大象传媒

This is a "script" which I use when talking to schoolchidren about my experiences as a small boy during the war. I do this about three times per year for different local schools, when they have World War Two as a history subject. The children are all primary school children hence the rather simplistic language used in the "script". I use it in conjunction with photographs on overhead slides and a collection of wartime artifacts that I have aquired, including some toys.

The Memoirs of a Small Boy during World War Two

I was born in Plaistow, which is on the East Side of London in July 1936

I lived in East Ham at my Grandmother's House together with my Mum and Dad, two aunts, two uncles and my Great Uncle Dave who had fought in the war against the Boers in South Africa and in the first World War. My grandfather died before I was born

Then when I was three years old , Britain went to war with Germany. My father had been a regular soldier in the Royal Horse Artillery and he was called up straight away leaving my mother and me to stay with my Grandmother.

The Government was afraid that there would be bombing in London so they made air raid shelters available for the people who lived there. There were two types, the Morrison Shelter and the Anderson Shelter; both named after the men who designed them. The Morrison Shelter was a metal cage that fitted inside the house usually under the table but the Anderson shelter was put in the garden and was made of big curved sheets of corrugated iron. My Grandmother had an Anderson Shelter and I can remember my uncles digging a big hole in the garden and putting the shelter into it. Then it was covered over with all the soil that they had dug out and my Grandmother grew vegetables and things like lettuces and radishes on it.

My grandmother also kept chickens for their eggs and rabbits. We used to eat the rabbits and the chickens too, if they stopped laying eggs

Another early memory was of the workmen coming down the street that my Grandmother's house was in and cutting down all the iron railings that ran in front of all the houses. They said they needed the steel for the War Effort to make guns and shells and tanks.

Then the government decided that all the children should be evacuated to the so that they wouldn鈥檛 be killed when the bombing started.

Evacuation meant that the children were sent off into the Country without their mums and dads, to live with people they had never met before. Sometimes their brothers or sisters went to live in a different house

Some children went to Australia and Canada but most of them went to the country here in England or Wales or Scotland

But not all of the children went on their own. Small children could go with their mothers, so I went with mine. My mother packed our belongings into two suitcases; one for me and one for her and off we went with our Gas Masks over our shoulders to catch the train.

That was how I came to be evacuated to a little village near Dunster, in Somerset with my mother.

When we arrived they took us to a big hall and I was running round the hall and I bumped into a gentleman whose name was Captain Lutteral. He sked, 鈥淲hose child is this?鈥� and my mother came and rescued me and he said to her 鈥測ou can come home with me鈥�. That is how we came to stay in a big house in a little village called Bicknoller, right at the foot of the Quantock Hills with Captain Lutteral and his family.

Captain Lutterall must have been very rich, because he had servants and a cook and a parlour maid. His daughter was called Miss Elizabeth. She was 16 and she had her own pony.

We didn鈥檛 stay very long in Somerset because the Germans didn鈥檛 bomb London after all so lots of mothers, mine included, took themselves and their children back into London

So we went back to stay with my Grandma and my uncles and aunts, in East Ham. Neither of my uncles were called up to join the Army because they were both in 鈥渞eserved occupations鈥�. That means that the job that they did was ever so important to the 鈥淲ar Effort鈥�. The youngest one, Tom was a toolmaker making tools that were used to manufacture shells, but at night he was an Ack Ack Gunner.
Anyway, back we went to London and we weren鈥檛 there very long before the Germans did start to bomb. We used to sleep down n the shelter every night because of the Air Raids and we had mattresses on the floor. People who didn鈥檛 have shelters used to go down into the London Underground and sleep on the Station Platforms.

We also used to go down the shelter in the daytime if the siren sounded.

Fire engines and ambulances didn鈥檛 have sirens in those days, they had bells.

Air Raid Wardens wore steel helmets and they used to go round the streets making sure that people didn鈥檛 have any lights showing because it would guide the German planes and show them where to bomb. So all the houses had to have blackout curtains made of black material to stop the light coming through the windows. The Wardens would shout, 鈥淧ut that light out鈥� if they saw anyone with a light showing. If you had a torch it had to have a cover over the bulb.

One day after a very big air raid I remember coming up out of the shelter and all the air was full of smoke and all the sky was red. The Germans had begun what became known as the Blitz, which is short for Blitzkrieg and is German for lightening war. I can still remember the smell of the smoke and the cordite (which was in the bombs) as if it were yesterday

When the Germans began to bomb London my mum took me to live with some friends in a village in Essex called Tiptree.

