大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Anna Jones of the 大象传媒 on behalf of Bernard Bullbrook and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

I was born in 1931. At the end of August 1939, changed school, first big school as it were, Battersea Grammar. Evacuated a week later to Worthing. War declared the day after my 8th birthday. First night away from home, sleeping on a blanket on the floor of a billiard room. No friends, no parents, nothing. The billiard room was in the garden, as evacuees weren't wanted indoors by the owners. Moved to a bungalow two days later, again on my own. Still with no friends. They did look after me, but lonely.
Trying to tell my parents how unhappy I was, I wrote a first letter only to find out that letters were being censored. A new plan was needed...
Bedwetters tended to get sent home... So I had a new strategy. And after some weeks it worked. I was back in the bosom of my family!

After I returned from Worthing, my father built a shelter in the dinning room, in which would sleep my parents and myself. And it would've take the bulk of weight of the house in case it collapsed. It was needed after a bomb dropped some fifty yards form the house, making a crater some twenty feet deep, setting alight the gas main and damaging beyond repair some fourteen houses. All the windows were in and the ceilings down. We got out of the house not knowing if the top of the house was even there or about to colapse. Spent the rest of the night in a sand bank shelter, some three hundred yards away.
There were many bombs in the locality and it was thought that the germans were aiming for the TANNOY factory some five hundred yards from our house who were engaged in work on ASDIC development (submarine radar) and other war work.

Norwood was getting bombed regularly. ONe night half of the high road was in flames after an oil shop was hit and all the large stocks of parafin went up in flames. It was contained very well but still there was lots of damage to nearby shops.

After the war finished in the far east prisoners of war returned, including a neighbour who had been like a much older brother to me. He had been taken prisoner by the Japonese, in camp for two years. He was a shadow of his former self, but was determined that his coming home party was going to be memorable. So, my parents, his parents and all the neighbours helped setting up the party. He was determined to enjoy himself even if he was too ill. This was at least two months after Scott was released. I couldn't say were he was taken prisoner for he would not say it to us. Due to the maltreatment of the Japonese a viril young man was turned into a ghost.
It concluded with him doing a strip to music down to the loin cloth he had worn in the camp. He looked like something out of a concentration camp. He was dead within the year.

Doing National Service in the RAF in 1950/51 I learned from the people there the horrors of the Japonese occupation at first hand. This was in Singapore. There were many stories by the locals about the occupation.

The bomb site opposite to the house was neglected until 1944 until the day the Americans arrived in the form of the Core of Engineers. They then proceeded to build eight Nisson Hut type dwellings on the site. This took some two months, in order to occupy them prior to D Day.
At 13 having been deprived with my local friends of "exciting food" we soon learned at what time the chow truck arrived and would line up with our plates along with the GI's.
We learned a lot from our American friends, including how to play dice... as well as enjoying hither two unknown delicacies such as peanut butter.

During the war most boys magazines were full of war stories and quite explicit strategies for dealing with any German Paratrooper who attempted to land in the vicinity. Makeshift garrots, Jiu-Jitsu, means of making booby traps were to us bloodthirsty Young Blades part of our existence.
We used to actually make some of those traps and try them out to see if they would work... though we avoided getting injured ourselves. We also collected shrapnel and wood, take cordite out of bullets, wrap the stick of cordite in foil, set light to the end and have the mini-rocket shooting across the classroom.

The general attitude was to live for the day, really. When you're being bombed night after night there isn't much to expect. You'd look to check each day at school who hadn't arrived. Sometimes they never did arrive.
It was restrictive because your parents needed to know where you were in case of enemy action. This is part of normal life in a war. War was normal. You learn to be very self reliant, and to be very fatalistic about death. If your number is on it there nothing you can do about it.

Being 73 I am still living in the same house were it all happened.

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