大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the Peoples War website by Sarah Cooper at the AGC Museum on behalf of Brian Woodruff. Brian Woodruff fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

My first memory dates from just before the war when living at Heston, Middlesex; it is of seeing Neville Chamberlain and entourage driving up Cranford Lane enroute to Heston Airport to go to Munich to meet Hitler and to agree not to intervene in his plans to invade Czechoslovakia.

Next, I can remember hearing Chamberlains Declaration of War on a very hot and sunny Seoptember 3rd 1939 and of the air raid sirens sounding almost immediately with air raid wardens blowing whistles and telling people to take cover - it was apparently a lone German aircraft over Scotland on reconnaissance but at that early stage had set off warning across the entire Country,

At age of 13 I was at my second year at grammer school; at first all classes were stopped and we were given work to take home - later we had occasional classes, but were soon back to full attendance, even when air-raids started in 1940. We were all used to carrying gas masks and having air-raid drills which required going down into shelters in the school grounds.

My father, who was in the Civil Service, was evacuated to St.Annes-on-Sea near Blackpool in 1940 and my Mother and I went up to join him; but as my mother missed being in London we returned there in 1941 and were back in Heston for the last two blitzes. We then had an Anderson shelter in the graden and had to spend nights down there when raids were on but did not have the bombs dropping locally as we were in the outer suburbs. I remember not being too happy at the sounds of insects crawling about underground!

During the rest of my days at school we lived a life of food restrictions, rationing, blackouts etc. We boys all became keen on aircraft recognition and learned the silhouettes of all the German and RAF planes. We were expected to join some sort of Cadet Corps and I became an Army Cadet. Life was goverened by war news, speeches by Winston Churchill, which were listened to avidly by everyone and which gave inspiration. I remember that we kept rabbits to supplement meagre rations.

I left school in early 1943 and joined the London County Council who had evacuated offices in Englefield Green, Surrey. At 16 I lived, with several other lads in nissen huts in the grounds of the Office at Coopers Hill, while the girls were in separate flats. This was the period 19433/44, of heavy air raids on Germany by the RAF and USAAF and, of course V1's and later V2's. We often saw American Liberator and B17's limping home to base with holes in wings and tails. I joined the local Home Guard as the equivalent of Pike in Dad's Army and used to go out on exercises with blackened faces. Many of these were carried out on an area sloping down to the Thames called the Lookout, a local Lover's Paradise, and we would often have to apologise for disturbing young couples in the bushes when crawling along on hands and knees with our sten guns.

I used to go home to Heston at weekends and had many experiemces of V1's. One day I was late to catch my usual 116 bus from Hounslow Bus Garage to Egham which involved crossing Hounslow heath, I therefore caught the next bus. There was an immediate warning that V1's were approaching our area and as my bus approached the heath there was a very loud crack and as we rounded the bend I saw the bus I had just missed with windows shattered and passengers staggering off it, many looking bloody - a V1 had landed beside the road on a hut in which several workmen had been who were all killed. On another occasion I had gone to a dance at a local hall with my girlfriend when a V1 landed close by and we were all flung to the floor as the blast blew in the windows.

I had at this time volunteered to be trained as a surveyor by the LCC for the Country of London plan to rebuild London after the war which necessitated visits to London from Surrey for classes at County Hall in London. We had classes on the 6th floor of County Hall at the height of the V1 attacks when SE London was being badly hit; if the bombs were heading in our direction, hooters were sounded on the ground floor and we all had to dive under desks. We often saw the bombs pass and fly on towards Lambeth; when the motors cut there was silence as the bomb dropped and clouds of dust and smoke could be seen rising whenever they had hit some poor unfortunate folk. We used to see gaps in buildings on our train trips from Egham to Waterloo where bombs had fallen.

Then came the build up to D-Day and then at home in Heston we became used to seeing large formations of our fighters from Northolt and Heston with their black and white striped wings heading out for sweeps over France - a very thrilling time!

I joined the Navy on 19th December 1944 and was sent to Skegness Butlin's Holiday Camp then known as "H.M.S. Royal Arthur". On the day we joined we were taken in lorries to the camp and were welcomed in by a large sign on the central tower which said "Our Every Intent Is For Your Delight" from happier pre-war days - quite a joke when you were indoctrinated into navy discipline there. On Christmas day the Padre said to the new recruits "I know Mun and Dad back home will be thinking of you now" - most of us were near to tears! At the end of my training we were given leave to go home for VE Day. I took a Belgian friend form Camp home with me and we were feted by all our friends and neighbours in the street. There were masses of decorations, flags and buting and it was open house to us all along the street - naturally we were both very drunk by the end of it.

I was posted to Chatham Barracks and sent out to the Far East in June 1945. We were packed into a troop train from chatham for an unknown destination and chugged through the night through blacked out stations with their names obliterated. We stopped at one station where a woman and her daughetr shouted out that they would post any letters that we might have - train windows dropped and showers of letters were flung on to the platform before the train moved on. We finally arrived at Liverpool and left for India and Ceylon. We were given intense training and were embarking at Bombay to invade Malaya on the day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I was eventually to go there six months after the bomb and walked round the totally devestated city with a photographer friend; no thoughts then of radiation hazards. Mostly it was flattened with only a few stone buildings standing including the building with the dome which I believe is now a museum. Later when on leave in Tokyo we were able to spend a day at the War Crimes trials of General Tojo et al. Previously, when still in Singapore, i was able to witness Lord Mountbatten receiving the Malay Resistance leaders, who were later to return to the jungle and fight us as communists.

I returned to civilian life in May 1947.

22nd June 2005

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