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This story has been submitted to the People’s War Site by Jan Barrett on behalf of Leslie Dobson and has been added to the site with his permission. Leslie fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I am Leslie Dobson and I am 72. I was born on the 19th November 1932.

On September 3rd, 1939, when War was declared on Germany, I was on holiday with my parents and brother at Hastings. We had to cut our holiday short because Dad, who was a Policeman and worked in the Surrey Commercial Docks, was recalled to London.

At that time we were living at 75 Banstead Street, Nunhead, Peckham, in the borough of Camberwell, South London. Now my memory is a bit hazy as to what happened next. I was only 6 years and ten months at the time. I cannot remember traveling back to London. I know my brother, Ron, who was eleven years old on that eventful day, went, with our mother to our School in Holidale Road, Nunhead, Peckham. There we assembled in the playground with our teacher. Then with our Mum, and the whole School, we traveled to a railway station . There we said our goodbyes to Mum. We were very tearful, because we had never been parted from our Mother in our lives.

The train took us all to Shoreham-on-Sea, where we assembled in a big hall. There, after we had been given a paper carrier bag with tins and packets of food, we had to wait whilst the good people of the town decided who they would like to have in their homes.

Nobody wanted Ron and I. We were eventually taken by a lady around the streets. She knocked on several doors. We were taken in for just the one night by two elderly ladies. The next day we ended up being billeted with the local Lighthouse Keeper and his wife. We had to sleep in a couple of ships bunkbeds in the garage. It was full of rope, fishing nets, lobster pots and old anchors. After we had been there a few weeks Mum came to visit and took us back to London after we complained about the place we had to sleep in.

In the meantime, Dad and the next door neighbour had put in an Anderson shelter in the back garden. All the windows in the house had sticky strips of paper on then. And there were blackout blinds to cover the windows at night. Life went on as normal for a bit. I was now at Wholton Road School, which later became Peckham Rye Secondary Modern.

When the siren sounded, we went down to the basement till the ‘all clear’ went off. When the bombing started in earnest and we were at home it was usually at night time. So often we were woken by the noise of the ack’ack guns and the loud explosions.

I remember one time when we were coming down the stairs and the bombs were falling all around us, Mum covered me with her body. It was then a mad rush to get to the shelter in the garden before the house received a direct hit. You could always tell if the Jerries were flying over, their engines made an unmistakable sound. We would stay there all night. Part of the next day would be spent clearing up the mess. Thick dust and broken glass.

Sometimes there would be no gas to cook with or water to drink. One time I took the old bath tub around the street on my go-cart to find someone who could fill our old ‘tub’ up. When I returned home with the water slopping everywhere, I was told the water had been restored.

Us children used to collect pieces of shrapnel from the bombs and incendiary bomb casings. Sweets were rationed as was most things. We had a quarter of a pound a week (110 grams). School functioned normally.

When the bombing got really bad, we were evacuated to Axminster in Devon. We, meaning my brother and Mum together with a cousin and her Grandma, were put up in an old farmhouse with seven other families. It was a bit of a cultural shock. They didn’t understand us at first and we not them.

After Devon, we returned to London. I contracted rheumatic fever and had to go to Queens Mary’s Hospital, Carshalton. Whilst I was there a V1 started to come over and one boy said he saw the pilot-less aeroplane, which fell on the men’s section in the hospital.

After that I went back to Peckham, but our house was too badly damaged to live in. One of the V1’s fell on a railway track near us and my Dad who had been standing outside having a cigarette rushed to get down to the Anderson shelter but he was not quite quick enough and got covered in dust!

Leslie Dobson
September 2005.

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