大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of John D Roberts and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Happy days were about to become to an end, it was coming up now to September 1939 and war breaks out with Germany.
There was just one more happy event for us in that September; Mum had a baby boy, a brother for me to play with in the years to come. I was now 6 years old and remember it well.
I did not understand at that time what war meant. We the people of Plymouth were about to find out from the German air force the heavy raids to come, but it was not until July 1940 that we experienced its first raid. Just as well as there was a lot of work to do, getting the air raid shelters up. Each house had an Anderson shelter to put up, Dad was home on leave and dugout to 6 feet deep in the garden for the shelter to go in, then it was half buried. I did help a bit and Dad worked day and night to get it done before going back aboard ship, he put a wooden floor in, electric light, fire and bunk beds. The shelter was home form home as they say.
The weeks went by and we were all wondering what was going to happen to us in the months to come. There was food rationing and we all had a gas mask each, when you put it on the smell of rubber was awful, for babies there was a gas mask box with a window in it, you laid baby inside and zipped it up, all this became a part of life.
In July 1940 we had the first enemy bombs dropped on Plymouth and from then on the Germans never let up, night after night they came about the same time, 8.30pm. Mum would say get ready for bed the Germans will be here soon. It just became a way of life, sometimes we went to bed in the house but that meant getting up again and going to the shelter, another time we would go to bed in the shelter once the raid was on and the bombs were dropping, there was no sleep you just lay there and prayed for the siren to give the 鈥榓ll clear鈥� and then we could sleep in peace.
I must tell you, in our house upstairs we had a bed-sit with small kitchen and Mum always let it out to Navy couples, at this time Bill and his wife were staying with us and again another night raid. I had gone to bed so Bill told Mum that he would carry me down to the shelter, so here we are going down the garden in the dark and Bill fell over the dustbin sending me flying through the air, we were lucky, just shaken up, I remember that night well. After that night Bill said to Mum that he wasn鈥檛 going down to the shelter anymore, we are staying in bed and if we get bombed we will die in bed and that was that. I always think if your time鈥檚 up then that鈥檚 it. I remember across the road from us lived a lady with her two little children, one about the same age as me, one night raid they went into their shelter and it had a direct hit and they were killed, by the irony of fate the house they had just left was hardly damaged.
Some nights when an air raid was on I would stand on a chair, look out of the bedroom window and watch it all happening. In the darkness of night the sky would light up, there would be searchlights, flash of guns and tracers sent orange lights racing through the darkness, the sky would glow red with all the fires. Looks like the city centre鈥檚 been hammered again Mum would say and it was.
Our house was only about a mile from the navy barracks and the Germans were always trying to destroy the navy base and ships, some bombs did hit the barracks with a lot of casualties.

It was now April 1941 and Plymouth had been gutted and Devonport was next on Hitler鈥檚 list.
Heavy raids night after night on poor old Devonport were taking place, then one morning as I was sitting having breakfast there was a knock on the door and Gran and Grandad were standing there, that night they had lost their house, bombed completely, demolished, not a brick left standing, all they had got left was Gran鈥檚 handbag and the clothes they stood up in. They came in, sat down and told us what had happened, last night they had gone over the road to the Forum cinema when there was a raid on. That鈥檚 what they did most times and there would be film on, you see they had no shelter in the house and no garden to put one in so the Forum was their shelter, a lot of people did the same thing, so that night luck was on their side, they had survived, and now we were altogether in our house at Bridwell Road.
I was going to miss my trips into Devonport and Gran鈥檚 house that was gone forever. Gran and Grandad at this time were well in their late 60鈥檚 and it was a very sad time for them.

At no time in the war did I think of death or the fear of dying, I don鈥檛 think you do when one is young, but at times I was very scared, it was the noise I did not like, bombs going off and the gunfire.
I remember one day playing in the street and looked up to the sky and high above me there was just one German bomber, I saw him release a big bomb and it looked as if it was coming right at me, I can tell you I was scared but lucky as the bomb hit about half a mile away in a field the other side of our hill, I went up to have a look and it had made a very big crater. That was the only time in the war that I had seen a bomb coming down, thank goodness.

The war was now getting my Mum down, she was under a lot of pressure what with my young baby brother, myself, Gran and Grandad to look after and a lot of sleepless nights with the air raids most night. Then one morning Mum said, 鈥淲e are going鈥� 鈥渨here to鈥� I said, 鈥淒awlish鈥� Mum said, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 the place for us,鈥� Mum had a great aunt there and when she was a young girl she went there for her holidays. So we set off for Dawlish, I think we must have missed the train because we ended up in Plympton that night with nowhere to stay so we went to the police station for help and they found us a place for the night and the next day we set off again for Dawlish, we arrived in the evening and made our way up to Aunt Lil鈥檚 house, we stopped that night and the next day we went to the council offices to see if they could find us somewhere to stay. The district council found us some emergency accommodation, it was about 5 miles out of Dawlish with a Mr and Mrs Farrar 鈥� in a lovely old house in Dawlish Water which was right in the heart of the country. After the Plymouth blitzes it was a very peaceful place, just up the road there was a farm and I spent a lot of time there, this was something new for me as I had never been on a farm before and I had a nice time. Mr and Mrs Farrar, now retired, were back from the old colonial days in India, had a big rose garden and I remember Mrs Farrar with her big sun hat on cutting her roses.

