大象传媒

WW2 Peoples War
A Childs Perspective

What is that "Buzzing" noise Mummy those words stand out very firmly in my mind as a child, while walking up the road with my Mother who was deaf (no deaf aids for the ordinary person in those days) so 1 was her ears. At the age of nine or ten 1 had heard the first air raid on Croydon airport and consequently we were herded into a public air raid shelter by the police at the end of the road.

1 was born in 1931 and so was eight years old when the war started. In 1938 1 had been taken to school complete with gas mask and luggage label to be shipped off to America because of the Munich crisis, only to find after floods of tears that I was not going, as an agreement had been reached by Mr Chamberlain " how innocent the young can be!"

This small preparatory private school " Aberdeen House" was the first of seven that 1 attended throughout the war, when 1 look back now what a disrupted education this was , 1 wonder what modem psychologists would make of it these days?

1 lived in what was commonly known as London's " Bomb Alley" boundaries on all sides of the area containing Kenley, Biggin Hill and Croydon airports.

When war was declared we joined another family (except for my Father who was serving in the Police War Reserve) and went to Middleton on Sea in Sussex near Brighton, to stay with an aunt. Here 1 attended my second school, a Dame's school (one class in each corner of a church hall). Things must have become too noisy for this aunt with four children in the house and so 1 was sent as a London evacuee to Brighton where 1 joined another local school that had been evacuated from Croydon Surrey, my home town.

The first Sunday tea time 1 seem to remember was a great education when a large cork was placed in the middle of the table containing several large hat pins, 1 was told these are for the cockles that my foster Father had collected he being a fisherman "Ugh"

When France fell my Father decided to bring us all back to Warlingham in Surrey, supposedly "a safe area" about 15 miles outside Croydon. He stated "if we are going to get killed we might as well all go together"!

Here 1 went to yet another school and spent a good deal of the time in the school air raid shelter during daylight raids, becoming very adept at playing "battleships" and " noughts and crosses" having first been given a boiled sweet from a large jar which was every child's reward for keeping calm! During this time my memories of all the kids in the neighbourhood, going down the garden with pillows under their arms to sleep the night in the air raid shelters, shouting across the garden fences "good night mind the bugs don't bite" which was quite realistic with the spiders and creepy crawlies that inhabited the shelters. 1 can still remember the red glow on the paint work of the windows, of our houses at night when the docks were on fire and the Blitz was at its height, as the crow flies we were not that far from the East End of London.
One day time raid that 1 remember quite vividly, as 1 have already said my Mother was deaf, we had been sent down to the shelter as the siren had gone while she was preparing the vegetables for dinner, suddenly she saw the planes approaching, picked up the large enamel washing up bowl with handles on each side, that she was using put it over her head and ran down to the shelter, to arrive soaking wet, potato peelings adorning her hair.

The bombing had a "lull" the time in a child is non existent but at 10+ years 1 had to change school again because of my age and had to go to a Central school for a few months before 1 could attend the Grammar school, which 1 had passed the exam for ( quite amazing really!) 1 would walk past the Blacksmiths shop and watch the farrier shoeing the horses., or wait at the bus stop on the village green and collect the bus tickets that had been dropped (they were much more sophisticated pieces of paper than the present day) and painstakingly put them in numerical order with my collection at home (no TV then!!)

Down our lane soldiers would often march singing as they went, where they were heading we did not know, but on hindsight "D" day was approaching. Us kids would go down to the field at the end where RAF lads where in charge of tethered barrage balloon, 1 received a letter from one of them and thought 1 was really in LOVE !! but 1 think he was probably lonely too and missing his own kids! We would walk up a neighbouring lane and see them practising towing gliders. ( The posters would advertise careless talk costs lives) but we were quite oblivious of this potential.

1 suppose it was about the end of my second year in Grammar school when guess what, 1 was evacuated again, this time to Newton Abbot in Devon, owing to the vast increase in the flying bomb raids, so we were packed on to trains from school and despatched to an unknown destination as far as we were concerned, singing as we went " we're on the way to any where, don't know where we're going till we're there, on arrival given a revolting cup of sweet milky tea poured out of a large teapot (to my disgust as 1 did not like sugar in my tea) along with a bun. In the assembly hall we were duly dished out to various billets (some very strange including mine) and with yet another school on the horizon.

1 was very unhappy with all this, hot water was non existent in these back to back houses with outside toilets, and at thirteen years of age hygiene was becoming quite important, hence 1 learnt to swim at the local swimming pool, as it was the only place that my friend and 1 could find to freshen ourselves up!

After many tears and arguments 1 eventually persuaded my parents to take me back home, the war was starting to come to a close with the allied forces getting well into France.

One very vivid memory was going out one day with my Mother back at home and hearing the "Whoosh"! Of a rocket (V2) coming, and pushing her into a bank to take cover, just in time to hear it explode in a nearby field (the accolade afterwards was great, and 1 felt that perhaps 1 had been some use in asking to come home.)!

The feeling of camaraderie in those dreadful times was with us as kids just as the adults. 1 being one of the eldest organised a concert to perform in front of the neighbours (using the Morrison table shelter we had in our house as a stage) Our efforts raised 拢5 for the Red Cross Prisoners of War Fund which was a lot of money in those days!
What did all this teach us? How to look after all we had not to waste and be caring for others around us. We did not know too much about fear except when the raids were on, but 1 think it made us pretty responsible adults early on in life.

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