大象传媒

MEMOIRS OF JOHN PHILIP HASELDINE DOB 12iv1926

I was evacuated from Harlesden in north-west London in 1939, before the war started. I was aged thirteen. I cannot remember the name of the village but it was within nine miles of Dunstable and within a few miles of Wing in Bedfordshire. Three of us boys were sent to a farm; we lasted there one week. In the farmyard there was a pump and one day the wife told us to pump 100 times on the pump to pour water into a tank in the kitchen. Of course, not realising, we did 100 pumps EACH, which flooded the kitchen and water was flowing out of the kitchen door - so we had to leave.

Then we were sent to a very elderly lady who lived in a very large old house with an orchard full of plum trees. She told us not to eat any as they were not eating plums but for use in dyeing clothes etc., and so slightly poisonous. Now I realise it was it stop us eating them. She was very religious and we had to go to church twice on Sunday and often once in the week. She was very good to us. The house had many nooks and crannies. We went up into the attic one day which was all empty and dusty but in one corner was an old peg leg, just like the one Long John Silver had in Treasure Island. We were quite frightened and never went up there again. We eventually found out that one of her family had been a sea-captain. While we were here we sat around the radio and listened to Neville Chamberlain declare that we were at war.

I would write home every few days asking to be taken back. My parents and sister visited me but were loath to return me to London.

I remember in the main room a very large chimney, big enough to walk into, which we would pop our heads into and call out, 鈥淐an you hear me, mother?鈥�, which was a catch phrase of Sandy Powell, a popular comedian of the time.

My father owned a baker鈥檚 shop within 100 yds of Willesden Junction Station. It was the largest rail goods depot in England at that time. The Grand Union Canal ran parallel with the railway line and there was a large coal yard from which shire horses would pull wagons of coal quite a long distance. The coalmen looked after these great horses wonderfully and there was quite a steep rise from the depot to the top of the town. In frozen weather and snow they used to carry large sacks to fling under the horses鈥� hooves to stop them slipping. Even so I saw at least one slide and slip right down and they had a terrible job to get it up again.

After the start of the war there were none of the expected air raids for many months and my father decided to fetch me home. At that time he owned a large 18hp Austin car which you could sit in with a top hat on if you wanted to. As he had a large business he was allowed plenty of petrol. Also he had a number of delivery vans, one of which I remember was called a Jowett. He also had men who pulled barrows round local roads.

At the start of hostilities, nearly all his young men were in their early 20s and were called up for war service. He was left with a depleted workforce, mostly old men almost past working age.

There was no bombing for some long time after the war started and also few schools were open and I used to work at home for my father. I then joined the Army Cadets and was given a .303 rifle. I remember coming home with this rifle; I must only have been about 5鈥�3鈥� and my family all laughed because the rifle was bigger than I. I was in that a few weeks and then I heard about the Air Training Corps which had started at the local grammar school. I was allowed to join although I was not a grammar school boy. The C.O. was an old 1914-18 pilot and we revered him greatly. We used to train in all sorts of things - aircraft recognition and Morse code, which I found very difficult to reach the standard required for pilot training, but eventually I did somehow.

By then the bombing had started and being where we live it was pretty terrific. Every night we would be bombed and I remember people coming to the shop on their way to work saying they had been bombed out the night before. It was amazing what they would put up with. The front windows of our shop and the house above were blown out and on two occasions we had firebombs on the roof. My eldest sister used to be up with a bucket of water to throw over them and we managed to procure a stirrup pump because for a time I did fire watching with two elderly men.

The noise at night was ear-splitting, not only with bombs coming down but on the railway they had large anti-aircraft guns which could move along the rails like trains and the noise they made was also terrific. On the corner of a road nearby to us was a public house called the Junction Arms and one night a dud ack-ack shell killed four people when it landed in the bar. I remember one very bad night because, I suppose stupidly, we never went into shelters. We stayed in the house above the shop and a large bomb came down only a few houses away and we had all dived under a large table. My sister jumped up after not knowing that the door to the room had blown off and badly cracked her head against it. She went to her office the next day, where she worked for a solicitor in the City and back home again but she never remembered getting there or coming home. This must have been concussion, but I must say she was marvellous because through all the bombing she never missed one day going to the office. Things got so bad at one stage we did decide to sleep in a local shelter in the road. They were horrible places and after we had been a couple of nights I contracted what was then known of 鈥榮helter face鈥� - my face swelled up like a balloon.

One couple who were customers at our shop used to put a Valor oil stove to heat the shelter. They always stood it just inside the entrance and one night my sister and I were carrying bedding in. She went first and part of her bedding caught the stove and it blew up in great roaring flames. Luckily I had the presence of mind to grab hold of the stove, run to the entrance, and throw it out. I was very fortunate because both my hands, hair and eyelashes were singed but no permanent injury. When the owners of the stove saw it, virtually in ashes in the street, they were so annoyed they made my father buy them a new one. Another evening, being a bit of a devil myself (of course, shelters were dark as there was no light), my sister and I had gone with bedding. As usual she went in first and I flung a white sheet over myself and moaned like a ghost and frightened her terribly, for which I was told off by my parents.

When the bombing of London was at its height and things were extremely bad a good friend of my father鈥檚 lived at Carpenders Park, along the Tube line. He kept on to us that we should go there for a good night鈥檚 sleep with them as it was quiet there. Although you could hear the bombing going on in London he said they never got any bombs. So one night my mother, father, sister and I, after a lot of arguments, decided that we would go. It was about nine o鈥檆lock at night after the shop was closed and all the men had gone. We took the Undergound and went to Carpenders Park. While we waited for a train, it was a night of terrible bombing and we could here tracer bullets going up into the sky and see them coming down in all different colours, and the anti-aircraft guns banging away. The Underground still ran and we went to Carpenders Park and when we got there went to bed. The next morning when I woke up I was told by my parents that next door had been bombed and the people in the house killed - I had never heard a thing. The bombers seemed to follow us and it was a wonder we were not killed ourselves. Needless to say we only spent that one night in Carpenders Park.

My sister had terribly good hearing and she could tell us German bombers were coming even before the siren sounded and, truthfully, she was always right.

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