大象传媒

Three events stick in my mind about September 1939. I was a six year old at school at a London elementary school a few streets from my home. Dad was in the building trade and therefore in a reserved occupation and spent the war repairing war damage by day and being a firewatcher by night. Motherkept house and was expecting my sister (although ( didn't know it ! ) The first signs of anything out of the ordinary was the evacuation of some classrooms on the ground floor so that the windows facing the playground could be bricked up, floor to roof, to make air-raid shelters for us. The second event was my father and our next door neighbour ripping down the fence between our back gardens and starting to dig an enormous hole. Eventually a concrete DIY air-raid shelter took shape in which four adults (less one on fire watch) and I spent the nights of the blitz. At first there was no lighting - merely candles and torches, but eventually a cable was run from our house to provide electric lighting. A wooden seat ran along the length of the shelter on each side - providing bunk space at night with two other folding bunks fitted above, and one for me across the end. A squeeze - but we all fitted in ! The outside of the shelter was banked up with the excavated earth and terraced with dwarf brick walls to provide growing space for plants, and a year later, a greenhouse was erected on top in which both families grew tomatoes, cucumbers throughout the war. As far as I am aware the shelter is still there, being too solid to demolish and providing a spendidly cool storeroom in the summer !
The day war was declared was the most memorable. Mid-afternoon we saw con-trails of aircraft in the sky and could hear the engines and machinegun fire. Clearly there was a dog-fight going on overhead - we were only a few miles from Croydon aerodrome, then used by the RAF, I believe. Cartridge cases fell into the street which we boys chased after as trophies, and some were still warm ! After a while the RAF seemed to chase off whatever enemy they had been fighting - and then the Air Raid Warning sounded ! Anxious parents herded us off to the appropriate shelter until the 'All Clear' but we had seen the RAF in action, collected our trophies of the scrap and had a tale to tell our classmates at school next day.
During the school holidays, Dad sometimes took me to work with him, usually repairing shattered roofs and broken windows and while he (as foreman) supervised all this, my job was to keep the fire going in the brazier to boil the water for tea !
My best memory of all though, was VE day. Neighbours children of about 18, took me to London to see the crowds and the celebrations and we were in Parliament Square when Winston Churchill drove through.Everyone went mad, crowding round his car and forcing it to stop, and with one adventurous neighbour, I climbed onto the running board of the car, staring mesmerised at the face I'd seen so often in newsreels and newspapers, but now practically face-to-face and when the car eventually began to move on slowly, we travelled part-way round the square on Winston's car, until we were pulled off by an unsympathetic copper ! But something to remember always.

If the archivists want to quiz me about the blitz, evacuation etc, from a child's viewpoint, please feel free to email me. AJW

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