大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a Volunteer from 大象传媒 Radio Berkshire on behalf of Rosse Stamp and has been added to the site with his permission. Rosse Stamp fully understands the site's terms and Conditions.

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I can remember seeing the very first V1. The V1's were nasty - the engines would cut out and it would dive vertically downwards. They sent it as an investigation. I remember looking out of my window seeing it with flames coming out of it. The following night, all hell was let loose because they were all falling on south east London and we had no idea what they were.
There was another time when the engine would cut out and nothing would fall. These were gliders and they would glide along for several miles. The V2's would either hit you and you didn't know anything about it. As a family we didn't have many casualities - although I had an Uncle and cousin who were hit by the Germans.

Before the Morrison shelter, my neighbours had a cellar and we happened to have a disused telegraph pole and we used it to reinforce the cellar celling. The idea was that if the house collapsed, it would protect you. The nearest a bomb came to us was fifty yards. At that time as a family, we had a Morrison shelter, I can only describe it as a steel dining room table that you would jump underneath. My parents slept on top of it and my brother and I slept underneath it.

I also remember terror raids. When I was at school, a German Plane came screaming up the playing fields and it came across below roof level with guns blazing. But we weren't scared and we didn't have time to fall flat. We used to collect shrapnel. It used to come down like rain after a blast of AA guns. The one purpose of the tin helmet was to protect you from the shrapnel.We used to go out the following day to collect it - I found a nose cone of a shell that was worth a lot on the swap market.
I spent half the war at school and the other half at college - there we had to do fire watching. Fire watching was going up on to the roof to watch for fires and try to put them out. I can remember my final exams taking place and there was a air raid warning. We were very used to them and we were asked to leave, if we wanted to and very few people actually did.
I remember rationing not really during the war but afterwards which is when it got really serious but my father worked in the grocery trade. Firstly it meant keeping legal and not fiddling with rationing. But at the same time it gave us access to things that were in short supply. 'Under the counter' was the expression. Also a lot of bartering happened during rationing - nit black market but just between people swapping food items.

The other thing was during the war there was radio silence - because the Ham radios had stopped here which meant you could surf the stations in the states. It was odd because the housewivies would use amatuer radio to communicate to each other, largely in the Mid-West.

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