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My War at School and at Home

I was 5 when war was declared, it was a hot Sunday, the brown velvet curtains were drawn in the back room and I was running in and out, pushing through the curtains. My father had been digging a shelter at the bottom of the garden, it must have been very hard work, it was solid London clay. When the announcement came over the radio both my parents went in to listen, and I was told to stop running in and out. After the announcement the siren went, it was just a test I suppose. In the digging of the shelter, a land drainage pipe had been revealed, and some time later I had taken a hammer to it, unbeknown to my father. When it rained next time the shelter became flooded, my father was cross! He did try to pump it out but the hand pump made little impact and the task was finally abandoned and the shelter filled in. As an interim measure, my father took off some of the doors in the house and made a shelter with them in the back room. I think this must have been during the early part of the war, before the battle of Britain. I remember one night we were all lying on the floor under the doors, I was not sleeping and my father read to me from the Russian Bible and then translated it. I was enthralled by the sound of the strange language although I don't remember what he read. I now sometimes wonder if perhaps, it was for his benefit as much as mine.

Although I can’t remember exactly when, it must have been early 1940, the school was shut and the playground dug up to construct shelters. During this time local children would congregate in our house and the teacher would come round and give some lessons. Latter on, after the shelter was finished, we would all troupe down into the shelter and sit in long lines, on hard benches in the gloom and sing songs, I remember the air always had a damp smell. I understand that the shelter is still there although the entrances are all covered over.

Aunty Brown, not a real aunt but our next-door neighbour, had an Anderson shelter installed and early on we used it as well. During the battle of Britain I would try and watch, standing at the entrance to the shelter, I could hear the sound of the aircraft guns and see the vapour trails.

We were given the choice of shelters, and we chose to have the kitchen made into a blast proof room. Blast proofing meant having large walls constructed very close to each of the windows, the back door and the front door. The walls were constructed from large hollow concrete blocks filled with sand. The windows were covered with netting, which was varnished in place. My Father built bunk beds for my brother and my self but my parents slept on the floor.

When my brother started at Burnt Ash in 1941, he was only 4, and of course I had to take him to school. My memory is of a little boy dressed in a blue siren suit standing limp, as I tried to remove the suit. Inevitably I would be late, but my teacher did not think too much of my excuse, she would say ' just get up earlier'. It must have been about a mile to school, but during the war they opened a short cut through the water board field. This cut must have reduced the journey by about a third. If the siren went while we were on the way to school we were told to either run home or to school which ever was the nearest. I don’t remember the siren ever going during the journey.

Sometime early in the war I went to a birthday party at one of my friends, and we had banana sandwiches, when I told my mother she asked my friends mother where the bananas came from, and was told it they were made from Swede with Banana flavouring.
During a raid on Bromley on the 16/17th April 1941, I remember laying awake in my bunk and seeing the house sway when a land mine fell near us, it shattered the back room windows and shook all the soot from the chimney. Even Sandy the dog looked frightened, he used to sleep under the sink. The next morning we were moved out because of a parachute mine hanging on a tree in the local cemetery. I think it only lasted a day. We were moved out again later in the war because of an unexploded bomb at the bottom of the garden. In this case we went to stay with friends for several days, eventually the army came and dug it out.

During the war paper was short and so most of our school exercise books were of rather poor quality. The Head Master still had some pre-war books left and so when you needed a new book you had to go to him. If your work was very good you got a pre-war book, I never did.

During the latter part of the war, maybe January 1943, I was sitting in the kitchen having lunch, when I heard aircraft coming, I looked out of the window and saw a German fighter passing over next door at roof top height. I could sea the pilot in his helmet he was so close. There had been no warning. When I got back to school every body had seen the fighters one boy said that he had nearly been killed by the machine gun fire, but the teacher said ‘either you were killed or you were not killed you could not be nearly killed’ I think the comment was lost on the class. When my father got home that night, he said that the school at the back of his works had been hit with a lot of children killed. [On 20th January 1943, in a lunchtime raid by German fighters on London, they hit Sandhurst School killing 6 teachers and 38 children.]

Some of my friends had been evacuated at the beginning of the war, but my parents declined the opportunity. But come the V1’s I was packed off to live with my Aunt in Liverpool. It may not have been until the end of August that I went, because I remember seeing the V1’s coming over and watching fighters chasing them. The nearest V1 to us passed over our house and landed about half a mile north of us on the Downham Estate. I was in the garden one lunchtime and had seen the doodlebug coming, it appeared to be heading straight for us, and then the engine cut out. I ran in to the kitchen and we crouched under the table, it seemed an age before we heard the swish as it passed overhead and then seconds later the explosion.

I went to school in Liverpool until Christmas 1944 when my mother came to take us home, she was appalled by my accent.

The V2’s just landed — no warning, but I can remember being in class and the teacher asking me to pay attention and I said that I could hear the missile coming. What I could hear was the sonic boom as it passed over. By March it was all over.

The Bromley Borough Council issued an Official Programme of Local Arrangements. VE day+1 was a Bank Holiday and we built a bonfire in the road and had a street party and although I don’t remember any of the celebrations, I do have the photograph of the street party.

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