大象传媒

I was born during 1936, so I was only 3 years old when war was declared, in September 1939.

I lived in Custom House in the East End of London near the docks. My earliest recollections were that I was bombed out, and so my family was taken to Epping Forest. They gave us these army biscuits that were too hard to eat, and we gave them to the horses. Then we moved back and we were housed in new council flats. I remember trying to sleep whilst the neighbour downstairs was flicking holy water over us, as she was a devout catholic.

Then one night back in London we were in a brick air raid shelter, and a doodlebug came down the road and killed lots of people. My uncle was rolling a cigarette in the doorway, and when the bomb blast went off, it blew him back into the shelter and he never found his cigarette. After the sirens went off, night after night, we often went back to our homes to find that the windows had been blown out, and fragments of glass everywhere, all over our beds, and fragments of curtains at the windows. We would just shake off the glass as best as we could, just so that we could sleep there, and put brown paper at the window to keep the wind out. Only if the ceiling was damaged would we leave our homes, and be put in temporary accommodation.

People watched the doodlebugs not because of callousness but they wanted to see where it was going to fall. They had a huge flame coming out of the back, then when the fuel was all used up it would glide with the wind, and you never knew where they would fall. These would fly over day and night. We got used to the special noise they made the same way that you learned which was the sound of a german aircraft and which one was British.

My family used to go hop picking during August and September in Faversham near Canterbury in Kent. We used to watch the 鈥渄og fights鈥� which we later learnt was the Battle of Britain. A German plane crashed in the orchard, and I like everybody else ran to see the plane. The pilot lit a cigarette, saluted and died. Every year we used to put flowers on his grave, in a little churchyard there.

The money my mother earned from the hop picking holidays, would buy us strong winter shoes. My father was in the Corps of Commissionaires and so had all his uniform and shoes provided during this time of rationing, and short supplies of items. I did not see a banana until I was 12 years old, although I was 9 when the war ended.

On VE day we travelled around the streets of London in an American Jeep. The Americans gave us sweets, we had never had seen sweets, as sugar was rationed. In the middle of the road outside our houses we sat at long tables, there were few cars around. We ate Spam sandwiches and jelly at the street party. Bunting across the street, Union Jack flags, and welcome home banners over the doorways. Peace at last, but rationing still carried on in this brave new world鈥︹�� Things were still scarce and I could only get size 2 shoes, though I needed size 4.

The wheels of general manufacturing had still to turn, so people had to suffer shortages for a long time鈥�

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