大象传媒

WARTIME MEMORIES,(Ronalds War)

I was born on the 2nd August 1935 at which time my parents and my older brother were living in Brixton London SW2 in a large Victorian terrace house in Appach Road.
Our garden which was long and narrow backed on to the Express Dairy Co鈥檚 yard and stables.
Towards the bottom of our garden we had an Anderson shelter which had been set into the ground and the earth that had been excavated was replaced on the arched roof of the shelter as further protection and camouflage from aerial attack .
Inside the shelter were slatted benches down both sides where the family were to sit for the duration of the air raid.
Many people would construct panels of floorboards for added comfort and to ward off the dampness and cold of the earth floor which was fine during dry weather but when the rain came the shelters tended to flood so every one had a baling can or bucket to get the water level down
To an acceptable level, we also had a small lamp in the shelter and a copious supply of candles,
Matches, kept in waterproof packaging to ward off the damp, there was also a supply of tinned food, clean drinking water, dry blankets for bedding and a small stove for warmth and to boil water for a hot drink and last but not least a wooden door that you could put in place and secure from inside the shelter.
Having set the scene, we would carry on living in our house as normal but as soon as the air raid sirens were sounded we would all have to make a mad dash to the bottom of the garden and get into the shelter, put the door in place and secure it , and remain in the shelter until the All Clear
Was sounded (this could be anything from 30 minutes up to several hours )
Other methods of sheltering during an air raid would be to get into the cupboard under the stairs or even simply getting under a sturdy kitchen table., my mother , brother and myself have spent many nights utilising all of these methods.
I can remember things that I saw as a child as if they had happened yesterday ,the screaming of the bombs as they were falling, the violent explosions that seemed to rock the earth like a violent earthquake ,the smell of smoke and dust was everywhere as people picked their way through the rubble that had been lived in houses before the raid searching for survivors or if they were returning from their shelters they would be looking for what they could salvage of their belongings.
I can remember seeing the fighters in the sky engaged in dog fights, pilots baling out of stricken aircraft and descending on parachutes, children going round the streets collecting shrapnel (fragments of shells and bombs etc) to add to their collections
Then one day mother, brother and me were assembled with our luggage and gas masks and had a large sort of luggage label with our details on it tied to us and we were taken to the railway station and we were evacuated for our own safety and we were despatched, in my case the family was kept together and we were despatched to North Molton in Devon.
We arrived in this village during the evening and a group of us was taken to the village hall where we would spend the night on straw palliasses on the floor of the hall which was a building constructed from corrugated iron sheet materials.
We were awakened in the middle of the night by a strange noise and violent movement of the side of the hall (we thought we had been invaded) only to discover in the morning that the upset had been caused by strange large animals with horns the like of which we had never seen before

Needless to say these strange animals were Cows and they had been rubbing there selves up against the back corner of the hall
We were told that we were to be billeted in the village and we re taken to a large house and a group of us were placed in this house (I think that there was two or three families placed here)
I have memories of going to an infants school which I think was in Exeter, memories of country lanes with steep grassy verges, of horse and carts and in particular a steam in a wooded area where we were able to collect Watercress from and I also remember a night when the Germans bombed
An industrial area some considerable distance away but the sky was ablaze and the noise audible even though they were some considerable distance away
This event was instrumental in mother taking my brother and I back to London where we went to
Live in Peckham at 15A Hardcastle Street which we were later to lose due to a V2 rocket we at the time were sheltering in the cellars beneath the bus depot in Hill Street Peckham.when the all clear was sounded we were allowed to return to our homes but on reaching the bottom of our street my mother became distraught for where the houses had stood and two brick built street shelters had stood all that remained was rubble ,broken glass , burning timbers and smoke and dust everywhere there was nothing she could do, we had lost everything. The only thing my mother could do was to take my brother and myself further down the High street to my grandmothers house in Consort Road No46 and between her and my mothers sister Annie who lived at No 42 they managed to take us in And after this disaster my Father arranged for us to be sent to Bradford in Yorkshire where he joined us later when he took up a new position with a large printing firm in the city where he worked until his death in 1943 at the age of 58 ,at the time I was 8 years old.
Eventually my mother remarried and we moved to Staningley Nr Leeds where we stayed until my step father got the wanderlust and decided that he wanted to go back to farming, work he had done in his younger days so we departed to Lincolnshire where we underwent a magical mystery tour starting at Grantham then on to Ruskington followed by North Kyme Fen, then on to Wrangle Then to Frith Bank Nr Boston then on to Spalding Marsh followed by a return to Staningley for a brief period then a further return to Lincolnshire to Frith Bank then to Gipsy Bridge then on to Market Rasen .and continuing to Sutton on Sea ,then it was back to Stanningley where I finaly completed my schooling in Yorkshire in 1950 and returned to London and stayed for one year and whilst there I worked in Alexanders grocers situated on Peckham High Street adjacent to Hill Street where I stayed there for the year and then returned to Yorkshire to Bradford where I did a variety of jobs before I joined the Royal Air Force in 1953 after which I returned to Bradford where I met my wife Gene and we have been married for 46 years, we have a son Andrew aged 43 and a daughter Susan aged 42 who now lives in Scotland With her husband Kevin and her son Christopher who is now 17 years of age
I have continued into a period following the war to try to illustrate how my life changed due to the happenings of the war and to the insecurity instilled in into us by the things that we had both seen and heard during the Blitz. Regards Ron Barker, email ;-ronald.barker2@ntlworld.

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