大象传媒

I am Phil Tickner. I was born in 1929 at St Mary Cray in Kent, and at the beginning of the war we moved to Orpington where I lived for the rest of time. I was at school there. At the beginning of the war I was in the choir of the local church. On the day the war broke out, we were in this service; it started at eleven o鈥檆lock of course, and the parson had been giving this talk about the possibility of war and almost how certain it was, and he had prayers hoping that it wouldn鈥檛 happen, when the sirens went. The churchwarden went out to find out what it was and he came back and said war had been declared. So without further ado the vicar called the service to a close and sent everybody home. My friend next to me said 鈥淚 wish they鈥檇 start a war every week, then we could go home early every week鈥�. Anyway, we all went home but nothing happened at all, not on the first. There was no raid. It was just called a phoney war wasn鈥檛 it?

The next thing I can remember was the Battle of Britain. During he Battle of Britain, which was an exciting time because where we lived was only four miles from Biggin Hill in a straight line. We used to see all the aeroplanes taking off although we couldn鈥檛 see the airfield because of the hills between us. Unfortunately I was very shortsighted at the time, nobody realised it, so I couldn鈥檛 really see what was going on up above. I could see the con-trails from the aircraft, and the odd one coming down, pouring smoke out of it but that鈥檚 all I could see. And then of course when you鈥檙e home and your parents are there, and you鈥檙e down in the shelter, and weren鈥檛 allowed to look. The grown-ups could stand at the door looking out, and we鈥檇 have to sit at the back. So all we could hear was the rat-tat-tat of the machine guns and the bangs of the bombs.

There was a particularly bad day at Biggin Hill, the day they the bomb hit an air-raid shelter there and killed a lot of WAAFs. We could hear the noise of that and see all the smoke going up. My father was in the Civil Defence. He was on the heavy rescue so he went over there, and he told us about it when he came back.

After the Battle of Britain there was a little bit of quiet and then they started the all-night London raids. The sirens would go about seven o鈥檆lock and the all-clear would go about seven o鈥檆lock the next morning. At that particular time we were sleeping down our Anderson shelter. We fitted it all up with bunk beds, my sister and I and my mother slept down there. I鈥檓 not sure about my father because being in the Civil Defence, half the time he was away anyway. It was a very noisy time but I don鈥檛 remember anything serious happening.

My mother had friends in Devon and in the November, we went down there, my sister and I and her and we stayed down there for a year. Nothing happened down there. When they used to bomb Bristol, you鈥檇 hear them going over and get the occasional bomb being released when they were coming back. Apart from that there was nothing else. And then, when we came back in the following November, they had another little spell of night raids but I was older then so I was able to watch and see what went on, see all the shells exploding in the sky, and the odd glow from a fire in London or somewhere. But nothing really concerned us in our locality.

And the next thing was when the doodlebugs started. I鈥檇 started work then. I was working locally. There was a lot of excitement when the first ones came over. People didn鈥檛 know what they were. They were called Flying Bombs, Buzz-Bombs, and eventually Doodlebugs. You could stand and watch these things and watch when they dropped. We had one or two local, nothing serious; we had three windows out one week, three panes of glass. The following Friday I was home on my own, I was in the garden, and I looked up there was this doodlebug thing coming low, almost touching the trees, a terrific flame out the back of it. I wasn鈥檛 far from the shelter so I dived down there, and of course there was a big bang. It had dropped just down the road, and all the windows that we鈥檇 covered over from the week before had all been blown out again. I reckon it must have hit the trees and then dropped in someone鈥檚 garden. Nobody was killed. People were away from the actual house. It was just a skeleton. At that time I was in the Air Training Corps, getting interested in aircraft and of course we were taking an interest in these old doodlebugs. The normal type would come across, I presume there was a time gadget in it that would, when it got to it鈥檚 destination, I suppose they worked it out by mileage, how much fuel it鈥檚 got, how far it would go, and then the engine would cut out and this gadget would tip the doodlebug about 45 degrees or something, into the ground. That was our theory.
I suppose they used to work out the distance from where it was launched to London and with a bit of luck it would hit London. But of course they couldn鈥檛 allow for head wind or tail wind, so some dropped short and some overshot. Those were all right because you could hear them and when the engine stopped if you knew it was coming towards you, you could get behind the nearest wall. I鈥檝e read books on them but nothing really specific about the workings of them.

But the rockets I don鈥檛 know much about. When the first one fell, I heard that explode. I was home with a sprained ankle. I think it was in the September or October time. There was this enormous bang, mind you, it was a distant bang but we knew there鈥檇 been a big explosion somewhere because we went out and everybody was wondering what the devil it was. It actually dropped in Chiswick. I did see one explode in the sky once; it was coming down I suppose.

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