大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Helen Avey of the 大象传媒 London Team on behalf of David Dombey and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Background

In 1939 I was living with my parents and younger sister, Beryl, in Streatham (South West London). My mother told me that I was born in the London Hospital (Aldgate in East London) and that since she could hear the bells of Bow church I was a true 'Cockney'. I had just started my secondary education at Bec Grammar School (Tooting) at the age of 12.

Initial Evacuation

The school, with over 500 boys, was initially evacuated to a small village, Chailey, outside Lewes, Sussex in September 1939. We were all found homes (Called 'billets') in local homes and I was placed with two other boys in a lonely cottage owned by two maiden ladies. However the authorities had made a mistake sending a Grammar School to an area where there was only small village schools, which lacked the capacity, or facilities (laboratories, etc) for us to properly continue our secondary education.

During the period for this organisational error to be resolved we spent most of that glorious summer enjoying the exploration of the countryside, which many of us, as city children of families with no car, had not had the opportunity to experience. My earliest recollection of this period was when my parents came to visit me. The journey from London, with disorganised train and bus timetables, had been long and tiring for them. Unfortunately for them as they arrived at my billet I was preparing to go fishing with my friends (another new adventure for me) and instead of properly greeting them I rushed off with my friends - to their utter disgust!

Eventual Evacuation

By the Christmas of 1939 new arrangements were made for the school to be moved to the county tow of Sussex, Lewes, where there was a Grammar school. Our school shared their premises, with each school using it for either mornings or afternoons. Clearly this restricted class periods and we left to do much studying on our own in our billets. This was not really convenient since our host families did not have sufficient room for peaceful study.

Some billets were extremely small whilst others were able to provide both sleeping and study accommodation for young boy teenagers to both study and enjoy their other pastimes. I remember one family I stayed with for several years where the father was called Donald Hugh McDonald and claimed that he was a direct descendant of the clan McDonald.

I became interested in chess and represented the school in competition with other local schools. I also captained the school 2nd XV rugby team. Because it was realised that many of us would finish up serving in the British armed forces the school started a cadet corps, and I was promoted eventually to be its first Sergeant-major under a master, Captain Melluish.

Wartime memories

During the school holidays we were allowed to visit our families in London, if they were still living there, or elsewhere if they too had been evacuated. My mother and sister had been invited to stay in a home, attached to a stud farm owned by Anthony de Rotchschild in Linslade, near Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. My father was serving in the forces for the majority of the war.

Our home in Streatham had been let to a family who had lost their own home through bombing. However by Christmas 1944 the bombing of London appeared to have stopped and Bec headmaster, MR Gibson, told us before we left for the Christmas holiday to return to our own homes, since there more students of the school living back in London than he had in the evacuated school. He then 'unofficially' suggested that in January 1945 we all reported back to the school in tooting - which of course we obeyed.

Because my mother and sister had not returned to London I stayed with neighbours, the Webb family. A few months later London was attacked with V1 (flying bombs) and V2 (aerial rockets). I normally travelled to school by tram, but one morning no trams appeared so I started to walk the two miles to school. We had been taught that we could tell when the flying bombs would drop because the very significant 'pop-pope' sound of their engines stopped (when the fuel ran out). I was half-way to school when I heard a flying bomb overhead whose engine then cut out. I dived into a nearby garden and heard the huge explosion as the missile exploded not far away, demolishing several houses. The emergency vehicles soon arrived and I continued to school - rather shaken!

At night we slept in an indoor Morrison shelter - a reinforced steel table, with wire mess surrounds which could, it was reported, take the weight of a collapsed house if it was hit by a bomb. This was preferable to the alternative - an Anderson shelter partly underground in people's gardens, which were both cold and often became waterlogged.

Conclusion

At the end of the war my mother and sister returned to our family home in Streatham and my father was demobbed from the army. I had managed to pass both Matriculation and Higher School's Certificate (the equivalent of today's O and A levels) and was due to go to university in September 1945. However most of the university places were given to returning demobilised troops and I was called up for National Service until 1947. I became a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps serving in Trieste and finally as an instructor at the School of Military Intelligence.

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