大象传媒

Summer of 1940

The summer of 1940 was a hot one. I was 13years old and was living at home that summer with my mother and my sister Betty who was working in London as a secretary. My 3 brothers Dudley, Dennis and Kenneth were all in the forces, Dudley and Dennis in the Army and Kenneth in the Navy. Dennis was in the Territorial Army before the start of the second world war and within a month of its beginning in September 1939 was with the first British Expeditionary Force in France.

Having been at boarding school when my father died in 1936, I subsequently went to a day school, St. Dunstans College in Catford, South East London, in September 1938. Immediately prior to the outbreak of war, the school was evacuated to Reigate and I was billeted with my friend Neil Rowlands (I wonder where he is now?) with a married couple without children in a house at the foot of the North Downs. It was a strange household for the husband was a member of the Plymouth Brethren sect 鈥� church every day and 3 times on Sunday! Of course there was no television at that time although it had been invented and television broadcasts had started about 1938; I had seen a programme on a small screen about 9 inches square a t the house of a friend some time before the war started. All transmissions stopped when the war began. The house had no wireless which was an instrument of the devil! I am not sure that they had a telephone and of course mobile phones were not even within the realms of fantasy.

Within an hour or two of the declaration of war on Sunday 3rd September 1939, the Air Raid siren was sounded. This was very frightening for I had seen at the pictures the film of H G Wells 鈥淭he War of the Worlds鈥�. It is difficult today to imagine the horror that we expected to follow an Air Raid warning. In reality nothing at all happened and the alarm was a false one but Neil and I were at the top of Reigate Hill and we slid very fast down the chalk path -- mainly on our bottoms.

My brother Dennis was one of the last of the British Army to leave the beaches at Dunkirk to which the British Army had retreated in May of 1940. Many of the trains bringing the soldiers from the Dover area to other parts of the Country passed through the level crossing at Reigate and I still have vivid memories of standing at the crossing over a period of 4 or 5 days looking for my brother 鈥� in vain.

But to return to the summer of 1940. There was no suggestion of our being able to go on holiday. My mother ( your great grandma who died in 1972) was managing the family business after my brother Kenneth joined the Navy. Life was very hard for her as she was widowed at the age of 41 with 5 children. She had never before been out to work as she had been married at 18 and had known no life apart from having babies and bringing up children. Following my father鈥檚 death in 1936 we were not very well off and the war made our finances very precarious. We certainly could not have afforded a holiday even if my mother had been able to leave the business. Consequently I spent many days of that warm summer cycling with Neil in the Kent countryside.

In the middle of July, I forget the exact date, the Germans started bombing the south coast of England and then the airfields from which our fighter planes were based. Biggin Hill was one of the main airfields and our cycling in Kent was often not far away. We frequently saw both German bombers and our Hurricanes and Spitfires in 鈥渄og fights鈥� 鈥� by this time we had lost our early fears of bombing. The battle of Britain as the air war fought in July and August was called was virtually over before we were due to return to school in the middle of September. In the afternoon of 7th September the Germans launched their first bombing attack on London by attacking the London Docks area with both High explosive and incendiary bombs. Although our house was maybe some 10 miles as the crow flies from the docks, I can still see the huge flames and pall of smoke which overhung the docks area. The flames enabled the night bombers to find their way up the river Thames to the City which had its first bomb attack that night.

A builder friend of the family built us an Air Raid shelter in our garage at the end of the garden 鈥� about 20yards. We had bunk beds and could sleep perhaps 8 people although at times we had more than that. Although I lived during the term in Reigate (Neil and I moved from the Plymouth Brethren after the first year), we came home during holidays and often would cycle from Reigate to Catford at the weekend. Thus we experienced at first hand the bombing of London throughout the Autumn and Winter of 1940/41

During the first year of the war, our school shared premises with Reigate Grammar School; they used the buildings in the morning and we in the afternoon or perhaps the other way round. By the September term 1940, the school had taken over 3 houses in different parts of Reigate, one for the juniors, one for the middle school and one for the seniors. I was initially in the middle school and subsequently at the senior 鈥� it was next door to a sand pit which was used by the army as a firing range and for training soldiers to crawl along the ground with firing above their heads; it was great way to teach one how to crawl!

Life continued in much the same way during 1941 and 1942 鈥� term time with Mr & Mrs Friskin in Doran Drive Reigate, some weekends and holidays at home in Catford. I finally left school at the end of 1942 and started in the law in January 1943

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