大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 War site by CSV Storygatherers Lucy Thomas and Pam Barnett of Callington U3A on behalf of Donald King. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

WW2 MEMORIES OF DONALD KING

Part 1
WAR REALITIES AT A VERY YOUNG AGE

My name is Donald King.and I was just over three years old when the war started. My first memory is of looking out of a neighbour's upstairs window in Munster Road, Fulham, London, to look at the swirling vapour trails of the aircraft making tremendous patterns against a blue sky, but you couldn't hear anything, which was odd. You could see all that was going on but no sound.

I went to Sherwell Road School at age five and was there for less than a year. During the air raids at that time we used to all go out to the wash houses in the courtyards of the flats because for some reason, people thought it was safer to go out there rather than stay inside. This was a bit silly because there was only a tin roof over this wash house It was the first time I can remember being shocked by anything in the war because this particular night there was a huge bang during an air raid. I remember the man who was standing up next to me slumping to the ground in a faint. This was not something I expected from adults and though I wasn't frightened, it seemed to be a strange thing to happen.

After this particular raid, we all went outside to see what the bang had been. It was at the end of the road just alongside Munster Road - I think it was Wyefold Road - and there was a school down there. It wasn't my school but another one and it was ablaze from top to bottom. A lot of the kids around the street were, of course, cheering and pleased to see their school burned down but the parents were obviously not quite so happy about this. It was the first time I saw a major fire and damage during the war. They said it was a land mine but I never knew what that meant. I think it just meant it was a large bomb and it probably came down on a parachute and that was what people used to refer to as a land mine rather than just an ordinary bomb.

Another of the things I remember from the early days was gas attack practice when we received our gas masks. Whistles would blow and the ARP would come round and we would have to put on our gas masks and evacuate houses and things like that. I remember a sad occasion when the woman next door to us was showing my mum her son's saxophone case. He was in the RAF and had been sent to North Africa and been killed out there. One of the few things that came back among his effects was his saxophone that he'd taken with him. It was covered in dust and sand and that brought home a bit that there were some unpleasant things going on.

By now our flat, which was a ground floor flat, was being used as a shelter, (rather than going out to the wash houses at the back), and this was really quite good fun for us kids because we got to stay up late. There were people sleeping on mattresses and on blankets all over our kitchen floor and bedroom floors and I quite enjoyed those events. It was quite a social occasion, with men playing cards and women chatting, but when the all clear went, everyone cleared off. That was an odd time.

It was 1940 when my dad, who was a plumber and working all around the country on such things as airfields and military installations, was working somewhere near Cheltenham. I remember we went to Cheltenham at about the time my mother was expecting my eldest sister and in the boarding house where we were staying, there was a Polish airman who had lost his family back home in Poland. Because of that when my sister was born, she was given the name of Yvonne for her second name after this airman. He was very pleased about that and gave her a little Christening cup which I think she's still got.

In around 1942, we moved to Musgrave Crescent, near Wadham Green, which is now called Fulham Broadway, and I changed schools. That school was soon converted to a fire station and I was moved to another school, which was one of the six different primary and junior schools I attended during the course of the war. Lots of different changes and I didn't have a chance to settle in too much anywhere. I became a lot more aware of the bombing around by then. We still didn't have shelters at that stage but we ended up under the downstairs tenants' double bed where two families of people crowded under a double bed in the belief that somehow the bed would cushion the debris as it came down. It was very uncomfortable and dusty and partly because of that, I think, I used to get bronchitis a lot at that time. A bit later on, of course, we had an Anderson shelter built in the back yard which was dark and always seemed damp and for a while it seemed we spent a lot of time down there.

As far as the war activity, it was really linked to the fact of the bombing and the guns, which at that time were mobile AA guns, which would pull up outside, go off and then move on to another place and fire again. At Gilbert Common, opposite our house and they put up a gun emplacement with anti-aircraft guns, a searchlight and a barrage balloon. This was really exciting for us kids because we could see all this activity and every time the air raid warnings went off, we'd watch the searchlights going up, see the planes getting caught in the crossbeams and hear the guns going off. We all wanted to stop out and watch all this but we were always dragged into the shelter and for very good reasons. In the mornings the next thing the kids used to do was collect the shrapnel and bits of bomb around the streets. These were really heavy, jagged lumps of metal and if you were hit with one of those without a helmet you could've had some really nasty injuries. After the all-clear went, we would go and look at the damage and if there were any fires, we would go and have a look at them. It was all a bit macabre but that's what people did.

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