大象传媒

Having been to the 鈥淭rocadero鈥�, cinemas at the Elephant & Castle with two friends were making our way along the Walworth Road, our destination was the pie and mash shop opposite East Lane. The late afternoon seemed to get terrible noisy with the drone of aeroplanes and the clanging of fire engine bells. This we knew was different from the war that had mainly been going on between the Air Forces. That had been happening along the coastal towns and the fighter planes airfields, which had been constantly attacked. Now it was London and civilians that were being bombed. The main focus of the attack was directed against the East End and London Docks. I cannot remember if we had our pie and mash. That night was the start of the endless nights spent sleeping in our shelter. That first night of the 鈥樷�楤litz鈥樷�� killed or wounded nearly 2000. Waves of planes kept up the attack, 318 of them altogether until 4.30 a.m. on Sunday. Many of the fighter pilots had become our heroes over the past few weeks, Paddy Finucane, Johnnie Johnson, and Douglas Bader. The battles in the sky would continue with intensity until the 15th September. It would decide who had won the Battle of Britain. The Royal Air Force fighters tore into he German bombers and at the end of the day the Germans knew they had lost the Battle of Britain. They had to postpone the invasion of Britain. The raids on London continued, as did the systematic destruction by night on Britains cities. Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, Coventry, Derby, Leicester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast were among the cities that suffered. None of them suffered such prolonged ferocity as London. Two or three night鈥檚 consecutive nights of bombing at a time were common for them.
For London, September 7/8 was only the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombardment, and there were many more after the first 57. It must have very hard for parents with all the worries that faced them everyday. I was a 15 year old and starting to have visions of following my two elder brothers into the forces. Being a parent now I cannot imagine what it must have been like then to have them taken away from you. They also had the task of facing up to the continuous air raids every night. The shelters became like a club. Your neighbours became your friends and the droning of German planes, the sounds of bombs coming down and exploding, our own anti-aircraft guns .All these noises became nightly happenings and we quickly got used to them. It drew people closer together and although some nights were rather frightening, being all-together did ease people鈥檚 fears. I cannot try to explain to people that never experienced it just what it was like. To read today that some people have sat down and feel ready to condemn the people that ordered our Air Force to bomb German cities later on in the war. It seems to me that they never had to experience the Blitz. The Nazis had been bombing innocent people all over Europe for years. They had no reason to complain. Life carried on strange as it was. My two brothers as I said were in the Forces. My elder brother who was in the Army was training somewhere in England. The other brother serving in the Navy was on a cruiser. Although all mail was censored we managed to find out his ship was operating around the West Indies. My elder brother got married to the girl he had been courting for a few years. All this was happening in 1940 and before the year ended, there was another shock in store for us. It was not very pleasant either. It was at the end of the year and the usual raid was in progress when the droning of planes overhead seemed to get louder than usual. The outcome of it was that a stick of bombs were dropped and exploded in the part of Peckham Road right where our block of flats was. A coach carrying Polish soldiers was blown up .A gas main was ignited and a big fire was started which burned on all through the night. Brick walls were blown down and it did look very warlike when eventually we did leave the shelter to see what damage had been done. The biggest worry being that German planes continuing the raid during the night would be drawn to the fire blazing away in the roadway. We learned later that the weather stopped them returning that night. The bombs had made it unsafe for us to go on living in our happy but unsafe block of flats. It seemed very sad that we had to leave that happy block to move to another house on the same Estate. We had lived there for six or more years and all the families or most of them were very nice people. I say most of them because on the night of the very near misses a neighbour returned to his house to check on the damage. In the darkness, because the air raid was still in progress he came across a neighbour鈥檚 son in one if his bedrooms. The man was in his twenties, and for some reason must have been medically unfit not to be in one of the services. As all the doors of the houses had been blown, open by the bomb blast he had not broken in. He had had nothing on him that he had stolen, so his explanation of what he was doing there was listened to but not believed. The war and that night changed the direction of our lives and although we only moved forty to fifty yards, we were never to be as close to our former neighbours again. Although I was always playing football, cricket and roller-skating with my male friends, there was always this close friendship I had with the girl that lived in the flat below. It was a brother, sister thing that we had between us and it had lasted for a few years. When we had to move although her family moved also and only lived twenty yards away, it was never the same between us. It had never been a love affair; we were far too young for that. It may have been fate but I used to see a young girl visiting a family in the block of flats she lived in. That young girl although I did not know at the time was to change my life completely.
