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This story was entered onto the Peoples War website by John Warner on behalf of Mr M R C Parr, the author who fully understands and accepts the sites terms and conditions.

MEMORIES OF WORLD WAR II — 29 JUNE 2005

Index:
A. Outbreak of war, . . . back to Athens crisis, . . . Adria Line ship not running, . . . Imperial Airways could not get us all on one flight, . . . day before seats for all, . . . fly back from Athens, Brindisi, Lake Bracciano, Marselles night stop-over, St Nazaire, . . . Southampton 1/9/39.

B. Home at Kensington Square, . . . declaration of war, looking at the barrage balloons over Hyde Park.

C. Home at Penheale, put down half the dogs, . . . prepared to move into the gate-house, . . . prepared the stables for evacuees, painted out, got beds, put in bathroom and kitchen, . . . since they were looking for families for them none came, . . . it became HG HQ.

D. School Summerfield, St Leonards, . . . heard gunfire from France, moved before the greenhouses were shot —up, plane crashed on playing field.

E. School Summerfields, Derbyshire.

F. School Summerfields, Oxfordshire, . . . joined with original school, . . . remembered the fireball when a bomber crashed.

G. School, Eton, . . . own alert system, Scouts, collect waste paper, . . . national Scout camps, school of mechanics, . . . six PDRanti-tank gun pivots, instrument panel frames for Hawser Gliders.

H. Civil Defence at Eton, . . . ambulance attendant, ambulance, . . . still have empty steel helmet, greatcoat, respirator and beret, . . . practices, casualty union, . . . first V113/6/44, . . . stirrup pump practice on mock furniture in trailer.

(A) “Before the outbreak of war I was in fact with the family going round the Greek Islands in a yacht, the captain of which only knew Greek, and it wasn’t until we got back to Athens, after a couple of weeks, that we discovered that there was a major crisis on and the ship we were going to sail back on, a steamer, the Adriatica Line, was not running, so my mother went on to Imperial Airways and tried to book us on flights as soon as they could to get us back. In fact we were told that we would have to go on two flights which were two days apart. We managed to all get on the first flight. This was on the old Empire Route of the Imperial Airways with the flying boats which had come back from five days Sidney back to London. We actually came back on one called Calypso, and we eventually took off from the harbour at Athens and we flew across to Italy, landing in Brindisi in the harbour for a change of passengers and everything else. The next stop was a place called Lake Bracciano which was just outside Rome, in fact we were going over the Apennines and with no pressurisation we tended to go to sleep a bit. Anyway we went on from there to Marseilles, where we in fact spent the night, because the flying boats didn’t in fact land at night because you couldn’t see any driftwood in the water, which would be dangerous. The next day we had two stages, the first one from Marseilles back to St Nazaire, which of course was where the big raid was later, and we finally landed at Southampton, down on somewhere near Lee-on-Solent, and on the big flare-path there for flying boats. We were towed up to Southampton itself, and actually landed on the 1st. September, two days before the declaration of war.

(B) I shall remember in our drawing room looking out over Hyde Park, hearing Chamberlain saying that war was declared and looking at the barrage balloons and things like that.

(C) We in fact all moved out of our London house totally and moved down to my house at Penheale near Launceston, and we prepared for the war down there. We knew various things were happening. My brother went and joined up, we had quite a lot of gun dogs and we had to put half of those down. We even prepared to move out of the main house down to the Gate House, we never had to. Then everyone was talking about evacuation and we’d actually prepared the stables for evacuees, painting them out, getting beds, putting in a bathroom and a kitchen, but in practice they were looking for families to look after the children, so we never got any evacuees. Subsequently when my stepfather took on the Home Guard and ran the Northern half of Cornwall, the stables became his headquarters.

(D) I can remember various things down there though I was at school for most of the hours at boarding school. I can remember a bit later on in the war, the first thing was that we had some soldiers coming back from Dunkirk who turned up at my home at Penheale rather when they should have been going further on to Penhale Camp.
We didn’t suffer too much, but we did eventually have German bombers that used to cross Cornwall, and they would find a lake, and then they would circle over a lake and they would climb until they could find the next one, and then go on. I do remember woken up and taken by people down under the stairs and being extremely upset, and said never again, when I’d been taken down there.

(E) At school I was then at St Leonards-on-Sea. We stayed there until after Dunkirk when France had fallen and we started hearing gunfire from the French coast, and then we actually moved out. A bit later on, after we had moved out, that was very much in the front line and I knew that the greenhouses were all shot —up and at least one aircraft landed on our playing fields.

We at that point had to have allotments we started to grow food for everybody, I remember having chilblains and all this lot. I think we all started knitting scarves for the troops and doing various things like that. We were evacuated from there and we took a big house up in Derbyshire, only for about one term, where we had great fun playing around. I do remember seeing the glow of the fires when Derby was bombed.

(F) We eventually went back and joined the other half of the original school which was at Oxford, I don’t remember very much, though the butter ration I think was about four ounces a week, and we were allowed our butter in a little pot with a lid with our names on it and we always had those on the table. The margarine ration always went towards the cooking. After that the only thing I can remember particularly of the war there was a huge great fireball when a bomber crashed and blew up not far away.

