大象传媒

MY WARTIME LONDON by Michael Moriarty, FCIJ

My memories of wartime London begin when I was about eight years old. My father had fought in the 1914-1918 war in the trenches in France and although he was not too old to join up for WWII, he was in an essential job in the City. Nevertheless, he spent all his spare time in uniform as a Staff Sergeant in the Home Guard in Hampstead, north London where we lived.
Our house was a four-storey, detached house in Swiss Cottage and my mother did her bit for the war effort by letting out all the rooms not occupied by the family to civil servants working for the Home Office and the War Department. One of those was my sister, Maria who, at eighteen was a secretary in the War Department, (Navy).
Maria and I shared a bedroom and being so young, I was always in bed first and most evenings was fast asleep before my big sister came to bed. Except one evening when I had secreted a four-inch rubber spider just under her pillow on top of her nightie.
Each night during the Blitz, my mother insisted on taking my young brother John down into Swiss Cottage Underground Station as soon as any siren went off. Maria refused point blank to leave her bed. She said that it was essential she was rested and fully awake in order to do her job and going to the Underground would mean she wouldn鈥檛 sleep and she would be no good for work the next day.
鈥淚f a bomb gets me, I won鈥檛 be able to work anyway, so I am staying put.鈥� Because my big sister was a bit of a heroine to me, I also refused to leave home but
we got a bit of a scare one morning when we woke up to find glass all over the floor and our bedclothes. It appeared that a 500lb bomb had dropped about 300 yards from our house. It dislodged one brick from our chimney and blew out one window 鈥� our bedroom window and we had slept right through it.
I used to spend most afternoons up on the roof of our house after school watching the dog-fights over London between our Hurricanes and Spitfires and the German Heinkles, Dorniers and Me109s. Later, of course, I remember watching with some trepidation, the V1s chug-chugging overhead. I remember being relieved when they passed by without going silent.
It was a mystery to me why, having gone through the worst of the Blitz, my parents packed John and me off to Hemel Hempstead as evacuees in 1944 when I was nine and John just six. My one wartime memory of that period was of being in the park with a group of children from my class on the way home from school when one of the last of the V1s came over the park and being the oldest and so worldly and war wise, I made everyone lie down until the flying bomb had passed.
We were not happy being separated from our parents and in December, 1944, we returned to Swiss Cottage to find that my parents had bought a much larger house in Eton Avenue in order to accommodate the growing business of looking after civil servants. My mother was a marvellous cook and this was the basis of her success in running a private hotel.
There were always parties in our huge reception rooms. My sister, an accomplished pianist, would provide wonderful swing and jazz music on our baby grand piano. Civil servants, my father鈥檚 Home Guard buddies and family friends always seemed to fill the place.
But it was VE-Day that I remember best. Right from early that lovely May day, there was an infectious air of excitement and happiness. My mother and father were busy from very early on, baking cakes, preparing what seemed to me like mountains of food and other goodies for the celebrations that evening. I knew that central London would be the place to see the excitement at its best so, leaving the industry of my home, I set off to Primrose Hill where there was an ack-ack battery, to talk to the sergeant in charge. We had often talked to the soldiers there when we were out playing with my school friends and I had got to know the sergeant. But he wasn鈥檛 there that morning so I continued down the hill to Regent鈥檚 Park and then down Regent Street, heading for Piccadilly Circus. Now in Regent Street there was a Black and White milk bar where you could get waffles with syrup. After this feast, I mingled with the service men and women who were celebrating and dancing around Eros.
I remember hearing someone say that Buckingham Palace would be the place to be that afternoon, so I made my way down The Mall and pushed my way through the crowds to the palace railings.
Great cheers greeted the King and Queen with the two princesses when they came out onto the balcony but I couldn鈥檛 see things too well since I was unable to push my way right up to the railings. So I went back to the wedding cake-like statue that forms the round-about in front of the palace and climbed up, seating myself on
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the shoulders of the lady that faces the palace. I must have spent about two hours there, watching the comings and goings on the balcony of the palace, including seeing Mr Churchill there with the royal family.
Nobody told me off, a 10-year-old sitting high up watching all the jollity.
Eventually, hunger made me start for home. I got to Primrose Hill just as it was getting dark and the good sergeant had added his searchlight to the many that were waving across the sky across London. He let me operate the huge wheel that made the light to play up towards the stars.
I do not remember the journey home from Primrose Hill but when I did arrive home I walked back into a wonderful, celebration party, my sister in full flow on the piano, people dancing, eating and drinking and nobody seemed to have noticed I had been gone all day.
Happy daze!

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