The war seemed along way off until one morning in December 1941 the postman called with a telegram, it was bad news, Dad had been killed at sea, he had gone down with his ship, the cruiser HMS Galatea was torpedoed and sunk off Alexandria in the Mediterranean.
It was a very sad time for Mum and for me; I was not going to see Dad again, for me that did not sink in. After about eight weeks our stay at Dawlish Water came to an end, so after thanking Mr and Mrs Farrar for all their kindness we set off back to Dawlish to live.
The Council had taken over the Blenheim Hotel, it was right on the sea front and it was going to be full of evacuees, one big happy family you see. We were placed on the 2nd floor, our living room overlooked the sea, it was a beautiful view, our bedrooms were at the back of the hotel, and mine overlooked the road to Teignmouth and a pub. Now for the rest of the evacuees, they had come from all over the country, there was Mrs Povey and her four children, Mrs Lock and son Michael, Mrs Thorogood and son Robert and our family of five. Staying at the Blenheim, for me, seemed one long holiday and in the summer I spent a lot of time on the beach and in the sea swimming.
I must say at this time that scaffolding was in place on all the beaches to stop a German invasion, which never came thank God. I remember one day playing on the seafront with the lads and we saw four people walking along, two men and two ladies, as they got close I recognised the men at once, they were Flanagan and Allen with their wives. They had come down from London for two or three days rest, at this time they were topping the bill with their act at the theatres all over. It was nice to see them and I went back over the road to the Blenheim and told Mum who I had seen on the front that day.
All the time I was in Dawlish I don鈥檛 remember any bombs being dropped in the area but German fighter planes would come in low and fire bullets up and down the streets and then go back home over the Channel. I don鈥檛 know if anyone got injured in the attacks but I do know that the Blenheim was hit, there were bullet holes right across the front of the hotel, lucky for me I was not there at the time.

I spent a lot of time on the beach with the lads and at the end of the day we would do a bit of beachcombing, in those days it was done with a stick poking the sand about and sometimes we did find things. I was on the beach one day when I saw a black object with spikes, it was bobbing up and down in the sea, it was a mine that had come loose and it was coming in fast with the tide. The police and army were called to the beach to try and tow it out to sea and blow it up - this was not the first time a mine had come loose but it鈥檚 the only time I had seen it for myself - well on this day a good job was done, the army towed it out to sea and up it went, if it had come in on the beach I would have run like hell.
Us lads spent a lot of time on the sea front and one day we saw a stranger, a man, sitting there, he was writing and watching all the trains, this went on for about a week, he never said a word then one morning we all went up to him and said, 鈥淵ou are a German spy,鈥� with that said he just got up and went off, we never saw him again. When I look back he did look the part of a spy.
With the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbour in 1941 the Americans came into the war with us.
I will never forget the day the American army came to Dawlish, it was the summer of 1942, they marched along the seafront and as they passed us they gave us chocolate and chewing gum. What a day that was, it was just like Christmas day. The generosity we received from them will never be forgotten, they were so good to us and so friendly, we didn鈥檛 have much food and sweets at that time as it was all on ration. The American camp was just up the road from us and we lads went up a lot to the cookhouse to see if there was any food to spare, there was sometimes, I got tins of ham and fruit.

I had a friend called Tom and we spent a lot of time together, he had a sister and sometimes she came out with us and played with us on the beach. One day Tom called for me and told me they were leaving Dawlish and going to live in Torquay, his mother said that Dawlish was too quiet for her and that Torquay was a bigger place and a lot more going on. I was going to miss Tom and was sad he was going. Well they went and that first night in Torquay there was an air raid and Tom, his mother and sister were all killed, if only they had stayed in Dawlish. I would be glad when the war was over; it just seemed to go on and on, no end to it.
I did love staying at the Blenheim, if you ever go to Dawlish do go and see the hotel, if you look up to the top of the building there is a porthole, we would make a parachute out of a handkerchief and throw it out of the porthole and watch it glide down to the ground, it was good fun.
One night when we were having tea Mum said that we have the chance to move into a council house out on the Exeter road, so it was goodbye to the Blenheim Hotel, I was sad to go but it was time on move on and it was only about two miles out of Dawlish and there was a garden to play in. Over the road were some woods and we played a lot in them, the beach was about 录 mile away. I well remember one day coming home from a shopping trip in Dawlish with Mum and my brother Peter, he was in a pushchair, we were caught out in the open, we looked up and coming right at us was a German fighter plane and right on its tail was a spitfire, they were flying very low and bullets were flying all over the place. I got down on the ground but Mum just stood there, we were lucky that day it was a close call and I was very scared and glad to get home.
I remember one day playing over the road near the woods and looking up to the sky and coming in very low was an American flying fortress, a B27, it was coming back from a bombing mission and was shot to pieces and only had one engine left functioning. I ran after it to see what had happened to it, it had crash-landed in an open field about a mile from our house. I was soon on the spot and having a good look at it, the pilot had done well to get the plane home and in one piece, he was the only in it as the rest of the crew had bailed out. Inside one of the turrets I saw blood on the glass so someone must have been hit.
The sad bit to this story is that three weeks after this happened the same pilot was 鈥榢illed in action鈥� on another mission over Germany, this was reported in the Dawlish newspaper, this time he didn鈥檛 come home. Someone in the USA had lost a son.

It is now summer 1944 and at last things are getting better, as far as the war goes, peaceful times in Dawlish at last. Mum said it was now time to go back home to Plymouth. I knew I would miss Dawlish very much, it had been a part of my life and I had some happy times there, so off we went again back to Plymouth and Bridwell Road and back to Combs Head School.
I remember we had not been home long and the end of the war with Germany was over so we had a street party to celebrate victory, a grand time was had by all.

Peace at last, peace in my time, I will never forget, my war was over.

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