大象传媒

My story begins on the morning of 31st August 1940, when following a bomber attack on the Royal Air Force base at Hornchurch, the enemy aircraft turned on a residential Cul-de-Sac not far from the airfield. One aircraft "machine gunned our road then dropped a bomb which blew up the gas main, and destroyed Banfields the Greengrocers on the corner, and smashing the water main.

With the huge fire of the gas main, and with the water filling both sides of the road and flooding the gutters; it was not long after the all clear was sounded that all the children in the road were paddling along the gutters and towing their toy boats behind them! All this within 20 minutes or so of being bombed and machine gunned.

The garden of the bungalow where I lived with my brother and parents, had a high wooden fence which screened the garden from fields which adjoined the airfield. These fields of course were where the Anti-aircraft guns were sited together with some barrage balloons, so as 7-8 year olds we used to sit on the fence for a grandstand view of the action! Until the adults came on the scene and sent us down the shelter. I remember vividly, the vapour trails in the sky and watching dog fights in the sunny clear skies during the Battle of Britain period. During the whole war living where we did. We were bombed, parachute land mined, aerial torpedoed, doodle bugged, and finally V2 rockets. Some of my school chums and their parents were killed:

I also remember all the aircraft and gliders going over Hornchurch during the D-Day landings. The main London to Southend arterial road was closed and guarded as it was full of Tanks and Lorries all parked prior to going to France.

For a short while during the Battle of Britain my parents rented a thatched cottage in Gestingthorpe in Suffolk thinking that we may escape some of the bombing, which during its peak was every night. So, nightly, it was down to the shelter which was damp and heated only by a paraffin stove.

After a short while in Gestingthorpe with a straw bale shelter behind the church, we found to our dismay that it was on the return flight path for enemy bombers, who jettisoned their bombs, so we again were subjected to High Explosive and Incendiary bombs being dropped on us,

My father was, of course, still in Hornchurch and we only saw him every 2 weeks or so. After finding that we were still being bombed. He decided that if we were to be killed we would go together. So we returned to Hornchurch for the rest of the war, and continued to collect shrapnel and unexploded incendiary and butterfly bombs and go and see the shot down planes in the fields.

On V.E.Day there was a street party for all the children, most of whom had stayed with their parents for the duration of the war.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.