大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War site by Jan Moore for Kent Libraries and Archives and Canterbury City Council Museums on behalf of Bryan Leader and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I remember war being declared and my father saying that it would only last a week! I remember the drone of the planes as they started to come over and bombs starting to fall.

A bomb fell on the pavement opposite where we lived and destroyed all of the front of our house; the houses on the other side of the road suffered even more damage.

We were fitted with two types of air raid shelter, the Anderson in the back garden and the Morrison indoors; it was a large steel table with thick wire mesh around the edges.

I went to Chestfield Road School in Enfield. I used to go home for lunch and the school received a hit at lunchtime in the playground. My teacher, Miss Parnell, was killed along with a lot of children, as she attempted to get them into a shelter, so I was very lucky to survive.

I can remember the pig bins being put out in the road for any edible swill.

When the bombing used to commence, Bufus guns on wheels were placed at each end of our street, because the planes used to bomb and once fires were started, they would then come back and machine gun the firemen trying to put out the flames.

I used to collect the shrapnel afterwards and would often be smacked for doing so!

We used to have to carry our gas mask all the time and the baby in the house had a special cot as a gas mask.

A Block Barrage was set up in a farmers field, which consisted of a large number of guns all fired together, which formed a block in the sky and brought down plane formations. That was at Bullmore Lane, Enfield and we were told that this was the first barrage of this type.

Things became so bad with the bombing, because of the factories in the area, they decided to evacuate the children. We were sent to a place called Meanwood in Leeds, Yorkshire. After about a year away, we came back home to Enfield and the bombing had died down by then.It then became the V1 and V2 rockets that were the danger.
There was a line of shops at the end of our road, including a butchers shop and it got a direct hit with a V2 rocket, which destroyed it.

My father was seriously injured at the D-Day landings in France. He came home, but was never able to work again and died while still quite young, never fully recovering.

I lived in London until the end of the war and moved to Herne Bay, after coming to Studd Hill for a holiday.
I joined up as a regular soldier in 1951 and served 22 years.

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