大象传媒

I was born in Ealing (now London, then Middlesex) in 1936. For the first twenty-six years of my life my home was a house in Windermere Road - the street where I was born. This means that six years of my early childhood were spent in wartime suburbia - I was not among those who were evacuated and have many clear memories of World War Two. In many ways I remember it as being unremarkable. Perhaps it was what I then thought of as normal life.
We were provided with a "Morrison" shelter, a heavy steel table affair with sharp rough-cut edges which could be frighteningly dangerous if they came into contact with naked flesh., It was placed in the "kitchen", the room in which we spent most of our time - reading, listening to the wireless, eating, etc. Beneath this metal table there was room for a small bed, which I remember using during the days of the bombing. During air raids I would sometimes be joined under the shelter top by my grandmother. The antiaircraft guns, which were situated in Gunnersbury Park, about a mile away, would make a fearful noise and I can clearly see my Grandma as she jumped in fright at every salvo. We would wait with bated breath as we heard the all too familiar whistling sound of falling bombs, followed by the inevitable explosion, which came as a relief as we selfishly gave thanks for someone else's tragedy. One clear blue-skied day I went out into the garden and looked overhead to see blocks of aircraft high overhead flying northwards in formation. I believe I was told that they had been heading for Coventry. There were, of course, large public air raid shelters at strategic places all around London. One was under the middle of Lammas Park at the back of us - but we seldom made any use of them. In fact, I seem to remember my family being extremely carefree about taking cover during the raids and although I was usually shoved into or under a shelter, I believe my parents simply carried on with life as normally as possible. Much of Lammas Park was turned over to allotments and my father took up plot number seven. He grew all the usual staple vegetable crops and I seem to remember that he did it quite successfully. Tomatoes and potatoes have never tasted as good as his.
Windermere Road was a respectable and friendly community, although it was typical of suburbia inasmuch as everyone kept very much to themselves. Our next door neighbours were originally from Wales and when the man of the house was called up, they went to spend much of the war in their home area. In the time before they left, I often used to go and spend air raids in the "Anderson" shelter in their garden. Andersons were corrugated iron affairs half buried in the soil, with, I think, room for four people sleeping in bunks, two on each side, one above the other. Our neighbour used to provide hot chocolate drinks made with "Colact", something I have not heard of since, but which to a small child deprived of sweets, tasted like nectar. There was a sense of adventure about being outdoors at night in a damp and dark "bunker".
My father, who was not called for active service, worked for Middlesex County Council and his office was at Highgate. He was frequently involved in "fire-watching". This was a regular occupation for those who remained in civilian life. My father was equipped with one black tin helmet for his protection and a bucket and stirrup pump. His duties were, I believe, simply to be at his workplace during the night and to telephone the emergency services if he should see some fire or explosion occur. I can vividly recall that on one occasion when he was due to spend the night at Highgate he cried off because he had a very heavy cold. He went in next morning to find that the office had been flattened; it takes but a small decision or action to change the course of a whole life.
One of the changes brought by the Second World War was in the lifestyle of women who were required to take up employment, unless they had a strong reason for not doing so. My grandmother, my aunt and my mother all began working at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mattock Lane, Ealing. Gran worked in the canteen as a cook, my aunt and my mother worked as clerical officers. It was while she was "fire-watching" in the hospital tower that a flying bomb (V.1.) flew past her and buried itself in Abernethies Department Store in the Uxbridge Road only two hundred yards away. I can remember her telling how she watched as the many dead and injured were ferried into the hospital by whatever means available.
Ealing was not particularly badly hit by the war, if compared with the east end of London or with some other English cities. Nevertheless, the bombing that did occur made an impression on young minds. I remember two or three houses being destroyed in Weymouth Avenue, about a quarter of a mile away from home, and a heavy hit on shops and houses in Northfield Avenue, close to the bottom of Windermere Road. This particular episode forced the Nos. 55 and 97 bus routes to divert along our road and it amused me to see buses passing our front door. On the site in Northfield Avenue a large round emergency water tank was erected and remained for the duration of the war, Other bomb sites I can recall include a direct hit on Shellshear's stores in West Ealing. A few small bombs landed harmlessly in Lammas and Walpole Parks and now and then an incendiary device would come down; I believe their primary function was to cause a fire which would then act as a beacon for bombers with high explosives. One such I remember at a shop close to a bus stop we often used; the smell of burnt and smouldering timbers is easily recalled. During one air raid a loud bump was heard on the roof of our own house and my father immediately thought it must have been an incendiary bomb, but as no fire broke out we assumed that a large piece of shrapnel must have landed up there. Nothing was ever found, so it may still be somewhere on the roof or in the garden. While I was at primary school, we were visited by an official who brought with him some dummy bombs and shells, which he warned us about, in case we came across one in the street or in the park. I can particularly recall the "butterfly" bomb, which he said we might find dangling from a tree.
I was on Jacob's Ladder footbridge, West Ealing, with some friends of my own age one day in May 1945 enjoying my hobby of trainspotting, when a passing stranger told us that the war had ended. It was a strange feeling. I can remember wondering what peace was like.

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