We lived in a little cottage called Redcot and we had a Morrison Shelter under the table in case the Germans bombed us. By now my Father was at the Army Depot in Collingham in Nottinghamshire because he had come back to England from Dunkirk

The Germans had pushed the British Expeditionary Force back to the English Channel at Dunkirk and lots of very brave people took their little boats across the English Channel to France to rescue the soldiers and bring them home. My dad was lucky; he was one of the soldiers who were rescued.

By this time my father was a Despatch Rider which is a sort of messenger who rides a motor cycle. They were call Don Rs. Don R is short for Despatch Rider

My mum took me to live in Collingham, so that we could be near my Father.

In Collingham we lived with the village postman at first. His name was Mr Harker. Here is a picture of me with Mr Harker. He only had one hand and he used to have a big clip that screwed into the end of his arm and he could put all the letters into it. Sometime he used to take me with him when he went to deliver letters and he would pull up two carrots from the field and wipe them clean and we would eat one each as we walked along the lanes. It was in Collingham that I started school, I was five then.

My dad was sent to North Africa (Tunisia) in November 1942 and we went back to London again to live with my Grandma and my Aunts and Uncles in East Ham. At Christmas my dad sent me a Christmas Card all the way from Tunisia. I鈥檝e still got it. It was printed on special light paper so that it could be flown to England in an aeroplane without being too heavy.

My mum went to work for a factory called Plessey. They made munitions, that is, shells and bullets. The factory was deep down in the ground on an underground railway station. She used to operate some sort of machine making shell cases

I went to Latham Road School, in East Ham. I was only 6 and Barbara, the girl from next door, who was older than me, used to take me to School. We used to walk to the school and on the way we used to collect all the pieces of shrapnel that we could find. We used to put them into a box in the corner of the classroom. Shrapnel were the pieces of shells that had been fired at the German bombers and had fallen back to the ground after they had exploded in the air. They used to be collected from the school and melted down to make more shells. Sometimes we picked up pieces of what was called window. Window was thin strips of silver paper, which were dropped by the German Bombers to confuse our radar.

One night when I was about 7 years old there was an air raid. My Uncle Tom let me stand outside the air raid shelter with him and he put his steel helmet on my head and I was able to see the tracer bullets from the Ack Ack Guns firing up into the sky and the searchlights picking out the German Bombers. There were also lots of Barrage Balloons floating up in the sky on the end of steel wires. This was to make sure that the aeroplanes couldn鈥檛 fly low enough to bomb accurately because if they flew too low their wings would hit the cables. The Balloons were full of gas and just floated up when the cables were let out.

On another occasion I was standing in the garden and I saw a V1 which we called Doodlebugs. They were flying bombs powered by a ram jet engine. The engines made a very funny noise and when the engine stopped the bomb crashed and exploded.

We didn鈥檛 have television in those days, nor computers, video recorders, tape recorders, music centres or game boys. Most of our toys were second hand because the toy factories were all making shells and bullets and guns or else they were home made. My Uncle Tom made me some tanks and boats out of wood.

We had some comics, like the Beano and Dandy, Film Fun and Radio Fun and we did have what was called 鈥渢he wireless鈥�.

My Grandma had a wireless and it was powered, not by electricity but by a battery called an accumulator. It was a bit like a small car battery, except that it was made of glass and we used to have to take it to a shop to have it charged up. My grandma鈥檚 house didn鈥檛 have any electricity so the lights were gas lamps and they used to make a soft hissing sound when they were alight . You had to be very careful when you lit them because the gas mantles were very delicate. At night, one of the adults would draw the blackout curtains light the gas lamps and then we would all sit down to listen to the wireless until it was time to go down into the shelter to bed. We did not have any lights in the shelter only torches and candles

We also had a gramophone, which you had to wind up to make it play. The records were quite brittle and would break if you dropped them. One of my uncles played a banjo and another one played the accordion so whenever we had a party we had lots of music

Towards the end of the war, when I was about eight years old, I moved to Birmingham with my mum and we lived with my Father鈥檚 parents. We lived opposite Elmdon Aerodrome, which today is called Birmingham Airport

I used to sit on the grassy bank outside my grandparent鈥檚 house and watch the Lancaster Bombers take off and land and in the playground at the school that I went to, we had a barrage balloon.

The war ended soon after that, in April 1945.

All over Britain people held victory parties in the streets. I went to London with my mum and we joined in the victory party in my Grandma鈥檚 road. Someone brought out a piano and we had tables all down the street and we all sat down to sandwiches and cream cakes and jelly and ice cream. The grown ups drank beer and danced up and down the street to the music of the piano

My Father was demobilised and came home in January 1946 and I have lived in the Midlands ever since.

D.C.J. Morrison 15th May 2002

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