大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site at Banstead History Centre on behalf of Mr Geoffrey Robinson. It has been added to the site with the author's permission, and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

ME AND THE WAR IN BANSTEAD
(PART THREE)

I used to go to school in Sutton by train from Banstead. The station was the scene of much activity with the clanking of goods trains being shunted into and out of the sidings. Coal or coke was the usual form of heating and especially in winter the bunkers in the goods yard were continually being filled from railway trucks with different kinds of coal. This was then taken by the coal merchant's horse and cart to individual houses to meet the coal ration introduced in 1941 of one ton per household per month. Most other freight was also moved by rail rather than road. Not many people had cars in those days. Petrol was rationed and not available except for essential users such as doctors.

One night one side of Belmont station was destroyed by a bomb and another morning we found a bomb had fallen on the line there making a perfectly symmetrical crater where the line had been. This was quickly repaired but in the meantime we were allowed to use the bus from Banstead to Sutton without charge on production of a season ticket.

As the war progressed various young men departed from Banstead station and returned after a while wearing a uniform. One such was my next door neighbour John Kent, a genial and friendly man who worked for a bank. He was called up in late 1940 and joined the Navy, as he enjoyed sailing. He was killed in the Mediterranean in 1944.

Another naval victim was Ronald Best of Roundwood Way, the brother of my sister's best friend, killed in the destroyer Boadicea in 1944. Other local casualties, only half remembered now were Roy Yeomans also of Roundwood Way, killed in 1942, a glider pilot who had been at school with me, and my near neighbours William Biles killed in Libya in 1942 and Philip Hamilton who died at sea in 1941.

At school assembly the headmaster would read out from time to time the names of old boys, usually in the RAF, who had died or were missing. Sometimes old boys who had been on some daring operation would come to the school and talk to us about their experiences. We looked admiringly at these young men in their smart RAF uniforms who had been boys there not long before and wondered whether they would survive the war.

The grass of the school playground was gradually dug up, firstly for air raid shelters and then for the growing of vegetables by the boys. Lessons were interrupted from time to time by air raid warnings which meant trooping out to the shelters and hanging about in a fuggy half light until the all clear sounded. It was not until 1941 that lighting was installed.

Occasionally there was some interruption of lessons as when a delayed action bomb exploded loudly one afternoon just off Sutton High Street. Another time a stick of bombs fell near the school overnight wrecking several houses and we were sent home as it was feared that a crater in the school playing field might contain a delayed action bomb.

One afternoon leaving school we were intrigued by the sight of two fighter aircraft apparently engaged in high spirited low level flying over the roof tops of Manor Park. It was only after watching them for some time that we noticed that one was German and hoped it would not get away.

There were only intermittent air raids after 1941. More and more people were asked to do their bit for their country and war work for women became compulsory in 1943. This included enlistment as Fire Guards trained to deal with incendiary bombs and the use of stirrup pumps.

One afternoon in May 1944 one of my friends told me that an American Lightning fighter had crashed on Banstead Downs, killing the pilot. His eye witness account told how the pilot had tried to bale out of his plane but been unable to do so in time. He told how the body parts had been retrieved and carried away by the police in his parachute. We went to the crash scene and found that some small human remains had not in fact been removed. The crash was probably due to a failure in the unusual airframe of this plane. Some years ago a memorial plaque to the dead American was placed in the Downs not far from the crash site.

Shortly after the Allied landings in France in June 1944 there was unusual activity locally. Ambulance trains carrying casualties from the beach landings began to arrive at Epsom Downs railway station and, I believe, Tattenham Corner station also. I watched men being unloaded on stretchers and taken by ambulance to local hospitals, especially cleared of other patients.

Soon afterwards the first German flying bomb, or "doodle-bug", made its appearance. This was a pilotless bomb on wings with a ton of high explosive in a thin steel casing propelled by an ingenious and very fast jet engine. It was designed to fall in the centre of London and was initially very successful. It was some time before defensive measures against it became effective, resulting in work being badly disrupted by frequent air raid warnings.

I had left school in 1943 and worked in the City of London for the rest of the war. Being the most junior and working on the top floor I was deputed to be flying bomb spotter for my building. On the top of the nearby Bank of England was a system of cones operated by staff connected to Royal Observer Corps lookouts. Cones being hoisted meant that a flying bomb was coming directly in our path whereupon it was my duty to sound a buzzer to tell the staff to take cover and to do so myself if necessary in a small shelter on the roof.

This was better than working but not altogether satisfactory. Two such bombs had already fallen quite close nearby (one of them, incidentally, killing a Banstead man) and it was believed that these bombs were launched from the same site with the same amount of fuel, making it quite likely that more bombs would fall nearby also.

In fact no more flying bombs did fall close by although on one memorable occasion the device's engine cut out not far away and I had the curious experience of looking across areas made derelict by the fire bombing in 1940 and down at the bomb which, glinting in the sunlight, glided silently to the ground over the empty areas, exploding with successively yellow and red fire and black smoke.

The flying bombs in Banstead came nearer home. The first of seven to fall on Nork was in the early morning of 17th-June 1944 when one fell near Partridge Mead, which at that time ended in an open cornfield. One bungalow was demolished and other property seriously damaged with the nearby school also sufferering damage. I looked out to see if I could see anything but noticed only the smell of high explosive. Others that day fell on Banstead Downs and Epsom Downs.

On returning home one evening in early July I was astonished to be met by a scene of destruction in Nork Way. The familiar shops I had passed on my way to the station in the morning had been wrecked by a bomb. The baker's shop was in ruins and the baker killed, I was told, by a sack of flour falling on him.

