大象传媒

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I was evacuated from East Ham in the east end of London on Friday Sept 1st 1939 when I was six and a half years old. It was before any bombing but we were evacuated because the docks were going to be an important target for the Germans. I can't find details of the address where I went to but I ended up with two other lads in a house in Weston-Super-Mare. I didn't really want to go so I had an idea to note the train number of the train that took us to Weston so I could get it back home. About three days after arriving I went back to the station with the number of the train and stood there waiting for it to come back, because I thought trains worked in the same way as trams or buses which I knew about. I was homesick and fed up. I'd been there for a while when a policeman tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was the lad who'd been evacuated. I went back to the house and the women kept me in my underwear so I could not go away. I suppose it was the best thing she could do. I would be easy to spot in the street if I did a runner. I was dead keen to get home, I remember standing in the garden shouting 'mum' thinking it would get all the way back to London. I didn't know where London was. I remember big fighter planes going over all the time. I realised later there was an RAF base near Weston.
The woman looking after me was getting six bob a week for me, but seven and six for the bigger boys.
A few days later my mum came to get me and I went back home to East Ham.
We had an air raid shelter there which was posh compared to others in the street because we were one of the first ten houses whose shelters were sealed with rubber glue. That was important because the ground was waterlogged because we were so close to the docks.
We had a dog, a terrier called Toby, and mum and dad said he would hear the sirens before we did. He'd hear them when they went at Dagenham, the next town down, and he'd want to get out of the house. Mum would let him out, I'd hold his lead and he'd run down to the shelter pulling me after him.
We were bombed out the first time on the afternoon of Saturday September 7th 1940.
My father took pictures after the raid.
Because we lived near the High Street and we had no fridge we bought food daily. That Saturday Dad went to take books to library, and Mum and me went to buy something to eat. The air raid siren went and Mum and me ran through a block of flats to an air raid shelter in the park. We didn't know where Dad was. When the all-clear went we came out of shelter through flats and back to our road.
There was a policeman using a washing line as a barrier across the road. Mum said we had to get to our house, saying it was the one with all the windows blown out and curtains billowing out but the policeman wouldn't let us through. But when the policeman was distracted she lifted up the line and we ran through. Dad had got back to the house and he was still indoors, wearing an old felt overcoat he'd been wearing to go to the library. He told us he saw the planes going over and saw the bomb bays open and he thought "I'm in trouble". So he ducked into the chimney corner of our house and put his overcoat over his head. The bombs blew soot down the chimney all over the room. When he stepped up he could see his silhouette on the wall. He'd protected the wallpaper. Mum was furious because her sideboard was covered in soot. It was normally like a mirror. I think it was shock that made her so angry about that.
We heard the Germans were coming back to the area later so we decided to do a bunk. We went to East Ham railway station. We bought tickets to the end of the line as far as you could go. The next thing we know we got off at Wimbledon. We'd never been there before. When we came out of the station we turned left because it was uphill to the right and Dad said the 'nobs' lived there and we wouldn't find any digs. So we turned left and kept going through the Broadway to Kings Road. We turned in and there was a woman walking towards us. Mum asked her if she knew anyone with digs. The woman said 'have you come from that lot?' pointing out the red glow in the sky coming from the east, where the timber docks were burning like mad. She took us in, and I've never slept in a bigger bed in my life. I went back years later to thank her. I was amazed. I don't remember her charging anything.
We lived there a day or two, but then went looking for lodgings in Morden. I was out looking with my mum and we stopped to use a call box so she could call Dad. Behind the call box was an empty house, we asked the next door neighbour about it and she gave us the address of the landlord in Streatham. I lived there for 19 years until I got married.
Dad worked as a hydraulic engineer for a mineral water firm, making lemonade and oragne squash. His office in East London had been bombed so his company told him to go and work in the Southfields office, which was near to our new home.
In June 1944 the Germans started with their Doodlebugs. They dropped one in a street near our house. I was working in our big front garden where we grew vegetables, digging a deep trench to put manure in and earth back on top. I ducked down in the trench because I heard this thing coming. I lay down in the trench and there was terrific bang. Mum came running out. Some of my friends were in an air raid shelter which went over on its side. They came out battered and bruised but OK.
We lost all the tiles, French windows and all the glass. Mum said she had enough of this. Dad's firm also got bombed out. When he went to the office in Southfields after the raid to sort out his desk he had to smash it up to get into it. Out fell a complete sheet of 1929 Postal Union Congress ha'penny stamps. He took them home and gave them to me to swap them with my friends. They'd been down the back of that desk since 1929.
Dad's company asked him if he'd like to go to their Harrogate offices after that. We found digs there and stayed in Yorkshire several months until the war ended and we came back and rented the house. Dad eventually bought it for 拢1,300. I'd never seen a house with bath before then. I remember turning the taps on and I didn't know what to do. It's probably worth a quarter of a million now.

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