大象传媒

I was 8 years old (a twin) living in Bexleyheath, Kent. A few weeks before war broke out on 3 Sept 39 my family were woken one night about 3am by a tremendous clatter outside the house. There was a furious banging on the front door and when my shakened father opened it he was presented with four gas masks! War was on its way!

At about this time we (like all other households) were given an Anderson shelter which we had to erect ourselves. Digging the hole for it was a difficult task - my father nearly broke his back!
The shelter, containing two bunks for my brother and I together with two upright deck chairs for my parents to sleep in, were used night after night during many weeks.

Sometimes the shelter after rain would contain six inches of water, which had to be pumped out before we could use it again.

We usually went down to the shelter around 9pm after an air raid warning, the 'all clear'sounding about 4 am. Then back to the house for a couple of hours sleep - then off to school where our lessons would be interrupted by another raid, which meant another hour in a shelter. It's amazing we ever learnt anything at school during this period.

Later, in 1941, my brother and I together with my two cousins were evacuated to Swindon, Wilts, where we remained for about a year.

One day my uncle, a sergeant in the City of London police, brought home two items - the parachute silk cord from a land mine dropped by a German aircraft, which landed three feet from St Pauls Cathedral but did not explode, and an unexploded incendiary bomb complete with fin. I wrapped up the bomb in newspaper and took it on the bus to school. The headmaster said: 'Take it round the school - show the children what's falling on London!'

Then I took it back home, again on the bus, but when my uncle found out he dug a big hole in the garden where we were living and buried the bomb.I expect it's still there to this day.

Back in Bexleyheath in 1945 Winston Churchill had an idea for blacking out the River Thames, which was an excellent guiding path for German planes when the moon was shining. He had thousands of small metal chimneys, 6 feet high, made with a reservoir at the bottom of each, which were placed about 12 feet apart along every road each side of the river between London and Dartford. The reservoir was filled by the Army Pioneer corps with crude oil which was set alight with the oil burning all night and producing a thick pea soup fog. Next day the chimneys were cleaned and the reservoir filled again, ready for the next night's burning. What a smell it created - especially in the summer when all our windows had to be completely closed.

I must have seen over 100 flying bombs in Bexleyheath during the period June-September 1944 which flew from Belgium and Holland into London. My brother and I rarely went out of the house during this period and in fact we were given a loud whistle that we blew to warn local residents whenever a flying bomb was on its way to our area. One crashed one night on to the local trolley bus garage. Only 4 out of 80 buses survived.

Towards the end of the war my father's business took him to Norwich where we stayed for seven months living close to St Faiths airport (now Norwich airport). St Faiths contained two squadrons of American Liberator bombers and one day when my brother and I were walking a half a mile from the runway a Liberator returning from a bombing raid on Germany, with only one engine working, came straight towards us about 50 feet from the ground and sending out flares. We dropped to the ground in time to see it turn over and crash a few yards away taking part of two houses. Sadly all 10 crew were killed plus two children, who had been playing in their garden.

After all our stressful days in the war we never had any counselling nor had we ever heard of such a thing.

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