大象传媒

'Experiences' around WWII
A boy of 4 1/2 to 10 yrs.
Background:
Retail shop in Hounslow, Middlesex. Father died ca. 1939 of TB - first memories therefore of grief. Later, during War, a kindly step-father appeared - and then disappeared temporarily on service in the RAF.

1940: sent as an evacuee to North Wales - Llanberis area. 'Confined' in a convent ensconced in a grim old castle
with dingy dormitories. (Bryn Bras Castle). In spite of strict, ecclesiastical conditions, the Sisters did their best, I am sure, to ameliorate the grim interiors. We did, I remember, have occasional outings - I remember walking with the others along a narrow lane with - to me - rather high hedges and being scared by a goat appearing over the hedge above me and, probably on the same outing, walking through an amazing sight to a town boy - a host of bluebells in a wood. I also remember a trip to the pebbly beach at Llandudno, where seemingly the big cold pebbles amplified my experience of an awful toothache which must have begun that day. However, I must have cheered up, since I remember we were all singing in the coach on the way back - mostly American patriotic songs about Georgia and John Brown's Body. I did learn to read and write while there, but remember nothing about formal lessons, story telling or music during that sojourn. After some months, my mother somehow managed to motor up in our old Ford to North Wales to visit - and was so shocked by my appearance (cropped hair and nasty medicated sores behind my ears!) and the fact that I insisted on calling her 'Mother' in a very Welsh accent rather than the accustomed 'mummy', that she insisted on my immediate return to Hounslow - presumably the worst of the London Blitz was over.
Since I was somewhat poorly, especially in winter months, and was after all a TB 'Child Contact Case' outpatient at Brompton Hospital, it was deemed that I was not a suitable internee for a either a boarding school or a normal primary school, so I attended daily 'school' at a nearby 'Open Air School' at Busch House, Syon, riding the latest style of trolley bus to get there. Very little formal schooling took place there, I remember mostly gardening lessons, singing lessons, clay modelling lessons, daily enforced after-lunch hour-long exasperating 'sleep' periods either in a large hall or outside on a huge patio - that's where one day I was stung by a wasp! I remember many such hours where I just contemplated the shapes made by the distant high trees of Syon Park! Occasionally, - I believe in 1943 - 44 - the air raid warning sounded and we had to go down the communal shelters - not very large ones - where the staff gave memorable readings of 'Brer Rabbit' and 'Winnie-the Pooh' to while away the time. Digging in the school garden gave me a rupture, so I was sent to hospital for the operation. Being 'Wartime', it was difficult to find a bed, and I apparently ended up in Oxford in a ward of wounded military men! They seemed to make me a ward mascot for the short time I was there.

War events:
In my experience, we were quite lucky not to have any untoward event in Hounslow until the 'Little' Blitz. One night we had one of the usual air raid warnings sounding, but we were fairly oblivious to them - anyway, we didn't make our way to the nearby local subterranean communal shelter - of which I had rather dank memories of times spent on 'Dunlopillo'. However, the anti-aircraft firing became unusually close, so we huddled under the stairs at home. It seems a sole bomber came overhead - since only one bomb appeared to have dropped - not much more than a hundred yards away directly onto the railway embankment of the Underground Piccadilly/District Line and just by the intended target of the prominent electrical sub-station at the end of Hounslow East station. Stones and debris - fortunately not much - fell on our roof. The Piccadilly Line didn't run for a short while from Hounslow.

Later came D-Day and the 'Doodle-Bugs'; by now, I was a nine-year-old avidly reading the newspapers. The media in general were prominent, because there was little to occupy our minds. In the cinema we lapped up Lesley Mitchell and others yelling the latest filmed News; Alvar Lidell, Stuart Hibberd and others in more moderate tones were telling the story on the radio; I was entertained by many, such as Charles Hawtrey (who sometimes came into our shop), Patricia Hayes, Uncle Mac, Eric Barker, Charley Chester, Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne and, of course, That Man Again! - Oh, and one of my uncles had a big, mysterious cabinet in the corner of the room with a dark glass stuck in it?? (***Tele-Vision???) - it was a curiously spell-binding, incomprehensible in function, blank object.
At that time, the progress of the American and British armies were reported more-or-less daily by the likes of Richard Dimbleby, Chester Wilmot, Frank Gillard, Stewart McPherson, John Snagge and even, I believe, Raymond Baxter. (You can tell we listened a great deal to the radio!)
As I just mentioned, I studied the newspaper reports of V1 'Doodle-Bugs' which were pilotless, winged engines of a new type - pulsating jet engines with a characteristic rumbling sound - bearing fairly powerful explosive warheads. As it turned out, there was a design fault - they had been intended apparently to dive fully powered down to the ground. For some reason they instead carried on flying until the fuel had run out, and the engine and rumbling cut out. So you had a few moments of warning - either useless or helpful as the case may have been! Later, daily the newspapers depicted grim maps of different areas of London on consecutive days which were peppered with black dots showing the doodle-bug damage - some areas of South London being especially badly pock-marked.
One evening in the summer of 1944, we were standing around the entrance to the subterranaen shelter mentioned previously. A warning had sounded - I seem to remember that a new way of sounding warnings had been developed for such non-blitz raids - short blasts of sound, instead of the familiarised undulating blare, but again, we were seemingly oblivious to any expectation of anything happening. I was looking over towards the west sky and saw an aircraft, quickly spotted the engine above the back end of the aircraft and shouted ,"There's one!" and dived into the shelter. Someone said "He's right!" and everyone rushed in after me. My step-father just managed to shut the door as the blast occurred! Fortunately, the 'bug landed some four/five hundred yards away, just in front of the empty primary school, damaging it badly - it was the very school I was intended to change to from the Open Air School that following September! Another 'bug came down in the flatlands of Hounslow Heath - now Heathrow - and a brother of my stepfather was killed at his workplace.
That was not the last local event. The second of Hitler's revenge weapons was the V2 stratospheric rocket sent from the rapidly dwindling territory of the Third Reich, mainly to Britain. Being supersonic, there was no warning at all, neither of it nor of any impending raid! Indeed, the sounds of the rocket arrived after the explosion had actually occurred. I had been sent up the road to the baker's one morning when a terrific explosion occurred to the north - actually in Heston about a mile away, I ran all the way home! I was too afraid to walk around to find out the degree of damage! Only the advancing Western Front was able to reduce the number of launchings.

Epilogue:
Because of the enforced lack of scholastic experience, I had to cram in just one year, all preparation for my '11-plus' exams - failing them and then attending Senior School of a lower grade than desirable. However, I did well at science and french/german with some able teachers and soon transferred to a Secondary Technical School - actually a part of Northampton Polytechnic - in London (situated on grounds that were associated with the Earl, apparently). Later, I finally managed to enter Grammar School - again, just before O-level exam time! - and found science teachers who had also transferred there from the previous school!

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