大象传媒

I was born in 1935 and at the start of the war I was living in London. I was evacuated with my brother Maurice, who is three years older than me, to a small village in Hampshire. On my mother's first visit to us she found us in the same clothes in which we had left London, the new clothes being still in the suitcase on top of the wardrobe. She took us back to London saying "she would rather us be clean and dead".

On returning to London, to live at 8 Welbeck Street, Marylebone, I attended St Marys C/E School which was attached to the St Marys Church. During air raids when we were in school we would be sent down to the gymnasium area which had been steel reinforced to protect us during the day. However during the night raids children from the school were killed and in the morning the headmistress Mrs Atwright would have a special prayer and she would cry whilst she was doing it. But for us children the worst was as a member of St Marys choir if there was a raid we would be sent down to the crypt where you could see through the various cell gates, coffins etc. and the older boys would make the gates squeek and make noises to frighten the younger ones - this was more scary than the raid.

I remember particularly one night there was a very bad raid in my area which was Welbeck Street there had been a number of direct hits close to our house but particularly the warehouse for the Times Book Club which was behind our house was hit badly on fire and the fire bridgade used our house to come through and to get to the Times Book club. Through the night my mother had set up tea for the firemen, some Americans who had been billited on us were lacing the tea with whisky - news soon got arround the firemen from all over - who had been overcome by smoke - were coming in for tea. My job was to help serve the tea. While all this was going on one American came to the door who wanted to see the Times Book Club on fire so I took him up on to the roof of our house which was four storey high so he could look down onto the fire - for letting him do this he emptied his pockets and gave me all the change he had which added up to 15s, which at that time was a lot of money. Also a good fistful of chewing gum.

Another night during a raid the heating pipes going up through the house were fractured releasing carbon monoxide gas. Something woke my mother who was the only one of the family who could stir due to the effects of the gas - she dragged us out and sealed up that area of the house. A couple of days later she realised what had woken her had been our cat - Winstone - who was now missing. When we were able to go back into that area of the house we found the cat dead in my mother's bedroom - it was buried with family honours as he had saved our lives.

The worst for me was the V2 bombs - as there was no warning just massive explosions which in reality like the doodlebugs (V1) if you heard the bang you were OK.

One particularly V2 which landed fairly close landed just to the one side of Selfridges which brought down part of our ceilings and broke some windows. The following morning a friend (John Cole) and I sneaked down - we were not allowed - and saw a large number of covered bodies lined up could see where a taxi had been blown right through one of the windows and was inside the store. These were things that we lived with - as daily facts - we never knew anything different.

On VE day I have strong memories of mother taking us down Regent Street to Picadilly and Trafalgar Square through the euphoric crowds which you now often see shown on television of people singing and dancing through the streets on down to Buckingham Palace where we saw the Royal Family out on the balcony, that and other celebrations was the start of a new way of life.

For me as a member of the St Mary's Choir I was privileged to sing in St Paul's Cathedral at a service for the children of London to celebrate the end of the war.

These are some of my memories.

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