大象传媒

At home that Sunday, listening to Neville Chamberlain make his speech, were five
members of the family. Father, mother, two sisters and son F. Apart from mother鈥檚
tears the reaction of the others was something like dumb acceptance of what had
become inevitable. Anyway, there was no time for reflection because almost
immediately the siren (just up the road and very loud) wound-up the 鈥榓lert鈥�, and all
who heard it. The stomach-clenching affect of a siren鈥檚 first rising notes would last
throughout life.

Although some preparations had been made in anticipation of war, an Anderson
Shelter was still in the future. Naturally, father took charge that morning and, with his
knowledge of building construction, and assuring his team that the main wall should
survive the house鈥檚 demolition, he lined them up with their backs to it. Son F
remembers them standing there, in age sequence like the Five Bears, resuming their
reflecting as they gazed at the staircase across the hallway.

To him, having just entered his tenth year, this war stuff was all old-hat; as it was for his
sister (Z), a couple of years older. Only the year before, back in their London home,
hadn鈥檛 they had the excitement of the Munich non-evacuation? Throughout the
crescendo of the 1930s crises, none of the seven adults of the family had thought it
necessary to shield the two young ones from the political arguments that went on
across the meal table. Or to ban listening to the wireless, nor seeing the newspaper
headlines. The pair of them were therefore fairly up-to-speed on events.

The London County Council schools had an evacuation plan in place in 1938. Parents
had been given a what-to-do list, so Z, with F in tow, was sent to the haberdashers
around the corner to buy Cash鈥檚 initial tapes (probably priced at elevenpence-three
farthings), for mother to sew on to their clothes; sheets and the like. By 29th
September 1938 they were kitted-out, but not quite ready for the knock on the door by
the over-excited neighbour, shouting 鈥淭hey鈥檙e going - the coach is waiting at the top
of the road鈥�. Brother and sister were quickly labelled, booted and spurred and with
their cases ready, they stood by the front door, waiting for the off - that never came.
The prime minister had landed at Croydon. At home tears of relief were shed. But, F
thinks, also tears of frustration by his siblings, when they realised the extra elbow room
at table they were looking forward to was not going to happen.

Now in 1939, a year after that non-event, it was the real thing. The News Chronicle
map of the western front could be put up on the kitchen wall, near the wireless; the
blackout completed. Son F volunteered to be in charge of the latter each night. But it
involved carting a heavy pair of step-ladders about the house to fix some high level
pieces, and he had that job for the duration. He came to regret his early enthusiasm.
The early enthusiasm for the war map also faded after the retreats of 1940, which were
too rapid to keep-up with anyway; it hung there, yellowing over the years. Come
June 1944, it had been almost forgotten; besides, there weren鈥檛 any Yankee flags.

Aircraft recognition books could be studied however, and the Woolworth鈥檚 packs of
printed cards of miniature tanks, and ships, and weapons bought, cut-out, scored along
the dotted lines, bent and glued. Often not very successfully.

Father could be helped to dig a hole in the heavy clay soil for the Anderson shelter, and
to erect it. Plus a blast wall to guard its entrance. Then to give him a hand with making
some bunks for it, and run an electric light point. The fitting out was completed with a
chest containing a small spirit stove, kettle, water bottle, tea-making gear and some
tinned food. Let old Hitler do his worst!

By then he seemed to have known about Herr Hitler since forever. Actually the precise
date was a night in November 1936. With the fireworks going off and the bonfire
alight, his brothers D and E had carried out the Guy for the burning. The way they
carried him Guy had an arm raised stiffly, and mother exclaimed 鈥淥h! look - its old
Hitler鈥�. So an explanation had to be given to the youngest son.

As soon as war was declared the schools closed down. Then the education system
recovered itself a bit and half-a-day attendance was arranged; not at his usual school
but one a bus-ride away. There was more juggling and disturbance of schooling as the
war went on. Daytime air-raids meant a good deal of sitting in the reinforced
cloakrooms, singing. The teacher who added music to her other duties was a woman
of mature years; probably recalled to the profession for the war. She had two sons in
the services, one in the navy and one in the tank corps. She wore their badges proudly
on her bosom and was intensely patriotic. Consequently the singing, which she led, was
sure to include many items such as 鈥楾here鈥檒l always be an England鈥�. A lovely lady.

In the first months of the war it was all very thrilling; a kind of hot-running
excitement, laid on for young boys. F was specially favoured because big sister X
worked right in the heart of things, in the embassy area of London; close by Victoria
station. She managed a small concession shop in a splendid building which had just
been completed in 1938, but now taken over by the War Office. Sometimes, on a
Saturday or holiday, when the shop鈥檚 owner, a WWI blinded ex-serviceman, couldn鈥檛
get there, F accompanied her, to lend a hand. Up the marble steps and through the
heavily sandbagged entrance the first thing he would see was a War Department
policeman, complete with a - REVOLVER! - strapped to his hip; checking passes and
things. And as F helped serve the mixed custom of civil servants and military people,
he might see, crossing the big entrance hall, a brace of red-tabbed brigadiers, a general
or two and once, in those phoney-war days of the B.E.F in France, a glimpse of Lord
Gort. And did he imagine or did he really see the boys-own-hero figure of Carton de
Wyatt, complete with black eye-patch?

Later, after the fall of France, with the governments-in-exile of half Europe in that part
of London, those journeys would take him through a range of uniforms of the allied
armed services as could hardly be imagined. The kepi of Free- French soldiers, and the
red pom-pom on their sailors鈥� hats; the square top to the Polish officers鈥� caps;
Australian bush-hats; varied versions of the colour khaki or drab grey for soldiers, and
slate blue of airmen. Bewildering assortment of badges of rank, shoulder flashes and
epaulettes. All their wearers seeming to be moving about with a purpose. It was all
very exciting - the centre of things - the only place to be at that time.

