大象传媒

Return from 3 years of evacuation.

I had been evacuated since the day war was declared on September 3rd 1939 and was glad that my Mother has agreed for me to come home in 1943 when the threat of a German invasion had long passed. The American's had joined us in the fight in December of 1941 and we knew that, given time, victory would be ours.

Back to school.

I continued my education by attending the secondary school in Wellington Avenue, but was soon in trouble with the teachers due to my strong country accent which I had picked up in The Forest of Dean. They must have thought that I was being impudent. The school like many others had lost most of the younger teachers and the older ones who had come in to take their place were not so patient.

I soon settled down as my form master was also the science teacher and he also took mathmatics which were my best subjects. All was going well except for one thing, the war was still on.

Air raid precautions.

Along one side of the school football pitch, were a row of brick built shelters, and when the air-raid warning sirens sounded we were taken to these shelters and had to wait in them untill 'The all clear'.

Most of the raids took place at night while I was in bed. The Anderson shelter which we had at the bottom of our garden was cold and damp and not a place you would like to stay in very long during a cold night. My Mother prefered to get into the cupboard under the stairs which she considered just as safe. When houses were bombed, quite often the stair case remined standing and it saved you from falling bricks etc. so that is where we used to hide when the bombs were falling near the house.

A very frightening time.

After living in comparative safety in the country I now was experiencing the horror of war and I was scared sick when the house shook from the explosions. I prayed that all the Germans who were doing this to us would die and leave us alone.

Mother was always ready to have a laugh, and when she called for me to get out of bed and get under the stairs, she burst out laughing when she saw that I had put on my trousers back to front.

The lone Bomber flying low.

We did not always take shelter at home when the warning sounded but waited until we could hear the bombs dropping. I was looking out of our rear bedroom window to see if I could spot any planes caught in our searchlights and suddenly I saw a bomber flying so close to the ground that I thought it was going to crash but it was trying to avoid the search lights and our guns. It was a bright moonlight night and I could clearly make out the crew sitting in their large perspex cockpit as it flew past.

The bombed Shelter.

A bomb dropped along the road in a house similar to ours. It landed in the garden at the rear. Before school next morning I went along the alleyway at the back to see what the damage was and found that the Anderson shelter in their garden was completely blown out of the ground and lay there upside down, concrete foundations and all. I had alook for shrapnel to add to my collection of which I had over a hundred pieces but found none even though I climbed down in to the crater which the bomb had made. On climbing out I bumped my head on an electric cable which had been hanging from pylons which crossed over our rear gardens but luckily it was dead.

Shrapnel and anti RADAR tape.

On the way to school in the mornings we were constantly on the lookout for pieces of shrapnel
which could be quite plentiful after a big raid and these bits of metal were prized colection pieces.
The shrapnel was bits of anti aircraft shells which fell back down to the ground. The German airmen used to throw out strips of tape which looked like the video tape we use today, it was meant to fool the RADAR operaters so that the exact location of the aircraft could not be found. We also collected yards of this tape.

The turning point of the war.

One lunch time at school, while we were eating our sandwiches, the headmaster told us that he had an importnat announcement to make 'The Allied Armies had made a sucessful landing in France on the coast of Normandy', that was D-Day June 6th 1944.

But the war was certainly not over and we had now to suffer the 'V' weapons. First came the V1's. On that first day we sat in the shelters at school for most of the day, not knowing what was happening. No one seemed to know what the Germans were throwing at us. The speculation varied from Suicide pilots to a long range gun but we soon were told that these were small aircraft without pilots and propelled by a new kind of engine. They said it was a ram jet and used parafin for fuel. We soon recognised when these flying bombs were near because of the loud noise these engines made and we felt safe all the time you could hear them, but when the fuel ran out, down they came with a ton of high explosive. We heard and saw many of these Buzz Bombs, later christened as Doodlebugs. Several fell in to the Reservoir which was under construction at the rear of our house but the nearest one to our house fell about a half mile away on a bridge which was part of a new road construction, postponed because of the war. It blew the sides off the bridge but as there were no houses near, no other damage was caused. We went to see the bridge but the police got there before us and prevented the taking any souvenirs.

Next we had to suffer the V2's these gave no warning of their approach as they were rockets which travelled faster than sound. No warnings, no noise of their approach just an unexpected explosion. None fell near our house and the only one which I had experience of landed in Epping Forest. When we heard about this we cycled to the site but only found a large hole amonst the trees.

End of school and start of work.

In August 1944, just after my 14th birthday, I left school and started work at The Flexo Plywood Company, where Mother was still employed. I was put in the metal work shop where many items were made for the aircraft industry such as Fuel tanks, Seats and exhaust pipes. As an unskilled worker, I was given the most boring of jobs such as filing rivit heads on the fuel tanks so that they could be coated with tin to prevent rusting. For this I receive 拢1:5 shilling per week. Later I was transfered to the sheet metal cutting department which was better. The man I worked with was an ex London policemen and he constantly regaled me with lurid stories of his experiences in the force. He operated the guillotine. Another man worked in the store where he stacked heavy sheets of steel on edge against the wall. Once when I was sent to see him about some material which was required I found him caught between some steel plates against the wall by their weight, unable to move or talk. I ran for help and he was released and was quite recovered after a sit down for a short time. Later the same day, I found him in exactly the same predicament and went running down to the work shop for help shouting 'He's done it again'. I was constantly teased about this and they would say 'Has he done it again'.

Back to the Sea Side.

After about 9 months working in the factory, Mother decided that she would like to return to Margate and restart the Guest House business once more. I handed in my notice and went on ahead while Mother arranged the sale of the house, and lodged with her friend while I found another job. I went to the labour exchange to look for work which you had to do in war time and was offered a choice of two positions. I could become a porter with The Southern Railway at Margate station or take an apprenticeship with the local Gas Company for a wage of 19 shillings and 5 pence. I chose the latter and agreed to start work on May 20 1945.
The war ended on May 8th just a few days before I started my long career with the Gas industry. I retired in August 1994 exactly 50 years after leaving school.

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