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A Boys War

My earliest memories of the war came almost together.

The first was being carried by my Father out to our Anderson shelter, during a raid at the height of the Battle of Britain. I looked up at that immortal summer sky and saw the vapour trails as the aircraft ran rings around each other. And I can still see that sky! During that time a pilot bailed out and landed on the roof of the house opposite, much to the consternation of the locals. A well-spoken Englishman calmed down a potentially explosive situation.

The second was meeting around that time a man who is - I think anyway - something of a hero, and makes James Bond look very dull indeed. A certain Colonel W.F.Stirling, DSO & bar, MC. I met him, with my parents, at both his Knightsbridge and Eynsford homes. He'd fought in South Africa at the turn of the century; seen action in the Dardanelles in WW1 and then, for a bit of a change, was sent as Chief Staff Officer to the Legendary 'Lawrence of Arabia'. When I saw him he was about to vanish for some four years or so into the Balkans on highly clandestine matters. After the war, he was the subject of an assassination attempt. But they couldn't kill 'Stirling the Wise' - the nickname both Lawrence and the Arab world had for him - with six bullets. The man makes the present day '007' look very second rate!

The next memory was the German air raid in September 1940 that fired the London Docks. We lived in north London at that time, and the whole sky - and we were many miles away from Dockland - was blood red that evening and for several afterwards! A fireman, who lived next door, was on duty for several days non-stop. When he did get back home, he told me that he'd been up to the top of his thigh boots in melted foodstuffs!

It was a 'black-out' culture in those days - the bright street lights were off for the duration, and the only illumination came from the roving searchlights seeking enemy aircraft and the flashes from exploding bombs; the sounds provided a rather harsh sort of accompaniment. Running up and down the nearby LNER main line was a 6-inch naval gun that let fly at anything moving in the sky above. I don't know if it ever hit anything, but it scared the hell out of everybody nearby!

But you can't be frightened all the time. In the end you get fatalistic, as, apart from anything else, the body just won't stand the continual stress of fear. If your number came up well, there was no point in worrying because you couldn't do anything about it anyway!

My mother and I were evacuated during the war to two different places. Firstly Cosby in Leicestershire and then to the little village of Ashby Magna in Warwickshire - you'll find it not far from the M1 now. One day when an uncle of mine came to stay (a veteran of the Battle of the Somme, and who’d won the MM) we went on a trip on the farmer's lorry to deliver something or other. My mother, Uncle Harry and I were riding on the back when Harry suddenly heard the sound of an aircraft's engine, just as we were approaching a bridge over the old Great Central main line. Suffice it to say, in seconds we were all huddled in the shadow of the bridge as bullets whizzed harmlessly by overhead.

At that time my mother worked at the nearby Bitteswell, RAF, aerodrome. They were flying Wellingtons at the time, and one-day a 'Wimpey' returned from a raid with a 'hang-up'. The crew of that aircraft was Polish - apart from the English rear-gunner. The pilot hadn't been able to get rid of the bomb and came in as gently as he could. Inevitably the bomb detonated and killed the whole crew - with the exception of the English rear-gunner. The force of the blast had spun his turret round and shot him out on to the nearby grass. He walked away unharmed!

We were back in London by the time the V1's and V2's came on the scene to add a little variety to things. I was attending the local primary school then, and it was not uncommon for lessons - during an air raid - to carry on undisturbed with everybody beneath their desks. One day a V1 came over not far away, and I pushed up the window to have a look – it must have been a mixture of curiosity and bravado overcoming the fear. It was a dirty black, rusty looking thing with a tongue of flame coming out of the rear of the pulsejet engine. Seconds latter, there was silence and the missile dropped into the American Gardens in Finsbury Park, killing a man on a seat and two girls serving in the nearby ack-ack battery. In September of 1944 the V2's arrived which were deadlier than the V1 but at least you didn't know they were coming, whereas the ‘Doodlebug’ scared the hell out of you for a good while before it arrived! One day I went to our library, in the Holloway Road, and went by a shortish little street that had a row of four storey houses on either side. On that morning there was just heaps of rubble on either side...and a damned great crater in the middle of the road. I don’t know how many were killed.

In the latter part of 1944 I went into St. Thomas' Hospital Westminster to have my tonsils out. While I was having the operation a doodlebug dropped very close by! They needed the beds because of the severity of the raid and I was bundled out as soon as possible. But I can still see the hoses, the people in bandages etc. I think I must have forgotten some of the things I saw at that time. But perhaps that's a good thing!

Our Doctor - Luther Soutter by name, as I recall - had decided I needed that operation and told us he'd made the necessary arrangements. On his way home to Muswell Hill the air raid warning sounded and he got home in time to get into the indoor shelter with his wife. Minutes later the house got a direct hit, and they were both killed. I often wonder what might have happened if he hadn't rushed home that day!

The evening that peace in Europe was declared, I remember thinking as clouds raced across the moon that things were going to be a lot different now! For one thing, nobody was going to get killed tonight - well not in Europe anyway!

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