大象传媒

I still have the notebook and police whistles which, with tin hats, armbands and a stirrup pump, made up a Fire Watcher鈥檚 equipment. We had a little circular ARP badge on our front gatepost to denote our status. Obviously the group of neighbours took it in turns to stay awake in case of emergency. Very few people had phones. It would be a do-it-yourself rescue job and perhaps a run to the nearest warden鈥檚 post or the phone box by the bus stop if extra help was needed. We had a quite a number of fire bombs round the house. Our garden fence was fatally damaged and charred pieces fell out of it from then on. Next door but one took a direct hit with the little metal canister lodging on top of the bedroom wardrobe. The old lady there was rather cross with my parents, who stood on her bed to put out the fire with the stirrup pump. Using sand bags to quell the flames was the usual method, but a neighbour discovered the hard way that you cannot use one sandbag for two bombs. His burns were one of the few local injuries, so we were very lucky. A most unpleasant phosphorus bomb fell in the car park of the Rising Sun pub. These were very hard to put out, but fortunately the building was spared, though the marks on the tarmac lasted for years.

鈥淥ur鈥� high explosive, probably just a throwaway from a nervous or returning bomber, landed on a chicken run six houses down the road. Not a feather was ever found. However our house had been picked up and shaken. We had some interesting cracks in the lath and plaster internal walls (so we could talk to our next door neighbour) and we lost most of our window glass, even the protective shutters in the kitchen blew in. My table top shelter saved me from the glass of the garden door and the outer door knob, plus cat Timmy, mother of the evacuated kitten, landed on the sideboard across the room; rather a mess, but nobody hurt. We then spent the next I-don鈥檛-know-how-long with canvas flapping over the windows and rather dark, cold rooms. Only one local house was demolished at that time, a rather beautiful 1920s art deco one about half a mile away. It must have been around this time that the severe night bombing in London caused fires we could see from 20 miles away. Also my father came home very late from work with a broken toe 鈥� a bridge fell on his foot when he was waiting to get into a shelter! Briefly the front room was requisitioned. We acquired a lodger, a rather dismal old man whose home had been bombed, but he was eventually re-housed and granny got her sitting room back.

During this rather active period the school was closed and a group of us had lessons part-time in Sylvia鈥檚 mum鈥檚 house, round her dining table. When more evacuated children returned, the school had two new shelters, one above ground, one under the playground and we learned to proceed there in an orderly manner if the siren sounded. It is strange how that wail still affected me with a sort of mental shudder, long after the war ended, as long as the machines were used to summon firemen to the local station. Barrage balloons appeared above the trees, perhaps over specific sites and one nearly beheaded mother, who looked out of a bus window on a trip to Sevenoaks, when a broken cable fell in the road beside us. Just think, you could hang out of bus windows then!

As the tide of war turned, and the little arrows on the newspaper maps started to show gains (and we acquired a wireless from 鈥淎unty鈥� Polly, an elderly neighbour), so we saw more aircraft, great squadrons of 鈥渙urs鈥�, heading eastwards, but raiders still came our way. Dad and I were going to the library one morning when we stopped in the village to count aircraft going over, probably more than 50, when a sneak raider dived over us, releasing a stick of high explosives. As I heard the whistle of the bombs, I was thrown into a shop doorway with dad and about five more men piled on top of me. There were three or four explosions and then silence. As the siren then sounded, the shop owner in his tin hat looked out cautiously, as we picked ourselves up, and he invited us in. Looking up before we took cover, we saw in the sky directly overhead a great black cloud. It looked as if a bomb or bombs had exploded in mid air. Was that possible? I don鈥檛 know. Two craters were later found in nearby fields, but there was a direct hit on an old wooden farmhouse. The unfortunate owner was taking a bath at the time and was rescued, relatively unscathed from the bath, which had become open to the four winds. One other bomb which affected me was the one which fell on the dry cleaners when my favourite coat was there 鈥� alas, never seen again, but I still have the receipt for it!

