大象传媒

MEMORIES OF WW.11

The day war was declared my friend Frank Donovan and I decided to go for a walk on Wanstead Flats, we were walking along Odessa Road and after a little while the air raid siren started it鈥檚 mournful wailing but we thought it just a test and we merrily carried on. Suddenly we realised that there were fewer people on the street but took no notice and carried on past my old school still chatting away until we realised that now there was nobody around. We stopped, wondered whether we should go home, and agreed to go and find out if it was a real alert. We turned and casually started back, at first slowly then our pace quickened until finally we were running as fast as we could.

We were both sixteen and had just been saying it would all be over before we could go to 鈥淭he War鈥� but that little experience did make us think a bit. I did go, in 1942.

When the 鈥減honey war鈥� stopped and the blitz started I remember along with others going out in the morning to see who could find the biggest piece of shrapnel from the anti-aircraft shells fired during the night, it was fun.

At the outbreak of war I was a messenger working for the Port of London Authority in their head office at Trinity Square in the city, {before then I worked for a few months at the London Medical College as an office boy}, just across the road from the Tower of London.

Living in Forest Gate and going to London each day meant cycling the same as all the other kids did, we could not afford the fares public transport. Some time later as the bombing increased the P.L.A. decided that the warehouse in Cutler St. which had no staff at night time should be protected by what were known then as firewatchers, they were given a hand operated water pump and buckets of sand to douse any incendiary bombs that may fall. The reason for this protection was

that the place was full of the most expensive carpets in London and we had to work at this sometimes when the regular staff

were not on. During our rest periods we used some very expensive beds 鈥渢he carpets鈥�.

I can recall the time when they really started the blitz when in broad daylight great formations of bombers flew over on the way to the docks where they dropped the incendiaries that set the whole place alight and then at night they returned and dropped more bombs into the raging fires. My father was a policeman and on duty at the time in the docks and stayed for 48 hrs. helping to deal with the chaos.

Sometime later when it was the turn of the city to be bombed the P.L.A. building which boasted the largest unsupported rotunda in the business world took a direct hit and the whole thing collapsed, we couldn鈥檛 work and were sent home to wait for a call to return. Dad thought it would be a good idea for us younger ones to stay with my sister in Leicester, I did too, but it didn鈥檛 last, I was soon back at work.

From then on it was like everyone else getting on with life, going to the picture, when we could afford it, accepting that everything was rationed. Spending many nights in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, it might sound blas茅, but it many ways, it was an exciting time to live.

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