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The Blitz:
When the London Blitz started I was 4½ years old. We lived in a terraced house in Bermondsey very close to the Surrey docks which was a prime target for Hitler's Luftwaffe My first memory of the war was of seeing the sky full of German bombers as they came to attack in broad daylight. Later, sheltering with my Dad under the railway bridge at the top of Drummond Road we watched the vapour trails in the sky as the RAF.fighters chased the German fighters in what was known then as 'dog fights'.
The other local target was the Peek Frean's biscuit factory which was on war work at the time and just across the road from where we lived.
A large hole had been dug in our back garden for the forthcoming Anderson shelter and into which I duly fell and from which my mother had to rescue me. Memories of the shelter consist of the cramped conditions and the smell of damp earth; the noise and flash of the bomb which hit on the opposite side of the road one night killing a number of people; the heavy wooden board across the open end of our shelter being torn away with the force of the blast. I had a fit but soon recovered. One sad result of the bombing was that my Dad had to have our Old English sheepdog, Tiny, put down as she could not tolerate the effects of the raids.

The Blackout:
Walking in the blackout was a very hazardous affair in spite of white-painted kerbs and lamp posts. All vehicles had their lights covered with only a narrow strip left open in their headlamps which allowed a small amount of light to come through.

Aldwych Underground Shelter:
Eventually we got a ticket and a place down the Aldwych tube station where the lines were still uncovered so we slept on the platform to start with and later on three-tier bunks in a tunnel. Children slept in hammocks slung between the lines until they were eventually boarded over.
The platforms were below the level of the bed of the River Thames and within a few hundred yards of it. There were heavy flood doors fitted and I have often wondered since as to how safe we really were from flooding had the area between the Tube Station and the Thames been breached by bombs.
Each evening my Mum, sister Pam and me would take the bus to the Strand and go to the Monseigneur News Theatre for an hour or so and then on to the shelter. Dad, on essential war work, would go off to do fire-watching, complete with tin hat and gas mask, at his place of work. As a lathe operator he was in a reserved occupation. He'd served in the Pioneer Corps in the First World War, joined up under age and finished up burying those who had been killed by poison gas in France and suffered with his chest and nose for the rest of his life as a result. We all had gas masks but fortunately did not need to use them for real.
The shelter toilet arrangements consisted of large metal drums surrounded by canvas curtains to give some privacy. The drums were filled with a strong disinfectant and even today if I smell that same disinfectant I am mentally transported back to that time immediately.

St Clement Danes church hit:
Although the platform was about 80ft. below street level the 'crump' of the explosions could be heard and felt. A canteen was in operation which made life more bearable. Posters on the white-tiled walls advertised what was on at the various theatres in the Strand and West End. After going to the toilets one night I walked back down the darkened tunnel, found what I thought was my bunk, tried to get in but it was occupied by a shocked stranger — wrong bunk! much to my and their embarrassment! One morning in 1941 we surfaced to find that St Clement Danes church, about 100yards from the shelter, had been hit during the night and the air was choking with brickdust.

Unexploded Bomb:
Going home from the shelter to Bermondsey one day we found that there was an unexploded bomb in the street. The docks were a particularly bad place to be during the Blitz so Dad decided we ought to leave so we moved to a flat in Westminster. The six storey block had already taken a direct hit but without casualties and was mainly intact. As my Dad had some equipment for the small printing business that he had managed set up after some ten years of unemployment in the 1930's he went back to our previous abode in order to take what he could and smash up the rest in order to prevent it being looted, unfortunately these things did happen during the war.

Collecting Shrapnel:
My sister and I went to Burdett-Coutts School by Vincent Square, which at that time, had a Barrage Balloon site on it. This school also took a direct hit when it was empty fortunately — there is a plaque on the wall commemorating the event and we were moved to St James the Less in Moreton Street until it was repaired. After the previous night's air raid I would go up to the roof of the flats with an empty cocoa tin to collect whatever I could find in the way of shrapnel. I believe German boys used to do the same thing after the RAF's visit the night before.

Evacuated to Devon:
My Mum, sister and me were sent to a farm in Torrington, Devon for a while. It had a thatched roof which harboured a multitude of insects etc. which came out at night attracted by the candles that lit the bedroom, frightening for a child, especially townies as we were. The outside was a sea of mud — not a happy situation. After a while Mum decided that she preferred the bombs in London to this situation especially as she had to watch the farmer's wife wringing the chickens' necks in front of her. On the way back to London the train was straffed by a single German aircraft and we all got on the floor of the carriage, whether the train was hit or not I don't know.

