大象传媒

I was 8 years old when war was declared. I lived in Wallington surrey, which is in the commuter belt for London. I remember the siren going off and expected bombs to drop at any moment but as we know it was the start of the phoney war. When hostilities began we used to watch the dog fights going on, and close at hand was Croydon airport, and we watched as low level German bombers came over and released their bombs which hit the Bourjois scent factory amongst others, and the air around was a mixture of smoke tnt and Midnight in Paris!! When the doodlebugs started my friends and I stood on our garage roof and watched them go over toward London. We became known as doodle bug alley. Sometimes they stopped short and we boys had to do a quick jump down to the shelter and wait for the bang and got covered in dust, which seemed to come from nowhere. I later went to Wallington County school, and one night a lone bomber dropped his bombs which landed each end of the school and wrecked 2 labs, and a third landed in the river in Beddington park. Our hobby was to collect shrapnel, the bigger the better and if it was still warm that was a real find My father was in the construction business and built a shelter under our garage, and of course we boys thoroughly enjoyed digging out the whole. We slept 8 people, and each night we had the ritual of gathering our prized possessions and going down the shelter. Both sets of my grand parents were bombed out of their houses in Lewisham and Bromley and they stayed with us until they could get other accommodation, so we always had a full house. Because of this my Dad extended the shelter and as we had central heating in the shelter it was extended to the green house, which was built over the second shelter, and he grew cucumbers and tomatoes. He became a very popular man as these items were very scarce, and he gave the surplus to his 鈥渇riends. He had a reserved occupation because of various projects that were going. He served in the home guard and I used to enjoy taking his sten gun to bits and cleaning it. No ammo of course!! We had some bomb damage caused when the cemetery chapel got hit and caused a lot of damage to the tiled roofs and our greenhouse glass got smashed by pieces of flying headstones. Gangs of Irish labourers used to come round to patch things up and repair the windows with draughtsmen linen sheet until such time as glass could be obtained. We had an allotment to grow veggies, and that got damaged by a flying bomb but we were able to recover the potato crop Fortunately all my relations who were in the army survived
Sadly they have all passed on and I鈥檓 the last of the family. I have 2 sons of my own and a grandson of 6 who keeps me young and busy. After the war one of our shelters was converted to grow mushrooms and my Dad had quite a thriving sideline, and the other shelter was used by myself and friends as a club room for the various activities like photography, and doing up bikes and making one good one from scrounged parts. They say what goes round comes around and I seem to be doing the same thing again 60 years later, but of course using more modern technology.

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