大象传媒

.
WW2 PEOPLE'S WAR

September 3rd 1939

I was living at 153 Crowborough Road, Tooting, London SW17, when the Second World War started on 3rd September 1939. I was an only child of 4 years.( Five the following day)

Almost immediately something very strange happened. Mrs Hewitt, one of our neighbours who lived at number 151, came out into the street in her blue silk dressing gown, with her long brown wavy hair hanging down to her waist, it was usually done up in neat ear-phones. She was brandishing a silver-bladed dagger with a bone handle and she was yelling and roaring `I've got this for the Germans, I've got this for the Germans.'
Mrs Hewitt was a widow, her husband having been killed in the First World War. She lived alone, never having any children, nor managed to find a second husband.

Anderson Shelter

My Father Charles William Hankins, whose parents lived in Cambray Road Balham, South London, worked for the Gas Light and Coke Company and had City and Guilds qualifications in plumbing.
He was called up and put in the Air Force, ground staff. He had to go for training to various locations in Wales, such as Cardington and Wrexham. When he returned home, after the training, Father was wearing the Royal Air Force blue uniform, complete with peaked cap and superb thick blue overcoat, with white lambs wool lining.
He immediately started digging up the back garden, demolishing his carefully crafted lawn, flower beds, and rhubarb. There were a few lupins and hollyhocks remaining round the edges. He then lowered the rounded corrugated iron sheets of the Anderson shelter into the huge, dank hole in which there were some wriggling worms. He completed the job by covering the shelter with sandbags. He made the inside comfortable with flooring and bunk beds. I put some of my toys in there.

My Grandfathers During The First World War I914-17 and The Second World War 1939-1945
My Father's Father, William Hankins, was an electrician, and when the First World War started, he was not sent to the trenches. Instead he was dispatched to Woolwich Arsenal in North London, to assist or supervise in the making and wiring up of bombs. He used to talk about this experience for years afterwards. I think he spoke of the horror when the bombs they were making were unstable, some blew up and girls in the factory were killed. (I was listening in to grown-ups talking, I am not sure of the facts about the bombs blowing up.) He lived in Balham throughout
the Second World War and worked as an electrician.
My Mother's Father, George Eades worked in a London club as a sort of butler, come gentleman's gentleman, before 1914. He wore smart suits and shoes, and imitated the toffs, took snuff, smoked cigars. He had varicose veins in both legs and was thought unfit for the army. Instead he was made a conductor on the trams between Balham and Victoria. This job entailed standing up all day every day, not advisable for people with legs like his. He bound them up each day in elasticated bandages.
He was still working on the trams as a conductor when the Second World War started. He survived the bombing in London and worked on the trams throughout the war.
Second World War 1939-1945 - Cavendish Road, Balham, SW12 London. and the Belgian Lodger
My mother's parents George and Ethel Eades rented a house in Balham, 314 Cavendish Road, all their married life. Their four children were brought up there, one of whom, was my Mother (Mrs Ethel Hankins/ Nee Eades.)
Their three sons were called up and all joined the Army. George was taken prisoner by the Germans at Crete. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war in Germany. Cyril served in Egypt as a 'Desert Rat'. Alfred was in the army throughout the war, but I don't know where.
My Grandparents Eades usually had one lodger in the upstairs back bedroom. There was only one toilet. It was outside in the back yard with a wooden slatted door and furnished with a scrubbed wooden lavatory seat and squares of newspaper hanging on a string for toilet paper.

Pierre was a refugee from Belgium and was lodged with my grandparents, George and Ethel Eades. He spoke no English, but they set about teaching him.
During the blitz of London in 1940, when the German aeroplanes were flying over Balham, people would gather in the street, outside their houses, and stare up at the sky, watching the terrible sight. My grandparents taught Pierre to call out `You Buggers! You Buggers!' while shaking his fist at them. He was happy to do it.

Being Evacuated: The First Two Occasions in 1939-40

SOMERSET - I first was sent to Somerset to stay with Mrs Polkingham. All I can remember is sharing a bed with a lady who must have been pregnant. I found myself sleeping in a bed with a stranger, who had a big bump for a tummy. As nothing happened at home in Tooting, I came home.

