardly any animals there, but I remember the snake house.

After the war it took a long while for London to get back on its feet.

(PK)

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.