大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War by Lynn Hughes on behalf of John Freeborn, the author and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My first memory of the war was being fitted for a gas mask; I must have still been at school for that is where we went to be fitted. They smelt horrible and made a rude noise when you breathed out, like a whoopee cushion. Gas masks were issued prior to actual war being declared, which must have been a terrible worry for the adults fearing a repeat of the 1914/1918 war.

The following year on 8th September 1939 Neville Chamberlain the Prime Minister declared war on Germany. I had left school and was back in London living with my grandparents at 1 Hyde Park Street, Paddington, where my Grandfather had got me a job as assistant porter, he being the head porter. We lived in the basement flat, I remember his words as we listened to Neville Chamberlain on the wireless, 鈥淲ell John will not be involved, it will be over before he is old enough鈥�. As a 14 year old having only just left school it was impossible to grasp the significance of it, you have to remember that at that time there was no TV or portable radio鈥檚 the only visual news at the cinema, and no children鈥檚 Saturday morning shows. But the Air Raid siren that screamed out only moments after his speech certainly brought home the reality of it.

So started the wartime phase of my life. Grandfather had decided we should use the wine cellar in the middle of the basement as our air raid shelter as it had a strong vaulted roof. Looking back I certainly thought that it was strong enough, but would anybody have found us under all the rubble had the building been bombed? We did not have any food or water down there to survive.

Living in the centre of London alongside Hyde Park you quickly learnt the realities of wartime Brition. School children were evacuated out of London and the open area鈥檚 of the park rapidly filled up with anti aircraft guns (200 ringed London) and barrage balloon鈥檚. Some areas were criss crossed with dug art air raid shelters, those in the area behind speaker鈥檚 corner are I believe still there just as they were sealed up with concrete slabs after the war. The first ones had just been trenches with wooden sides topped with wooden planks and earth. As the war dragged on they were rebuilt in concrete. Other areas by the Knightsbridge barracks became large deep quarries where soil had been dug up to fill sandbags. These quarries were filled after the war with bomb rubble and are now football pitches.

Later in the war as the Americans came any small space left in the park became a base Ball pitch, and the London Taxi drivers made hay as they took Americans on trips round London. The Taxis then had drop down hoods over the back seats that were put down to give a good view.

As a teenager in London that had not known anything different, you took all changes in your stride. While you went to dance lesson鈥檚 Ballroom dancing in those day鈥檚 in my case near where I worked in Acton, you cursed the people laying all over the underground station platforms as you came home, they were sheltering from the bombs. I had joined the ARP Air raid precautions as a messenger, so even the buildings destroyed became norm, just part of the statistics at our ARP post. We had a room in the basement of a house near our church in Hyde Park Crescent as our post. To while away the time between raids we had a half size billiard table. It was here that I met my first girl friend Olive, a little older than me she was a warden. Gran was very kind and invited her home for tea and made quite a fuss of her, we did the usual things in those days, went to the pictures and dancing. Olive joined the WRAF (Womans Royal Air Force) and left before I joined the Navy. I did see her on a couple of leaves, and met up by accident after the war when I found her working in the Sketchly Dry Cleaning shop in Connaught Street not far form Hyde Park St. She had married a Scotsman, they visited us once when we lived in Ewell.

My stepsisters Iris Hennickie used to travel from Kenton some evenings to join me in dancing lessons, we went to a dance club in the Edgware Road. Looking back I shudder to think where it was we went, it was a bit sleazy, the sort of place that I now know you go to pick up a prostitute, but we had no trouble and they did teach you to dance. By this time I was apprenticed as a printer to a firm in Acton, travelling to work by bus every day you noticed all the different coloured buses from other cities that were taking the place of the traditional red London bus as they were destroyed in the blitz. So many were lost that it is surprising it did not appear with the aircraft losses, i.e. 6 aircraft and 2 buses were lost in last nights raids.

In our area there had not been a lot of bomb damage. It could have been the fact that the Anti Aircraft guns in Hyde Park kept them away from us we did have lots of incendiary bombs on the roof, in the morning you found them burnt out on the roof luckily they did not burn through the Tarmac to the rafters. The house on the other corner Albion Street was not so lucky and did catch fire and we could only watch helplessly from the street all night seeing the fire moving closer to us all the time. The fire engines were all rushing past on the way to the fires in dockland, that being the night of the fire blitz on the docks. The fire was put out just in time to save us but not that house. Going to the Discovery next day I cursed all the fire hoses over the pavement that you had to lift you cycle over. That house was pulled down and the basement flooded to make an emergency water tank. We did have was obviously a small bomb hit our marble front door steps, all the windows were blown out and the heavy oak front door to pieces. I did manage to save enough of the wood to make a Tea Trolley for my Auntie Winnie Winifred Levy. I managed to leave bits of the shrapnel in the wood as a reminder of what it was. Unfortunately this was disposed of after her death because her children did not know of its origin. I got into a bit of trouble about this, as I was seen taking the photograph and reported as a spy, luckily Granddad being an ex policeman was able to it out.

