大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV Bekshire, Amy Williams, on behalf of Doug Bukin and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

When the war was declared on 3rd September 1939 I was 10 years old. We all immediately thought that we were going to see Germans in the next day or two in this country but that didn't happen. There was quite a long time before there was any activity in the skies or any bombing. After the war was announced, I was sacred when I went to bed at night wondering about whether a German bomber might come over us that night. Before the bombing actually started we were constantly worrying about it. Once the bombing began, at least it was real and it didn't prey on my mind so much.

I was living with my parents in the northern part of the east end of London when the heavy bombing started. We used to hear all the explosions, the 'ack-ack' fire of the anti-aircraft guns. We could see the fires started by the bombing: some close, some glowing in the sky in the distance. At the end of our house on some waste ground there was a searchlight battery. Searchlights were very big. I'd had no idea that they were so big before this one was placed near to our house. The searchlights had their own generator to supply this tremendous current for this big arc light. The beam would obviously go right up into the sky and they'd sweep the sky. It was quite exciting to suddenly see one or maybe two or three searchlights latch onto a German bomber so that it looked like a white ghost in the sky. Then all the anti-aircraft fire would start bursting around it.

It was a strange thing but when the German aircraft were coming over they had a different engine note to British ones. We could tell whether it was a British or German aircraft in the dark. "That's a Jerry!" we'd say. The German plane had a pulsing engine noise - apparently this was due to the fact that their engines were different to ours. The German aircraft could be reasonably identified by their sound.

During the bombing you felt a nervous excitement but you weren't quivering like a jelly in a heap. It's amazing how you became almost immune to it as life had to carry on. When the bombers were coming over the chances are that you would then be going into your Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden or into the Morrison shelter inside the house. At first we all went down to the Anderson shelter. After a while we started poking our heads out and it was just like a gigantic firework display. There were orange and green tracer bullets going up and down, all the explosions of the shells and it was exciting! It was dangerous too. You'd pop outside and there was a greater danger not from being bombed but from our own shrapnel - shell caps and things like that coming down from our own anti-aircraft guns. They were lethal. You could be hit by anything at any time. It could be a bit dangerous but there was a fair gap in between the bombs so you could a bit cautious about that. But after a while we got a bit blase about it. We'd come out of the cellar and then sometimes we'd probably go back to bed in our house. When the bombs came down they would emit a screaming sound. The Germans put a screaming device on their bomb, especially their dive-bombers.

I would walk to school in the morning with the other children - although a lot of my friends had been evacuated. We'd walk to school with our gas masks around our necks. We'd be pick up shrapnel mainly from our own anti-aircraft guns: shell splinters and anti-aircraft shell nose cones which were big brass caps with a timing mechanism on them about the size of a teacup. When the brass caps are coming down from about a couple of thousand feet they are lethal to anyone on the ground. We used to collect them, and then at school we would compare what we'd collected on the way. We would say: "I like that one!" "I'll swap you that one for this one" "I've got two shells" "I've got an incendiary bomb". The bombing was frightening but somehow you survived that and you made the most of it and quite enjoyed it.

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