大象传媒

War Memories of London & Ramsgate
John Coe K.A.B. Driver at Dover,

I was born in London in 1936 so I was only 3 陆 when the war started, my mums name was Sally my Dads name was Jack I had a sister Rose who was 9years older than me. Just before the war started my dad got a job in Ramsgate so we all moved down there, and lived in a house in St .Luke鈥檚 Avenue.

One weekend in late 1940 we went to London to visit our relatives which turned out to be very lucky for us, for that same weekend the German bombed Ramsgate and one of the bombs dropped on the back of our house, so if we had been at home we would have been killed.
Because we had no where to live we moved back to London and lived with my Gran and Grandad they lived in a house in Great Dover Street Southwark. When the Blitz started my Dad got my, Mum Sister and me evacuated to the safety of the country, I still remember that day as if was yesterday. My dad took the three of us to London Bridge railway station which was just round the corner from where we were living. There were loads of people on the platform but none of us knew where we were going.

The train arrived and we all got on, I remember my dad kissing the three of us and saying goodbye. We travelled for what seemed a very long time before the train stopped. I don鈥檛 remember the name of the station but some of the passengers got off, the train moved off to the next station where more of the passengers got off. After what seemed a very long time the train stopped at a station with a sign saying that it was Barnstable which is in north Devon.

The three of us and the remaining passengers got off and were told to line up outside the station, where there were some people from the town waiting to take us home to live with them, the problem was that there were three of us and my mum didn鈥檛 want us split up. So the people in charge had to find someone who could take the three of us in. Luckily for us there was a farmer鈥檚 wife called Mrs. Bale who owned a small shop on the outskirts of Barnstable which had a small flat above that we could stay in.

Mr. and Mrs. Bale had a daughter named Rita who was about the same age as my sister, my sister and me went to the local school with Rita. My mum got herself a job as a post lady to earn some money to buy food and things we needed, because my dad who was still living with my nan could not send us a lot of money. Dad used to come down to stay with us some weekends if he was not working or on night watch at the factory where he worked. The factory made big water pumps for the Fire Brigade and the forces. One weekend when dad came down to stay Mr. Bale offered him a job on the farm that he owned, but because the work he was doing in London was helping the war effort he was not allowed to move down to Barnstable.
When my dad was on night watch at the factory one of the main jobs was putting out incendiary bombs which the Germans dropped a lot of during the blitz, one night when he was at work the usual air raid was on, a land mine was dropped in the street where my nan lived demolishing all the houses in the street, killing who was in them. My nan was one that never went down the shelter so she was killed that night, granddad who was down the shelter survived.
My mum sister and me came up to London for the funeral which was held in a cemetery in Ilford. My nan was buried in a mass grave with a lot more people who were killed that night. After the funeral my mum sister and me went back down to Barnstable leaving my dad alone in London.
Living down in Barnstable during the war instead of London seemed like heaven, the air raid siren didn鈥檛 sound very often and when it did there were a few air raid shelters, so most people either stayed indoors or walked out into the fields. As we lived on the outskirts of the town we just walked into the nearby field, where we watched the German bombers flying overhead to drop their bombs on Swansea which was just across the Bristol Channel and Bristol which was just up the road from Barnstable. Sometimes the German bombers couldn鈥檛 reach their targets so they would turn round and on the way back they would jettison their bombs either in the Bristol Channel or in the fields, which was the only excitement kids got.
After about 8 months and because dad was now living on his own, mum my sister and me returned to live with my dad in London right in the middle of the blitz. My dad found us a flat to live in which was in a big block of flats called Becketts House in Tabbard St. Southwark which overlooked the ruins where my nan was killed in Great Dover St. My memory of living in Becketts House is one of not spending much time in the flat, during the day I was at school, then it was home to have my tea, then it was time to go to bed. The funny thing was that we knew we knew we wouldn鈥檛 be in bed very long before the Siren would go and we would have to go down to the shelter for the rest of the night
When the siren went my sister and me would get dressed and the two of us would run down to the Borough Underground station where we would grab a space on the platform, mum and dad would follow on with some blankets, food and drink which mum had got ready earlier. My sister and me would first get a place on the platform because there was hundreds of people down there every night.

The big excitement of the night was what we kids called the ghost train which was open carriages which were filled with men going across London underground to help tackle the fires and help rescue people. It was much easier to get across London that way. If you were sleeping near the edge of the platform you had to very careful not to roll of the edge or dangle your legs over the edge. So that is where we like hundreds of other people would spend every night in London during the blitz.

What now seems very strange is that as kids in the war we never seemed to worry about being killed, I think our parents worried more about that. The only time my sister and me got worried was one night we were down on the platform of the Borough underground station as usual but mum and dad didn鈥檛 arrive. They had got caught in the raid and had to take shelter down in the crypt of a church on the way. So we didn鈥檛 meet up until after the all clear had gone, they were waiting outside the station for us.

Sometime in 1943 my dad got a job on Manston airfield as a civilian working for the R.A.F. putting up
Landing lights and repairing bomb damage, so we all moved back down to Ramsgate again. Because our house was still bomb damaged we had to live in a flat in Hardress St. Very few people in Ramsgate had air raid shelters in their back gardens, because just before the war the local council dug tunnels all under the town which allowed you to walk from one side of Ramsgate to the other underground. So when the siren went we just walked down the nearest entrance.

We lived in Hardress St. for sometime before we were offered a house in College Rd. which was just round the corner from St. Luke鈥檚 Ave. where we used to live. We didn鈥檛 have an air raid shelter in the back garden, so when a raid was on we used to go into the cupboard under the stairs, in College Rd it was not near any of the entrances to the tunnels.

Later on my dad helped a man who had a shop around the corner in St. Luke鈥檚 Ave. where we used to live. His wife was there and they were called Mr. and Mrs. Dines. So they all dug a big enough shelter for us all to use. The worst thing about the raids in Ramsgate was the shelling, the Germans had very big guns on the top of the cliffs in France and very often they would fire a few shells over. The big problem was with an airplane you could hear it so the siren would go before they dropped their bombs. With a shell it landed and blew up before the siren sounded. Later on things got a lot quieter. We lived next door to St. Lawrence College which was used to billet troops during the war but they all moved out for D.Day. We used to watch the doodle bugs fly over to drop on London. I will never forget the very strange sound they made. Manston airfield was used as an emergency air field later on in the war so very often British and American bombers that had been shot up would try to land there. Sometimes they wouldn鈥檛 quite make it so they would crash land on the roads and fields around the airfield. After they had been taken away me and my mates would go there and pick up bits of the bombers and bits of Perspex from the windows. We took the Perspex to file it into cross and heart shapes to make into a brooch or necklace.

So that is some of my memories of the war. John Coe. This story was submitted to the PEOPLES WAR site by Larry Liddiard a volunteer of the Folkestone Library team on behalf of John COE and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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