大象传媒

War Recollections
I was just 4 years old when the war broke out, and I lived in North Hyde Road, Hayes Middlesex not far from the shops between Wyre Grove and Roseville Road.
My earliest recollections were of the air raids at night and being taken under the stairs with my younger sister by my mother. My father was employed by Fairy Aviation, who at the beginning of the war was making Swordfish aircraft for the Fleet Air Arm. During the raids he had to go out as a firewatcher at the factory.

At first we had no air raid shelter and spent many nights in the cupboard under the stairs in our three bedroom semi, as that was regarded as the safest place to be. After some time a neighbour managed to get an Anderson outdoor shelter in their back garden and they shared it with their immediate neighbours. I recall after a period of rain it filled up with water rendering it useless. However after some time all the houses were supplied with Andersons or inside Morrison shelters, which were like a solid steel table and replaced the dining table in most households.
The new Andersons were also concreted in to make them waterproof. We spent many nights in our shelter and to this day I can vividly remember the sound of the very distinct undulating pitch of the engines of the German bombers. Early on in the war we were all issued with gas masks mine fitted over the face and head and was carried in a cardboard box. But my baby sister had a sort of a complete body suite into which she was placed and sealed in.

I went to Cranford Park primary School in Phelps Way, which was hit by a bomb in the early months of the war that killed the school caretaker and his wife, their only daughter survived. They were sheltering in the school boiler room that took a direct hit, to my recollection, it was the only bomb that fell any where near the school by miles.
As the war progressed our lessons at Cranford Park were frequently interrupted by air raids and we had to hurriedly evacuate the classrooms and go into the long underground shelters that were built at the back of the school. In those days we walked to school accompanied by mum for a while but when we had learnt the route we went by ourselves, it was a walk of about three-quarters of a mile. On the way I can remember that we passed large round tanks of water, about four feet deep and ten yards in diameter which were to give instant supplies of water to fight fires caused by incendiary bombs. Also at the top of Phelps Way there was a large brick air raid shelter built on the pavement with a door that opened strait onto the road, we used to play in it frequently. On one occasion I was run over by a lorry as I ran out of that door, I must have been six or seven at the time, fortunately I got off with a cut on the head and a slightly bruised foot.

Food was strictly rationed and everyone including my father grew a lot of vegetables and kept rabbits and chickens. We just had rabbits, lots of them when they started breeding and it was my job to pick dandelions and cow thistles to feed them. My sister and I liked to play with them in our Anderson shelter, but it never seemed to bother us when one was dispatched and ended up on the dinner table. One of my other jobs was to follow the milk carts, which were horse drawn and collect the manure in a bucket for my fathers vegetable garden.

On several occasions during the war my sister and I were sent to my grandparents house in a small town in Sussex called Heathfield, just about a dozen miles inland from Eastbourne. I can remember that there were large numbers of Canadian troops stationed there and that they raided my grandmother鈥檚 chicken coups, to steal the eggs. On one occasion they took the ceramic artificial egg that was used to encourage the chickens to lay, and my grandmother would laugh at the thought of them trying to eat it.
On one winter visit to my grandmother it was winter and there had been quitw a heavy snowfall. My grandmother was great believer in goose grease and we had it rubbed on our boots to keep the wet out and on our chests for some unknown reason.
We always seemed to have long hot summers in those days and we would range far and wide in the fields between Hayes and Southall and Cranford Park with no fear of being molested or any other harm coming to us. Heston aerodrome at some point was taken over by the American Army Air Force as it was then, and as far as I could make out it became a casualty evacuation centre for D Day. We soon got used to the Americans, our favourite catch phrase was 鈥淕ot any gum chum鈥� and they were very generous, as they knew that we had very little in the way of sweats etc. We were very keen on swimming and as Hayes had no pool we would walk all the way to Heston Swimming Pool as it was the only indoor pool around. In the summer we would sometimes walk to Southall or even Uxbridge outdoor pools.
The next major period of the war that I can remember was when the flying bombs (also known as V1s or doodlebugs) started to come over, they were worse than the bombing as you heard them come with the very distinct sound of their pulse jet. The jet would suddenly stop and we were taught to get into the nearest ditch or behind any substantial wall, if out in the open lay down flat supporting your weight on your hands and toes, as if in a 鈥榩ress up position鈥�. They were designed to explode immediately on impact and create a very large blast field which in addition to it鈥檚 own fragments would cause a lot of lethal flying glass and debris. The nearest one to land to us landed in fields between Watersplash Lane and Heston aerodrome. It caused considerable damage to the houses in Roseville Road. In our house, which was about one third of a mile away, it pulled a bedroom window frame out by two or three inches without breaking the windows.
It was in the same field that a badly damaged B17 Fortress Bomber landed. It was there for a few days and as kids we were drawn to it like flies to a jam pot. The American guards were very casual, they let us have a good look around and you could see all of the battle damage that it had sustained. They told use that the pilot had seen his girl friend in that field and called in to see her.