That move which was the result of bombing, which was happening to thousands of people at the time, did not move me away from my friends. I had left my Fleet Street job and now worked for a prestigious firm of solicitors whose address was in Throgmorton Avenue. Only a stone鈥檚 throw from the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England and London Wall. Very different from the Fleet Street one room job. Old clean and impressive looking entrance, plenty of brass name plates on the wall which always looked as though they had jut been polished. Five steps up and the highly polished wooden doors opened on to a glass-encased reception desk to your right in front of you was the lift. More polished wood, a metal grilled door you swung across and a metal wire cord that entered at the top of the lift. It ran through the lift and went out through the floor. You worked that cord to go up and to come down or I should say a jovial man was the official lift attendant. His name was Bill Rowe if I remember correctly. His other jobs included boilerman; brass cleaner, a jack-of-all-trades that always seemed to have a smile on his face. He came from the East End of London. The names on the brainwork at the entrance were Sir John Crisp, Sir Thomas Outen also a son of Sir Thomas who鈥檚 Christian name I cannot remember. The fourth partner was a young man named Richard Blake who always seemed to be in a hurry. I should imagine he became very successful solicitor .I started doing junior office jobs, working in the Post Room, taking over in the reception desk when the official receptionist went to lunch. The receptionist was a man in his fifties who took his job very seriously and was very kind .I think he enjoyed the younger staff working with him and enjoyed our sense of humour knowing that over the next few years we would be going into the Services. We thought so to because the war these first few years did not seem to be going to well for us and was going to take a few more years before it would be all over. Already it was noticeable that the older of the young men were going into the Services and younger of us were having to take over their jobs while they were away. I might add that when the war had started having to leave school was a disappointment for me. I was enjoying my bookkeeping typing and shorthand lesson together with the art classes. Trying to continue with evening classes, which I did try, was difficult and having to cope with going to work and later on the air raids, it soon became a lost cause. Getting back to the solicitors it became very interesting for me because as I said previously as time progressed the older of the men were being called and were also volunteering for the Services. That made the younger members available to try and do the jobs they vacated. My days working in the Post Room were very happy days as can be said for the years I spent at Ashurst, Morris & Crisp prior to volunteering for the Royal Navy. While working in the Post Room I also took over the telephone switchboard went for her lunch break. After the Post Room, the Bill Office came next on my list. Two men worked in this office I made it three. The senior of the two a man of about sixty years of age, very jovial looking a Mr. Pickwick look alike. Liked to sing and joke it made for a happy atmosphere. The other man, forty something, slim short man was of the same temperament and going to work was no hardship at all. The war was still raging we were being bombed the news regarding our victories was in short supply so working in a happy environment did mean a lot. The Bill Office then was before calculators and the solicitor鈥檚 secretaries made daily costs on sheets of paper and when the case was finally ended all the sheets of that case came to us. It was our job to then calculate all the costs incurred in that case. As I loved figures and calculating, it was a pleasant labour for me. The caf茅 I found to go to for lunch was opposite Liverpool Street Station a matter of ten minutes walk from Throgmorton Avenue and the meals were more suited to my wages. My favourite was steak and kidney pudding. It was about that time that myself and a friend from the Glebe Estate where we lived decided for some reason to go along to Dulwich Hamlet Football Club. We knew that while the war was on and all the regular players were in the services we would be able to train and play. We kept the terraces clean and also trained by running up and down the terraces to strengthen our legs. We played in practise matches and thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent there. We were linesman some Saturdays and even got a game when they were making teams to play opponents because of shortage elder men away in the services. As I said my two elder brothers were on active service and two of sisters were on war work travelling to Wimbledon every day. It was to work in the Triang toy-making factory. Toys were forgotten while the war was in progress and they worked at making parts of glider planes. Working in the solicitors was still pleasant enough and the interesting start to the day was the walk to Camberwell Green to catch a tram to Southwark Bridge. The walk from the bridge towards the Guildhall along Bishopsgate to he Mansion House and the Bank of England and past the Stock Exchange to Throgmorton Avenue. The interesting start was seeing an attractive young lady about my own age just before I reached Camberwell Green. I cannot remember which bus or tram she boarded when she reached the Green but it did not head in the same direction as I did. Seeing her morning after morning, I suppose it was only natural I eventually found out her, name and that she lived a very short walk from the Green. It must have been an effort on my part because my lack of confidence, which had always held me back in all, I did was the same when it came to girls. But her name was Joan Peak and she lived in Kerfield Crescent, and it had a pub on the corner of the crescent. She seemed to like me but she liked to go dancing which was a no-no for me. Apart from going round and waiting