大象传媒

98 BRIGHTON ROAD
In 1939 my family lived in number 98 Brighton Road, Sutton then part of Surrey. We were ordinary middle class of the period - father in his 40鈥檚 having served as a volunteer 1914-1919, London Scottish TA Regt., Sth Staffordshire Regt., and RFC/ RAF Pilot, mother also 40鈥檚 housewife, my brother, aged 19, a Staff Trainee with Imperial Airways and myself aged 8. On the declaration of War my father was to have rejoined the RAF as an Pilot instructor, but he contracted septicaemia, lost his medical category, and had to settle for the ARP, transferring later to the Home Guard (OC 55 Coy East Surrey鈥檚, Mitcham.). My brother immediately volunteered for the RAF as a Pilot- (Father said, 鈥業f your going to get killed better to do it yourself and not in another Aircrew category.鈥�). As there were too many volunteers for Pilot, and mindful of Dad鈥檚 warning my brother elected to take a ground trade awaiting call forward for Pilot training. He duly disappeared on his Norton motor bike for RAF Compton Basset to train as a Wireless Op ( Ground ) subsequently sailing in 1940 for Egypt via the Cape, served in all the Desert campaigns until he was transferred to British Airways to restart civil air transport in the Middle East- we did not see him again until 1946.

The Brighton road was, in 1939, still used as one of the main coast roads and there was a good London Transport bus service with a stop outside our house, opposite Egmont Road. The 88 bus ran from Acton Green to Belmont, the 164 Morden to Banstead and the Green Line single deckers also passed from Victoria to Reigate. The Postman pushed his bike from Sutton PO; United Dairies delivered the milk by horse drawn wagon, the Rag and Bone man toured around from time to time shouting his inexplicable cry and trying to get some speed out of his scrawny horse. For me the days were months long and we owned a 1937 Riley Adelphi.

98 Brighton Road was one of a line of some 6 or 7 four-storey Victorian houses, each of which had long formal gardens with lawns, some high trees, loaded fruit trees and orderly vegetable patches. The gardens of numbers 94 - 100 ended at a fenced access pathway bordering Sutton Bowling Green, a well established Club, often used for competitions; small boys making any noise in their gardens were soon hushed into silence. Beyond the Club were the Southern Railway electrified tracks to and from Epsom Downs - electrified, although, during Derby week, race day specials were headed by an exciting assortment of steam locomotives. Most of the Victorian houses were still occupied by single families, some still with Grandma in charge. Our particular house had been split into two flats plus a tiny top apartment. We occupied the bottom flat and most of the garden, although I had free range over the total area. We also inherited the coal fired central heating furnace which heated the whole house. Father was the stoker, saying that he was fully qualified as he had driven a steam engine in the 1924 General Strike! Coal for the furnace was delivered by a wagon hauled by an immaculate Shire horse, the bags of coal carried in by leather helmeted coal men and tipped down into the cellar coal store.

The houses on the road coming up from Sutton were mostly large and hidden behind dense evergreen hedges. One of these in particular was on the southern corner of the junction of Devonshire Avenue and Brighton Road and it was special because it had a separate Lodge House facing onto the main road. The Declaration of War triggered off a flurry of Civil Defence projects including the construction of a large public air raid shelter on the corner of Ventnor Road, opposite Devonshire Avenue. The workers shared their tea with me in chipped enamel mugs made with thick condensed milk and spoonfuls of sugar. My Mother was not too impressed, saying -鈥楾hese chaps can鈥檛 afford to be giving you their tea.鈥� Although I knew it came from the Council or something like that.

At the same time ARP Wardens were being recruited and their first post was set up in the nearby Sutton Hard Courts Tennis Club. A short time later an ARP control post was built underground on the island at the road junction by the Club and Downsway. One of my most poignant memories of those first months of the War was the sight of a lorry fully laden with Walls 鈥� Stop Me and Buy One 鈥� tricycles being driven away from the Walls depot in lower Sutton - no more ice cream or those lovely 1d, orange flavoured, ice lollies!

The War gathered momentum and we began to see shell shocked soldiers in their bright blue uniforms and red ties from the Hospital requisitioned by the Army near Belmont railway station. Then came the daylight raids and the Battle of Britain. I watched the vapour trails with my father and soon came to know the sound of the German bombers鈥� desynchronised engines and ME109 slow cannon fire as opposed to the crisp sound of the RAF Merlins and rapid firing 303 Browning machine guns. One bright sunny morning I was in the garden when, without warning, three ME109鈥檚 with yellow noses roared low over our house in line abreast heading towards London. I can see them now but don鈥檛 remember being scared just, 鈥榃ow did you see them!鈥�

As the German attacks turned to the Cities and the night Blitz started we had our first damage. Several of the windows at the back of the house were smashed when a wing of the Belmont Military Hospital was bombed. By this time we had a Morrison shelter in our cellar dining room where we would retire to when the sirens went. (Even now in my 70鈥檚 the sound of sirens still make the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up). From our shelter we would listen to the throbbing engine notes overhead, hear the occasional whistle and crump of a bomb or the unexpected, no warning, arrival of a landmine. More frightening, however, was the sudden outburst of anti-aircraft fire from the mobile Bofors guns that roamed the streets loosing off whenever they had a target. These light guns were backed up by a steam hauled heavy AA gun that also loosed off with even more noise from the railway line. Came the morning and I would start an intensive search in the garden for shrapnel. The larger the better and shell nose cones were very tradable at school. Father would check the roof for smashed slates.

