大象传媒

When war broke out my parents packed us children off to the comparative safety of Somerset, with the rest of our school.
How different life was in the country.
At that time we had entered what people called the phoney war, and after about eight months we all returned to Barnhurst where nothing was happening, but that was not for long.
Soon there were nightly air raids; the ghastly noise of the warning sirens really scared us children.
My father and a neighbour constructed an Anderson shelter in the garden for the two families to share, and while they patrolled as air raid wardens, we all trooped down the garden as soon as the sirens started.

How children sleep.
One morning when we awoke we had no idea of the noise that must have gone on during the night.
Just after midnight a cluster of bombs had dropped locally, damaging houses a quarter of a mile away including a house just a few doors away from our home.
When we came out of the shelter in the morning, I was taken to see the damage.
Our house lost most of its roof, my bed was directly below a gaping hole, and covered in fallen plaster and roof tiles.
I may not have been killed, but I think I had a lucky escape.
The house was never quite the same after that, with the holes and the tarpaulin covers, which took a very long time to fix.

A few months later we moved to Bromley, not that many miles away, mainly to escape the months of quite intense, noisy and dangerous nights. with anti aircraft guns constantly firing. They were based at a temporary overnight gun site just at the end of our road about 50 yards away.

Bromley was another story
The area was very much like Barnhurst.
The incessant bombing of London had not brought us to our knees so the Germans looked for other means to defeat the population. The relentless overnight noise, the constant interruptions, and the loss of sleep were much reduced in our new home.
There were occasional air raids, but really it was much quieter, and I suspected that we were not so much on guard as we used to have been in Barnhurst.

It was a cold clear day, no frost, no rain, just a day for coats and scarves.
There were four of us boys all around 13, were on our way back to school after our lunch break. We were walking along a local road, just to the East of Bromley, walking SouthEast.
Suddenly in the clarity of the air we saw planes heading directly towards us.
Our initial school boy cheers were immediately frozen, when someone shouted 'They're Germans', Within four seconds they were overhead, the noise was colossal. There were three or four fighter planes flying at roof top level along the main road.
For an instant we were looking at the aircraft crew as they looked at us, it all happened so quickly we had no time to be frightened just rooted to the spot with astonishment.
Within five or six seconds they had gone.
We watched as they disappeared towards London as quickly as they'd come.

There is a sting in the tale.
For now we had to get back to school where no one, neither boys nor masters believed our story, why should they?
It was so unlikely; they'd not been seen or heard from the school.
As I said, it had all happened in seconds.
The following day was different as the awful news got around; twenty seconds flying time took those German planes over Catford and Lewisham. There they attacked the local school, strafing the playground with machine gun fire and dropping a five hundred-kilogram high explosive bomb.
There were many casualties, children and teachers, but the greatest horror was the gunning down of children in the playground.
That incident was the first, and for many the only daylight raid, and even sixty years on, is still talked about with anger.
I wonder what would have happened if the machine guns had been firing as they flew over Bromley.

My closest call of all.

1944
School for the day was well over. I'd been home and had afternoon tea.
Because it was such a lovely day I decided to go out on my bicycle.
Like many teenagers of my age, I collected train numbers, and I'd headed straight for my favourite viewpoint, a small road bridge just south of Bromley station. (A major stop between London Victoria, Maidstone and the coast).
It was about five thirty when I heard the distinctive sound of a German V1 flying bomb, a Doodlebug,
The noise got louder and I wondered whether to stay or go. It was so annoying, I was waiting to see the next train which was the five fifty six coast train which I was sure would have an interesting engine, and I really didn't want to miss it.
The noise got louder and louder, and I realised the V1 was getting nearer and nearer very fast, and I thought towards me!
None too soon I decided that home would be the best place. I pedalled home at record speed.
Halfway home I heard the engine cut out, from then I knew the bomb was coming down, but still I had no idea where it was.
Breathless I hurled myself though the back door and shouted to my startled mother to get down. She'd not heard the Doodlebug above the normal family noise.
We all heard the bomb go off but unsure just where.
I didn't go out again that evening.
It was the day after and back at school that I heard the news.
The bomb had fallen on the two houses nearest the railway bridge that was my viewing point, both houses were completely destroyed, five people were killed, all adults, one of my friends living in the next house had his face permanently scarred from the flying glass.
I'm sure I would have lost more that my school cap if I'd stayed to look at the on-coming train.
The bridge was closed for several days.
I didn't collect train numbers from there ever again.

London was never a healthy place to be during the blitz, and afterwards when the Germans, frustrated as they were, invented first the V1 then the V2s, as extra ways of tormenting us all.
SouthEast London was as bad a place as any, we got more than our share of bombing during the war.
It wasn't till many years later that I began to thing about how fortunate I'd been.

We'd all been very brave during the war, and it was perhaps this frame of mind that helped us through those dark times.

Certainly Hitler never saw me off --

I saw him off!

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