outside her house till she came out and stood and talked, I never had the self-confidence to even ask her to go out with me. I remember the one time I arranged to meet her outside the Odeon at Camberwell Green. It became too much for me and I never turned up. My excuse for not turning up must have been pretty lame. Also the evenings when I went to football practise at Dulwich Hamlet on the way home would call on her with my friend. He saw her and liked her and she seemed flattered to have two lads turning up to see her. That is how things carried on. We would just go round in the evenings and talk to her. It was never anything serious and I supposed it did her ego a power of good to tell us about the dances she went to. After the one time, that I arranged to take her to the cinema and bottled out it was never tried again. We remained friends and the months rolled on. The only time she seemed to show undue interest in me was when one evening going round and meeting her outside her house, she had another girl with her. The other girl turned out to be her cousin .She was a nice girl, unlike Joan who had dark hair she was fair-haired a very bouncy full of life character. I cannot even remember her name now but anyway we both liked each other. She did the wrong thing in front of her cousin in openly saying how much she liked me. Joan immediately thought that I was flavour of the month again. This is just to illustrate how shallow our lives were at the time. We were teenagers; the war was still going on, our lives like millions of others had been suddenly thrown into chaos. Our education had been cut short and our lives would never be the same again. Air raid sirens, bombing, living in the dark with blackout every dusk, air raid shelters, families being broken up and parted for years. More the sufferers were our parents who just had to carry on and try not to complain or to cry too much at least not in front of their families. I earlier mentioned a young girl that visited a family that lived in the block opposite us. It turned out that she lived in the block of flats on the other side of Peckham Road and in the same block as my sister and her husband. My sister had just adopted a baby girl and I would go across to visit them. While over there I saw this girl found out her name was Eileen and that she had three sisters, one older and two younger than herself. She was a very pretty girl and her face was covered with freckles, which I was later to find out her elder sister used to tease her about. She also annoyed her calling them something flies did instead of freckles. I learned that Eileen and her elder sister together with a couple of other girls that lived on the Glebe Estate worked together. They travelled by tram from Camberwell Green over Blackfriars Bridge to the Embankment. They walked from the Embankment the two hundred odd yards to Whitefriars Street, which housed 鈥淏estways Patterns鈥� which was where they worked. It was deep in the heart of the newspaper country being opposite the 鈥淒aily Mail鈥� and a very short walk from Fleet Street. It then became a sort of a game to try and appear to walk to Camberwell Green every morning and spot the girls doing the same thing. So the day started well trying to see them and also Joan Peak. Eileen and J. Peak knew each other by sight I found out from both them when it w as mentioned. They both went dancing and saw each other then at different times. I do not think they cared for each other that much. So I got to know this young girl and even had t he decency to invite her to come along to the cinema one Sunday afternoon. Of course, my friend came also. We were very polite and the film we saw called 鈥淕eronimo鈥� was a western about a Red Indian chief. That should have been a warning to her, I suppose at the time we though we were doing her a favour. Time and memory get jumbled those few years between the age of 15 to 17 are mixed up. The Americans are in the war being attacked by Japan in 1941 and things have got a lot better for us regarding victories here and there. My elder brother in the army is India bound, the sailor serving aboard a cruiser in the Mediterranean, which has been torpedoed and has been sent o Philadelphia in the U.S.A. to be refitted. The time at the solicitors continued and I was still enjoying working in the Bill Office. As I said it made the days go more quickly working with two nice and happy men. It came to an end when the secretary working in the cashier鈥檚 office had to go in the forces. Of course, the secretary was a man. It was decided that I should take over when he left. Seeing that the knowledge of typing, shorthand and bookkeeping was no stranger to me, it seemed obvious to the cashier that I should step into the position. I was just seventeen years of age. The cashier鈥檚 office was a gloomy place. Very different from the previous one. Very much quieter and not much laughter, in fact none at all. The chief cashier, Mr. Beal was a quietly spoken man in his fifties and never smiled a lot. Perhaps he had his reasons. The assistant chief cashier was a tall man whose name I cannot remember. He always gave me the impression that he would at sometime have liked the idea of letting his hair down. I never saw that sometime, to me he always remained very sober looking, As I say they were both very nice to me but at 17 with all that was going on in he world it seemed to me that it was making life very miserable. My father came to my aid. Talking to him about being conscripted when I reached 18, which would be in about six months, he suggested that I volunteer. Having served in the Royal Navy in the First World War, he had no liking for army life. When you were conscripted into the services, you did not know where they would put you. To volunteer would ensure that I would get into the Royal Navy. As he said on a ship, you always had water to wash and keep clean with and there was always something to eat. There was a Royal Navy recruiting office in the Charing Cross Road so one dinner hour break I went along there.

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