大象传媒

I was only nine when war broke out.

Immediately after the prime minister had finished speaking the siren went, and I happened to be two or three doors away from home, with a friend of mine. I'd bought a choc-ice, I think cost me two pence, a rare treat in those days, my mother screamed at me from down the road to come home.
I didn't get the best from that ice cream, I can tell you.

My school had air raid shelters, they were very large diameter pipes let into the ground length ways, with 'bucket' sanitation. The noise when anyone pee'd in the bucket was beyond belief. Most of use would rather die than being laughed at using the buckets.
We would try and hold on until the 'All Clear' went.

I had no experience of going anywhere, we didn't even go into central London, we were stuck at home, and had no experience of life outside our local community, but it was an exciting time.
The whole of our school was dedicated to the war effort, collecting everything we could think of. Every scrap of paper and metal. We saved everything, otherwise, we were told, the country would be in dreadful trouble.
I remember the Nation Savings, every schools joined in. If a local school managed to save 拢5000 they could buy a Spitfire, and this really encouraged people to save.
A friend of mine had a brilliant idea, he withdrew all his savings from the scheme, and when it came to the big push, he put them back in.
The next time there was an effort he'd repeat the scheme. This made him a sort of a local hero, but not many people knew how he managed to save and invest so much, constantly.

Once a week we had a lesson in aircraft recognition. There were silhouettes of different airplanes, and we were taught to recognise a Spitfire, a Lancaster if you were lucky, and some of the German planes. I found that quite exciting.

My father was a bricklayer and enlisted as a private in the Infantry.
He was passionate about chickens, and I do remember we never went short of eggs. We could keep a dozen a week and the rest had to be handed to the Ministry of Food.
He knew nearly everything about keeping chickens. He read all the magazines about keeping chickens and I'm sure they had a better time during the war, except at the inevitable times, such as Christmas!
As a family we had a very hard time during the war. I can't remember how much he was paid, but it was very little, probably less than a couple of pounds a week. The education authorities were quite generous and paid for my school uniform.

Gas masks?
I've still got mine, but not the box. It would have been completely useless. A lot of people kept a sock in theirs so that if it ever came to be used, you could put it over the respirator and allow a slight advantage against the chemical attack.
The make-up of the filter was charcoal and asbestos as the main filter elements.
Well, work it out for yourself. A sock would have been useful, possibly on its own!
There was an enormous fear of this happening.

One day the air raid siren started but it was a bit late and as we ran for the shelter we saw the German planes coming over and drop a Molotov cocktail bomb, (a series of incendiary bombs), they landed in the playground as we ran for the shelters.
By landing in the playground they didn't cause much damage, they were quite small and just burst into flames. It gave the school caretaker something to do trying to put them out and clearing them away when they cooled down.].

We had an Anderson shelter at home, built in the back garden.
Ours was covered with earth and my father grew marrows on the top of it.
A dreadful place, very smelly and when it rained water came in along all the joins, making it even wetter.
Later on we got a Morrison shelter, a metal table that we kept in the kitchen. This allowed us to sleep indoors, thank goodness.

About 100 yards away there was a market garden and during the war a battery of anti aircraft guns were installed. What a noise. The whole of the area shook.
In a curious way they kept up morale as we thought at least we were striking back.
Of course I found out later the best effect of the guns was to keep the bombers flying high, so they would have trouble identifying and hitting their targets.
Occasionally the guns did get lucky and hit a plane, but I don鈥檛 remember that happening anywhere near us.

Every day on our way to school we looked in the gutter for pieces of shrapnel, which we could sell for two pence a bag to the ARP wardens.
The great find I had was a nose cone off a shell, if you found one of those there would be no problem selling it at all.
I think there were more people killed from un-explode bombs than actual bombs landing.
It was always risky trying to retrieve saleable shrapnel.

The most significant problem in the East End was the V1's and 2's, that came during 1944.
These things were quite terrifying and had an instantly recognisable sound, or more especially the sudden lack of sound.
We were in our Morrison shelter, and I wasn't particularly worried when I heard one fly over. We heard the engine stop and counted to ten through the silence. It landed two or three hundred yards down the road on the house of friends of ours. They were all killed. That was the worst incident, apart from the V1 on the local Standard factory where hundred were killed.
Somehow the V2's were less frightening than the V1's. I remember a V2 land, a tremendous plume of smoke and an explosion. Somehow you became very detached from all the devastation.

We were all given an identity card. The strange thing is practically everyone who had a card can still remember the number. I can, very strange.

I remember when the docks were destroyed there was such a lot of burnt paper floating through the air and the smell of burning, that strange smell of destruction mixed with wet plaster. All those smells you'd never forget.

I remember the Battle Of Britain and the incessant noise of planes. I presumed there was a German plane being chased by a Spitfire. They were going flat out and buzzed right above the shelters we were in. My mother wouldn't allow me to go and look but we did hear them, I thought it was fantastic, the noise and the excitement.

D-Day for a nine-year old was very exciting, there were tanks and lorries everywhere. An absolute joy to see those wonderful armoured vehicles coming rumbling down the road, presumably to the local railway station. There was an enormous amount of planes going over.
All the children and their teachers were being evacuated, and so were pregnant mothers. This meant total disruption and hopefully no school, at least for the time being.

The War!
Well I was nine, it was so exciting, and it was later that I found out the true cost.
I regret, now, being so enthusiastic, but that was then.

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