大象传媒

In 1938, as Chamberlain flew to Munich I was evacuated to Wiltshire together with two of cousins. We were to stay with my auntie's sister. However, the crisis passed and I was back in Earlsfield a week later. But in 1939 as it became obvious that war was inevitable I was sent again to Wiltshire. This time I stayed for 3 months but I came home for Christmas and stayed home.

I can't remember whether it was just before my first or second evacuation that I witnessed the Irish navvies in Earlsfield digging the foundations for the shelters. However, a lot of the shelters including ours at home flooded and had to have a concrete wall built around the inside which made them smaller.

My cousin Ruth who had been evacuated with me returned to London a little later and she began work at Arding and Hobbs Department Store at Clapham Junction. She witnessed one of the early bombings at the back of the Store. It was terrible and very frightening.

The bomb which affected me most was probably a small one. It damaged a wall at the back of the former Workhouse in Swaffield Street in Earlsfield. The vibration knocked over a broom by the back door and the noise seemed to go on through my head.

Where there is now a block of flats, between Dingwall and Inman Roads in Earlsfield, a time-bomb fell and went off at about 2.00 a.m. This was in the middle of the Blitz on London. At one stage
a mysterious hole appeared in Inman Road near the junction with Wilna Road. The whole area was roped off as far as Dingwall Road. I think this turned out to be a shell.

One of the worst incidents was a direct hit on an Anderson Shelter at the corner of Bassingham Road, almost opposite the School. My father and our immediate neighbour, (one of the old-time railway guards), and his son who was home on leave from the Air Force went to help the local Air Raid Wardens to dig people out but alas - all dead. I don't think the Wardens got enough recognition for their work during the War.

After tbis incident my father insisted that my mother and myself be evacuated and my father telegraphed to my aunt's cousin and all the country-folk were on standby to receive us. As we left there was a time-bomb in Brocklebank Road, where the block of flats and modern houses now stand. While we were away yet another bomb wiped out houses in Earlsfield Road between Brocklebank and Dingwall Roads, (where the flats now back onto Dingwall Road.)

When I was back in London, one of the most terrifying nights was when a German plane was hit by our guns and we could hear it getting lower and lower. It came down in Merton Park. The younger generation now would no doubt think first of the pilot and crew but our first thoughts were that it was one less 'B' to bomb us. My father knew someone in that direction and we acquired a piece of metal from the plane. We kept this with a lump of jagged metal(shrapnel(?)), which fell with a thump in our garden one night. Both were kept for many years in our hall-stand until they smelled and went mouldy. Sometimes, I wish I had kept them to show my great-nephews or to give to the Wandsworth Museum in Garratt Lane.

At one stage during the War I was attending night-school on West Hill. As we left one evening the sirens sounded. My cousin Ed was going to Cadets nearby. With a barrage of guns sounding, Jerry appeared to be coming for us from the Richmond direction. I flew down Wandsworth High Street, followed by my cousin until I saw the Warden and asked where was the nearest shelter. We found it and tumbled in. Ed said: " I never knew you could run like that!" - but that is what fear does.

I belonged to the girl's club at my church, (Congregational), at the foot of Earlsfield Road. As we left one evening a Raid was hotting up and at first we ran to one of the girl's houses in Algarve Road. I think it was the grandmother who opened the door, but understandably, she did not want the responsibility of all of us, so several of us made for the main road and for a time took shelter in Earlsfield Station but with Jerry overhead this was not a good place to be, so we took our chances with the shrapnel and raced to one of the basement shelters below the shops in Garratt Lane.

My father worked in the Sorting Office,then at the High Street end of St. Anne's Hill. He cycled to work on his old bike. One evening he reached as far as Swaffield School and the frame of his bike split and he came off, shedding all his pens and pencils needed for his work. This in the middle of a Raid and in the Blackout!

Between short raids at night everyone used to go up and down the road looking for incendiaries. There was a contraption the Germans used, known as a 'Molotov Bread Basket'. This shed hundreds of incendiaries as opposed to High Explosive Incendiaries, (H.E.S.) The Church was damaged by one of these.

The German planes sometimes dropped Verey Lights earlier than the main night raids. They lit up the area. The Garratt Lane area towards King George's Park was a big factory area and therefore a target. There was a quieter period after I started work, between 1942-43. However, in one of Jeffrey Archer's books about a London Store one would think the war had ended as far as air raids were concerned but this was not the case.

Alas, there were even more terrifying times to come. In 1944 came the Flying Bombs, V.I.S. or Doodle Bugs, ( a nickname which stuck). I believe that Wandsworth together with Croydon, Lewisham, New Cross and Catford had the highest rate of V.I.S. No one could forget the terrible rattling sound and the engine cutting out. One counted to ten and if you were still alive you knew someone else had 'copped it'.

As the raids went on the piles of debris in the streets mounted higher and higher. One night, together with a friend I arrived at our stop - Brocklebank Road at Garratt Lane on the 77 bus. As we dismounted we could feel the silence that came after a bad attack. We feared the worst and asked someone: "Where did it fall?" The reply: Wilna Road. Our road. Fearing the very worst, my friend and I joined hands and turned the corner. Thank God! Our houses and folk were safe but at the bottom of the road all we could see was a mass of white helmets as the Wardens dug for any survivors. The windows in our house were all blown out but as I recall later replaced by the Royal Navy (?). My mother who had been at home at the time the bomb fell and who hated the Anderson Shelter had taken cover under the stairs. Her friend, Mrs Dell had just left the house when the raid started and only just made into her own home in Vanderbilt Road. I shall never forget that homecoming.

There was a big incident in Clapham Junction when a 77 bus was blown to bits. My father, then Assistant Head Postman at the West Central Post Office just missed catching this bus but caught the one behind and narrowly missed being killed himself. Apart from the bus and its passengers the bomb also destroyed Battersea Sorting Office at Lavender Hill and I believe, a gas main. My father said he would never forget it as long as he lived. He was asked to return to work - at the Lavender Hill Sorting Office and was back on duty even bfore they had finished clearing away the bodies - some of them no doubt his former colleagues.

Later during a lull and when I was working in the basement of the Music Shop in Holborn, I was about to go laden with the post to the Post Office further down High Holborn. I got as far as the foot of the stairs of the shop (all shop basements were shelters as well), when a V2 rocket landed further down the street. It blew in the windows of the shop. I was helping my manageress clear the window when my father came rushing along to see if I was safe, having heard where the incident was. I think it actually landed on an already bombed site. I remember going to the Post Office later that day,(life had to go on), and passing someone bleeding and in state of shock.

It was a good job that the Germans did not have those weapons at the time of Dunkirk, which the younger of my two brothers survived - just. He was missing for a few days. My elder brother, who had not passsed the forces medical tests acted as fire warden at the White Horse Whiskey premises underneath Waterloo Station, and Dad at Store Street Post Office, off Tottenham Court Road.

I feel my experiences of the War at Home are few compared to those of my sister-in-law and her sister. They used to travel from Peckham to Perivale,( a bomb alley), every day to the Hoover factory for war work all through the Blitz and the blackout. People talk about stress nowadays but I think those who worked in London or any big city during the War certainly had their fair share of it!

Before the bombing began the Council had been trying to move people if there was severe overcrowding in the house. A friend, one of a family of 10 was moved to then new Henry Prince Estate off Garratt Lane. He was killed in India on the last day of the War. He was training to be a fighter pilot.

Eileen Bicknell
Silver Circle Reading Group
Wandsworth Libraries

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