大象传媒

Shortly after those infamous words by Chamberlaine (鈥淭his country is at war with Germany鈥︹��) the air raid warning sounded. My mum straight away dumped two blankets into a sink full of water - the theory being if you hung a wet blanket over the doorway and windows that it would stop gas from entering the room. Fortunately it was just a false alarm.
Around September 1939 the children started to be evacuated. My mum had given me the choice of going or staying in London. I stayed and I felt honoured to be given that option as most kids had just been bundled off. Haverstock Central, like all schools, was now closed and - being 12陆 - I still had 3陆 years of education to go. Several months passed, however, before we received a visit from a school teacher who arranged to start up a class once a week in our front room. Three or four of us attended the class and we were left with homework sheets to be completed before the teacher returned on the next visit. This continued until the first air raid in August 1940 and then abruptly stopped. (I still have my last worksheet which, until this day, has never been collected.)
Everybody was promised an Anderson or Morrison Air Raid Shelter. Our garden was unsuitable for the Anderson so we were promised the Morrison. It never did arrive. Next door did have an Anderson in their garden and occasionally we would clamber over the wall to join them, but it was very crowded. I remember quite well the first stick of bombs that dropped in Allcroft Road NW5 a couple of hundred yards way. They were the whistling type, the sound surrounded you here and everywhere. (the troops at Dunkirk must have had a hell of a time for most of the type dropped by the Stukas were whistlers). Instead of the Morrison they volunteered to build a sandbag shelter outside the house in the street housing approximately 20 people 鈥� it was later replaced by brick and concrete structure.
Once erected we were inclined to use it when things got a bit noisy. Some old lady there proudly displayed a piece of Zeppelin that she had collected in World War I. Everyone in the shelter was very amicable and all went well until a basket of incendiary bombs were scattered around the shelter and then they refused to let me out to help extinguish them. In my opinion I would have been expert at doing some having studied the matter. After that I didn鈥檛 use the shelter any more.
As the blitz progressed the family would be sitting around the radio while consuming the evening meal. Silence. The radio went quiet and at this point someone would say 鈥淗e鈥檚 early tonight or he鈥檚 late. He was never on time.鈥� Shortly afterward the sirens would wail.
I spent most of my days collecting shrapnel, buckets of water for people (if the local water pipes had been fractured by the bombing), or taking people鈥檚 dogs for walks (people were working from dawn to dusk). This turned out to be very fortunate for me for a friend of the family suggested that I could go down to his firm 鈥� Henry Akins (Gunsmiths) at Jermyn Street 鈥� and give them a hand (making the tea, blueing screws to make them rust proof and loading up the Lewis Machine Gun magasin with dummy 303 bullets for testing). I eventually got the job of assembling most of the bits and pieces. Great Stuff!
One evening whilst beavering, there was this tearing, crashing sound so I went out into Ormond Yard at the rear entrance of Henry Akins. Nothing appeared wrong so we all carried on working as there was a shortage of Lewis guns at the time.
Upon arriving in Jermyn Street the following day we were stopped by the police from going to the workshop. Apparently what we had heard the night before had been a 50 kilo unexploded bomb crashing down on the building which backed onto our workshop. The bomb had finished up in a flat rented by a Polish Officer who, when returning that evening and finding it lodged by his bed, had done no more than just pick it up, stagger down to the street clutching it to his chest and deposit it outside in the gutter. (I suppose he was tired). The bomb remained there until the bomb squad arrived. Some time later he appeared in court and was fined 拢100 for removing the bomb.

And that鈥檚 how it started for me 鈥� my Great Adventure.

Mr. Alfred Maurice Payne
69 Queens Crescent
London NW5 4ES

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