Three bombs also fell in our back field, it was said. Men came to dig as there were no explosions. As it was very wet there, either they were wrong or the bombs continued sinking. Nothing was found and the holes became small nature reserves for tadpoles. Such was the general lack of worry about safety that we hung about by the fence and watched the digging. The men soon came over with a paper bag of tea and sugar mixed to ask if mum could make them a pot of tea.

Doodlebugs
Sometime about 1941 my father was called up. As he was 40 at the time he was offered a choice, the Army or the Police. We are not the heroic type 鈥� he learned to swim and became a dock policeman at Avonmouth, near Bristol, where the troop ships docked after the Americans joined the war. We were, of course, affected by rationing and foreign fruit was rare, so this posting was improved by the occasional 鈥減erk鈥� of fruit thrown over the side to celebrate the safe crossing of the Atlantic and in this way I had my only wartime banana, which had to be drunk from a cup!

Mother also had to go to work at this time and went to Bexleyheath as a clerk for the Ministry of Food. Mum and I occasionally shared her double bed while dad was away and one night we heard aircraft when there had been no siren. The sound was odd. Mum got up and looked out of the window. I joined her, curious. From east to west little red lights were chugging across the sky. We watched and waited and began to realise that if the chugging stopped an explosion followed. Then the siren went 鈥� somewhat late, and we went down stairs to shelter for a bit, then went back to bed. Next day the papers and the news told us about the 鈥渄oodlebugs鈥� fired from the coastal areas of France. Again we had few local casualties, just one empty house a mile away was flattened when one of these crashed on it.

There was noticeable more bombing in the summer and I was offered a respite by staying with father鈥檚 landlady at Shirehampton. I missed the first visit by developing a slight rash the night before the trip which turned out to be german measles. (Since the whooping cough, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox, as did most of my contemporaries, but the diet provided by our rations plus our school milk, which I much enjoyed and often drank other peoples, seemed to keep us in pretty good health and I was rarely ill for more than a day or so. A year later I managed this holiday, travelling to Bristol by train alone and chatting to GIs on the way (I was too young to be offered nylons, alas!) During the three weeks away I won a raffle and had to give the groceries to my landlady for reasons of good relationships, I learned to ride a horse and regularly fetched fish and chips from the shop, to which one took a foot ferry for twopence across the River Avon.

The V2s
Life gradually returned to normal as it became more difficult for enemy aircraft to reach England and the war turned in our favour. The flying bombs had been frightening at first, then, as their launching points were destroyed and various means were used to set them off course, we almost ignored them. One night, however, the old fear returned with the most tremendous crash without any warning. We discovered that a rocket bomb had landed about half a mile away, demolishing six houses and killing their occupants. The windows at the back of our house had caved in again, so we realised it must have been extremely powerful. As news of these V2s came through we knew this was a weapon to be feared indeed, not realising the power of the final bombs of the war still to be programmed to fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were fortunate that the enemy did not have enough time to finalise their plans for the delivery of the rockets and that enough brave people in the Resistance helped to wreck their attempts.

Life in general
I noticed, on reading this through, that I have begun to write 鈥渨e鈥� rather than 鈥淚鈥�. As an only child with elderly neighbours, I spent a lot of time reading and doing quiet things. I was aware of other children mainly at school, or as the 鈥渒ids down the road鈥� who were not really considered to be my social equals. This led to teasing on my walks to the village for music lessons and some problems at Brownies, which I hated because they seemed to think I should make my own bed. What did they think mothers were for? 鈥淯p the road鈥� there was Jennifer, 鈥渁 nice girl鈥� my parents said, but she was older and rather superior 鈥� so I learned my place. To gain what would now be called 鈥渟treet cred,鈥� it was necessary to disobey the rules and play in the road, or rather in the field opposite. Here there was a deep, dry ditch, a climbable conker tree and a variety of 鈥渄are鈥� type activities. At harvest time there were stooks of wheat to make tickly houses until the wagons came to take it away. Our local farmer had at least one tractor, but also three huge work horses, a Shire, a chestnut which might have been a Suffolk Punch and a grey. These would regularly be taken to the smithy in the village to be shod and on at least one occasion I met the chestnut, unattended, galloping home in a fright. The farmer employed the local ladies (mothers of my undesirable friends) to gather potatoes and stook the corn in season and also two wagon loads of gypsies, who camped in his yard in winter and presumably did a few odd jobs and perhaps a bit of poaching. I have a vague memory of having prisoners of war pointed out to me as they also worked on the land. One or two extra fields were ploughed to help feed the country, but the ones by the river were too wet and soon reverted to pasture.