It must have been the summer of 1944 that I had appendicitis with peritonitis, our GP a Dr Singer, who had a practice in Wyre Grove had me rushed to Hillingdon Hospital immediately. I can remember that I was operated on literally as soon as I got there by a surgeon called Mr Duncan. I was at Hillingdon for one month whilst the poisons were drained out of me, as there were no antibiotics then, I was told that I was very lucky to have survived and I certainly owe my life to those two doctors. At that time the V2 rockets had started to come over and the windows of all the wards at Hillingdon were totally bricked up as there could be no evacuation procedure, it was artificial light for the entire month that I was in there. I can remember when my mother had been able to get a choc ice for me, and it was such a rare treat that took it all round the ward, I was so excited. V2s were very different to V1s in that you had no warning at all before the impact. As they travelled faster than sound you heard them come after the explosion. I recall that one landed at the junction of Uxbridge Road and Landsbury Drive in the vicinity of a cinema there, whose name I cannot remember.

When I was discharged from Hillingdon Hospital, I remember that I was sent down to my grandparents in Sussex as it was thought that I would be safer down there. I remember taking the train from Victoria Station and after crossing the Thames seeing acre after acre of buildings that had been flattened by the flying bombs. When I got to my grandparents it turned out that I was probably in more danger there than back in Hayes as they were in the zone where the V1s were being shot down over the rural areas of Sussex, where in theory they would do less damage. Their house had already suffered considerable damage from one that had landed close by so we had to stop with an aunt. The first intimation of the arrival of a flying bomb was the sound of the gunfire at the coast, which they invariably passed. Then you could hear the fighter planes chasing them and the sound of their machine guns followed by the silence, then you would head for the ditch!
My aunt had a Morrison shelter and my sister and I and our cousins all slept in it whilst our mothers slept in their beds. They had a kitten which used to play with the balls of a game of bagatelle up in a bedroom and on a number of occasions we heard this kitten playing away in bedroom as a doodlebug passed overhead.
Whilst I was there I remember that one landed in a potato field and the potatoes were just about ready to be harvested. The farmer had no need to dig them up, as there were potatoes everywhere.

We returned to Hayes and as part of my recuperation I was encouraged to take up swimming as a sport and joined Heston Swimming Club. I can remember at Heston Pool when there was a warning of a flying bomb, we were all made to get out of the pool and stand along the side on the interior of the building. The other side of the pool faced the exterior and there was no wall just a series of windows and glass panel doors. Knowing what those bombs could do, I always felt that we were put in the most dangerous position possible, but who were we to argue as kids.
Once the danger of the V bombs had passed the last months of the war were uneventful as far as we concerned. On of the few things that I do remember, our neighbour鈥檚 son who had just recently been called up into the Army was home on leave and took me to the pictures. The newsreels 鈥淧athe News鈥� were showing the first pictures of the concentration camp at Belson, which had just been overrun by the British. I remember that as the scenes were considered so horrific that children were made to leave the cinema and stand in the foyer until the news was over. However like most kids I was curious and managed to see most of it through a crack in the door.

In the last months of the war German POWs started to build prefabs opposite Cranford Park School, they were fenced in behind high wire net fences and were told not to talk, but as the building site was right opposite the school gate we all did.

When the war ended we had a street bonfire on a patch of waste ground, there were no fireworks as they were not available. Flags and bunting were put out everywhere and I remember going on long walks with my parents just to see all the decorations in different neighbourhoods, not only in Hayes and Harlington but over to Cranford as well. Our neighbour鈥檚 eldest son who had been captured at Tobruk at the beginning of the war came home and had horrendous tales of conditions in POW camps. There were lots of other strange faces as the servicemen returned, some didn鈥檛 as our local newsagent who was a friend of my parents lost both his sons in the war.
A happy time for many and a sad time for some, but I am sure that my parents were just glad that they got though the war unscathed.

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