Besides being in the ARP I was still in the Sea Scouts on the 鈥淒iscovery鈥� moored by Waterloo Bridge. There we senior scouts also performed Mine watching duties against the latest threat of 2200lb parachute mines being dropped into the Thames to drift on the tide to cripple the shipping in the docks. We older Scouts Rover Scouts also helped the Fire Brigade with its floating pumps, they had made emergency fire floats, putting trailer pumps into empty Thames dumb barges to help them fight the warehouse fires from the river side. These barges were often on our moorings alongside the 鈥淒iscovery鈥�.

We senior scouts were also undertaking Navel training on the Discovery, meant to give us a flying start in the Navy as CW candidates for entry as midshipman. The engine of the 鈥淒iscovery鈥� had been taken out as scrap to help the war effort. This had been a very large triple expansion steam engine. The space left by the removal of the engine and its boiler was converted to sleeping accommodation for us as trainees. Proper naval routine was followed, with us doing drills on the flat roof of Temple underground station across the embankment from the Discovery. Many did achieve entry as CW candidates I unfortunately did not; my schooling was not up to grade. I did achieve entry into the navy, which was difficult at that time, the main entry being into the army. Unfortunately I lost contact with all my chums then and I do not know if any survived the war. I did become a deep-sea Scout; we wore our scouts badge on a wrist strap and hoped that we would perhaps meet up with other scouts at sea. After the war I did try to trace my old friends through the troop records, but City of London Sea scouts had been disbanded and all records lost.

15th July 1943 I volunteered for the Royal Navy as a visual signalman, at Willesden recruiting centre. 6th September 1943 I received my travel warrant to Skegness to join HMS King Arthur. Which turned out to be Butlins Holiday camp, where we were kited out with uniform and had a full medical overhaul and inoculations followed by basic drill. Followed most importantly by me, a psychology test to try and fit round pegs into round holes. That鈥檚 where my poor schooling mainly spelling failed my wish to be a visual signalman. In their wisdom the navy choose my destiny, to be a wireman the navy鈥檚 name for a basic electrician. I was whisked off to HMS Shrapnel at Letchworth a RN unit in a factory that produced the gear that we would have to maintain on board ship and into civy billets in Hitching. It was there that we learnt our trade and found out we would be join Landing Craft. Passing out with good grades they were right I would make a good electrician. I was then posted to HMS Quebec, for a moment I thought whoopee, I was off to Canada only to be brought down to earth Scottish earth. It was another naval base camp on the shores of Loch near Inveraray.

This was where we were introduced to our landing craft. I would point out here that the Navy has a peculiar method of moving you around, together with your kitbag, hammock and tool chest, and a lot of gear. Wherever you were drafted you first took a train back to your home barracks in my case Devonport spent one night there and then back on the train to your next ship or base. From there I was drafted to HMS Mylodon in Lowestoft with the obligatory visit to Devonport. I saw a lot of England from those trains. All combined operation bases i.e. landing craft had names of prehistoric animals. HMS Mylodon was in a disused silk works on the river Waveney. By the way The Mylodon was a Great Tree Eating Sloth. Here I found that my skills were judged to best suit joining the base staff, were landing craft were repaired and maintained, in my case LCT鈥檚 and Assault craft.

It was here at Mylodon that I met Grace, girlfriend 2. A Wren Writer, who worked for the Master at Arms. We were together in that camp right up to when we were demobbed. The rest is as they say history, Grace has always said that she should not have gone out with somebody also on the base staff, it stopped her meeting other boys, and she would certainly have got many others, she was such a looker. In Lowestoft we started having Potato and Gravy pies probably the forerunner of the instant food shops like McDonalds. At this time I advanced to Leading Wireman. It was now the run up time to the Dday landings, this combined with the geographical position of Lowestoft Mylodon was in the forefront of perations. I was pleased that having gone through the London blitz I was playing evens a small part in the final stage of the war. Although my part was fairly modest it was a good feeling. VE Day celebrations came and went in Lowestoft and our duties changed to decommissioning the landing craft along the banks of the river. Following VJ Day with everyone being demobbed, Mylodon by then had become a demobb centre I drew the short straw and had to stay and decommission the base.

Finally I was demobbed on 12th July 1946 3 years in the Navy almost to the day. It was then back to civy street to complete my apprenticeship as a printer, and hopefully to find somewhere to live in the ruins of London.

If the young think that they have it hard now, they should have had a go back then.

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