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Memories of the blitz, V1’s and V2’s in London

For most of the war (apart from being evacuated to Ashtead, Surrey, from September 1939 to July 1940) I lived with my parents in S.E. London (Overhill Road, East Dulwich, SE22). Being quite high on a hill, we could see most of London from the garden and back windows of our house. We normally took shelter in the cellar of our house when the air-raid sirens went, but as soon as it was safe we came up and could see the effects of the air-raid. We had a ‘grandstand view’. I remember in particular seeing the fires raging in the docks after the devastating air-raids in August 1940.
As our air-defences developed, the air-raids took place more often at night, usually at full moon. So they were fairly predictable. I remember walking home from school one afternoon and wondering who would get killed that night.

The V1’s (‘doodlebugs’)
I had my 14th birthday on June 12th 1944, a few days after D-day and a few days before the first V1’s came over. By this time they had replaced the traditional anti-aircraft battery in Dulwich Woods with rockets. When the first V1 came over, they fired at it. We had never heard the rockets in action before. They sounded like an express train roaring over the house! But that happened only once or twice. They soon moved the rockets to the coast, as there was no point in shooting down a V1 over London.
One day after a V1 had passed overhead, and it was safe to come out, we watched it fly further over London. After a short while the engine cut out, and it dived to the ground. There was a huge golden ball of fire. At first we thought it was some new secret weapon. But it turned out that it had hit the gas-holder at the Oval, and all the gas had gone up in one sheet of flame! Very dramatic! But I do not know of any casualties from that one.
The V1’s became a regular part of life. I remember a cartoon in The Daily Mail. It depicted a school GCE examination in progress. All the windows in the examination room were shattered. But one boy had his hand up asking the invigilator to stop a man from playing his violin in the street, as it was disturbing his concentration!
Sadly I remember that a boy in our school who passed his GCE that summer was killed by a V1 during the summer holidays.

The V2’s
A month or two later the V2’s started. Since they travelled faster than the speed of sound, you never saw them. The first you knew was the explosion. However, one day I was standing in the road opposite our house waiting for someone, and as I glanced up I saw the flash of an explosion high in the sky. For many years I had no idea what it was. But some time ago I heard that some V2’s burnt up on re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. I must have glanced up at the precise moment that this had happened!
After the war I learned from friends in Holland that the V2’s sometimes failed shortly after lift-off and crashed back onto the launch-site with an explosion. It was said that the German soldiers working on the launch-sites were punishment squads.
How grateful we should be that D-Day was successful. If it had failed, the V1’s, V2’s, and possibly even the V3’s, which were never used, might have caused appalling casualties in London.

Contribution by David Wallington Orpington, Kent.

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