大象传媒

My father was moved in early 1941 to Shrewsbury. The Armament Research Department set up in The Raven Hotel, situated in Castle Street. To all intents and purposes the hotel was open but if you tried to book a room the reception would tell you that they were full up. The bedrooms were turned into offices and meetings rooms. Apart from the civilian staff, there were senior officers from the three services to advise and help in the work. This comprised the development of countermeasures against aircraft, submarines and the development of new and more powerful tank and anti-tank guns. My father's expertise was in the calculations and design of new explosives and weapons.
Bombs designed by the air bombardment group, which he was a member, lead to the production of the 10 ton aerial bomb used in the attacks on the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneiseneau which were based at Brest. They posed a serious threat to the Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. Some of this work was described in a book written by Air Commodore P. Huskinson CBE. published by Werner Laurie (London] in 1949. On page 41 he describes the formation of the Static Detonation Committee. "Doctor Guy was its Chairman, and with him some of the best brains, scientific and otherwise, in the country. Among them were Sir Robert Robertson, Doctor Christopherson, Mr Warren, Mr Early, the RAF members of the Ordnance Board, and others. I was myself a humble member of this august body. "
During this period of the war my father used to go with the Air Bombardment Group of the Ordnance Board to America where they were doing trials of large aerial bombs and as I learnt after the war, work on the first atomic bomb. The method of traveling to America in the early part of the war, when America was neutral, was by unarmed plane to Lisbon and then by PanAm clipper to the States. Later on they flew in flying boats via Iceland and Gander in Newfoundland to Baltimore.
From 1941 until 1943, we stayed in a rented house in Oak Street in Shrewsbury, sharing it with another family, a Captain and Mrs Hurst. I went to the Priory School for Boys, a grammar school situated on the banks of the Severn in Shrewsbury. Life at school was interesting with lots to do. We worked hard at our studies and in the evenings especially in the summer we worked on food production in our large garden and on the school allotments. By 1942 at the height of the U-boat war, the food ration was reduced to a basic level. Nobody starved but I can remember being hungry at times.
Bread, potatoes and vegetables were not rationed but everything else was. There were no fresh eggs, only dried egg in tins that was imported from the USA. Meat was reduced to 10 pence worth a week which was enough for a meal for one person. Butter was 2 ounces a week per person, all tinned food was rated on a points system. For a month the allocation of points was 32. I remember a small tin of chopped ham [Spam] was 32 points. To provide fruit, we had fruit trees in our garden and in the autumn we picked the fruit and stored it in a barn on newspapers. Some of the apples were cut into rings and dried on canes. These were used for puddings in the winter. Because sugar was rationed we used saccharine or sugar beet extract to sweeten.

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We planted soft fruit like raspberries and gooseberries which we used for puddings in the summer to provide extra vitamin C. Some food was imported into the country inside tanks and lorries which formed deck cargo on some of the larger merchant ships. This had to be carefully washed before eating to remove oil and salt.
In 1943, my father returned to Fort Halstead with my mother and I stayed in Shrewsbury with a Mr. and Mrs. Tank at 8, Oak Street. At this time I had enrolled into the Civil Defence Corps which meant that I went to school during the day and three evenings a week I reported to the local post. I was trained as a messenger who took information from the Incident Officer to the other services. Our post was in the offices of the British Aluminium Company [BAC], who were responsible for producing metal for airframes for the RAF. Each time I went to the post, during the early part of the evening I did my homework and then the BAC provided us all with a hot supper.
The bombing at that time was mostly against Birmingham and some of the local airfields. We did however have some very nasty anti-personnel bombs dropped known as butterfly bombs. These were canisters painted in bright colours with a 1 kg. charge of high explosive. When released from the aircraft they spun down to ground fitted with a rotating metal parachute which armed the bomb. The intention was for children to see them and pick them up with lethal results.
One of our bomb disposal officers was killed trying to deal with one of these bombs. The technique was to place a guncotton charge near to the butterfly bomb by means of a long pole and then to detonate the charge. Unfortunately on this occasion the guncotton charge partially exploded and the remainder of the charge flew into the air and landed on the soldier's head blowing it off.
The Germans tended to bomb us during the night because our daytime defenses were becoming quite effective. The Tanks were a very kind family. Dick Tank was born in Barmouth, North Wales and spoke fluent Welsh. Gwen was half Welsh and half a Londoner and was a centre of fun for the family. She and I hit it off from the start. Gwen was a very live wire and always cheerful.
She had me and a young lady pharmacist called Moira billeted with her. Moira was going out with her boss who Gwen didn't like, so they had to do their courting in the porch outside the house. Gwen's mother, a Mrs. Hughes was rather like Lady Bracknell. Whenever she went out shopping she was always smartly dressed and wearing leather gloves.
During 1943, clothing was getting very short and Gwen did not have a pair of smart leather gloves to wear. Mrs. Hughes saw us shopping in Shrewsbury on a Saturday and gave Gwen a dressing down for not being properly dressed.. I think Gwen was rather scared of her mother. Gwen's great weakness was rescuing stay cats. A lot of cats were made homeless by the bombing and they would appear at her kitchen door to be fed. When the population of cats reach about 8 to 10, Gwen would remark that she couldn't have all these cats under her feet. I was asked to cycle to the PDSA to collect a large cat basket.

