大象传媒

Being born in early 1928, I was rising twelve on the Sunday that war was declared and helping to fill sandbags at the rear of Chislehurst police station. The sound of the air raid siren was petrifying and everyone stood stock still for a short moment, frozen where they stood with shovels still in hand, before there was a sudden flurry of action on the part of those policemen who had been 'old sweats' in WWI. One or two policemen, who had been badly shell-shocked in the first war, were in a bad way but order was quickly restored. So began the 'phoney war'.

It was less than three weeks later when I accidentally amputated the fingers of my right hand, thus destroying my boyhood hopes of joining the Royal Navy. During the next few quiet months on the 'home front' I noticed a gradual reduction of goods in the shops and a steep rise in the price of some articles. Lemons, for example. were being offered at one shilling each. That's something like 拢3 each in today's terms! I was familiar with prices in those days as I had to act as 'interpreter' for my mother when shopping - she was a 'geordie' and the local shopkeepers couldn't understand everything she said.

When the war got going I was sent to a school in Sussex which, with hindsight, was not the safest county during the forthcoming Battle of Britain! I was only there for one year but saw a great deal of the wounded survivors of Dunkirk who were lodged at our school. On one occasion some of us children were 'buzzed' by a very low flying ME109. We saw the pilot quite clearly but I think he was baffled by the low lying mist. Very early one morning a German reconnaissance plane left it too late to return home and was spotted by a group of four fighters (Hurricanes, I think). They circled the German and took turns putting a burst of fire into the underside. The German plane crash-landed on a Sussex beach.

Whilst in Sussex, my brother, back in Chislehurst, was posting me a copy of the Children's newspaper when a bomb fell nearby, totally destroying a house or two. He was later found stripped of his clothes with numerous wounds and his pelvis broken in two places. His bicycle was found two street away. He was carted off to the nearest dressing station (our local school) in a private car that was being used as an emergency ambulance.

When I returned to Chislehurst I noticed that most of the German plane formations seemed to meet over our village before going on to London. Aerial dogfights and anti-aircraft barrages were commonplace and the rain of spent bullets and shell splinters were as much a threat to life as the German bombs, which was why we were exhorted to 'take cover' or, for those who had to be out, to wear a 'tin hat'. One memorable occasion was the day the Germans made a concerted effort to hit Dockland during daylight. I remember standing outside our Anderson shelter in the garden in defiance of instructions to witness three large bomber formations converging overhead. They had been mauled by our fighters and now faced the anti-aircraft barrage. The barrage resembled a thick black 'rainbow' of bursting shells that stretched across the path of the bombers as well as amongst them. Planes were dropping from the sky and one formation turned tail and fled. The centre group ploughed on and the remaining group was shattered. One can only wonder what the group leader was saying over the intercom!

End of part one.

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