大象传媒

My name is Arthur Smith. I was born in 1926, and at the time I was living in Nottingham in an area called Snienton just off the Carlton Road. The day war broke out I was at church, a little choir boy. The vicar announced that war had been declared, and the service was ended fairly quickly, and I鈥檇 hardly got home when the sirens went and we all trooped down to the cellar and sat there for about a couple of hours before the all-clear was sounded. And that was the first taste. It was a false alarm obviously. And then the ensuing months were the phoney war until Dunkirk and that period.

Nottingham was not really bombed until May 1941, and it was the practice in the Smith household that you always went to bed as normal, and if the guns started firing, you got up and went down in the cellar. One night father came in, quick as an air-raid warden, banging everywhere, making a heck of a noise, get down the shelter quick. Apparently he鈥檇 been talking to a merchant seaman who was on leave, and he鈥檇 said to him when they were walking around doing his A.R.P. duties 鈥淚f I was you I鈥檇 get your people down the shelters quick because this is how Jerry marks out a convoy before he starts bombing鈥�. So we all rushed down to the shelter and we鈥檇 hardly got down there when all hell let loose. The nearest I can explain it to you it鈥檚 like standing on a tube train and hearing the train roaring from the tunnel. There was this roaring noise and the very loud bang. My sister had got a child because she鈥檚 a lot older than me, and mother, I鈥檝e got a younger brother, and all they said was 鈥渕y baby鈥� and flung themselves on top of them. I just flung myself on the floor.

Unfortunately our next-door neighbours caught it. They were about 20 yards away with a detached house, and it was two elderly ladies and a brother and they were taken out completely. We had one or two incendiary bombs, which my elder brother who was at home at the time, put out. And then, when it was all clear, we鈥檇 got very little damage in the house itself, but there was smoke, which I couldn鈥檛 place. We鈥檇 got a dog at the time, and he went round with me and started barking in my parent鈥檚 bedroom. Apparently an incendiary bomb had fallen through the roof onto their bed and it was smothered. It hid in the old flock mattress type thing and it was too big for me to pick up or do anything with, so I ran round and found my father and he just picked the lot up and through it out the window. Another bomb had landed on the corner of the next street. Apparently there was an unexploded bomb there. We were all evacuated, and my father was standing watching, from a distance, and the two R.E. blokes came running out, jumping out of the hole and ran like hell up the road and flung themselves on the floor and it went up, and that鈥檚 what caused the actual damage to the house, the roof, windows, and everything. A little aside there, we, at that time had got redifusion sound. It was absolutely chaos as you can imagine all around, wires down, no electricity, but the redifusion was still playing. We used to go to night school in those days but I had to stop because we never learnt anything 鈥� because the sirens went, we all evacuated. I was in the city centre and I used to walk home in moonlight mostly, from shelter to shelter just in case, and eventually got home.

Then I think it was 鈥�43 we left there and went to live out in the sticks and my old man kept a pub for a while, and there used to be a R.A.F. station the other side of the river, and they always were part of the big bomber raids. Occasionally, not very often thank God, there was a Lancaster used to come down, heavily loaded and instead of taking off, they came off the airfield in the valley 鈥� drop, and it would just drop and drop and drop until he鈥檇 go up with a hell of a big bang in the fields fortunately.

And by that time I was doing shifts, not night shifts but day shifts and evenings, and then until 鈥�44 when I was called up and I went to Colchester in Essex. And as I came off Liverpool Street Station to get to Colchester I heard this funny noise and that was my first introduction to Doodle-bugs. And for the next I think it would be six weeks, played at soldiers in Colchester and very often you鈥檇 go on the square doing your square-bashing early in the morning and you鈥檇 just have to stop because the amount of aircraft going over to France was phenomenal. The skies were almost black. I left there and went to Catterick, and from Catterick, after I鈥檇 done some training some more in Scarborough which was like heaven by comparison to Catterick. And then just after VE Day we went down to Southampton. The war in Japan ended while we were on board going out the Far East, so as far as actual wartime efforts in Burma were concerned I saw next to nothing. I had very grand Cook鈥檚 tour, not a very comfortable Cook鈥檚 tour. Went right round the houses, we went down to Ceylon. Don鈥檛 ask me why, then back up to Bombay. Just as an aside, when we were in Columbo, the first ex-POWs, British POWs came in, poor devils. Then I went to a place called Mhow up in the hills. Goodness knows where it was, it was somewhere near Indore I think, and then did some training there and then went across to Calcutta and from Calcutta we went in a troop ship. Somebody said it had been used to take pilgrims to Mecca. It was very small and packed like sardines. There was a heck of a storm blowing and we had to heave to at one time because one of the Indian troops had died during the night. He was put over the side, I presume a Muslim ceremony.

Then we went into Rangoon. Of course, that had been knocked around a bit and that鈥檚 when I realised just how those blokes storming up the beaches had suffered because we couldn鈥檛 heave to properly and we were out in the Irawadi and we, what with the full packs, fifty round of ammunition and a rifle and kit bag, we had to get into these landing craft and it was very easy actually but how uncomfortable it was, and there was nobody firing shots at us. And then I just spent up and down Burma 鈥� occasionally got shot at by so-called dacoits. Until end of 鈥�47, beginning of 鈥�48 when I was finally demobbed.

And that鈥檚 my war.

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