大象传媒

When the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� sounded at about 5.00am every morning during the bombing of London, we would dash upstairs to our flat to see if St. Paul鈥檚 Cathedral was undamaged, or if indeed it was still there. Sometimes we had a clear view of the dome but sometimes it was shrouded in billows of smoke, coming from the fires still burning from the night before.
St. Paul鈥檚 to me was the symbol of London, especially as I was born on September 2nd 1920 when 鈥淏ig Tom鈥� was striking 6.00am. My father worked for the Worshipful Company of Dyers and we had a flat in the Dyers Hall, which was situated in Dowgate Hill, next to Cannon Street Station. Our air-raid shelter was in the basement of the hall, where the kitchens, the coal cellar, wine cellar and the safe were and where all the silver was kept, also my father鈥檚 pantry which became an A.R.P. post. My father was one of the wardens and I became a part-time voluntary warden. Banquets in happier times were cooked in the kitchens, but were little use to us now as gas pressure was so low and electricity sometimes non-existent. The basement was our home on and off for the next six years.
We had one or two air-raids, mostly false alarms, until one Saturday afternoon the German bombers came over in full force, bombed and set fire to the docks. Fires raged along both sides of the Thames for hours, a truly terrible afternoon. We expected them back again that night but nothing happened.
I remember one evening two men from the War Office called to see how much accommodation we had, the first we knew that the evacuation of Dunkirk had begun. Alas though, the accommodation wasn鈥檛 needed.
Soon the Battle of Britain started. Some bombers got through to London, but none penetrated as far as the City in daylight. We started having what we called nuisance raids at night, one lone bomber would circle round and round eventually dropping its stick of bombs, then another would come and so on all night. At this time we only had one ack-ack gun near us, soon however, more guns came and so did the bombers, until the warnings would go off at sundown until sunrise every day.
We slept on camp beds in the shelter, fully clothed even with our shoes on and wondering if we would see the morning, often waking up at intervals wishing they would all go home, and I have, on occasions, when the noise was horrendous, wished the next bomb would fall on us and put us out of our misery, we were so tired.
Each morning we emerged into the daylight to the acrid smell of smoke, and sometimes the stench coming from the Thames because so much water had been drawn off the night before to fight the fires. Often we saw firemen standing around aimlessly with their appliances because no more water could be used. We usually managed to get a trickle of water to wash and a tiny jet of gas for a cup of tea, but sometimes we had to wait for the water cart to come round. I remember once seeing the building opposite whose first and second floors had been sliced off, leaving a pile of rubble below in the courtyard, a beautiful blue satin cushion, quite undamaged, was impaled on the railings.
Another time on my way to the Bank, I had to walk through a river of wine, beer and spirits, running down Dowgate Hill because the two pubs on the corner had been bombed. I had often to make a detour on my way to the office because of an unexploded bomb which had fallen in the road. One such fell on our church a few hundred yards away. When my father broke down the door, he found the bomb had gone way down into the crypt. The Bomb Disposal Squad couldn鈥檛 come for several days because they were so busy. In fact unexploded bombs are still being found to this day. It was thought as the German army pushed through Europe, gobbling up factories in occupied countries, the workers sabotaged some of them. Probably the biggest unexploded bomb was dropped by the front entrance of St. Paul鈥檚. Word went out to clear the streets. We had to make sure no traffic came into the main road from the side roads while the bomb was being driven on a lorry through the city, to be exploded on Hackney Marshes.
I was fortunate in so much as I could walk to my work in the Bank of England, where I was a temporary clerk, albeit dodging broken glass and debris. We worked three floors down in the vaults. Some of my colleagues had such horrendous journeys on London Transport that the Bank laid on coaches from the suburbs, and some clerks took it in turns to stay at night. The worst thing was to see who was missing the next morning.
We sometimes had to eat our supper in the shelter in candlelight, as the electricity usually went off as the first bomb dropped. Our supper nearly always consisted of powdered scrambled egg. How I came to hate scrambled egg, and still do. It was mixed with a good powdering of coal dust and eaten to the noise of the guns, the whine of the bombs coming down, the sickening explosions and the swaying of the buildings 鈥� we often wondered how they managed to stay up. Our flat lost all its glass from the windows and a lot of plaster from walls and ceilings, a good smattering of debris was strewn down the stairs each morning.