Return to London:
Back in London, in a brick air-raid shelter built on the ground floor of the flats, during one heavy raid I remember the dust being shaken out of the brick walls as the explosions occurred close by and at the same time seeing a sign on the wall saying "Happy Christmas"!

Evacuated to Scotland:
In early 1944 we were found a place in a croft in the village of Dyce in Aberdeenshire, Dad had to stay in London. This was due to fact that a cousin was a Flight Sergeant in the RAF Police stationed at RAF. Dyce. We lived in a working croft next to the railway. We were so close to the aerodrome that by standing on the railway bridge I was able to see and hear the Spitfires and Mosquitos as they taxiied for take off or after landing with engines cracking and banging at low revs and of course there always the steam engines to enjoy.

Unofficial visit to the RAF Station:
My cousin was able to sneak me on to the aerodrome one day and I was very unofficially allowed to sit in a single engine Auster spotter plane I think complete with explosive device which would have been used as a last resort to destroy the aircraft if it was ever brought down by enemy action. The high spot of the visit was sitting in the pilot's seat of a Mosquito with its smell of leather and oil, an experience I have never forgotten. Shortly after I managed to accidentally kick over a tin of white paint on to nice black tarmac upon which an airman was carefully painting white lines. Fortunately I never found out what he thought over my carelessness.

A spy or was it?:
On another occasion a friend and I saw a man using a pair of binoculars on the outskirts of the village, a highly suspicious act during the war, so we reported him to the local policeman but we never did find out whether he was a spy or not. Also while we were there a German aircraft crashed and the pilot parachuted out and was arrested although we were not witness to the event. The winter we experienced in Dyce was very cold and the snow was as deep as I was tall.
My Dad, living by himself in the London flat, needed a break so he travelled up to us in Aberdeenshire carrying a ciné projector and some films for our entertainment. He'd spent over 16 hours on the train from King's Cross to Aberdeen, standing all the way as the train was full of servicemen on route the north — a real labour of love.

Return to London and the Flying Bombs:
After nearly a year we went back to London straight into the flying bomb phase, the V1s. The silence after their engines cut out was the most terrifying part. One morning we watched the V1 that hit the Lambeth Baths on the other side of the Thames. On another occasion, when coming up the steps of the Temple underground station a huge shadow of a V1 went over the top of us and exploded some distance away. We emerged to find the streets absolutely covered in broken glass.

The American incident:
One lighter incident occurred when the Yanks were in Britain. In Hyde Park one day I plucked up courage and approached a couple of American servicemen and asked one "Got any gum chum?". To which he replied "Nope, but I've got some chewin' tobacco". It was a kind offer that was not taken up!

Nearly copped it again:
Before we had returned to London a V1 had hit the square of houses on the other side of the street to the flats we were living in. A direct hit caused the almost complete destruction of the area with some fatalities. A lifelong friend of mine survived only due to the fact that he was in the Anderson shelter in the garden when the bomb hit.
All our windows were blown in and a small piece of glass , at neck height, embedded itself in a wardrobe, lethal if anybody had been in its way. It stayed in that wardrobe as a gruesome momento for many years after the war had ended.

End of the war in Europe and VE Day:
The war in Europe ended on 8th May 1945 and my Dad took me up to Whitehall where we saw and heard Mr Churchill make his balcony speech to a huge, happy crowd on VE Day.
Then a few days after we had our street party (see photo). All the local Mums had used some of their food coupons to give about thirty kids a good feed and there was a three- piece band to provide some music. A happy day indeed.
We thanked all those who had their lives taken, not given as is often said, from them but unfortunately, yet more lives were to be lost before victory over the Japanese in the Far East was achieved in the following August only after the dropping of two nuclear bombs.

Postscript:
Over sixty years later I feel that the war correspondents and cameramen, some of whom lost their lives, have left us an incredible amount of evidence of man's cruelty to man.
Hitler and his Nazis, at the cost of many lives, had made sure that us kids had plenty of bomb-sites on which we could play happily, sometimes dangerously, for years to come.
In 1954 I was posted to Germany for two years whilst serving in the RAF. and there I saw some evidence of what the Allies had done to the country as the German economic miracle was not really under way by then.
In 1972 I came with my family to live and work in Dingwall, Ross and Cromarty, a very quiet place indeed after London. One afternoon shortly after arriving I heard a siren sound which was identical to the ones used in the war. Twenty seven years after last hearing that sound I went into a bit of a panic but was calmed by my work colleagues telling me that it was for the local voluntary fire brigade to turn out - funny how these things last with you.

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