大象传媒

No Longer Children鈥檚 War Games

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by volunteer Anita Howard from Essex Action Desk CSV on behalf of Sid Woodland and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

I was seven years old and living in the East End of London at the beginning of the Second World War. I had three 鈥榖est鈥� friends, Donald, Lenny and Ken and we certainly knew about Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. They had appeared as figures of fun in our comic books, Dandy and Beano and they always came to a sticky end so we saw them as figures not to be feared. Also, we each had a collection of Dinky Toy aero planes, Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, Blenhiem , Whitley and Wellington bombers and the odd German Messerschmitt and Focke Wolfe. With these aircraft, each one held between thumb and forefinger at arms length and accompanied by suitable vocal engine noises, we flew sorties to bomb Germany or held furious dogfights during which the German 鈥榩lanes inevitably got shot down leaving the British aircraft to return to base safely and undamaged.

We also went to the cinema and saw newsreel films of the real aircraft and sat open mouthed as we watched them soar and swoop and vowed to be fighter pilots just as soon as we could. So we went into the war fearlessly and excited, knowing Britain could never lose.

Soon after the early, quiet part of the war, Donald, Lenny, Ken and I were evacuated; each of us to a different part of the country and it would be several years before we were to meet again. I was sent to Oxford where I was passed from one set of foster parents to another, most providing a comfortable and reasonably happy home. There was one exception however, and without dwelling on it, the experience was not pleasant. After missing my old 鈥榤ates鈥� at first, who were goodness knows where, I did form new friendships, which became the most stable part of my day-to-day life. My new friends, Ray, Arthur and 鈥楤ono鈥� (I never did find out his real name), spoke differently to me and often laughed at some of my Cockney expressions but before long, I realized they all thought and acted along the same lines as Don, Lenny and Ken.

We cut out and collected photographs of warships, tanks and aeroplanes and occasionally went to a cinema, which seemed to specialize in showing propaganda films, so the war meant games and entertainment to us. We came out of the cinema and, at the top of our voices, discussed the highlights of the films we had just seen. We could not understand why the grown-ups viewed the war with such doom and gloom; compared to ours, their discussions were very solemn and pessimistic.

There were times of special excitement, when Spitfires and Hurricanes flew low across the fields, their Rolls Royce engines making that unmistakable crackling roar. Then our imaginations would transport us to the cockpits of those glamorous fighter 鈥榩lanes, and we would dream of dogfights where we shot down one Messerschmitt after another in flames.

Then there was the incident of the Whitley bomber. We were out among the fields and hedgerows of the Oxfordshire countryside. It was a hot, midsummer day and we were not feeling too energetic, so we were searching for birds鈥� nests in the hedges, unsuccessfully as it turned out. Arthur was the first to spot it. 鈥淟ook, it鈥檚 a Whitley鈥� he said, pointing across the fields. The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was a big, lumbering, twin engined bomber used by Bomber Command before the introduction of Halifaxes and Lancasters. It was flying unusually low and appeared to be getting lower, as though it was about to land. We could just about hear the throbbing of its engines as it disappeared behind a clump of tall trees. 鈥� It must have landed鈥� I said, and as I spoke a bright orange flame shot up above the trees, followed by a cloud of dense, black smoke. We were speechless until somebody said 鈥淚t鈥檚 crashed!鈥� As one and without saying anything else we started to run across the fields towards the trees, behind which the cloud of smoke grew ominously larger, suffused with orange flames. We ran like the wind. We had not witnessed anything like this before and wanted to get there so we could tell our classmates what we had seen with our own eyes, not just at the cinema. We sweated profusely and were panting from the effort, but still we ran. It seemed further away than we thought, but eventually, we burst through a hedge, and there it was before us.

The 鈥榩lane had crashed into a house, so the smoke and flames were coming from a tangled wreckage dominated by the broken fuselage of the Whitley. We were immediately spotted by a policeman who ran towards us, holding his arms out wide and shouting at us to go away. He was joined by another policeman and together, they bundled us back through the hedge, shielding us from the scene. They were not quite quick enough. We had already seen the broken and blood covered body of a woman lying on the grass. We had also seen a badly burnt and apparently blind airman being led away from the blazing wreck by a fireman, and a dead airman being lifted on to a stretcher.

We stood together, not speaking, shocked at what we had seen, then slowly, turned to make our way back across the fields. After that, things were never the same. No longer did we want to become fighter pilots. Brutally, the true reality of war had come home to us that day. War was no longer a game.

Syd. Woodland.

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