大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Sidney Rising with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In September 1940 I was 62 years old, living with my parents in East Ham in East London. The school I went to was the local grammar school for girls because the local grammar school for boys had been possessed by the Army in time of war.
We lived in a terraced house with a rear garden that backed onto the local railway line which ran into central London from the rural areas of Essex.
The house we lived in had a coal cellar which we were able to get into by a staircase leading off the living room. Like all other gardens in East London ours was being prepared to take an Anderson type air raid shelter. Until such a shelter was installed, it was the practice of my family to go down into the coal cellar every time the air raid warning was sounded.
This warning was the wailing of many sirens all over London. It was a terrible sound that still makes the hair on my neck stand up when I hear it on historical films. Several precautions were made to combat air raids.
I became involved in fire fighting practice every Sunday morning with several of the neighbours. I was able to operate a stirrup pump which was used to extinguish incendiary bombs which were dropped frequently by enemy aircraft.
Living with my parents at this time was my cousin Doris who was preparing to marry a serving soldier whose family also lived in East Ham.
Not only was Doris making the usual preparations for a bride she was gradually getting a home together and storing various pieces of furniture she was able to get in various rooms at the house. She was also having to undergo a series of discussion to become a Roman Catholic for the occasion because the bridegroom had been brought up in that faith.
Needless to say the whole family was caught up in the atmosphere of the wedding, which would be a highlight in the daily lifestyle of wartime London with all the air raid precautions taking place.
The day of the wedding arrived in early September and all the families and friends assembled in the local Roman Catholic Church.
I cannot remember much about the ceremony but the events afterwards were so dramatic I shall always remember them. Everyone adjourned to the nearby school for the wedding reception which was somewhat limited because of food rationing, but there was food and the inevitable speeches, then the wailing of the air raid siren.
This prompted the air raid wardens for the area to warn everyone to take shelter. The shelters for the wedding party were in the playground of the school.
They were known as surface shelters, being brick built with a thick concrete roof. Later experience proved that the brick walls tended to be blown out by the blast from a bomb and the concrete roof collapse on top of the people inside.
Fortunately, we were not aware of this danger at the time as everyone from the wedding reception filed into the shelters which were dark and cold and no electricity and just bare wooden forms to sit on.
It was still daylight outside the shelters and this day turned out to be the first daylight radii carried out by German bombers on London.
Bombs began dropping in the area, each bomb warning us of its approach by a screaming sound as it came through the air, followed by a loud 鈥楥rump鈥� as it exploded, causing the ground below our feet to vibrate violently which varied depending how near the bomb was to us.
The friendly chatter in the shelter turned to comments such as 鈥渢hat was a big one鈥� or 鈥渢hat was close鈥�. A German aircraft crashed and exploded on the local Woolworth store which was on the bridge over the main electric railway causing staff and customers to escape from the store onto the railway.
The main docks at Woolwich were about three miles away and these were all on fire when the bombers returned in the evening to destroy the docks with high explosive bombs in an all night raid.
As the night progresses, the people in the shelters seemed unconcerned with all that was going on around them, some were talking, some were joking and some even singing, perhaps to drown the noise of the bombs, but some kept going outside including myself to look at the distant flames from Woolwich docks, which were lighting up the sky around us.
Normal life could not resume until the 鈥榓ll clear鈥� siren had sounded. By the time this happened it was daylight he following morning so everyone moved out of the shelters stretched and began clearing up debris.
Doris and her new husband emerged from one of the shelters and this is how they started their married life together. I, together with the other boys, started searching the area for bomb craters where we hoped to recover pieces of shrapnel which we collected as souvenirs.
This was truly a wedding to remember, not for the church ceremony, but for the events following the church service.
In due time the bridegroom had to return to his Army unit and Doris continued living with us.

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