By this time I was at school in Ashtead, where we were also bombed, but I maintained that Hitler knew when I was going to be at home because I was always there whenever there was any activity. We survived the night Blitz and there had been a lull in hostile activities. The skies were busy day and night with RAF and later with USAAF aircraft as well. Some days we would watch the vapour trails of the Fortresses and Liberators forming up for another daylight raid. One day a friend and I were watching a flight of P38 Lightnings, twin engined, twin boomed, USAAF fighters. The aircraft were fairly low and heading South and, as we watched, one machine faltered and fell out of the formation, descending quickly towards Belmont. Very shortly there was an explosion and a black pillar of smoke billowed up. Reacting to the normal youthful wish to gawp at accidents, we leapt on our bikes and rode frantically towards the smoke, arriving before anyone of authority could cordon off the area. The aircraft had crashed on the edge of the Belmont Downs thus missing the populated areas. A pall of grey smoke hung over the whole site especially in the shrubby undergrowth, patches of fuel still burnt, pieces of silver metal and pipes intermixed with flight instruments and scorched rubber were strewn about. As we drew close to the impact point shreds of clothing hung in the bushes and I came face to face with violent death for the first time in my life. We rode away in a daze, the smell of the crash clung to me for a long time afterwards. At 13 I had learnt that War was no game after all.

During the night there would be the steady drone of the RAF bombers outbound. As we had not been on the receiving end for some time my Mother did not always close the heavy wooden shutters over her bedroom window. She was therefore surprised to be woken one night to see what she took to be an aircraft on fire followed by an explosion. At breakfast, she said,鈥� Some of our poor lads must have come down last night鈥� but later in the day father was detailed to search with his Home Guard Coy for gyros in the wreckage of German pilot-less bombs. That night we fortunately closed the window shutters and slept in the Morrison. Early in the morning there was a colossal explosion - our shutters crashed open, the Victorian ornate ceilings all disintegrated and fell down on the first floor, every window was broken. We were choked by dust - but unhurt. Mother had been complaining of back pains - the shock of the explosion had cured those. Later the duty Warden on top the Hard Courts post told us that he had heard the V1 engine cut and then was aware of a whistling sound as it glided towards him - he ducked and it flashed low over him down Egmont Road and on towards our house - peering from his flimsy shelter he estimated it to have missed our roof by some ten feet and then stalled finally on to a house beside the railway line. The house was totally destroyed and a serving RAF Squadron Leaders鈥� wife and young daughter were killed.

News of losses, injuries and friends captured were often talked about. The only son of the family in the flat above us had joined the Army at the same time as my brother joined the Air Force. Sadly, during the Desert campaign in 1942, the dreaded telegram came to 98 informing them that their son had been killed in action with his gun Battery. There was a strange feeling in the house after that - they seemed to resent the fact that their son had been killed but my brother had survived the same campaign. The family moved soon after that and we never saw them again.

Other tragedies affected the neighbourhood but to a new set of neighbours. Any unoccupied houses in the area, including some in Egmont Road, were requisitioned to house Canadian troops stationed in the area. They were a friendly crowd and the children around soon got to know them. Then they went away for a time, only to return, but not all of them- they had been to Dieppe. When they finally moved to the South for D Day, I cycled beside their Bren gun carriers as they drove up over Belmont Downs. The houses, when returned to the owners had been stripped of anything that could be burnt - panelling, banisters, even some doors and furniture. There was some grumbling about their behaviour from the house owners - but winter in the War was cold, even for a Canadian.

Amongst these tragedies there were still incidents to laugh at. As well as the Canadians billeted on us there were refugees who had escaped from Europe, one of whom was a wonderfully bohemian pianist named (I think) Marcel deHayes? He had somehow arrived from France to live in the Lodge House on the corner of Devonshire Avenue. The main house had by then been taken over by the Auxiliary Fire Service. Marcel was an accomplished pianist whom I am sure broadcast with the 大象传媒. On summer evenings he would practise by the open window - the music floating over the almost silent roads. Amongst the more classical pieces there was one particular popular tune which will always remind me of him - 鈥楤oom, why does my heart go boom?鈥�

In number 100, next door to us, was another musician, equally gifted who was in his 30鈥檚 and a well respected church organist in the district. When he was practising on his piano the music was more secular than Marcel鈥檚鈥�. Being in a later call up age group he was still at home and served as our Air Raid Warden. This task took him out in all weathers and hours which worried his aged mother who still lived with the family. She had therefore knitted him a scarf of enormous length- in later years a 鈥楧r Who鈥� would have been proud of it. One of our neighbours took more interest in having parties than he did in ensuring that his windows were blacked out. It was inevitable that he and the Warden would clash. The crunch finally came one winters night when the Warden, on his rounds, scarf and all, espied a light shining from this particular house. He duly approached and banged on the door which quickly opened and he was dragged in and invited to join a rather wild party. Not knowing where to look first the Warden beat a hasty retreat. My Mother was chuckling over that for weeks afterwards.

In 1945 father bought a house in The Warren, Carshalton Beeches. We were there when the War ended but, before the end my father had reason to remember a bomb, dropped by a hit and run intruder from above cloud cover landing about 20ft in front of him as he turned left out of Crossways into the Beeches road. It was so close in fact that he never heard the explosion, just a tower of soil being lifted and a large chunk of tarmac pathway landing on the bonnet of the Riley, in front of the windscreen. Despite this incident, The Beeches have memories that were quite different for me to those of wartime in 98 Brighton Road. Numbers 94-98 I believe have been knocked down and a complex of several houses now occupy the site. Maybe one of our tall garden trees survived the rebuild? Egmont Road I guess will not have changed much but I wonder how many people living today, in that same square mile around 鈥�98鈥� Brighton Road, will know of the action that took place there in the War?

Rob Glover
Lincoln. November 2004.

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