大象传媒

I was born in Fulham in May 1931 but soon after moved to Kingston-on-Thames in south-west London where I lived during the war. Early in 1940 my parents were given the opportunity to send their children to the Commonwealth for the duration and they decided that my brother and I should go to Canada. We went through all the preparations, including the inoculations, and were ready to go when the previous boat carrying the evacuees across the Atlantic was sunk by a U-boat. The whole scheme was then cancelled. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been if I had spent the war years in Canada.

My father worked in Central London and was frequently fire-watching overnight and therefore my mother was the main figure at home. During the Battle of Britain I recall watching a large formation of German bombers fly overhead. As my mother would not let me go out of the house I was lying on the floor with just my head outside looking directly upwards. Several fighters attacked the rear of the formation and I heard a machine-gun fire. Then a black twin-engine German bomber was seen to be coming down at almost 90 degrees. It wasn't on fire and my mother kept saying ''I hope they get out. I hope they get out.'' But they didn't and it crashed instead in a pillar of smoke behind the Odeon Cinema at Tolworth.

We went through the Blitz, usually sitting in the hallway,by the stairs, as this was the safest part of the house. The Blitz gradually diminished in intensity and we heard more on the Radio of our own Bomber Offensive and the first 1000 bomber raid on Germany. We saw little of this as most of the aerodromes were in Eastern England and the aircraft flew out over the North Sea to Germany. Then,one evening, as it was getting dark we heard a gradual roar of aircraft engines. Everyone left the house and you could see doors opening all along the street and hear your neighbours talking. The air was full of bombers, flying very low, some with their navigation lights on. There were hundreds of them. They didn't fly in formation but in a long wide stream and must have taken 15-20 minutes to pass. My mother was again with us, looking up and saying ''Give them hell,boys. Give them hell.'' It was only after the war that I learnt that Churchill had ordered Bomber Command to fly its aeroplanes over London on their way to Germany to raise the morale of the Londoners. It certainly did that.

A few days after D-day on the 6th June 1944 the pilotless planes or Doodlebugs arrived. They were widely scattered and came at all times of the day or night. The general Air Raid siren was frequently sounded but one tended to ignore it until the danger became imminent. You could hear them coming from a long way off because of the loudness and distinctive noise of the engine, and at night you could see them as small balls of fire moving through the sky. If they weren't coming directly at us we would go out and watch them because they flew quite low. The tricky bit was when the engine cut out and there was a sudden silence. The Doodlebug would either dive straight down , glide on for a time,or some say, turn round and come back! I clearly remember a Sunday afternoon in summer as we were on the back steps watching this flying bomb approach and my mother saying ''Keep going you bugger! Keep going! It did and landed near Hampton Court.

During the war we were always looking into the sky because this was where the danger came from. As schoolchildren we became experts in aircraft recognition and at the end we could tell from the engine noise whether it was friend or foe and, frequently, what aircraft aircraft it was - Spitfire, Lancaster, Dakota, Dornier etc. Aircraft are so common these days that most people ignore them. I always look up and wait for it to come out from the clouds and on the last Battle of Britain Day I knew from the sound of the Merlin engine that it would be a Spitfire!

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