大象传媒

At the outbreak of war I was almost exactly five years old, and my sister Alma was seven years older. I recall my parents and Alma and I were in the kitchen listening to the announcement by Chamberlain that our ultimatum had not been accepted and that we were at war. I had no idea of the graveness of this but undoubtedly my parents did, father having served in The Royal Engineers in France during WW1. Being in his mid- forties he was probably too old to be called up. He joined the Homeguard and his later issued rifle was kept in my parents bedroom wardrobe.
We lived at a place called Strawberry Hill close to Twickenham, and like so many children we were evacuated down to Bideford in Devon. We hated pretty well every minute of it, not because of the kind people that looked after us, but probably we were both very homesick, and because of the age gap my sister was stuck with looking after me most of the time.
During the early months of the war not much seemed to happen on the Home Front and my parents in their wisdom, and to our delight, brought us home after about six months. Just in time for The Battle of Britain and The Blitz.
My sisters best friend lived a couple of doors away and we shared their Air Raid shelter in their back garden. I simply cannot remember if there were daylight raids but certainly most nights as soon as the siren sounded we were bundled up and taken off to the shelter. There everyone listened to the thump off ack ack guns and the louder sounds of bombs. I dont recall there being much sense of fear, I guess at five and three quarters it was far too exciting.
I have two abiding memories of that time. Firstly coming out of the shelter early one beautiful sunny morning a, German twin engined plane roared over us very low, probably no more than two or three hundred feet up. That in itself was exciting but a couple of minutes later, at the same hight, two Spitfires (or possibly Hurricanes) with that glorious sound of the Merlin engines went over in hot pursuit.
It was not until many years later that I realised the German plane was almost certainly going to be overhauled very quickly and that the crew were unlikely to survive.
The second memory was my father late one night waking me up, and making sure there were no lights showing, opened my bedroom curtains. The whole of the night sky in the distance was glowing red and he and I watched in awe. It was London Docks burning and he thought it was momentous enough to wake up a little boy to witness it.
It was around this time the house next door was bombed and demolished , but with no casualties. From then on and for several years after the war it became the perfect playground. We dug a pit at the back and covered it in old blackout boards and propped them up. Two or three of us kids would sit inside whilst the rest would hurl bricks and large stones at it until it collapsed. This amused us for hours on end and I guess we were fortunate nobody was hurt. Todays Health & Safety Executive would turn white haired in their thousands.
You may think all our parents were negectful but not at all. There wasnt any problem with children playing and making their own fun in the street, and I am sure they had other pressures we were not aware of. I walked and later rode to school on my bike and on my own everyday. If there was a siren during the day lessons carried on down the shelter. Dont think we learnt much but you have to admit it was different.
After The Blitz, to youngsters like myself it semed fairly quiet and tame, we followed the news but hardly realised the importance of most of it. El Alamein was the exception, we all knew it was something special. I was fascinated listening to the 大象传媒 news on the radio by the names on the Russian Front. Not just Stalingrad and Moscow but lesser well known names such as the Donetz Basin. I had then, and still on the rare times I hear or read it, a mental vision of white wash basin.
The war really came alive again for me when the V 1s started, presumably because it was close to home. We could somtimes see them and watched listening to that ominous pulsating engine note and then that awful silence when it cut out. Some would glide a bit, others just nosedived followed by the crump of a huge explosion. One day I was on my own in Radnor Gardens, which fronted onto the Thames. I dont remember a siren going off but a doodlebug was headed my way following the river. I stood on the grass bank and watched as usual when it cut out and dipped downwards. A man grabbed me and pulled me behind a large Weeping Willow. The doodlebug landed about one hundred and fifty yards away on The Grotto Pub with I believe quite a few casualties. Small boys are and were not always very nice and a rumour persisted in our group that a car in the carpark was gutted, but just a pair of hands were left holding the steering wheel. We all tried so hard to get a peek at this, little ghouls that we were.
One other thing caused me to think. Our next door neighbours had one day received the dreaded telegram. Their only son had been killed in The Western Desert, a lieutenant in the Royal Tank Corps. It was the first time I realised that war wasnt just fun for us kids.

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