大象传媒

Introduction
My story starts in Green Lane Copnor Portsmouth where I was born and lived. I was just 5 when war was declared and had started school at the Copnor Road infants.

Shelter
My earliest memory of the war was of my father digging a trench to build an Anderson shelter. The Anderson shelter was covered in concrete including a motor bike for re-enforcing. This was then covered with earth and a further layer of concrete. The entrance had a thick wood and steel door and a concrete blast wall in front. The inside of the corrugated iron shelter was cork lined, it was quite cosy. We were confident that we would be safe in it.

Air Raids
During air raids I would climb a cloths post and wait until I could see aircraft or puffs of smoke from the anti-aircraft guns and rockets. These would form a box formation around the German aircraft, but they always seemed to fly through it. I remember diving into the shelter and landing on a mattress on the floor only to find that it was floating on water. A semi-rotary pump (which I still have) and sump was fitted to pump the water out. At night we slept in the shelter, accept the night my brother Vic was born. We had a raid that night and I went down to the shelter in my 'siren suit'.

During air raids we would listen for the sound of the German bombers, which sounded like 'for you - for you - for you'. I understand now that the bombers engines were synchronised to give a beat that would make it difficult for 'sound direction finding'. We also listened to the whistles of the bombs, which if we heard, was not for us. One night we heard a very loud bang and thought our house must have been hit. When we looked out nothing had been touched. The gasometer at the end of the road had been hit, we were told that the bomb had only dented the top and sent some cast iron spikes flying. In the same raid our hairdresser shop at the corner of Allcot Road and Copnor road was hit and a bomb had gone into the road in Gatcombe Avenue, the next road to us but did not explode, at the time it was not found!

We came out of the shelter one morning to find the sky to the south of us bright orange, I was quite excited, I was sure it was my school. I was right, but lost my book I kept in the in the school basement we used as a shelter. It was a story I later told new school friends as we travelled around the country. I did not return to this school until later in the war. The rest of my schooling in Portsmouth was limited to a half day a week at our house. A teacher visited several houses to teach small groups.

An air raid warning went while we were shopping and we went into the basement shelter under Woolworths in Kingstone Crescent. The pub on the opposite corner was hit. People were brought down to our shelter covered in blood and this was the first time it came home to me that the war was not a game.

We went to Fratton Road to buy some boots, bomb damage was still smouldering. The smell was horrible, my mother explained that it was from burnt bodies. I remember being on Portsdown Hill and saw a barrage balloon catch fire and fall. We also saw vapour trails of 'dog fights'. I found a piece of black aluminium, it may have come from anywhere but to me it was it was a prize piece of German aircraft.

My mothers' friend lost her home when the United Brewery was hit. A friend of mine whose father worked for the brewery said the raid was on 10 january 1941. I remember the arguments that my mothers' friend's husband had been more concerned at saving the brewery than their home. My aunt who lived with my grandfather in Gosport was injured by shrapnel when she had to leave her shelter when a raid got bad, to get my grandfather who had earlier refused to go down to the shelter.

Cirencester
My father volunteered for the RAF and we travelled around England with him and finally settled in Cirencester until he was posted to North Africa. We stayed in an old house with a heavy studded arched door and stables at the rear, which were used to store war stock tins of nestles milk. American soldiers were stationed in a park near us. We would go to the park, which had anti-tank ditches dug across it, to collect firewood, which we hid under my brother in his pram, for our cooking range. Soldiers often ran through our house and over the garden wall. I went to the local church school, which I visited a few years ago, and a telegraph pole was still in the playground that I had my arms pulled around and tickled. Torture was friendly in those days. I seem to remember the whole school marching to the church in the square every morning.

There were a lot of tanks and lorries on the roads and we would collect rubber the tanks shed from their tracks. Petrol was stored in square cans by the side of the road. There was always some petrol left in the empty cans and we would collect this in one of the cans. Some boys were trying to light a fire in a field we called the 'humpty dumps'. I helped by putting can of petrol on it. Flames shot out of the can and one of my legs was badly burnt.

My father came home with a story of a German plane touching down on the runway and although fired at took off without appearing to have been hit.

My father was sent to a crash station in North Africa were he said his main job was stripping damaged aircraft for spares. We then returned to our home in Portsmouth. I saw an aircraft fly over trailing little puffs of smoke. I remember telling my mother that it was a V1 and explained how it worked. I must have been a know-all as I could not explain it now. I don't remember any more air raids, but although we were told that the war was nearly over I was afraid that Germany might have a secret weapon.

When the atomic bomb was dropped on japan I went into the garden to listen for the bang. I also thought it might destroy the world. The know-all did get a bit wrong.

I had a funny education during the war I could knit, pick hops and say prayers, but did not know the alphabet or any nursery rimes! We seemed to have a long wait for my father to come home as the volunteers were the last to be 'demobed'.

My Wifes Story
At the begining of the war my wife Joan who was 2 and her brother Bill 4, cousins and an aunt were evacuated to Wales. Unfortunately the aunt lost her husband with the sinking of HMS BARHAM. Upset they all returned to the Portsmouth area, initially at Ripely where Joan survived being run over by a bolting horse and cart that had been led into a field where she was playing. Finding their accommodation was near an ammunition dump they moved to Petersfield and then to their grandparents house in Highland Terrace in Portsmouth. They were told that they could not move back into their home in Eastern Avenue as it had been requesitioned, however finding it empty they later moved back in.

Both Joan and Bill have a vivid memory of a raid in which a parachute bomb landed near their shelter, which fortunately did not explode. During this raid a number of houseboats in Velder creek in Langstone harbour, known locally as the 'shore' were set on fire. One of these was called JANIS and had just been painted blue and grey ready for a newly married couple. The raid may have been the result of decoy fires set up on mud flates in Langstone harbour, which would make Velder creek look like HMS Dolphin Submarine base in Portsmouth harbour, or the houseboats may have been mistaken as landing craft. Velder creek has now been filled in and a housing estate built around it.

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