大象传媒

Story no. 7

The Battle of Britain roughly coincided with the commencement of our school summer holiday. This was convenient in every respect for not only was it a good-weather summer, but with dangerous air raids undoubtedly on our cards, we'd be much safer with our parents. Both Caterham and Kenley held legitimate war targets for bombers, but as always civilian property round about were bound to collect overs and unders or misdirected bombs. The Chaldon outlook however was always much better for at a mile westwards of Caterham Barracks we would only get minimal fallout or the over flyers. And so it proved. While we saw the over flyers during the daylight B of B, nothing but a couple of forced landings by Hurricanes damaged our soil.
At Caterham it was a different matter since the Barracks and the airfields of Kenley and croydon had suffered the 'lash' of WAR by mid August, and with civilians collecting their predictable overs and unders.

With the main night bombing starting in mid September, then the over flyers already operating through the August weeks, now increased in great numbers. One bomber in late August gave us an awful midnight fright. We had been using the Anderson shelter on and off for about three weeks, when after an evening of watching and listening to over flyers going northwestwards of the Capital - making just noise and a searchlight spectacular - we turned-in to our respective 'shanty Andy bunks'. After our usual quiet talk in cosy candlelight had subsided, I slid into my tired oblivion like the proverbial log.

Suddenly I awoke to the shelter in a pandemonium of flashing light and awful sound as Mum - competing with a dreadful roaring noise of a crashing Heinkel - began repeatedly calling for Bob in her most urgent voice. The bomber was ablaze with petrol and bursting engines and perhaps on-board exploding ammunitiion, for the popping and banging and spluttering was seemingly closing by the second. Bob had only that night decided to sleep indoors and defy the bomb dangers; besides, he had said, a decent brain needs a decent sleep. He wasn't scared of blinkin' Germans, and he was tired of breathing dirty candle smoke and grovelling under ground. He'd take his chance indoors.
Even as I was arousing my senses - and with Mum screaming for Bob - he was speeding across the lawn like a guided missile to dive through the 'shanty' entrance door and gain the sanctuary of his bunk. Having actually seen the blazing wreck passing overhead and lighting up the garden and bungalows around him, it had called for ultimate rocket response. He'd neither stopped for shoe nor sock nor bothered with time-wasting key-turned back door; it was clearly a window exit job in double quick time.
Luckily the Heinkel seemingly bent on crashing onto our shelter managed to fly another half mile before smothering a house in Queens Park, where the crew who'd parachuted to safety were rounded up. I dare say their fright was greater than ours, for jumping out of a 'wounded' blazing aircraft into enemy darkness must be really scary. In fact, one 'boy' crew member was reportedly vomiting like a dog.
This hair raising episode taught us the reminding lesson that being kippered with Andy candle smoke was infinately better than frying within mortared bricks, for two people were burned in the Heinkel made bonfire.

But an air raid shelter was by no means bomb proof in every circumstance, for at Caterham one blitz night a what was described as an aerial torpedo had exploded underneath a family shelter, killing all eight members instantly. A teenage lad of the family had previously worked for Dad on his pre-wr bungalows.

Quite a lot of bombs fell at Caterham, and it was here that the boy dealers in WAR rinkests could make a bob or two. Bits and chunks of shrapnel were for sale as were the spent bullets, clips and cartridges. A shell nose-cone could well set a collector back half a knicker, while a parachute - with or without a body - could easily cost a bomb. But with silk at a premium, parachute 'chopped' for knickers was real bomb making material. Silk was as good as Gold!

It was at Caterham where one could see how bomb shrapnel could drill holes through lamp post steel and still have enough force to make-off elsewhere! Imagine how your bonce or belly would look if....!!
Bob had made sure both were pressed hard into the gutter kerbstone wedge at Coulsdon when the spinning German fighter came down towards him to crash into the Green; that was another awful fright he got but at least it was daylight.

Several bombs fell at and around the Chaldon crossroads one night, damaging a bungalow and spoiling a field patch of mangolds with an oil bomb. I got my sniff the next day for such a device hardly makes much impression in green fodder. What Jery used as oil I don't know, but it stank awful!!!

By December we'd largely given up using the Anderson; it was damp and earth smelling by then. Besides, we had become used to hearing the persistant bombers. Night after night they came by the dozen or hundreds. One could think many of the Heinkels would be suffering from metal fatigue; losing rivets, or hinges, for few it seemed got shot down. One wondered about the German crewmen too. Most of them had never visited England; never seen English people, or spoke our language. Strange really. Yet here they were, flying to London with cargoes of bombs as if the Luftwaffe was a truck company with a thousand tippers.

More bombs fell around our very local fields one evening of lesser activity. We heard the bomber coming from an easterly direction, which, in our wisdom of experience, meant it was a wanderer and needed watching. Mum was visiting a sick friend nearby, so grabbing our young sleeping brother, my sister and I stuffed him and ourselves under the table just as the whistling of a dozen or more bombs began a drawn-out descent. Dull 'thuds' ended their fall period for they were incendiary bombs, and a couple of time-bombs or duds. Nothing was hit, but we stayed cooped-up under the table till Mum arrived at speed. No ARP people were seen or heard But I suppose there was some response?
A local history book relates an ARP woman's account of their 'watch' duty point: 'Six members in two shifts manned the post every night from 8 until 5 in the morning'. They used oil lamps; '...and when the lamp went out you knew the air had all gone and you had to open the door to get fresh air. We did that for several years.' She then says '...we were not terribly busy.' No wonder we didn't see anything of them. And, at least our candles got their oxygen!

The falling fire bombs had been quite worrying, for having assessed the Jerry as a mischief maker from the East - a wanderer of ill intent - it was still a little surprising to think our sensory perception had proved positive. It's as well we do respond successfully to the 'hunch' or, extra sensory perception.
And having missed the bomb intended for me at the Caterham shops incident - the Biscuit Busting Banger - my luck held good till the 'doodle bugs' arrived on the scene. Even then, fear wasn't eating' at me - just reminding me that 'time' can run out very suddenly.
This 'sudden' factor was really rammed home in early 1941. The blitz nights were much reduced and often intermittent and we no longer used the shelter. Two minutes after a bomber flew overhead in what we considered the usual manner, there came a shattering 'bang'! Quite the loudest I'd heard in fact. It must have stirred the dust of every loft for miles around. It was in fact a land mine exploding near Merstham. A new form of night terror, the parachute mine could be descending several minutes after the raider had passed over, thus putting a new dimension to 'blitz' warfare. We could now no longer dismiss the over-flying raider as harmless to us. We had now to wait and wonder for this, mother and father of all 'bangers'. Even then nothing was certain, for there was always the possibility of a delayed action explosion. And it happened too!

A delayed action bomb (DA) was bad enough - hence they were strategically a good ploy of war - but to think that the dull 'thud' you thought you heard might be a mine sitting in your garden, would be enough to frighten you for life. And with the blast from a mine being more horizontal, it could level a whole street with ease.

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