大象传媒

My family moved to Longfellow Road in Mile End in the 1930's from Limehouse. My grandfather was a docker and had six children. My own father, Arthur, was born in 1923 and was therefore called up during the war to serve in the Royal Navy. His brothers served in the Army and RAF and had various intersting stories, but this story concerns the family at home in Longfellow Road.

Mile End is near to the West India docks. During the blitz early in WW2 air raids were a regular feature of life. My father was involved in collecting incendiary devices during the night raids and then going straight to work in the morning. He collected incendiaries in a bucket full of sand and them dumped them in the Regent's canal. He was taken to work in Walthamstow on the back of a lorry while the raid was still on. Shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns landing on the roads and glowing red.

As a boy I well remember going to see my grandmother who still lived in Longfellow Road into the 1970's. (Interestingly the 大象传媒 made a documentary about this East End community in the late 70's). On Sundays in the afternoon I would hear the stories of the blitz and its effects on the family.

One or two stories I remember particularly well. My Aunt Lou, who cared for my grandmother, had lived through the blitz in Longfellow Road. She told me something that will always remain with me. I asked her where she used to go to shelter during raids. My grandmother's house had a garden but it was too small even for an Anderson shelter, so I assumed she went to Mile End Underground Station, which was nearby. "No" said Lou, she did not like the underground stations which she felt were dirty. Lou told me that she used to go to Guardian Angels Catholic Church on Mile End Road, which still stands today. But I said, "you were no safer in the church than at home". "Ah yes", said Lou, "that's right but we was together". I will always remember that insight.

On another occasion my father was so tired after nights of collecting incendiaries and day-times building bombers in Walthamstow that even though a raid began he slept on in the bedroom at Longfellow Road. The rest went to shelter at the church. As they sheltered there was an enormous explosion somewhere nearby. My grandmother ran out of the church and back to the house in the raid. She found the house still standing. She went in and flew up the stairs to where my dad was. The windows were blown in and the ceiling had collapsed in the bedroom. But my father was still asleep in bed!

Another of my father's brothers was called Jim. He joined the Army and was with a commando unit attached to the London Scottish. He went into the line just after Alamein and came out at the end of the war in Germany. (Lou's husband of a short marriage was called Bert Hollis and he was killed at Alamein). Apparently in early life Jim was a tough sort of bloke, though when I knew him in the 1970's he was a lovely gentlemanly man. One Saturday afternoon during the blitz he was out in the Roman Road with my father shopping. A German bomber came along the Roman Road so low down that my father and Jim saw the nose gunner. The nose gunner opened fire with his machine guns from some distance away on the civilians shopping there. My father dashed into a doorway, pressed tight in against and wall to avoid the hail of bullets. Jim was out in the middle of the road, anger overtaking him, and shouting obscenities at the aircraft giving them two fingers, bullets zipping around.

Jim had stories to tell, much later in life, about the desert war and the tactics used by the British Army, particularly in light of the knowledge of the death camps in Germany, that would not be suitable for this site.

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