大象传媒

Earliest memory 鈥� our evacuee. Excitement at the thought of having a girl! Standing in the front garden waiting for her to arrive. A taxi pulls up with 2 girls and 1 boy. A small boy gets out, dressed for winter, with a small suitcase, looking absolutely terrified. The girls were taken to a neighbours a few doors away. I am devastated. Derek stayed with us for about six weeks before his parents came to take him home; (no bombs in the east end of London during that time and they missed him terribly.) My mother was so kind to Derek that I actually felt jealous and I wanted nothing to do with him. As the weather in the first weeks of the war was hot mum stripped Derek of his winter wear and he ran around with us wearing shorts and sandals, much to the horror of his parents when they came to visit him at the end of two weeks and saw his tanned face, arms, chest and legs and lack of clothes!

My father was in the A.R.P. and therefore rarely with us during air-raids. In the early months we spent many hours in the Anderson shelter. Digging the hole and putting up the corrugated iron roof was done by the men of the families helping each other, a thankless task as our soil was clay. Eventually we got too blas茅 to use the shelter except when planes were imminent. Cold, damp and comfortless.

My twin brother Ian inevitably had more freedom than I did and was always getting into mischief. Imagine my father鈥檚 horror following an incendiary raid in the road next to ours, when he came off duty, to discover Ian had been out scouting the road for souvenirs and brought home two unexploded incendiary bombs, together with a load of shrapnel. He buried them deeply under our Bramley apple tree. When, in 1967, he sold the house he informed the new owner of their whereabouts, just to be on the safe side!

Ian and his friend Peter Lucas, exploring the countryside on their bicycles, discovered an ammunition dump between Foxhall Road and Bell Lane which was guarded during the day but not in the evenings or at night. On a few occasions they climbed over the barbed wire and helped themselves to cartridges which they duly sold to their school friends for twopence each! He told me that a boy at school had clamped a cartridge in his father鈥檚 vice and successfully fired the bullet by hammering a nail into the end of the cartridge; thereby losing one of his fingers! Another luck escape came when Ian and Peter discovered an unexploded flare following another raid, and they took it into the middle of the playing fields where Sidegate Lane School now stands. To ignite the flare they wedged a birthday cake candle into the end, lit it and retired a 鈥渟afe鈥� distance. The first time it did not go off, so they returned and re-lit the candle, and ran for it. The explosion and brilliant light that resulted nearly blinded them but by the time the police arrived they were home and watching it from the bedroom window!

The American Air Force arrived, I think, in 1942 and our family was soon visited by an American bombardier, Lt. Nick Sallese, who was a friend of my cousin in New York who gave him our address in case he was posted to this area. In fact he was stationed at Mendlesham. The highlight of my brother鈥檚 life, when we got to know Nick well and the crew of his Flying Fortress Lily the Lemon, was being smuggled on to the base where he stayed with them in their Nissen hut, dressed in a uniform, eating breakfasts of bacon and eggs, covered with maple syrup and pancakes, even seeing their plane which he says was badly damaged and being repaired. He says there was hardly any security on the base and no one questioned him.

Ian told me that the crews managed to purchase in London 鈥渃hain 鈥攎ail鈥� and they used it to line the seats and backs of their chairs for extra protection from bullets. However, news of this practice leaked to their Commanding Officer who ordered the planes to be stripped because the weight of the chain-mail, added to the full complement of bombs made it difficult for the fortresses to take off!

As a family we had a close shave one winter evening. The siren had gone, and we were in our sitting room when we heard a German bomber almost overhead (we knew the sounds of 鈥渙ur鈥� and 鈥渢heir鈥� planes) and my mother grabbed us, pushing us into a corner behind an armchair with herself on top. Seconds later we heard the whine of two bombs followed by two explosions very close, and then, in the distance, more explosions. In daylight next morning, we discovered two craters in the Sidegate Lane playing fields, one of which was only a few yards from the other side of our back garden fence. We found out later that the plane had dropped a stick of bombs, all of which had fallen on open ground 鈥� no damage, no casualties.

There were many convoys on the Valley / Colchester roads in those days and on one occasion my brother was cycling furiously in the slip stream of the last vehicle, but he was defeated by the slope up to the bridge over the railway line, by which time the convoy was some yards ahead. Suddenly, a Dornier aircraft swooped over his head and opened fire on the convoy. His aim was bad, and Ian saw the bullets spraying into the grass verge on either side of the convoy, and again no damage to lorries or houses!

My mother invited Nick and his crew, together with their Commanding Officer, (although Nick didn鈥檛 know this at the time) to spend Christmas Day with us. (We had 5 chickens and 1 cockerel fattened up for the feast). A couple of days before hand Nick arrived with the firm intention of finding us a Christmas tree. There were none in the shops and we had no decorations. He borrowed my father鈥檚 bike, and together with my brother and myself we cycled to Rushmere Heath where we found a small, fenced enclosure containing a number of pine trees. Nick climbed over the fence, and pulled up a small tree which he tied to the cross bar of the bike. On the way past the Golf Club we were spotted by the Steward who shouted to Nick to stop, which he did. He sent us home however. He told us afterwards that when the Steward heard the story he said 鈥淚鈥檒l just forget about this, get on with it.鈥� The tree was planted in a pot and placed on a table in the bay window of our sitting room, but what to do for decorations?

I came up with cotton wool for 鈥渟now鈥�, used shiny pieces of jewellery, and Nick provided a small box of sweets (emergency rations for taking on their flights). These I split into small parcels tied with ribbon. The piece-de-resistance, however, was silver glitter strips which Nock produced. We didn鈥檛 know at the time that these thin glittering ribbons were the new invention for baffling radar and therefore highly secret. Imagine his horror when the Major arrived on Christmas Day. He looked at the tree and then at Nick and said 鈥淕reat decorations.鈥� A happy day for all!

A year ago, my husband Ray and I flew to the US to spend two weeks with Nick and his wife, in the Adirondack Mountains. He is 84 and I am now 76. What a time we had reminiscing! Nick flew 35 missions over Germany. He said, having a real home to visit and spend time, often on his own (he had his own key), kept him sane. Nick and his wife became friends with their neighbours, both German. The war was not discussed initially, but eventually the four of them came round to talking of the past and the missions Nick had flown. It turned out that one of his flights was diverted to a small town near the Rhine where Mrs Happe lived as a child and she remembered the one big raid there and Nick recalled the bombs he had dropped. She was very upset for a while and shed quite a few tears, but their friendship survived.

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