One night a few days after Christmas the bombers first dropped incendiary bombs, they came down nonstop, plopping like hail stones. My father and his team climbed onto the roofs and kicked as many as they could down into the street. Many fires were started that night and we thought of it ever after as the second great fire of London. No explosive bombs were dropped but there were explosions of appliances in the buildings, we thought at one stage some of the buildings were being blown up to stop the fires, as once again water had run out. Next morning we saw the firemen sometimes managing to get a trickle of water from their hose, which they trained onto a wall of a building, but the wall was so hot that all it did was hiss and turn into steam.
One night the raiders seemed to be concentrating on our part of the City. Bombs were coming down so fast and fires were starting everywhere. The firemen called to us to leave the building. Out cat had run upstairs and cut his paw on the broken glass. My father went up and brought him down and I rolled him up in one of my coats and we took him with us. My mother carried my suitcase as well as her own containing clothes and some of our treasures which we always took everywhere. I was always surprised at the people who often arrived in our shelter, having been bombed out, with only the clothes they stood up in. When we got into the street we wondered where to go, as fires were coming down the street, and fires were coming up the street, bombs were coming down and great tongues of flame would suddenly appear before the whole building burst into flames. We set off in one direction only to be turned back time and time again. We were eventually taken to a shelter in the Vintners Hall, another City Guild, but no sooner were we settled there than once again we were told to leave as there was an unexploded bomb next door, so off we went again with cat still rolled up in my coat and frantically licking the buttons. We went home, back into our shelter which was undamaged. My father had spent some time in our flat pulling down the curtains which were blowing outside and catching flames coming from the burning building opposite.
So the raids went on, thankfully soon easing off over London.
As 鈥淒-Day鈥� came we hoped the Germans would be too busy, but not a bit of it, they launched the V1s from along the European coast. The first we knew of them was one early evening the warning went and a deafening noise came through the air. I was rooted to the spot. It eventually disappeared into the distance, the noise suddenly stopped and seconds later there was a loud explosion. Not many minutes later another came and when we peeped out of the door, we saw this thing like a small aircraft, with a great tongue of flame flowing out the back. Soon after the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� went, only to be followed by the warning again, this went on for some time, until they gave it up and left the warning on, so it stayed on until the war ended. The V1s came over one after the other, night and day, hundreds must have been launched. The barrage balloons with their long, trailing cables had not been very effective, but now they were set up on the Surrey Hills in the path of the V1s. They got tangled up in the cables of the balloons which brought some of them down or sliced parts of the body off, sometimes making them turn round and go back the way they came.
By this time my father had moved most of our furniture to a little bungalow on the Surrey Downs. Whenever possible we spent a day there watching the V1s flying overhead and the spitfires trying to catch them, but they flew too fast, so the spitfires would lie in wait and pounce on them from above. Sometimes it was necessary for us to dive into the Anderson shelter in the garden. One day on the way back to London a V1 followed us, eventually gaining on the train. The noise the V1s made could be heard above the London traffic, so when you heard one coming you went in the nearest doorway and down the stairs if there were any. As the gates of the Dyers Hall were always open during the day we often found strangers in our basement. Once when my mother and I went to St. Paul鈥檚 for morning service on Sunday, the Cannon was reading the lesson when we heard a V1 coming. His voice got louder and louder and faster and faster, until we heard the V1 stop and then the explosion, when there was a audible sigh, and the service continued as usual.
Thankfully as the allies advanced through Europe the V1s got less and less, but now came the V2s, or rockets. I don鈥檛 think anyone saw them, as the explosion was heard before the noise of them was heard thundering through the air, travelling faster than sound. We got to know the times they would be coming. Usually about 8.00pm two or three would fall in quick succession, but some fell during the day. I found these rockets the most frightening of all the weapons as you couldn鈥檛 hear them coming and there was no defence. What difference all this made to us I shall never know. Thankfully this attack didn鈥檛 last long as the launching sites were fairly soon over-run.
I and my family never so much as suffered a scratch during the war so I considered myself very fortunate. My only memory of V.J. Day was the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� being sounded and going out in the evening to see a floodlight trained on the golden cross of St. Paul鈥檚 against a clear, navy blue sky, to me a wonderful sight.

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