CHICHESTER IN SUSSEX - Next, I remember being evacuated with Alan and Roger Jones who lived in Rectory lane, Tooting鈥� and whose garden abutted onto ours.
They had ginger hair, exactly the same as their mother, who tried to keep them under control by shouting at them. When I played in our garden I often heard Mrs Jones open her kitchen door and start shouting. `Alan come in this instant, Roger stop it or you'll get a slap, come here.'
Roger was a quiet, shy boy and once asked to have a doll like mine His mother shouted horribly at him for this.
We arrived in Chichester in Winter time. We were placed with Mr and Mrs Semper who had one five year old son. We children from a London suburb, immediately started living an impoverished country life, like poor farmers. When Mr Semper went out shooting rabbits, we children went with him. It was my first encounter with the sound of a gun being fired, and my first sight of a dead furry animal. I had only ever seen a rabbit in a story book before, and it was sweet and cuddly. Now I saw a blood-stained dead thing, hanging limply from Mr Semper's hand. He chucked it into a bag unfeelingly.
We ate rabbit stew endlessly, it seemed to be every day. It had a very unpleasant bitter taste.
I remember my first encounter with injustice, it occurred at bath time. We went two by two. First the Jones Boys were thrust in the bath, when they had finished, it was my turn with the Semper's son. But the latter was always placed in the best end of the bath, whilst I always found myself at the tap end, on the receiving end of all the cold drips on my back. I felt we should have taken it, it turns.

From leading a quiet life as an only child, with an affectionate father whose hand I loved to hold and kiss, and with a loving mother who played the piano, and had taught me to sing "Bless this House" when kindly aunties came, I was precipitated into a boys' world of noise, screams, fights and kicks.

At Christmas time my darling Mother arrived at the Sempers' house. I don't know how she managed to get a train to Chichester starting out from Tooting Broadway underground station. She was all alone. My father, and her three brothers had all been called up and had gone to war.
She was wearing her best silver fox fur with its four legs hanging down, and its silky body and brush draped round her shoulders. It was fastened with a clip in its mouth. She also wore a mauve velvet hat. My Father's sisters were furriers in London and had aquired the fur for her. It was a great luxury worn by film stars. My Mother only stayed a short time then set off on the return journey, but she left us a box of fondant sweets. I expected the Sempers to offer us some, but days passed and the sweets remained in the box in the sideboard. When no-one was looking, I had opened the cupboard to check.
One day we were told to put on our coats and gloves to go rabbit shooting again. I went to the cupboard, opened the box of sweets, took two pink sugary fondants, one to go down each glove. Mrs Semper called out 鈥淗urry up Marion!鈥�, took me by the hand and yelled, 鈥淲hat's this, you have been stealing sweets, thief, thief.鈥�
She shouted at me in a way that reminded me of Mrs Jones back home in Tooting. The sweets were removed from my gloves. We never had any of them. I felt that they were our due. My Mother brought them for us, for me.
Soon after her visit, my mother had me back home again, as nothing had happened so far.
We resumed living in our house in Tooting. We had our gas masks, torches, - black-out regulations, ration books, firewatchers, wardens in tin hats and the radio.

Scarlet fever and the Canadian Pilots
My Mother was friendly with a lovely Irish family called Lewis. Mr and Mrs Lewis had three very pretty daughters. The two eldest, Patricia and Odette, were in their early twenties and had Canadian pilots as their boyfiends.
Soon after returning to Tooting from Chichester, I had Scarlet Fever. I was not sent to the Fever Hospital as was the usual procedure. Instead I was allowed to stay at home and my Mother looked after me. I had a rash and a temperature, but remember little else about it, except for the visitors.
One afternoon, I was well enough to sit up in bed and play with toys, when my Mother brought up into the bedroom four visitors: Patricia, Odette and two smiling young men. There was much laughter, they were all smiling and the two young men, whom, even at my tender age I knew to be good looking, gave me hugs and little kisses on the cheek. I enjoyed it although I did not know why strangers were visiting me, hugging me so nicely. They were sweet and kind.
Years later I realised that the young pilots were so afraid of losing their lives in bombings raids over Germany, that it seemed worth delaying, or even avoiding death, by catching Scarlet Fever.
From what I heard neither of them caught it 鈥� the Fever that is.

