大象传媒

In 1939 my family lived in Grimsby House, East Hill Estate, Wandsworth, London. I was six and a half years old at the outbreak of the 2nd.WW and was a patient in the Tite Street Children's Hospital to have my tonsils removed.

On the way home from the hospital, my parents called into the housing estate office to collect my gasmask. There was no way that they were ever going to put that mask on me, it was too much like the mask in the hospital. My sister (3 years old)was given a Mickey Mouse (MM) mask and of course jealousy kicked in because I also wanted a MM mask.

The next memory I have of the war was when the Blitz began, at this time we lived in a ground floor appartment. The air raid shelter at the time was a fortified flat in the middle of the block on the ground floor. Therefore, we stayed in our own ground floor flat at night. One night my sister and I were in the same bed when a landmine exploded some 200 yards away. The blast wave caused the bedroom windows to be blown in. When things had settled down after the explosion I put my hand under the pillow between myself and my sister and pulled out a large portion of the window pane. We never understood how this large piece of glass could have passed between my sister and myself without beheading one of us.

My parents were so concerned with near miss of a serious injury that they arranged for my sister and I to be sent to my father's sister who lived in Hedge End, Nr. Southampton. Of course as we now know the Germans began bombing Southampton. Therefore my parents decided that we should return home to Wandsworth.

Whilst I was evacuated, the school I had attended in London plus all the teachers were evacuated therefore upon my return I had to enrol in a new school.

During the time I was in Hedge End my parents had moved to a larger flat on the 3rd. floor of the flats (extra bedroom for my sister). So at night we slept in the fortified flat on the ground floor. This flat was used by all the residents from the upper floors in the block. It was impossible not to hear the noises of the air raids, the bombs falling, the cracks from the AA guns on the Common, the wang wang from the mobile gun running up and down the nearby railway line (cross London rail link) etc. etc. After the "All Clear" siren in the mornings all the children poured out of the shelters in search of shrapnel, sometimes this shrapnel was still very hot to the touch.

Some time during 1941 my family moved house (10 mile away) in Battersea, again a new school. At this school I later sat the 11 plus exam (I don't think it was called this at that time). Before the results of the examination were known the Doodlebug (V1 weapon) attacks had begun on London and I was evacuated to Dean near Bolton, Lancashire. The teachers at the new school did not trust our school records and placed us in the bottom class with the slower local children.

After three months, because of the treatment my sister and I received, we returned to london to yet another new house and new school some 10 miles away from the previous locality.

Still the results of the eleven plus hadn't caught up with me and I enrolled in an elementary school. One morning in the park I met up with an old friend, he informed me that my name was on the register of the local "Central School" and was being called twice each day.

Eventually I was transferred to Battersea Central School, but this was February and the class was half way through the year's syllabus. The was little chance that I could catch up especially with the French language. Therefore, I repeated the first year when the remainder of the class moved onto the second year. At the end of this next year the schoiol decided to move me forward to the third year technical. Half way through the third year my father decided that I was not progressing well enough to remain at school and should begin to earn my living in the world. Later in life I discovered that I was/am slightly dislexic.

Returning to my move back to Battersea from Dean. Just as we arrived home the V2 rocket attacks on London began. The first you knew of a rocket attack (no sirens) was the sound of the explosion followed shortly afterwards by the sound of it travelling through the air (sound of the rocket motor). On one occasion a rocket fell on the local church, an underground passage was exposed. This passage led to an ancient armory where swords, pikes, crossbows etc were stored. Of course the children pilage this armoury before the police realised what was going on. I believe the police recovered most of these ancient weapons, but of course there wasn't an inventory so it's not certain.

It was at this time that the Cross London Rail Link was busy moving troops to the south of England in preparation for the invasion of Europe (Normandy). There were many US troop trains and we used to stand on a road below a railbridge and the Americans used to toss us candy and chewing gum, which was much appreciated as it was almost mpossible to obtain sweets in the shops.

Finally in 1950 at the age of 17 years I decided to enrol as a Royal Air Force (RAF) Aircraft Apprentice, I needed a moral reference from my last my last school. The head master of Battersea central School refused give me this document because I had left school before the age of sixteen. However, I did manage to achieve to get an Apprenticeship with the RAF. Durintg my service with the RAF I studied further at local night schools and gained additional qualifications. Eventually when I retired I held the position of Senior Civilian Telecommunications Engineer with NATO.

So although WW2 seriously affected my education I eventually achieved a good technical education

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