大象传媒

I was one of the generation who were too young to be in the armed forces (I was 10 when World War2 started and 16 when it ended) and my father was too old (He was 42 at the start and and 48 in 1946. But dont get me wrong we both played our part. Father was born in 1897 and was with his brother on the Somme in 1916 (or was it 1917?). His brother was killed and my father was only saved by getting an appendicitus (if that is how you spell it). He reported sick but no one believed he was ill and they sent him back to the lines. He colapsed with peritonotis and was shipped back to a field hospital and thence on one of the old Channel ferries to Dover. It must be remembered that this illness was then often fatal. Edward VII was one of the first to survive it but he had all the resources of the hospital named after him. Father spent the rest of the war in that rather curious blue and kharki uniform reserved for wounded soiliers, though he had not been wounded by the enemy.

Of course he survived or I would not be here to tell the tale. He was a Yorkshireman and married a Yorkshire girl. He took a job as Manager of the banana ripening rooms of Fyffes Bananas, firstly at Newport, Monmouthshire, where my sister was born and then at Liverpool. I was born there at Walasey (just accross the Mersey) in 1929. He was then offered the job of Assistant Publicity Manager for Fyffes and moved to Stratton Street in London, just next to the Mayfair Hotel.

The family bought a new semi at a cost of 拢1,000 in North Finchley (London N12)in 1938. They also bought a car. We were doing well. Then came the War. I remember hearing Nevil Chamberlain saying on the radio that he had a piece of paper that bore Her Hitler'signiture and his own and that it was peace in our time. Of course it was only at the cinema that we could see how hw waved it over his head. There was no television in 1939 except for a very few who were regarded as a bit mad.

Father was not in the forces in WW2 but he did his bit he was a Fire Watcher (they never seem to be mentioned now and they do not march past the Cenotaph. Their job was to patrol the streets both in the suberbs and at their place of work to watch out for incendary bombs and help the rescue services. One night the offices at Stratton Street were bombed and all the fire watches on duty were killed. My father was not on duty that night but he had the job of identifying the remains of his colleagues. I was only 11, I do not know what it was like for him but I know that his hair changed from grey/black to white in one week.

At home in North Finchley we were outside the official evacuation area but the Germans did not know this. One night a small bomb landed in the road and blew off our front gates. It threw a piece of shrapnel through the window and embedded it in the wall just above my parents bed. Oddly enough it opened the window first so not a window was brocken.

We had an incendary raid one night. "They've got Priors" (the local department store) we were told. We also had three incendaries in the back garden but these were left to burn in the flower beds. I was too busy helping the people next door who had an incendary in their loft. Can you imagine a thirteen year old crouching in an unfamiliar loft, pumping like mad at a sirrup pump whilst a neeighbour lay on the floor boards spraying the intensly hot bomb. You couldn't put thm out but you could cool them down so that they did not set the house on fire.

I could go on. I could tell you about my girlfriend's (my wife of fifty years)land mine that blew their front door into the back garden. It must have passed her father in the hall end on. I could tell you about being called up into the RAF:"for the duration of the present emergency" two tears after it was over. But I have gone on long enough. If you want to hear more let me know. There is one point I would like to make however: The war was not all bad! When I sat up in a tree in our suburban garden and fired my wooden machine gun at real German aircraft it was exciting. When my parents gave away the dining room suit to The Lord Mayor's Fund for the bombed out and replaced it with a Morrison shelter it was fun! I could tell you how my parents, my ninteen year old sister, her boyfriend and I all slept one night in this shelter as the doodlebugs passed overhead - but that is another story. England was never to be the same again, thank God.

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