The arrival of my new 鈥渟uitable鈥� friend was when a first floor flat was organised next door for a mother and daughter who had been 鈥渂ombed out.鈥� Shirley and I were the same age and warily took to each other. We often fought, we went to different schools and had different other friends, but in fact we were good companions. I learnt to ride her bike and as we grew older we went around together and exchanged stories of our other doings. We were able to chat most conveniently through the cracked wall between my bedroom and her kitchen!

Briefly Alison and her family moved in on the other side after the death of our aged neighbours, (a canon and his wife, who had two maid servants). She was a year younger, but we got on quite well until her family ate my rabbit, caught while stealing cabbages, but that is a post war story. There was also Alf and his little brothers, with whom I played football in the back field, where Shirley and I trespassed shamelessly to paddle in the river and make pets of the cows.

Rationing, surprisingly, did not seem to impact hard on my family. Both mother and grandma were good cooks and could make a meal of almost anything. I suspect I may have received a little more than my fair share. The main thing I remember is having to clear my plate at every meal! I鈥檓 sure we didn鈥檛 have eggs very often as I was most impressed by the menu at our first holiday hotel after the war, where it was an egg every day, butter in a heap on a plate on the table and chicken once a week. We certainly stretched our meat and bacon rations to a good few stews and suchlike. Fish seemed to be moderately available and I remember the enormous cod鈥檚 heads we bought to boil up for the cat and the interesting dissection possible when they were cooked. Milk was delivered by horse and cart from the nearby dairy, bread, which became a bit white and stodgy, came from a village baker and there were plenty of vegetables, fruit from a local orchard and some from the garden, but sweets were few and far between. Mother kept a firm hand on the coupons right up to the time I went to work in 1950! Our treats were rather odd. Dried fruit of all kinds I could not resist and would raid the larder. Shirley and I ate a complete loaf with a scrape of butter and a pot of jam one day 鈥渂ecause it was nice.鈥� With sixpence a week pocket money, as little as three or four pence would buy 鈥渓ittle apples鈥� from the greengrocer. Cakes were made regularly at home and the sugar ration was adequate as no-one but me had it in drinks. Dad very kindly gave me his butter ration as he said he couldn鈥檛 taste the difference 鈥� I was very fond of dad!

Clothing was a bit of a pain and there was a fair bit of knitting and making do and mending to keep us well dressed. The loss of my coat must have been a major calamity, shoes outgrown were handed down to someone else and parachute nylon was much in vogue for ladies underwear, but not for me. I wore my vest winter and summer and the infamous Liberty Bodice in cold weather. School uniform, a brown gymslip and white blouse, brown knickers and stockings was scraped together and it had to last! Coal and coke was sometimes in short supply, but we had plenty of firewood and gas lighting, as grandma was not keen on electricity, so there were no power cuts.

The End, we hoped
The war ended so suddenly, it seemed. The newspapers no longer produced their little maps of advances. Headlines talked of government changes 鈥� was there really anyone else but Churchill? Radio programmes still talked of austerity, but also of street parties and such. Well, we didn鈥檛 have one, but dad and I stood on Chelsea bridge, I think it was, and watched the fireworks on Battersea bridge to celebrate VJ night 鈥� Victory over Japan! I could not remember seeing anything like the display before and I still love fireworks, but the bangs just sometimes remind me of nights spent in the cupboard under the stairs鈥︹�︹�︹��.

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