大象传媒

First Day of the Doodlebug Attack

My family had lived in West Wickham, Kent for many years; we had lived at 45, Wickham Chase until just before the war when we moved to 51 Station Road. It was a mock tudor style semi-detached house with a good-sized garden and fields at the back where my father had a vegetable allotment the other side of our fence.

With the onset of WW2 an underground reinforced concrete air raid shelter was built at the bottom of the garden. This was where we spent many days and nights sheltering from the bombing, machine gunning and shrapnel raining from the skies. The air raids could last from only a few minutes to many hours. At night my sister and I would be put to bed in the bunk beds, where we usually slept unless the raid was particularly ferocious in our locality.

We did get a lot of air raids because we were close to three RAF airfields, Croydon, Biggin Hill and Kenley. In the opposite direction was Langley Park Golf Course that was commandeered for anti-aircraft guns. These places drew a lot of attention from the Luftwaffe.

Going back to the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden, I recall one major problem it had which was flooding. In any heavy rain the entrance area would flood and if this was not pumped out quickly, the water would rise over the barrier and flood the inside where our bunks were. This wetness made it a rather unhealthy place to be in especially during the winter. Because of this father bought a Morrison table shelter that was installed in our dining room at the front of the house.

It was a massive structure, at least to my young eyes and lack of stature. There was a base made up from a frame of steel angle iron pieces. The four corners were even bigger steel angle irons with another frame around the top on which was placed a steel sheet. All of this was bolted together to make the table. The open sides under the tabletop could be closed from the inside with steel mesh frames.

At meal times, the top was our dining table and at night the underneath was the bedroom for my sister and I. If there was an air raid, it became a refuge for all Mother and father as well.
We had many restful nights tucked up inside the Morrison shelter and even if there was a raid on we felt very safe surrounded by all this steel.

It was now pleasantly summer on June 13th 1944. Turning in my sleep I became aware of this strange droning noise. We had got pretty good at recognising the aircraft engine sounds but we had never heard this before. Then it went silent. Whatever it was had stopped so all was well. A moment or two later there was a loud explosion somewhere in the distance, then silence again.

That was the last bit of sleep we got that night. This strange noise must have been identified as of enemy origin because as soon as there was a faint drone sound, the ack ack guns in the area opened fire. The gunfire got more and more intense through the night, which kept us awake. With four of us in the Morrison shelter, Mother, Philip, Pauline and myself, it was a bit crowded for a restless, scary night.

Come daylight, the doodlebug goings-on ceased. The guns fell silent. Philip being big brother decided that he would go and catch up on has sleep so off he went to the bed in the small room in front of the house. Mother went into the kitchen and started to prepare some breakfast. She laid the table top of the shelter with the cutlery and cruet, put the cereals and milk out for us to have our meal

Then we heard what had become the dreaded drone of our first experience of the doodlebug in daylight. The next thing we knew Mother came flying into the room, grabbing us and bundling us into the Morrison shelter. The drone of the doodlebug stopped.

Working in the kitchen, Mother had seen the doodlebug coming low between the wide gap in the avenue of elm trees in the field behind our garden. It was heading straight for our house. We braced ourselves for the impact that would destroy our house and probably us. But it never came. Instead, after what seemed an eternity, but was only a few seconds, there was an almighty explosion somewhere outside. Thank goodness the strange quirk that doodlebugs had was to turn off to the left when the engine cuts out, just before impact. This had made this one turn and explode at the junction of Links Road and Station Road.

This is Philip鈥檚 memory of that moment: -

Then I heard a doodlebug coming over, the engine stopped, I was so petrified that I couldn't move. Then bang, I saw the windows come in and shower me with glass. I got up and ran down the stairs which were covered with glass, no slippers on and the first thing Mother said was 'you stupid boy, go and put your slippers on' so I ran up stairs all over the glass to put my slippers on and didn't get a single cut.

My memory was of this tremendous bang with the leaded light windows caving into the dining room around us. The blast was awesome. It came under the Morrison shelter top across our bodies but it did no harm to us. The leaded lights contorted into weird shapes on the carpet, some of the glass panes remaining intact. But many other strange things had happened around the house caused by the blast.

The first thing that came to our attention was the chiming of a clock. We had a large wooden cased clock that stood on a windowsill in the hall. It was a chiming clock that in my tender years had never chime, nor would it chime when we tried to make it. The blast had blown it off the sill onto the hall floor some six feet from its original position. The impact had broken some of the wooden moulding on the case and the chimes had started. It was still ticking and is still doing so to this very day.

The front door, which was a heavy oak door, had been blown off its hinges and was leaning against the wall. On closer examination of the hall we found that the door had gone on a journey around the spacious square hall. We found a mark on the top of the door that corresponded with a mark on the ceiling and a hole in the floorboard where it had landed on one of its three bounces.

The kitchen was even more amazing. When we went in first we found the floor covered in roofing tiles with the back door lying on top of them. When we cleaned up the kitchen we found that the back door had done a journey round the kitchen doing its own bit of damage.
It had punched a hole in the floorboards on one of its bounces; hit the glass fronted china cupboard on the wall opposite the doorway, knocked a big sliver off the cabinet without breaking any glass or china in the cupboard and come to rest on top of the tiles that had been blasted in from the garage roof. Not one pane of glass in the door was cracked or broken.

The dining room where we had been sheltering had its share of strange happenings. The plates that Mother had laid for breakfast were still there unharmed, but the jug of milk had vanished without trace. There was neither sign of spilt milk on or around the room nor any trace of the blue and white milk jug. Where it went we never discovered.

The only damage on the shelter top was to the crystal glass cruet set. The peppershaker top had gone and the stoppers to the vinegar and oil bottles had vanished. Nothing else on the cruet set had been damaged.

When the war damage repairs came to be done some time later we were told that the roof of the house must have lifted in the blast and settled down a few degrees out of true.

Whilst I look back on that morning with wonder and amazement there was a very sad incident. An ARP warden squad car returning from a night duty with six wardens riding in it had stopped for someone to buy cigarettes from the tobacconists near the junction of Red Lodge Road and Station Road. They then drove up Station Road and as they turned into Links Road., the doodlebug either landed on the car or very close to it, destroying it completely and killing all six men.

Whilst we were experiencing this catastrophe Father had been up in London fire watching on the roof of Babcock and Wilcox where he had watched these streaks of flame streaking across the sky throughout the night. When he got home he arranged for us to go to friends at Bledlow in Buckinghamshire. We travelled there that afternoon. On the train going up to Cannon Street Station we were stopped on the bridge over the Thames just outside the station. While we were stopped, an air raid warning went. This did nothing for our nerves stationary in such a vulnerable position. After some time we moved into Cannon Street Station much to our relief. Next day at the same time as we had been parked on the bridge, a bomb went through the bridge at the very same spot we had waited on. We felt that Jerry was trying to get us!

On a fashion note, my sister recalls that when we were in the underground shelter, Mother wore trousers. A garment we had never seen her wear before.

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