´óÏó´«Ã½

In 1938 our government set up Air Raid Precautions (ARP) to help protect the civilian population. Just after my tenth birthday we were fitted with gas masks by wardens in a newly built library near my home.

We were on holiday in Cromer on the Sunday the war began. I was most scared at night, at bedtime, and once a police-whistle did sound a warning. My mother came into my room and led me down to a passage without windows. Along one wall were chairs for the grownups. We all carried our gasmasks except for three people who had only wet towels. I was sorry for them, thinking that they had forgotten to pack theirs, but my mother explained that they were pacifists who would accept no help from a government involved in war. I thought they were daft!

We went home a day early to give my parents time to black out some of our windows. Using roofing felt and laths my father made shutters for our living room. My mother had bought lengths of black cotton to hang behind curtains in our bedrooms. Brown paper was wrapped round lampshades so that after dark we lived in gloomy rooms barely able to read.

The government ordered that there should be no large gatherings of people in buildings; thus no cinema or theatre though church services were allowed. In city areas schools were closed. Where I lived some classes were held in teachers’ homes. Some children were evacuated to safer areas but not everyone chose to send their children away. We lived in a suburb north-east of London on the edge of the Essex countryside. Perhaps people thought we were safe because of that. Television stopped entirely, not that there was much of it then. Radio changed too. Before the war we all had the National Programme (like Radio 4) and a Regional Programme (like Radio 2) suited to our own region of the Country. Instead of these the ´óÏó´«Ã½ put out the Home Service and the Forces Programme. Comedians like Arthur Askey and Tommy Handley came on the Forces Programme, while plays, news and discussions were broadcast on Home. To begin with though, we got little apart from music from a theatre organ played by a man called Sandy McPherson.

An uncle of mine who lived near Manchester was very ill in December 1939 and I was taken on a train to see him. It was a journey we had made often in peacetime. It was very different in war; in the compartment was a tiny blue lamp in the ceiling. When the train stopped it was not possible to see which station it was. Some kind porters would call out the names at small stations. We had to change at Crewe Junction, a big place, and it took us some time to decide that we had arrived there. Then the problem was to find which platform our next train would leave from. Many trains were full of troops, and the corridors packed with kitbags and rifles, so it was always difficult to find a seat. Posters in public places demanded, ‘Is your journey really necessary?’

In January 1940 my school resumed classes in two large Victorian houses. Our own modern buildings and playing fields had been taken over for civil defence; ARP Heavy Rescue, and the Auxiliary Fire Service. Green vehicles were parked on our hard tennis courts. That winter was cold. The ponds in Epping Forest had six inches of ice on them; good for skating but bad for chilblains. Near my school troops exercised almost daily. Some made friends with us boys. I and a classmate were given a ride in a Bren gun carrier. This was like a tiny open-top tank with armoured sides. Our friends were really jealous when we clambered out in front of the school. I was expecting to get in a row but our form master was keen to know all about it. Another time, in the warm weather, I was allowed to sight a Bren gun and cock it for firing. It wasn’t loaded, of course. Ten years later I fired Ben guns many times when I was in the army myself. The magazine held 28 rounds and it was very accurate though modern weapons fire much more rapidly.

In the weeks following the retreat from Dunkirk everyone was expecting a German invasion. Large concrete tank traps were built in great numbers; fields had deep trenches dug across them; steel cables were stretched high across roads and flat areas, all to make aircraft landings more difficult. Concrete gun emplacements were built, which were called pillboxes. Illustrated magazines and posters showed us how to recognise German soldiers even if they were out of uniform. Signposts were painted out or removed from the roadside. When you came to a village on a bike ride you would see only BLANK POST OFFICE. Everyone was instructed not to tell strangers where they were, in case they were spies or Germans. As the war went on, and I grew old enough to cycle large distances, I learned how to use a map and compass the hard way.

The weather was good during the summer of 1940. I put my bivouac tent up in our garden and left it there for weeks. It was forbidden to erect white tents but the large fruit trees hid it from the air. That August the Battle of Britain started though it had no name until it was all over. To us on the ground it was the Luftwaffe carrying out heavy daylight raids day after day. These were hotly resisted by anti-aircraft guns and by our fighters. News bulletins told us how successful our resistance was; that was done to cheer us up. We needed it! One day my mother and I had to run to the shelter 30 times. German bombers did not fly in ones and twos but in squadrons of 20. We knew that they were on their way even before the sirens sounded. Looking east from our garden we would see hundreds of barrage balloons flying. The aluminium particles in the fabric coating reflected the sunlight. Sirens would then be heard in the distance, then nearer ones until our local siren went off, almost deafening us. Their wailing struck almost as much fear as the sound of ack-ack guns.

Our gunfire was also dangerous for us; what goes up must come down, and shell splinters called shrapnel fell about us. Nasty stuff. The largest piece to hit our house weighed hundreds of grammes and was 20 centimetres long. Occasionally unexploded shells would fall and explode on the ground. Two houses near us were badly damaged in this way. Sometimes the bombers flew a course to the north of us and we would watch them being peppered by shell bursts. But the only planes I saw come down were two of our own fighters. The pilots parachuted and were shot dead as they dangled helplessly. Three fighter stations were close to us; North Weald 12 miles to the north, Hornchurch 7 miles to the east, and the auxiliary airfield Fairlop less than two miles away. Fortunately for us all, they all remained in operation sufficiently to prevent an invasion.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.