大象传媒

This contribution to 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War website was provided to Beah a Volunteer Story Gatherer from the 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk Action Desk at the event attended by the Norwich, Norfolk and Suffolk Pensioner鈥檚 Association. The story has been written and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf of John T. Boyd.

I was 6 years old when war started and at a school called Tilbury Upper Ward in Chadwell St Mary. We had just moved into a new house built outside the village on Chadwell Place Farm overlooking the marshes and Tilbury docks with the River Thames barges visible from the windows.
My younger brother and I helped dig the hole for the Anderson shelter and thought it was great fun if we had to sleep down there during an air-raid, listening to the anti-aircraft guns firing at German planes as they made their way to bomb London. We could tell the difference between the German bombers and our own planes by the sound of the engines.
A stick of bombs fell one night in between our farm and the neighbouring farm leaving big holes in the field and lifting all the tiles from our house and blowing the doors open.
Tilbury docks were a main target for the bombers. We watched fires burning after one raid and saw the loading derricks melting in the heat of the blaze of the main hotel.
Barrage balloons were meant to stop dive bombers, called 鈥淪tukas鈥�, from targeting ships and other places. Often these would break free and ascend high into the sky until they burst and came flapping down again.
We carried gas masks to school, which had to be regularly tested by the ARP Wardens to make sure we were only breathing air through the filters. They were not needed in the end. On our way to school we would pick up shrapnel in the street, most of it from exploding anti-aircraft shells and, during air-raids we took shelter in brick built shelters in the school grounds, which had no windows and had shielded doorways and a small escape tunnel, which we were allowed to use at times, crawling on our hands and knees to get out.
I saw and heard aeroplanes crashing and parachutists descending. On one occasion I saw a German bomber releasing its鈥� bombs, which was a shock in daytime.
Later on in the war V1 rockets or 鈥渄oodlebugs鈥� came over with a ramjet on top firing out a long flame until the fuel ran out. Then it would crash and explode. One landed near us on a childrens鈥� playground killing a couple of children who were up on the slide. All the potatoes were ripped out of the ground alongside, levelling the plot. The doodlebugs did not make a crater when they exploded.
We were warned about 鈥渂utterfly bombs鈥� at school. They looked like big yellow tins of beans which sprang open when they landed and would explode at a touch. A horse on the farm kicked one killing it and the ploughman.
Buses had all their seats turned sideways so that as many people could stand aboard as possible. Some were converted to run on town gas with either a bag on top or drawing a trailer full of gas. A fire at a bus garage damaged the top decks of several buses, so they were modified to be used as single deckers with the platform at the back where passengers were not supposed to stand, but often did.
Everybody had identity cards and ration books with coupons in them for specific food items. It was claimed that it meant some people had a better diet as a result. Men doing heavy work in factories and farms got extra rations at times.
Land Army girls, some as young as 16, were employed to work on the land. Often, we had one or two staying with us. Some had had no experience of country or farm life.

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