大象传媒

A SMALL CHILD鈥橲 WAR: PART 1

The Second World War as remembered by
Peter Dolan sixty years later

I was eight years old when the war started. We lived in the east end of London where my father was a doctor looking after the very poor and unemployed people. We were right next to the London Docks. We knew war was coming - we did not know how we would be affected but it was thought London would be heavily bombed and that it was likely that poison gas would be used.

In August 1939 we went to the local school to be fitted and issued with our gas masks which we were to keep with us at all times. We then prepared for the 'EVACUATION'. All the children were to be taken to the country to avoid the bombing. Our mothers packed suitcases for us and we dressed each day in our school uniform waiting for the call. It came on 1st September 1939. We all went to school and then walked in a long crocodile to the local station where a special train waited us. Most parents waved goodbye at the school. Some children cried, but most were quite excited and did not appreciate that some of us were seeing our parents for the last time. As my father had a car he took a lot of the baggage to the station for us and we said our 鈥済oodbyes鈥� there with admonitions of 鈥淏e good and don't forget to write鈥�. The train took us to Woodbridge in Suffolk from where we were taken a few miles on to Orfordness, a small village on the coast. We were all billeted on various families living in very old and quite small cottages. My brother, sister and I were billeted in a much grander house with several other children and some of the nuns. The house was owned by Lady Bunbury and she was very kind to us. The nuns and teachers did the cooking and it was a new experience for most of them.

There was no school so we spent most of the day walking around the country and picking blackberries. I cannot remember anything about the food so it must have been alright except we had blackberry and apple with every meal. Some of the children were not so lucky and were not treated so well. As there was no suitable place for us to use as a school after six weeks we moved to Thetford in Norfolk. We went by coach and as we got on we were given a brown paper bag containing some food, tea, sugar, condensed milk and the biggest bar of chocolate we had ever seen. This was an emergency ration. The billeting officer had trouble finding a family that would take three evacuees. Luckily he eventually found a very kind family who took us in. The father was a well to do builder. They had two children of their own who were rather spoiled. They had lots of toys including a huge electric train set. We enjoyed most playing on their pianola. This was like a piano but you could put rolls into it and then pump the pedal with your feet.
We fooled a number of our friends who thought at first we were actually playing for real.

School was organised in a large empty house and we settled in but we missed our parents. My parents managed to visit us one weekend but then petrol was put on the ration and they could not come any more. It was a period known as the 'phoney war'. The Germans were occupied in Poland and other places. England was very quiet. Lots of the children managed to persuade their parents to let them come home for Christmas. When Christmas was over most of us stayed at home as everything seemed OK.

Everything was fine until May 1940 when the Germans invaded France. In next to no time they were at the channel ports and our army was evacuated from Dunkirk. All the harbours had fallen so the big ships anchored off the coast and all the small motor boats sailing boats etc. from all around the south coast made their way across the channel and ferried the soldiers from the beaches out to the big ships offshore. A number of these small boats came from this area and there are still some afloat. They carry an engraved plaque commemorating the evacuation. The evacuation was complete on 4th June 1940 and then the Germans stated making attacks on our airfields in the south of England prior to invading. It was a very scary time. People tied carving knives and old bayonets to broom sticks to fight off the Germans when they landed. However our fighter pilots fought off the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Each day the papers would have headlines like the cricket scores: Germany 100 shot down; the RAF 35. We could see fighter trails all over the sky and we were all collecting bits of crashed aircraft. War had not really touched London but on Saturday 7th September 1940 Hitler stopped attacking the airfields and started on London.

The London docks were the target. About two hundred bombers came up the Thames and dropped tons of bombs on dockland. Everything caught fire. There were loud explosions, loud crashes as buildings fell down and huge billows of thick smoke. The Watney鈥檚 brewery just behind us was hit and caught fire and the smoke gave us all headaches. Apparently there was a store of petrol in a tank on the roof and we were waiting for it to explode. The raiders went away at about four o鈥檆lock but came back about seven. By this time there were streams of people moving about the streets their horse and carts loaded with what remained of their belongings. Our shelter was filled with friends who had had to leave their house due to nearby unexploded bombs. The bombing carried on till dawn and we were all very tired and frightened. My father did not want us to stay in London any more so we went to my Aunt who ran an old peoples home in Enfield, Middlesex. As it was the country turned out to be just as dangerous. One day we were machine gunned by a German plane whilst going down a country lane and were only saved by sheltering under a humped backed bridge, and on another day we heard a plane making what we thought were funny noises. It turned out to be a German plane. We realised this when we saw bombs falling from it! The bombs fell in a park keepers cottage garden and did little damage but unfortunately his son stood on the edge of one crater to have a look. It caved in and he was killed.

In October 1940 we were evacuated again and rejoined our school which was occupying a hotel in Newquay, Cornwall. We lived in a cottage on the cliffs above the harbour. Most of the hotels were occupied by soldiers and airmen. The soldiers manned the coastal defences and the airman were mainly trainee aircrew learning navigation and radio operating. We boys spent our spare time scrounging badges and buttons from the soldiers.

My father remained in London where the 'Blitz' had carried on very heavily every night. My mother was terribly worried about him. We had no phone and she asked him to send her a postcard every day to confirm he was ok. It鈥檚 funny to think that in time of war with everything being bombed those cards arrived regularly the next day. A much better service than you would get today! Unfortunately, after we had been in Newquay a month my twin brother was taken ill with blood poisoning. We did not have penicillin in those days and he died within two weeks.

Our cottage was on the cliffs an we could see right across the bay to St Eval airfield about eight miles away. We sometimes watched our bombers come back from raids on France. Once we saw a plane struggling to keep height and we were all horrified to see it crash into the cliffs and fall into the sea. In February 1941 the Germans bombed the airfield and they shot down some RAF planes returning from raids. I suppose the RAF did not have enough fuel left to divert to another airfield. A lot of the airmen who were killed that night are buried in the local churchyard and I always go to see them when I go to Newquay to visit my brothers grave. I will never forget the awfulness of that night seeing our airman being killed. My sister and I used to play on the rocks beneath the cliffs and we would explore the caves. One day we found the body of a German airman on the rocks and he is now buried very near to my brother.

Peter Dolan
3rd January 2004

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