(G) Eventually I went back to Eton in about 1941 where things were a little more sophisticated. We had our own alarm system, a system of air raid alarms there which came direct off the big army base up by Windsor Castle. I can remember things like gas masks and blackouts and everything else. Actually a little sideline on the blackout was that in our rooms, we had our own rooms there, they turned all the lights out at 10 o’clock, I had my own particular means of finding my own electricity and turning them on. Well with the blackout they couldn’t see that I had it on.
Food was very short, we had all sorts of peculiar things, lots of baked beans, I remember having the most awful charcoal biscuits. These were the sorts of things that fed us on. I can also remember that one also had things sent from home in the way of food, I can even remember rabbits, perfectly ordinary things that people used to eat in those days, being sent rabbits through the post, just a complete rabbit with a label tied round its neck, and then had someone up there who cooked them.
At Eton I was in the Scouts, we did a lot of collecting of waste paper, and we baled it and that went off with that lot, that was when all the iron railings went, and everything else.

(H) Having been in the Scouts one also ended up in the Civil Defence and I found myself as an ambulance attendant. Our ambulance was an emergency ambulance which was a big American saloon car with the back cut off and a body sort of built out of wood battening, rabbit netting, and canvas, into which you could slide four stretchers. We had a lot of practices and I remember people at the Casualties Union in a little bombed building at the back end of Eton there, and all sorts of casualties you were all learning to deal with theirs. In fact I’ve still got the steel helmet, respirator, greatcoat, and beret, with which I was issued with in those days
We had quite a major Civil Defence unit at Willowbrook, which is just outside Eton on the way up to Windsor, but in fact the place I had to go to was the small gym which was obviously the first-aid centre and we had to sleep there at night, on duty, and when the alert went we’d have to report our availably. I remember on one occasion, the only time I’ve ever answered a telephone completely in my sleep.
We had had four alarms that night and the chap on the other end thought that he had a slightly peculiar response from me.
An interesting one there was that over the top of the little gym was the old fencing room, and we thought that it was seriously haunted, because we could hear footsteps, ‘plonk plonk plonk’, as if someone was walking along there and we had people coming along trying to lay the ghost and everything else, I think it was quite a long time later I think one chap even broke out from his tutors to come and try and lay the ghost. We eventually found actually that it was a clack valve on the central heating system.
Other things we did there was we had a school of mechanics where we learnt carpentry and things like that, so we were all part of the war effort, because I can actually remember building instrument panel frames for the Hawser Gliders that were used for airborne landings, and in the metal working section I can clearly remember the pivots for the 6 pound anti-tank guns that we were actually machining in there.
We also learnt Civil Defence and learned to use a stirrup pump. We had a big thing like a trailer, a sort of steel open sided trailer, and they used to put mock furniture in it which was wire baskets which they filled, . . . in the old days one had milk bottles and the milk in the bottle was sealed with a little wax disc in the top of the bottle. The sheets of waxed card they were cut from was obviously good and inflammable and they put bundles of these in the various baskets around to simulate furniture, set them on fire, and then we had to go and put them out. We also learned how to deal with incendiary bombs, and one also learned about a butterfly bomb which was an anti-personnel bomb, which you left very well away and didn’t go any where near them. In fact one picked up lots of bits and pieces from where people were firing on the ranges, the odd mortar smoke bomb, and odd things like that, and one collected lots of bits of shrapnel that had fallen down, and my step-brother who was in the RAF and flew bombers, I’ve also got some of the safety pins from bombs which he ultimately dropped over Germany.

In fact all way round Eton there was an awful lot of military matters and I remember one used to go on a bicycle up to Slough and from the top of the bridge of the railway where there were vast great depots of acres and acres of just guns, tanks, trucks, and just everything else up there. When it came just before D-Day we had vast numbers of Americans driving trucks full of bombs through the school, absolutely gawping at us people looking most peculiar. They weren’t looking where they were driving, just looking at us. The other interesting thing there was that if it was a very clear night and it could have been a bombers’ night, they used to lay a monumental smoke-screen right over the whole of Slough. They had what I can describe as oversize Aladdin Stoves, about five feet high, which were designed to produce black soot, and there were huge great smuts about an inch long, so the next morning and the wind was in the north and it was coming down over us then the whole of Eton was absolutely covered with these huge great big smuts.
I can actually remember there the night the first flying bombs landed in the East End of London, it hit a railway bridge and because we were closed up, stood too, right through until the middle of the next morning, which was very unusual we heard that an aeroplane had crashed on to the railway line, and the railway line was blocked until the middle of the next day. Well normally an aircraft falling on a railway line would be cleared pretty quickly, so we knew that there was something very funny. It wasn’t till some time later that we knew what it was and it was interesting as it was actually one of the daughters of one of the house masters who was in Photographic Identification who’d spotted the first of the V1’s on a site at Penemunde.

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