大象传媒

MACHINE GUNNED IN CROYDON

By Jeremy Wellesley-Baldwin

The Summer of 1940 was notably hot and sunny. The Walls ice-cream man was busy pedalling his "Stop Me and Buy One" tricycle round the avenues and lanes although his wares were not quite what they had been. Ice Cream had already become the pale, sweet lard the British public were to come to know and love for the next 30 years. The alternative thirst quencher was the Water Ice. It was reborn as the Iced Lolly during the late 1950s.

The Fairfield Halls are a famous venue for Concerts and Bandshows. But their site was a green field in 1940, along the length of Barclay Road to the narrow wooden bridge at the end past Chatsworth Road with its post box. You could stop in the middle of the wooden bridge and peer down through the holes in the planking at the Brighton trains rushing below from London Bridge and East Croydon. If you crossed the bridge and turned left toward the Station, you could buy bananas at the little fruit shop by the path.

The taste of a banana was one of the most important signs of War that I remember. I was just old enough to appreciate the banana when it suddenly vanished, not to reappear for nearly 12 years. The makers of the television series hit the nail precisely on the head with their title: "No Bananas" about war time experiences.

The other sign of war etched into my soul will remain for the rest of my life: it was The Siren. The Air Raid Warning - quite unlike the low moaning noise we have heard from Baghdad. It was more a wailing screech to curdle the blood. War films which include the sound of the siren, raise the hairs on the back of my neck and tingle the spine in the way no other sound can. My wife experiences the same unpleasant sensations. We both had to leave our homes in childhood: a few tiles from the roof were enough to cause my family to leave Croydon, my wife's parents lost their home and business in Portsmouth. Complete destruction leaving only the family cat marooned miraculously atop the towering lonely pinnacle of the 4 story high chimney. Brave and kindly fire officers prevented my father-in-law-to-be from sacrificing his life in an attempt to save the animal which they fetched down with a mechanical ladder.

Most nights from Easter 1940 were spent in the cellar on hastily constructed bunk beds. But visitations by enemy aircraft during the day would find my grandmother and I on the doorstep performing a strange ritual as the "All Clear" sounded. Together we would genuflect deeply and gratefully in time to the pitch of the dying wail. On one occasion my grandmother blamed Adolf Hitler, noisily and expletively, for the loss of the supper sausages. They had smoked into inedible carbon because she had rushed me to the cellar in response to the siren and forgotten to turn out the gas.

One bright sunny day in June 1940 my grandmother and I were returning from visiting the Post Box in Chatsworth Road. We had just turned the corner into Barclay Road and were watching the cows grazing in the buttercup-filled field. I was leaning away from her, pulling on my reins as I stared across to the field. This was purely to see how far I could go before being pulled back:
"Stop pulling like at once Jeremy!": my grandmother was a retired schoolmistress. Our country walk was ended abruptly as a low, loud murmur filled the air. The horrid sound swelled and rose rapidly in pitch until the sound obliterated all other sensation. It echoed and re-echoed from the line of houses along the road. Oddly, I noted, the cows ignored it completely. The first two or three sirens must have shocked them but now they took its sound for granted.

"Quickly, now. Come on we must get home at once!", said Nanna. And we took to our heels for the fifty or so yards to our front door. Before we went in I noticed the Walls Ice Cream tricycle just entering the road 200 yards or so in front. In we went and down to the cellar where Nanna reached into a box to find a book for us to read.

It was a sign of her stalwart strength that Nanna went on reading during the raid. There were a few crumps and booms. The ground shook slightly. Perhaps it was the airport, perhaps something more distant, we heard nothing for some time until the welcome sound of the high pitched continuous note of the All Clear funnelled its way down to the shelter of our cellar.
"Come On Jeremy. We'll do the All Clear", said my Nanna and we made our way toward the front door. She never considered phoning Grandpapa at his office in London twelve miles away nor my mother in her job at the Library in town.

We climbed the cellar stairs and, as we opened the door to reach the hall and make our way to the front door, there came a frantic hammering. Someone was trying to come in.
"Whoever can that be?" said Nanna and let go my hand. She opened the door and in fell our ice-cream man, white faced and bleeding. His smart blue and white apron was dangling and his trousers were torn and muddy. I scarcely recognised him without his smart blue peaked cap.
"Oh Madam, I've been shot! Aeroplane. I've been machine gunned by the enemy. I'm so sorry to ---- Oh Madam I ------- Oh Sorry! -- ". He tripped and fell.
"Come on now. Sit down here." Nanna pulled the hall chair away from the telephone table. He stood up. Let out a groan and sat with a bump on the chair.
"Let me look at you. Where does it hurt?" Nanna became efficient. She told me to stay with the ice-cream man and went off saying she would find some iodine and bandages. I was too small to do much else so I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. I felt very upset at the commotion and at seeing a familiar figure in such a state.

My Nanna's ministering to the unfortunate Walls employee was efficient. Perhaps that's not too unexpected: she had brought up my mother and her three brothers. Happily the ice cream man's life was not in danger. His wounds were all self inflicted by his precipitous and undignified leap into the (now non-existent) ditch alongside the fair fields of pasture and cows. But this was not true of his tricycle and its precious content. His wounds iodined, patched and plastered, the ice-cream man went out to inspect his vehicle attended by his nurse and potential young customer.

We found the tricycle across the road about fifty yards in the direction of the town. It was on its side but a small knot of people had gathered and two men helped him to get it back on its feet. One tyre was flat, there was a little mud and grass stuck to its side. But the glaring damage had everyone present gasping in horror. Four large holes, each bigger than a penny (and they used to be quite large) pierced the van. They can only have been bullets because each entry hole was matched by another to match it where the round had sped on its way. Had they been explosive the van would certainly not have been on its feet again.

Inspecting the inside of the coolbox the ice-cream man found that most of his stock was undamaged. Big heartedly he handed round vanillas and water ices to all present. But suddenly he seemed upset and a little drunk. He grabbed at his van and my Nanna took charge:
"You have had a bad shock." She said. "You must come back in and I'll make some tea. We can telephone Walls" she added. The ice-cream man could only nod. He grabbed the steering bar of his tricycle and wheeled it, scraping noisily, across to the pavement. He came in and sat down gratefully while I pestered him about how the water ices were made.

Nanna duly made some tea which the ice-cream man gratefully drank. She telephoned his employers who replied that they would send round a van for him and his tricycle. In due course my Nanna received a very nice letter from the Manager and an invitation to telephone for a box of ice cream and water ices.

It don't remember the box nor when we enjoyed it. But that was the last we saw of any Walls ice-cream tricycles until the war had ended. The ice-cream man must have been called up.

Not long after that experience a bomb in the next road dislodged tiles from our roof and Grandpapa made arrangements to move the whole family away from London.

But that was not the end of my experiences of being machine gunned. It happened to my mother and me when she was foolish enough to try and take me for a seaside holiday in 1943. We trekked all the way to Chard in Somerset to stay at a farm for a fortnight. One day we spent by the sea at Seaton where she rushed me into the ladies' loo as an enemy aircraft descended towards us all on the beach - machine gun rat-tatting away. But that's another story.

And my wife experienced much the same at her home in Southsea, Hampshire. We are a generation who has experienced war at home and know just how searing and catastrophic it can be.

1621 ww.

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(c)This article is the property of Jeremy Wellesley-Baldwin of Emsworth, Hampshire, G.B.

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