The Blitz 1940

One night we heard, first the wail of the siren, soon followed by a terrible sound overhead, a deafening roar of aeroplane engines and bursts of ack-ack (anti aircraft) guns firing.
We ran next door to Mr and Mrs Carpenter and slid into their Morrison shelter, not to Dad's Anderson shelter, I don't know why. The Carpenter's shelter occupied the whole of their front room. It consisted of a big sheet of heavy metal. on four legs, like a reinforced table
The Carpenters , my Mother and I, all lay together like sardines in a tin. We were fully dressed in day clothes and overcoats. Mr Carpenter, a short balding man, even wore his trilby hat, his wife was larger than either him or my mother. They had their valuables, identity cards, and ration books in a brief case in the shelter with them.
When the `All clear ` sounded we tumbled our of the Morrison shelter and back home next door. We became accustomed to it.

But one night the air -raid started so rapidly, that there was no time to run anywhere. Big bombs, as well as incendiary bombs were falling right overhead. The ack-ack guns were firing. My mother and I only had time to squeeze under the stairs of our house. It seemed we had received a direct hit. There was the shattering sound of glass as all the windows blew out. The ceilings fell down and doors blasted open. The stairs seemed to be bursting asunder above us. and the roof falling in. The sound of it was horrendous.
My Mother and I had hysterics. We just lay screaming together in abject terror, in that tiny space under the stairs, where the gas meter was .
We had not received a direct hit, but the house opposite had been bombed. In the morning we saw that it had been demolished. It was just a smoking ruin. No-one was killed, I think the owners, were either evacuated, or had gone to Tooting Underground Station for the night.
The smell of our house after that night was of incendiary bombs, a sort of scorched wood smell coupled with damp from the water used by the firemen to put out the fires.
One of our neighbours was describing these events and continually referred to the use of 'Stir-up' ( As in stir up your tea) pumps by the firemen, instead of Stirrup-pumps. My Mother and My Grandmother enjoyed laughing about this. T
There were many words to hear and to learn, such as crater, barrage balloon, siren, shrapnel. flying bombs, search lights..

Third and last Evacuation 1942 -1945 ( Could have been 1943-45)

T'HRAPSTON IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE - This time my Mother came with me. We first stayed with a lady in a row of terraced houses in Thrapston. We lived there with a husband and wife. They must have been short of money, as I remember that they went gleaning to augment their income. They also kept chickens. I think my Mother found it very difficult to live in a tiny house with a married couple she had never met before. They accused her of frightening their chickens with the slippers she wore. The chickens laid wind eggs???

My Mother soon got a job at the Billetting Office, finding accommodation for newly arrived evacuees. She worked with Mr Pope who had been and invalided out of the army. He looked very thin and delicate and drawn. There she also worked with Betty De Macoustra a Jewish girl from Holland. They became great friends.
One day my Mother told me that we were moving on, to live in a bigger house, Thrapston Rectory. When we knocked at the door, Rector Munday himself answered the door.
`Come in,' he said with a warm welcoming smile.
`We have green bread at the rectory today, ha , ha, ha.'
He took us on a tour of the Rectory, ending up in the very big kitchen, where a rosy cheeked plump lady sat preparing some food, surrounded by four young children. We were all introduced. Her name was Mary.
`Look, we have green bread in the bread bin,' He took the lid off the bin and we peered in to see the green mould.
I'm sorry Rector, ` said Mary smiling sweetly, not in the least disturbed. `I'll clear it out in a minute.'
Fortunately my Mother got on really well with Mary, who had six children staying in the Rectory. She seemed to be lazy, but was so good tempered and lovable.

Every day we ate breakfast in a breakfast room, with lovely views over the garden and orchard. The table was covered with a beautiful red and gold cloth of rich brocade shining with gold thread. (On reflection, many years later, I wondered if it was a discarded altar cloth?)

Snippets to be written in full later

Tour of the Orchard with the Rector "You may pick apples from any tree but this one"? Redolent of Story of Adam and Eve

The Rector had a Bout of Malaria. The two evacuee mothers looked after him.

Christmas party for children in the hangar of an Aerodrome in Northamptonshire, given by USA airmen- wonderful party, presents, music, warmth, kindness.

Rector visits members of his parish, and takes evacuees(Mothers and children), in his Austin Minor car for a picnic by the river, all on the same day.

Rector Munday had a regional accent, that of Northamptonshire? Was he a local man?

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.