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Growing up in the War 1939-45 Part 1

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Remembering the war immediately takes me back to my childhood. To the figure who looks out at me from a photograph taken at school showing a figure in short trousers and woolly cardigan, wearing round spectacles, and grinning at the camera. Is that me? I can remember the moment the photograph was taken even now about sixty years later. Why are the impressions so vivid? Having a photograph taken then, usually a formal event at the photographers in Epsom, tended to take place when my Mother wished to have a photo to send to ‘Dad’, something to remind him of us and our life here wherever he was out in an unknown and unimaginable place called the ‘East’.
Buried in my memory are the effects of events even before the War started. As a small figure not as high as the dining room table, hiding under the tent made by the table cloth draped over the table, hearing the man on the news speaking about Mr Chamberlain arriving back at Croydon Airport with a piece of paper in his hand and talking of peace in our time. I picked up that this was something serious affecting the grown-ups for the past weeks who seemed very relieved at the news, although I had no idea what it meant.
However there was something about the wireless and the tone of voice of the commentators that created an atmosphere of anxiety, a sense that there was a bigger world outside home that in some way could threaten our life as a family. I was about six years old. Another five years were to pass before some idea of the reality of war began to come home to me when a master at school described some of the things he had seen while serving at a bomber aerodrome in Norfolk. He spoke of watching the bombers set off in the evening and waiting for their return in the morning. Planes coming in low over the watch tower, belching smoke, the undercarriage gone, crash landing and bursting into flames, and of those each day who did not return to be ticked off on the Squadron list. Again it was the way in which he spoke, his reluctance to recall it that showed how much the experience had affected him. So growing up is inextricably bound up with the progress of the War..
I remember the announcement that we were now at war with Germany, in those days the radio was the means by which everyone kept in touch with events and particular voices such as that of John Snagge used to announce serious war news. All through the war you knew when something momentous was coming by who was the announcer.
I recall scattered impressions from that early part of the War. Because there was a fear of bombing the government advised that sleeping under the bed on the floor would give some protection. So for a time we slept under my parent’s double bed that had been put up downstairs. Whatever the reason I enjoyed the unusual situation and the sense of closeness to my parents each evening as we lay on the mattress under the bed. There are memories of watching and then joining in sticking gummed paper strips in a criss-cross pattern across the living room windows not grasping why we were doing it. Of watching my father digging up the lawn and the tea roses he loved so we could grow potatoes instead, and wondering why he was doing it. Of staring up at very high and indistinct trails of white and hearing faint sounds of roaring engines far off and being told that it was a ‘dogfight’ over Croydon Aerodrome. It was only later that one saw this episode as part of the Battle of Britain, that the distant noise of diving planes was so crucial to our survival, a fragment of a vast battle taking place over Southern England.
There are unconnected memories of going down the steps into a cold, damp, dark shelter built in the playground of the infants’ school in Ewell village. Sitting in there during a raid, and the wonderful sense of return to light and warmth as we came out when the siren sounded ‘All Clear’. Around that time we were all issued with a gas mask which we were supposed to carry at all times in a box over our shoulder. We were shown how to put it on, then practice pulling the mask over our heads and breathing with it on. We all looked so weird with the masks on and I can smell the rubber smell and the way sounds changed inside the mask when you had it on. I wonder if there had been a gas attack whether we would have been quicker with our fumbling butterfingers getting the straps over our heads, than we were when we practised. I mentioned the siren. What that sound conjures up when I remember it. The very first moments at the start of its wailing call warning of an air raid, aroused anticipation, excitement and fear in my body. If I hear it now it instantly brings back the feelings of those times.
My father was not called up immediately war broke out, as he was in his early thirties, instead he joined the ARP and was stationed at Ewell Court. However in 1941 he received his calling up papers and joined the RAMC. He was posted to Fleet in Hampshire to do his basic training. Very abruptly he wasn’t around any more and a new relationship with my mother began. There were just the two of us in the house now. As the process of his training went by we went to see him at Fleet for a weekend. I cannot remember him, I only recall the moment when I saw a snake swimming in the canal by which we were strolling, and in the evening, being in a room full of khaki dressed soldiers, boisterously singing to the accompaniment of the piano played by a very friendly soldier who let me sit right by the piano. But there is no picture of my father. Later on we went to his passing out parade and saw squads of men marching past rows of low wooden huts. He was then posted to Totnes in Devon for his medical training. Our life became punctuated by partings at big railway stations. It was the first time I had been to a terminus like Paddington. These ‘Seeings Off’ were very emotional. The platform stretched away crowded with people saying ‘Goodbye’ - soldiers, sailors, airmen, wives, sweethearts and children. As the moment for departure grew nearer whistles blew, last doors were slammed, windows wound down for the last kisses to be given and taken. Then the engine whistled and the first spurts of steam as the engine strained to move its load very slowly away sent smoke and soot swirling to the roof. Gradually the face of your loved one was taken out of sight, and finally you saw the end of the train disappear out of the platform. There were many tears and a bleak feeling of emptiness. Not much was said on the journey back home.
My father came home once more on Embarkation Leave. It was Christmas. He, of course, did not know where he was being sent. We saw him off at Euston on his way to Liverpool. We heard no more for eight weeks. A letter arrived then saying he had docked at Bombay. It did not convey where he was going in India, that was censored, only later we followed his path across to Delhi. .
At this time I became one of a gang of boys who all lived in West Ewell. Jimmy Hayton, Micky Real, Jack McFarlane and David Joyce. We all went to Ewell Boys School, or Eggs, Bacon and Sausages as it was otherwise known. Mr Hills, the teacher, encouraged Mickey Real and I to draw on the blackboard all the aircraft and ships we could remember for our classmates to show them what to look out for. We knew a great many so the drawing afternoons went on for sometime. Most of our teachers were elderly as the young ones were all in the forces. All kinds of collections were made of stuff to do with the War. Things were bartered or exchanged amongst ourselves and other gangs in the school yard during the breaks. In connection with that there was the episode of having a shell explode in our back garden.
While my father was away a Morrison indoor shelter was put up in the living room. It was like a large table made of cast iron with steel mesh filling in the sides of the table to protect the occupants who slept inside from flying glass and metal fragments. On the day we had been having a mid morning ‘elevenses’ at our neighbours Mr and Mrs Cox, he was still home as he was engaged in essential war work. While we were there, there was an alert and we stayed in their house during it. We heard some explosions but they seemed to be some way away. After the ‘All Clear’, I went back to our house first.
Something was wrong. The rambler rose was hanging drunkenly out of the shattered bathroom window upstairs. Large holes were torn through the French windows and the wall of the back room, and even though the back wall into the front sitting room. The shelter had not stopped the flying pieces of metal going side ways through the mesh; we had been lucky not to have been in there! Outside in the back garden there was devastation too. A big hole and mounds of earth had taken the place of the orderly trellis and flowers in the rockery, not much of the garden had survived the blast. My mother must have been distraught! But I remember feeling we, our house, were really on the map now. Something had happened that made our garden the centre of interest. My pals would come round and I now had my own supply of shrapnel for swapping. I glowed with pride. It did not last long. Something else became the latest thing. We were told that the damage was caused by an AA shell fired by an AckAck gun mounted on a truck on the railway siding to Horton Hospital.
Continued in Part 2

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