大象传媒

I was 2 when the war broke out and 7 when it ended. My mother was very ill with TB for the duration of the war and so my father was allowed to stay at home and take a leading role in the Civil Defence Corps. He used to come home with stories of rescuing people from blazing buildings and picking up German aircrew from crash sites, dead or alive. He shielded me from the more gruesome details. He told me once of the funny sight of a lady left sitting upstairs in a bath when the side of her house fell away after a near-miss bomb.
I started school in 1941 and was trained to take my gas mask - red Mickey Mouse with floppy ears - to school and to lie down in the gutter if there was an air raid warning. We had an air-raid shelter at school and often had to go there to continue lessons. As I got older my father found a small tin-hat for me to carry to and from school.
At the end of our road, about two houses away, there was an air raid siren which went of with a diabolical racket. We then had to take shelter. At the beginning of the war all we could do was to scrum into the cupboard under the stairs with my grandmother and mother, but later we had a Morrison Table Shelter which took up most of the space in our dining room with its steel bulk. the one good thing about it was that it was excewllent for table tennis. We often had to sleep together as a family under it. Grandfatheer never did because he had fought in the First World War and no German was going to make him take cover!!! He continued to sleep in his bed upstairs. One night a bomb dropped very near and all our ceilings came down and the windows blew in. Grandpa awoke to find himself covered with plaster and glass. He huffed and puffed a bitbut was otherwise unhurt.
we lived near Collington Halt and at the top of the footbridge over the railway was a anti-aircraft gun emplacement. We children often used to go and talk to the gunners. Contingents of soldiers often marched along our road. All along the sea front were AA gun emplacements and the beach was impassible with barbed wire and anti tank blocks of concrete. these remained until long after the war had ended. I just remember swimming with my father before the war.
I remember the huge formations of German bombers droning over us on their way to bomb London, and then looking north to see the whole sky lit up with red as London burned. As the Allies graduaklly gained the upper hand the air traffic was reversed and hundreds of Allied bombers would fly over to reach targets in France. Towards the end of the war the "doodle bugs" started coming - unmanned flying bombs. Their was one route right over our house and they would come in with Spitfires and Hurricanes chasing them to shoot them down. We held our breath if we heard the engines of the "bug" stop because we knew it would come down not too far away, and blow a lot of people to bits.
Shrapnel was everywhere to be picked up - I had a very impressive collection which I was allowed to assemble in the garden shed. One had to be careful that it was not still hot when you picked it up.
German prisoners of war were housed locally and we often were passed by a lorry with them in, being taken to some workplace, farm or roadmending detail. It was all very friendly and we used to wave and get waves and smiles back. That never struck us as strange at the time. Likewise, I can never remember being afraid, I was all rather fun really for us children. Doubtless our parents feared for us, but they never showed it. Life just went on.
I remember the machinery of food rationing - coupons and so on and the knowledge that my grandparents particularly sacrificed their rations for my and my mother's benefit. I was never hungry and my grandmother was an excellent cook and manager of resources. I remember the delicious scrambled egg which she made from the powdered egg rations.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.