大象传媒

What is that 鈥淏uzzing鈥� noise Mummy those words stand out very firmly in my mind as a child while walking up the road with my Mother who was deaf (no deaf aids for the ordinary person in those days) so I was her ears. At the age of nine or ten I had heard the first air raid on Croydon Airport, and consequently we were herded into a public air raid shelter by the police at the end of the road.

I was born in 1931 and so was eight years old when the war started. In 1938 I had been taken to school complete with gas mask and luggage label to be shipped off to America because of the Munich crisis, only to find after floods of tears that I was not going as an agreement had been reached by Mr. Chamberlain 鈥渉ow innocent the young can be!鈥�

This small preparatory private school, Aberdeen House, was the first of seven that I attended throughout the war and when I look back now what a disrupted education this was, I wonder what modern Psychologists would make of it these days!

I lived in what was commonly known as London Bomb Alley with boundaries on all sides of the area containing Kenley, Biggin Hill and Croydon airports.

When war was declared we joined another family, except for my Father who was serving in the War Reserve Police force and went to Middleton on Sea in Sussex near Brighton, to stay with an aunt, here I attended my second school, a Dame鈥檚 school (one class in each corner of a church hall) Things must have become too noisy for this aunt, with four children in the house and so I was sent as a London evacuee to Brighton where I joined another local school that had been evacuated from Croydon Surrey, my home town.

The first Sunday tea time I seem to remember was a great education when a large cork was placed in the middle of the table containing several large hat pins, and I was told these are for the cockles that my foster father had collected he being a fisherman. 鈥淯gh鈥�

When France fell my Father decided to bring us all back to ,
Warlingham in Surrey, supposedly a safe area about 15 miles outside Croydon stating 鈥淚f we were going to get killed we might as well all go together!鈥�

Here I went to yet another school and spent a good deal of the time in the school air raid shelter during daylight raids becoming very adept at playing 鈥渂attleships鈥� and 鈥渘aught and crosses鈥� having first been given a boiled sweet from a large jar which was every child's reward for keeping calm! During this time my memories of all the kids in the neighbourhood going down the garden with pillows under their arms to sleep the night in the air raid shelter shouting across the garden fences 鈥漡ood night mind the bugs don鈥� bite鈥�. Which was quite realistic with the spiders and creepy craw- lies that inhabited the shelters. I can still remember the red glow on the paint work of the windows at night when the docks were on fire and the Blitz was at its height, as the crow flies we were not that far from the East End of London.

One day time raid that I remember quite vividly, as I have already said my Mother was deaf, we had been sent down to the shelter while she was preparing the vegetables for dinner, suddenly she saw the planes approaching picked up the large enamel washing up bowl with handles on each side that she was using put it over her head and ran down to the shelter, to arrive, soaking wet potato peelings adorning her hair.

The bombing had a lull the time in a child is non existent but at 10+ years I had to change schools again because of my age and had to go to a Central school for a few months before I could attend the Grammar school that I had passed the entrance exam for - quite amazing really! I would walk from the school past the Blacksmiths shop and watch the farrier shoeing the horses, or wait at the bus stop on the village green collecting the bus tickets that had been dropped (they were a much more sophisticated piece of paper than the present day) and painstakingly put them in numerical order with my collection at home.

Down our lane soldiers would often march singing as they went, where they were heading I do not know, but on hindsight 鈥淒-day鈥� was approaching, us kids would go down to the field at the end where RAF lads were in charge of a tethered barrage balloon, a walk up a neighbouring lane and see them practicing towing gliders 鈥淐areless talk costs lives would be advertised on posters鈥� but we were quite oblivious of this potential.

I suppose it about the end of my second year in Grammar school, when guess what I was evacuated again. This time to Newton Abbott in Devon, the flying bomb raids had got bad and so we were packed on to trains from school and dispatched to an unknown destination as far as we were concerned, but singing as we went 鈥渨e on the way to any any where, don鈥檛 know where were going till we鈥檙e there,鈥� On arrival given a cup of revolting sweet tea out of a large teapot 鈥渢o my disgust as I do not like sugar in my tea鈥�, along with a bun. In the assembly hall we were duly dished out to various billets 鈥渟ome very strange鈥�, with yet another school on the horizon.

I was very unhappy with all this, hot water was non existent and at thirteen years of age hygiene was becoming quite important, hence I learnt to swim at the swimming pool, it was the only place that my friend and I could find to freshen ourselves up. After many tears and arguments I eventually persuaded my parents to take me back home the war was starting to come to a close with the allied forces getting well in to France.

One very vivid memory was going out one day with my mother and hearing the whoosh of a rocket 鈥淰2鈥� coming and pushing her in to a bank to take cover just in time to hear it explode in a near by field 鈥渢he accolade afterwards was great and I felt perhaps I had been some use asking to come home.

The feeling of camaraderie in these dreadful times was with us kids just as with the adults, I being one of the eldest organised a concert to perform in front of the neighbours (using the Morrison table shelter we had in our house as a stage). Our efforts raised 拢5 for the Red Cross Prisoners of War Fund which was a lot of money in those days!

What did all this teach us. How to look after all we had. Not to waste and be caring for others around us. We did not know too much about fear except when the raids were on, but I think it made us in to pretty responsible adults.

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