大象传媒

I was 8 years old when the war started and we lived over a shop on Colindale Parade, Edgware Road. My School was Oliver Goldsmith Primary School in Kingsbury. The School was closed in 1939 (I think) for some months for it to be used as an Ambulance Station for Blitz victims, so we shared Preston Manor School, mornings one week, afternoons the next. My Father had a car all through the war for business reasons and as he was an area manager in food trade, also slightly disabled, he was not Called Up. We visited grandparents in Bucks some weekends (car allowed) and I remember many Sunday nights coming back down the Edgware Road with the huge anti-aircraft guns blasting away at the German aircraft. With all this noise and from bombs it was terrifying to us children, but my father sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" at the top of his voice! The guns were because we were surrounded by aircraft factories and nearby Hendon Airfield.

I also remember how much we carried on normal life. As a family, we always went to nearby cinemas one evening a week and on Mondays (my Mother's day off from the baker's shop below us) in school holidays we always took the bus to Oxford Street. But until the end of the Blitz we had to make sure to get back home before dark, when raids were expected. One night my parents went to the cinema in a quiet raids period on their own. We had a single-storey brick shelter above ground in the shop yard, shared with neighbours. That night there was a tremendous raid from about 8pm. I was too scared to go out to take my brother down to the shelter, so we got under the stairs of our two-storey flat. This was one of the two times I was really terrified. I did look out once: the searchlights lit up not only the barrage balloons, but a whole contingent of German bombers raiding our area. The other time we had been to a Coliseum pantomime and returning by Tube we of course passed many people sleeping on the platforms. Because of the raid in progress, we had to get out at Hendon Central, but luckily our friends lived nearby, about quarter of a mile away. But the shrapnel was falling like rain all around us and it would have taken only a large piece to kill each one of us. The other special point is, I now tell my grandchildren, my brother and I, even though so young, read the newspapers right through every day, so we knew all the details of the War at home and abroad, whatever was published.

In 1943, I started at Hendon County Grammar School. My Aunt worked in the City at a Wine Merchant's called George Jones in Eastcheap. As my parents were shopkeepers, we were on hand to buy unrationed offal and fish easily, so after school every Wednesday during 1944, I went by Tube from Hendon Central to Bank Station, but V1s had started, and quite often daytime raids were on when I got out. I went from door to door of the large commercial buildings to reach my Aunt with the parcel of food. A quick drink of water and the return journey. You couldn't do that today with a 13-year-old!

I left HCS in 1945 (VE-day) and I transferred to Chichester High School.

I would be interested to hear from others who share my history.

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