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On my return we then attempted to put the cats into the basket. Three would go in and then two would jump out. This pantomime would go on until all the cats were safely in the basket. Gwen would then order a taxi and then I was dispatched in it , with the cats, Gwen in floods of tears, back to the PDSA with strict orders that I was to see them put to sleep peacefully. This went on from time to time throughout my stay with the Tanks. They had a son Meyrick, who was a very cold and austere boy, quite a brilliant classic scholar, who ultimately went to Cambridge and from there was called up and served in the Intelligence Corps at Bletchley Park. I think they virtually adopted me as their son during my stay.

London during the V1 and V2 attack
When I returned to Eltham in June 1944, I was sorry to leave Dick and Gwen, but please to be with my parents again. The day I arrived in Eltham was the first day of the Germans attack on London with V1 flying bombs. For the first few days there were a few Vl;s which we thought at first were German aircraft on fire after being attacked by the RAF.
Later there was a steady stream of these VI's flying into London along the A2 main road. These bombs traveled at 500 mph and so only the fastest fighter aircraft could intercept them. The defenses developed a system that the anti-aircraft guns were moved to the coast and fired at the bombs out to sea. Then the fighter aircraft intercepted others over Kent hoping to shoot them down over farmland before they reached London. The map of Eltham and Woolwich made after the war shows the large number of bombs that were dropped in this area.
On 6th July Churchill announced that in the first three weeks of the VI attack 2,754 flying bombs had been fired at London and the South East resulting in 2,752 deaths. However nearly 750,000 houses had been damaged, 23,000 destroyed. By the end of August, the VI's had killed more than 6,000 persons mainly civilians. The Germans also made some daylight raids, hit and run efforts, which were nasty but did not affect the course of the war. Some German attacks were made at night in which they dropped 1 tonne land mines. These were dropped near to the A2 main road as this was the main route to Dover from London and they thought that Kidbrooke aerodrome on the map was an airfield actually it was a balloon barrage depot. In one such attack 3 land mines were dropped at the junction of Westmount Road and the A2 Rochester Way. Two exploded and one was a delayed action bomb. A bomb disposal officer dealt with the delayed action bomb, but one of the other bombs destroyed a row of houses near to the junction trapping a Miss Templeton who was the local physiotherapist. The Civil Defence rescue squad, many of whom were ex Welsh Miners, tunneled into the wreckage to get to Miss Templeton. She was very badly crushed and was given morphia to ease the pain. One of the rescuers stayed with her until she died.
During this period I was attending the Roan School in Greenwich, studying for my School Certificate and taking cover whenever there was an air raid. The Roan was a very good school and I enjoyed my time in the 5th and 6th forms.

