大象传媒

London W9, the Family at war & work, the Blitz , Evacuation & life in Devon, return to London, V bombs and a wartime holiday

My name is John Edward Birch, I was born on the 21st March, 1936 in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. My father, John Albert Birch, was a driver/gravedigger, my mother, Agnes Maud Birch (nee Lowe), was a dressmaker. Soon after my birth my parents moved to 48 Fordingley Road, Paddington, London, W9, and it was here that I spent most of the war. My father was called up on outbreak of war, he joined the RASC,(Royal Army Service Corps) as a driver and within months he was sent to Egypt. While serving there he had the luck to meet both his brothers, George, a Naval Officer,(who had been on HMS Ajax at the Battle of the River Plate and had given me a model of that ship), was on board HMS Queen Elizabeth when it was mined in the harbour at Alexandra and and Tom, who was with The Queen's Royal Regiment, who were in Egypt, just prior to the invasion of Italy at Salerno.

Uncle Tom was captured by the Germans in Italy and was made to march through the Brena Pass in winter (a death march, anyone falling out was shot), he spent the rest of the war as a P.O.W. in a camp next to a Concentration camp. He saw some terrible things but only rarely would he talk about them to the others after he returned home. Mum's elder half brother, Harry Rye, was a sailor, a Chief Stoker on Aircraft Carriers, his wife was called Vie and they lived in the middle flat next door. He came home on leave a couple of times but I was not to see my father for six years, until the night of VJ day.

My mother, her younger sister Rose, my baby sister Marion and I were evacuated to Leeds where I seemed to have made a blunder and shown up the family by eating my pudding and gravy and refusing the meal as I had 'already eaten'. It was the period of the 'phoney war', there did not seem to be anything happening, so we, like many others returned to our homes in London. The wireless was our link to he world, mother did not buy a newspaper. I soon learnt to tune in to the Home service and the many other stations. I recall with a smile ITMA with Tommy Handly. I heard many voices on the air including that of 'Lord Hawhaw' with his "Chermany calling", a 'horrid' man my mother said.

The men came and took our iron railings away and then they came and dug up the back garden and built an Anderson shelter. I remember that they dug up a log and when they broke it, water was pouring through it like a pipe. The shelter never was any good, it was always full of water. Mother put my sister an me into the base of a heavy built kitchen dresser in the kitchen and she slept under the table. There was a public shelter built in the road outside but we only used it once. It smelt horrible, a smell I will never forget, I think it was the bricks, someone said they were London Bricks and contained sewage. It was that, plus the smell of urine, vomit, alcohol and parafin, I think it was the only time during the war when I was near terrified. Mum told us that her Mother, our Nan, who had recently died, would look after us. We believed her and she may well have been right for we did not get even a broken window during the whole course of the war, despit the heavy raids and a house amost oposite getting a direct hit. It looked like a dolls house with the front open.

Our house was split, like all the others in the road, into three flats, we lived on the ground floor. We had two rooms, a kitchen with a solid fuel range and a scullery with a large copper which was heated by a fire. There was a toilet just outside the back door. The kitchen with its range was the heart of the household. My Mother was the hub of the extended family and gradualy all the Aunts came to live either next door or very close. Rations were tight and the ration books for everyone in our extended family were pooled. The younger aunts grumbled sometimes but Mum was strict. My favourite food was bread and dripping, mum would render down lumps of suet for the fat and us children then had the treat of the crackling bits. I remember being cold, the kitchen was the only room with a fire.

We would be put to bed in the dresser and I vividly recall waking one night to seeing Mum and my aunts sitting round the kitchen table asking questions and a glass they all had a finger on was spelling out replies. The women seemed to know were the men folk were and how they were fairing despite cencership of the letters and news reports.

All the women had jobs, including Mum who worked in High Street, Kensington as a tailoress /seamstress. The employer was a White Russian, jewish I think, who had fled here as a result of a pogrom. My sister and I would go with Mum if we were not at school, they taught me to sew, I would get two squares of scrap material and carefully sew them together. I would then collect all the scraps on the floor and after turning my squares inside out fill them tight with scaps, finaly sewing up carefully the small hole left for filling. I would then walk round the workshop with a magnet on a string picking up all the pins and these I would place into the pincushion I had made. If I had done a good job I may have been given a Joey (a threepenny bit), if not so good I got tupence.

I would sit in the corner sewing and the customers, diplomats wives and society ladies would come in for fittings. The people ignored me but I learnt a lot about women and how they dressed. I remember the Russians saying that Stalin was a lot worse than Hitler. I did not fully understand this untill after the war. I liked the Russians, they were serious but kind. One, he was called Joseph, had a very deep voice and when he sang it made my tummy tingle, it was a loverly sound and I enjoyed hearing him sing.

Mum also made wedding dresses at home for the girls in the neibourhood using all sorts of material, begged and borrowed. I was fairly tall for my age and would be used by Mum as a dressmakers dummy(I think I've worn more wedding dresses than Elizabeth Taylor). I was always woried in case a friend came in when one was being pinned on me by my Mother and being called a sissy.

The air-raids became very heavy, our house was between two railway lines, one from Paddington and one from Marylebone, the Grand Union Canal also ran nearby. One night, I think it was in May, Mum's younger sister Rose had just married Richard Dean, a solider, and the raid started. Every house, except ours, was hit by at least one incendary bomb and the Church on the corner was alight. My new uncle Dick, still in his best uniform from the wedding, went into the church with the wardens in an attempt to save the building. He came out with a bomb in each hand and as he stood up a third incendary bomb fell out of the back of his battle dress blouse and went of behind him. I think it shows they were past fear at the time for everyone thought it was funny. Uncle was not hurt and it became a family story of a wedding to remember.

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