大象传媒

We lived in NW London, near Hampstead Heath where they had Barrage balloons and an anti-aircraft battery: also allotments (we had one). Although we did not suffer like the centre of London it was nevertheless very noisy when the blitz was on.
Our windows had sticky tape, as far as I remember, and we slept on mattresses on the hall-floor. The hall being the narrowest room in the house and therefore the safest. I rigged up a bit of thick plywood over the hall window to stop glass flying in a blast. I also made a wooden structure filled with clay from the garden just outside the front door to protect that from blast also. When the Blitz started there were no AA guns - all we could hear were the characteristic rhythmic drone of the German bombers and we felt very frightened and vulnerable. However, they soon had the nearby gun battery which helped our morale alot. Even though it made a lot of noise! I well remember the sound of the first nearby bomb, it didn't break any of our windows, but my memory was of how flexible the walls of the house were when it went off. It destroyed a house about a quarter of a mile away. We naively used to speculate where they were aiming for eg, the local bus station!

For a time I was an assistant air raid warden, and went outside when there was a raid on. Our job being to report where a bomb had fallen so that rescue squads would know where to go. In my short spell of duty I never had an incident to report. I just remember the sound of falling shell splinters. Glad to say I was never hit by one. At first these splinters were a novelty and we used to pick them up - shell caps too. Later on incendiary attacks were a menace and my mother and sister used to do fire watching, ready with a stirrup pump to put out the fire. These bombs didn't usually get further than the loft, fortunately we never had to deal with one.

I devised a sort of crude seismograph consisting of a weight on a string, the top being tied to the ceiling and a pencil attached to the weight resting on a piece of paper on the floor. i hoped that when a bomb went off, the pencil line would point in it's direction. In fact it never seemed to be correctly set when a bomb did go off, and the family constantly reminded me to set it in order to keep the bombs away!

One final memory of the air raids was that we used to have great fun playing paper games, and when we weren't doing that we would turn the wireless up loud as a distraction.

Most memories were little things - unrelated to each other:- Not so much hungry as enjoying the food we did have. Using medicinal paraffin as a substitute for cooking fat. Crowded Railway Trains. Leaning by the sound of the rails when the train had got to my destination since the combination of blacked out windows on the train plus very dimly lit station names made it extremely difficult to know where you were!

A great interest in aircraft recognition by sight as well as sound. V1 bombs made a characterisitic noise - if the note started to drop by the Doppler effect it was passing you and you could relax. It was all the worse on one occasion when the note didn't drop - fortunately it fell short of where I was!
V2 rockets always made 2 bangs the first I think was because it was supersonic and the second was the explosion.
We used to cycle a lot - few buses and cars, nice and safe but absolutely no road signs so navigation was a problem.
The wireless was a great joy - programmes like 'Itma' and advice on digging for victory by Mr Middleton, and much more emphasis on classical music.

People sleeping on the tube platforms. Having various people to stay whose homes were in vulnerable areas. Digging for victory and ways of storing vegetables and fruit, there was no such thing as a freezer! Runner beans were salted, many things were preserved in Kilner Jars or made into jam. Apples were peeled, sliced thin and dried into apple rings.

I remember going out onto Hampstead Heath in the snow with a toboggan on which we loaded fallen branches for firewood.
Wartime bread was standard ie halfway between white and brown. Newspapers were I think down to about 1 sheet. Neaarly all mens jackets finished up with a leather patch on the elbow...

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