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From August 1944 the Germans began using a newer weapon known as the V2. This was the forerunner of the space age rockets and it delivered 1 tonne of explosive on the target. These rockets were fired from Holland and Northern France and traveled into the stratosphere falling vertically onto their targets. They traveled at supersonic speed and could not be detected or heard until they detonated on impact. This bombardment lasted 177 days when a total of 1,050 rockets fell on London.
One of the first rockets to fall in London fell at the top of Crookston Road at about 8 am. We went to see the crater and were amazed at the large blocks of ice surrounding it. I managed to recover a piece of the guidance system from the wreckage. A few months later, at about the same time, another rocket fell into the woods opposite our house.
All I remember was no noise but the breakfast crockery being lifted slowly and falling on the floor upside down, and then the ceilings falling onto us. We had lost our roof and the internal walls were cracked. Our windows were blown in but they were heavily taped so that the glass would not shatter. A blood curdling scream came from two doors down the road, and when two of us went to investigate we found Mrs. Potter with the framed picture of her late husband around her neck. Great care had to be taken to remove Mr. Potter without the glass cutting her throat.
I had a similar experience when in my form room at school, a V2 exploded in the park opposite. There was a terrific bang, all the ceilings fell in, we cleared the plaster from our desks and then Mr. Parker our form master continued the lesson [a tangent to a circle from an external point]. Nothing would deter Mr. Parker from his maths lesson, but he did send our form monitor, one "Niblo" Coe to cycle over to Blackheath to see if Mrs. Parker was safe.
The end of the war came in May 1945, for six months before we knew that we had defeated Germany and it was only a matter of time before they would surrender unconditionally. The moment came in Luneburg Heath in Northern Germany when the German General staff arrived to sign the surrender document. The entire High Command were there, spotlessly clean with their best No 1 uniforms and wearing their medals They arrived at General Montgomery's headquarters which was a tented encampment, and Monty wearing his combat and shabby battledress said to his brigade major "who are these people" The British major said "they are the German General staff sir and they have come to surrender". Monty replied" Parade them under the Union Jack until I am ready for them." The surrender ceremony held in an Army tent shows all the Germans signing the surrender document with their solid gold Sheaffer pens, and Monty getting an old Post Office pen with a dipping nib and signing on behalf of the Supreme Commander Allied Forces. The German must have thought to themselves how could we have been defected by this lot.
We all celebrated the victory for about a week with street parties etc. but of course we were short of food etc, so there was a reliance on bread and margarine and "full fruit standard "jam rather than cream cakes. We had achieved Victory in Europe but not Victory over Japan.

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The Americans and ourselves had come to recognize during the latter part of the War how dangerous an enemy the Japanese were. They treated their own men with brutality and were even worse to the civilians in occupied territories and particularly our prisoners of war. Many of them had been worked to death on the Burma railway and civil engineering projects in Borneo and Japan.
At this time my father was spending more time in the United States working on the arrangements for completion of the atomic bomb. He was present in the test firing of the first bomb in the Nevada desert. The test was done at night and the scientists stood some miles away from the detonation point. He though that they should all lie down until the blast wave past them and then stand and observe the effects looking through smoked glass ,until he was informed by the biologist expert in the party, that there was a very poisonous spider that inhabited this desert and usually came out at night!
My personal feelings about the use of the atomic and nuclear bombs were that they were justified in the circumstances. The Japanese would have killed hundreds of thousands of American and Allied troops if we had landed on their mainland. They would have murdered all the allied prisoners in their charge, as they had demonstrated in the New Guinea campaign. It took two bombs to bring Japan to its knees.

At last the war was over and we could all start to rebuild our lives. The joy of not being bombed or rocketed was evident in the population but the next few years were even worse for Britain in regards to food and materials. Our scrambler telephone was removed by the Post Office from my fathers bedroom office and we had to face severe rationing of everything except vegetables because we had to feed the starving on the continent of Europe.

Many of the members of the research group received honours for their services during the war including my father who was given an MBE. His colleague, Dr Rotter, an incredibly brave man, entered an underground gallery containing large aerial bombs near Stoke on Trent , and defused them while some of the bombs at the end of the gallery exploded.
I am glad to say that he received the George Medal from the King. He left government service at the end of the war and became a sheep farmer in Wales.

Peter John Warren written in July 2005.

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