大象传媒

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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bramley History Society and has been added to the website on behalf of Frank Hodges with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

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August 1939 An only child aged 9, living with my parents at our home at Barkingside, Ilford, Essex

September 1st 1939 Travelled with my mother to stay with my maternal grandparents at Broad Oak, Heathfield, Sussex. This was considered a safer area than Ilford. (Nationally, in the first few days of September more than 1.5 million schoolchildren and mothers with children under school age were evacuated from the big cities to escape the expected intensive bombing campaigns,)

September 3rd 1939 Heard PM Neville Chamberlin's statement on Grandfather's radio that we are now at war with Germany.

September 21st 1939 Furious activity to blackout homes. Registration day for National Identity Cards. My number - EKMN 172/3 - shows I was the third person in my Grandparents' household.

September 1939 - early 1940 Period of the `phoney' war. I was enrolled in the local village school and life settled into a normal routine. With the effects of the growing German U-boat campaign, things began to get short. In late 1939 Canadian troops arrive in the area. My grandmother, mother and her sisters help to prepare a `forces canteen' in a local disused warehouse. Christmas 1939 was exceptionally cold with lots of snow. It was difficult to keep warm in the poorly heated and badly insulated house and school buildings.

Rationing began in January 1940.

Late May/June 1940 Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France. Germans in Northern France prepare for invasion of England. Heathfield, being about 15 miles from South Coast becomes a vulnerable area. My grandfather, whose mother was a Jewess, becomes concerned about the possible effects on his family of Hitler's anti-Jewish policy.

June 1940 - early 1941 I returned with my mother to Ilford. Shortly afterwards I was evacuated with my school, Gearies, to Midsomer Norton, Somerset. At that time this was a coal mining town on the North Somerset Coalfield. I stay successively with two families. Both fathers had returned to the coal mining industry with the approach of war. I was fortunate to stay with very good families who were pillars of the local Methodist church.

At first, my school had its own classes in the local Methodist church school. However, before the main blitz on London began in October 1940, there were raids on Bristol and Cardiff. Some bombs were dumped on the next small town, Radstock and shortly after a German reconnaissance aircraft machine-gunned Midsomer Norton main street at lunchtime. Though I believe there were no casualties, these events caused many parents to bring their children back to London.

There were soon only few from my school left in Midsomer Norton and we joined the local school classes. While there I passed my Essex Junior Scholarship (11+) exam. My mother had joined me in Midsomer Norton, where she stayed for a while with the family of the NCO in charge of the local TA Drill Hall. Later she moved to Bath.

April 1941

I return to New Maiden, Surrey where my parents had found a house to rent. My father was working at Kingston Vale in a satellite office that had been established by his firm, a Dutch bank in the City. I was enrolled at Raynes Park County Secondary (from 1944 Grammar) School where I started in September 1941. For one term attended Beverly Central School.

1942

My father (at the age of 41) was called-up for military service in the RAF and was sent out to India where he served as a Pay Clerk in Tripura, eastern India.

6th June 1944

17th June 1944 D-Day. The invasion of Europe begins.

First V1 Flying bombs arrive. About 14 days later a V1 falls on the house opposite our home. Our house is badly damaged with all windows blown out, most doors off hinges, most of the tiles off the roof and some structural damage - in short uninhabitable. My mother and I survive unscratched in our Morrison table shelter in the front downstairs room.

July 1944

Two weeks later a second V1 falls on the houses opposite and undoes some of the temporary repair work which had already been undertaken. In all at least ten V1 s fall within a half mile radius of our house. For two or three weeks we stayed temporarily with friends and family. My school (Raynes Park) decided to evacuate those pupils whose parents wished away from the Buzz bombs.

The school went in three sections: the juniors to Salisbury, where they camped on the Bishop Wordsworth school playing field; the middle school (including me) to the school Harvest Camp site at Inkpen, Berks - this group later moved to West Woodhay House; and the senior school to the School's Scout Group camp site near Cambridge. At all of these sites, the school functioned as an outdoor boarding school

Only the School Certificate and Higher School Certificate candidates remained to defy the buzz bombs and actually took their exams in the brick air raid shelters! My mother went as a parent to the Salisbury camp to help look after the juniors. By November 1944 the threat of V1 s to south west London had passed as the Allies moved up into Belgium and the school returned to London. There was still the threat from V2 rockets (or gas explosions as they were first called). However, the only way to counter these was to destroy the launching sites. The rockets affected mainly the east of London, though there was serious incident at Richmond Station. My mother and I moved back into our house which had been patched up. It was to be many months before the inside was to be redecorated and our damaged furniture restored. 14 houses opposite had gone!

May 1945

The war ends in Europe.

August 1945

War ends in the Far East after the Atomic Bombs on Japan.

My father did not return from India until early 1946 by which time the `Quit India' campaign was in full swing.

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