The premises of the grocer, ladies' hairdresser, greengrocer and the draper had also been shattered and the petrol filling station only just survived. The houses at 53 and 55 Nork Way were also in ruins and others badly damaged, the local dentist in one of them suffering injuries from which he died later. The damage in the vicinity caused by the bomb was considerable. Apart from the fatalities it was recorded that four other casualties were taken to hospital. Not everybody behaved well; I remember the report of a salvage worker being convicted of looting from a bombed building there.

This was followed two weeks later by a bomb on the site now occupied by Fir Tree Close which likewise did much damage to property. The explosive force of these bombs was such that Morrison shelters were issued to those who wanted them. These were steel indoor table type shelters strongly constructed and with steel mesh over the sides. Erected in the living room it gave quite an acceptable shelter.

On the morning of 21st July I received a phone call telling me to come home at once as the house had been badly damaged. I hurried home and rounding the corner into Warren Road found that the missile had landed in the footway outside No. 20 wrecking or badly damaging about 30 houses, 10 of them beyond repair, with others made uninhabitable. Several residents had had remarkable escapes.

My house looked a mess. All the windows were broken,and most of the doors blown off their hinges. The ceilings were nearly all down, with plaster and soot everywhere. Walls, woodwork, furniture, upholstery, bedclothes and pictures were pitted with glass splinters. The tiles had mainly been blown off the roof, the lavatory basin was broken and an internal bedroom wall had shifted several inches.

The explosion had burst a water main and brought down telephone wires. However wardens, policemen, ambulances, and all the different repair and rescue services were quickly on the scene which became a hive of activity. The church hall in Warren Road was opened as a rest centre and the Womens Voluntary Service set to with a will, providing a meal and a drink to excited locals.

By nightfall most of the tiles had been replaced on our roof and external doors temporarily refitted, partly with tiles and doors salvaged from other damaged houses. Roofing felt was nailed over the wooden window frames, making the house almost watertight, if dark, until this was replaced later by oiled silk. But it was the Morrison shelter in the living room for us that night.

Other buzz-bombs fell locally, notably one on Banstead High Street one morning in August causing severe damage to the eastern end of the street and killing a soldier who happened to be there. I was waiting on Banstead station at the time and heard it arrive and explode. It was impossible to judge where it had fallen and I got on the train as usual hoping my mother, my home and my possessions were unharmed.

Later that day another bomb fell where Larchwood Close is now, the last to fall in Nork. One evening I heard the unmistakeable sound of a buzz-bomb accompanied by the roar of a fighter plane and the sound of gunfire. Looking up I saw that the bomb had actually been set alight and was flying in a ball of flame. I watched hoping it would explode in mid-air and do no damage, but this was not to be and it crashed and exploded somewhere in the Sutton area.

By the time of the bomb incident in Partridge Mead in mid-June there were only a dozen or so children left in the Roundwood Way school of the 91 originally on roll and they stayed in or near their shelters all day. After that bomb, parties of children were evacuated to King's Lynn and Middlesbrough. The school was closed for 18 days and did not reopen until 16th October by which time workmen and volunteers had made temporary repairs.

It was not surprising that there was an exodus from the district to somewhere safer, but realistically the risks of staying were not too great and at least it made the trains less crowded. But it was not pleasant going by train; they were crowded, sometimes travelling along a different route if the track had been damaged and often late, especially if air raid warnings were in operation.

Lighting on trains had been reduced in power at the start of the war making reading difficult and pulling down the blinds used at that time was compulsory. In 1944 the windows, like those of buses, began to be covered by a protective material glued to them except for a small diamond to see out of. Even this tended to be depressing sometimes when one saw the effect of the impact of a ton of high explosive on bricks and mortar near the railway or, as I once did, a doodle-bug overtaking the train on its way to London.

One afternoon in November 1944 a German V2 rocket with its ton of high explosive fell without warning in the grounds of Banstead Mental Hospital killing three people. By that time rockets were being launched on London in some numbers. Here there was no defence, and no indication of their approach so one could only hope for the best. One morning at work there was a tremendous explosion. It was obviously a rocket and I went out on to the roof to try to see where it had fallen. It was in fact one of the worst such incidents, having fallen on Smithfield Market and killed 115 people and injured many more.

The last months of the European war were notable for the large numbers of Allied aircraft going out in formation to bomb Germany, or, if I remember rightly, carrying parachute troops and gliders to be dropped near the front line. Sometimes there was evidence of damage to returning planes and we watched hoping they would get back to base safely.

VE Day was, for me, something of an anti-climax. There were of course no fireworks and the efforts of myself and my friends to make substitutes were not very successful. Apart from that the war was not over and we were all due to be called up. Although accepting the need for fighting the Germans in Europe to defend this country the prospect of fighting the Japanese in the jungle to save the British Empire did not appeal so much.

However we celebrated VE Day by building a bonfire in Nork Park and in the absence of fireworks someone brought along a belt of machine gun ammunition, which exploded satisfactorily if somewhat haphazardly when put on the fire.

VJ Day was celebrated by going up to London and trying to find some action in the Whitehall and Buckingham Palace areas. This was not very satisfactory either, especially when on returning to Warren Road we found that a fine bonfire had been lit there with the unauthorised taking of wooden fences and other flammable material from the houses and gardens in the area of the 1944 bombing, much to the dismay of the householders when they discovered what had been done.

For me the war lasted from age 12陆 to 18, obviously a very formative time in anyone's life. However most things for the wartime civilian went on much as usual and my life might not have been so different had there been no war. But it was a world away from that of today.

G A Robinson
December 2005

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