The air-raids could be interesting too; well, at first they could, and anyway, at that age
one feels immortal. At night, standing at the shelter鈥檚 entrance (careful to keep its light
from shining out) F could watch the searchlight beams moving across the sky; the
sparkling burst of an A-A shell overhead following the ear-splitting crack of the nearby
gun which sent it there; the clatter of shell splinters as they fell through the garden
trees. The sudden concentration of the searchlights as one picked up a bomber.
Occasionally in daylight raids there were brief dog-fights, and the faint rattle of
machine guns.

The daytime raid he remembers clearly, as others do, was on 7th September 1940,
when the London docks were set ablaze. He went to the railway, about half a mile
from home, and looking from a bridge, down the straight track to the Capital, he saw a
great grey smoke cloud, as though over the end of the line. It was fifteen miles away.
Later, when it was darker, he went again; by then the smoke had become a bright
orange glow - as if the sun had set in the east.

Given the length and intensity of the Blitz of 1940, the raids of the following spring
and those which came later, the family was lucky to avoid harm. The nearest serious
incident to the house was a landmine, half a mile away. That only blew open the French
windows of his home but took-out two rows of houses where it fell.

To fill in the duller patches of the war there were model ships and aircraft to be made,
for display at school. To raise funds for National Savings in the weeks variously
dedicated to 鈥楽alute the Soldier鈥�; 鈥楻oyal Navy Week鈥�; 鈥楰eep our Airmen Flying鈥�., and
so on. Preparing feed for the chickens at the bottom of the garden was a job for F (and
occasionally slaughtering one). Plus a bit of digging for victory. In those 鈥榙ays gone by鈥� children were expected to 鈥榬un errands鈥�; F had his share of those. One which stayed
in his mind was to the local greengrocer; when he came to lemons on his list the
shopkeeper said - 鈥淗aven鈥檛 got any. They come from Italy and Mussolini鈥檚 in the war
now, so you won鈥檛 be seeing any more of those鈥�. Which was about right.

The Doodlebugs (V1) when they came were viewed a bit more seriously by F; may be
because he was into his teens by then: - a tad more mature? Perhaps because they were
robots. The crews of bombers were sentient and counted their lives in the balance of
any action they took; but these things were on self-destruct. They flew relatively low,
were ugly, menacing and the coarse rumble of the motor enhanced the threat. At night,
as its black shape passed (one hoped) overhead, the flames of the rocket made it seem
even more evil and surreal. In daylight, at a distance and on a parallel course, it was OK.
However, pointing your way, and flying so low they appeared with little warning, one
learnt to get flat pretty quickly. On a few days on 'R and R' in the relative safety of the
midlands, well out of the range of such things, F saw a R.A.F DeHavilland Tiger Moth
trainer aircraft overhead, going through its acrobatics. Looping and rolling, diving and climbing, - and after a bit it went out of his mind. No doubt the pilot had to learn to glide the machine, for suddenly the rough sound of its old fashioned engine stopped. F hit the ground, covering his head, waiting for the bomb to explode. Realisation came back instantly, and sheepishly he got to his feet, looking round, hoping that no one had noticed his foolishness.

Strangely, although more powerful, the V2s did not seem so menacing. They were of
course, in general terms, but there was no build-up to the tension of their arrival as
there was with the V1s. Out of the blue would come one enormous bang, and that,
horribly, would be that.

Son F recollected sitting in a cinema during the period of the V-weapon attacks,
glancing at the decorated ceiling high above the auditorium, and thinking of the
consequences for himself and all those around him if the cinema received a hit. That
was the first occasion he could remember of any thought that he might not come out of
that war alive, or uninjured.

Even with the rocket danger over, with their sites over-run, his maturing was
quickened, as the retreat of the German army revealed the horrors of Belsen, Dachau,
Auschwitz and the other concentration camps. The unremitting newsreel and newspaper
pictures of the skeletal figures of their inmates, in their striped garb, among the heaped bodies, were rites of passage enough for anyone. Put together with all the other facts of war already learned, this might seem to be part of life: to be accepted. Along with the things a young person, unknowingly, accumulates in forming their view of life. A kind of coarsening
of character; necessary to get through the dangers of those years: to survive.

The pre-war lights of London鈥檚 theatreland were well remembered, and their return
looked forward to by F and his family. The switch-on, just a little ahead of VE Day,
was welcome, but a bit disappointing as, understandably, only a token amount of their
former brilliance could be mustered. And the Art-Deco factories of the suburbs did
their best with some impromptu floodlighting. But to be truthful, none of it came up to
the hoped-for return to 鈥榥ormality鈥�. At least not for F. Later he would come to see
how it presaged the years of drabness, rationing and 鈥楿tility鈥� living that was ahead.

Nevertheless, on VE Day itself he and quite a few of his family waited by the Victoria
statue, and cheered as the royal family and Winston Churchill came out of those central
windows, to stand waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. And came back to
the Capital in the evening, to watch from Millbank the multicoloured illumination of
water jets from the Thames fireboats. Then on to celebrate with the Piccadilly Circus
crowds and hear the singing, see the conga lines, the climbing of lampposts. And to
walk most of the way home.

Father, mother, sons and daughters of the family had got through the six years without
loss or injury of its members; even of relations or close friends. So much more fortunate than others.

Which left son F to pick-up life at school; to start his first job and await his own call-up for National Service.

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