大象传媒

Sometimes on a Sunday morning I鈥檇 be allowed into my parents bed. With a child鈥檚 curiosity I鈥檇 study the ceiling boards nailed to the joists above, greyish with green print around the edge of each board. I couldn鈥檛 remember when the original ceiling had come crashing down. According to my mother a bomb had landed in the next street. 鈥淲e were lucky,鈥� she said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 only a pile of rubble where the bomb hit.鈥� The Council had sent workmen round to nail up the boards.
It must have been much later that I saw the rocket. I was in the bathroom one afternoon looking through the open window when fire streaked across the sky before disappearing behind the houses opposite. I rushed downstairs to tell my father about it. The V2, that鈥檚 what it was a V2, crashed into Goodmayes Park leaving an enormous crater that was there for months after. Of course, you know it was later because it was a V2. The reason I know is because it killed the father of a girl in my class at school, Margaret her name was. He鈥檇 been standing at the bus stop outside the park gates. I didn鈥檛 start school until 1945.
I can鈥檛 say that I was ever afraid, nor was I aware of much fear around me, only a general anxiety. People talked about Doodlebugs and the fear of waiting for the inevitable explosion after their engines stopped. They repeated stories to each other, like the time that a Nazi plane flew down Green Lane with its machine guns blazing. In Becontree we were peripheral, although suffering from the misfortune of being near to the docks on the Thames and to the automotive plants in Dagenham. Our deaths would have been entirely arbitrary.
I didn鈥檛 see my father very often. Apart from the day of the rocket I can鈥檛 remember him much from the war years. He was either working in the Royal Army Pay Corp during the day, or at night he was on a roof in London looking out for fires and spotting where bombs were dropping. I think he lived with us most of the time. Mum and I were evacuated to the country for a short while, but Mum insisted on going back home.
I have a vivid image in my head of a rifle lying on the floor next to the bookcase in the front room, Dad鈥檚 rifle. I suppose he never had to fire it, not in the Pay Corp. I did wonder if he ever took a pot shot at an enemy aircraft when he was fire spotting; probably not, knowing Dad. He survived the war. We all did in our family. Ironically they sent him to France when it was all over.
The shelter was fun after the war; a good playhouse even if it was prone to flooding. Dad had dug the hole, lined it with wood and put the corrugated iron over the top before covering it with earth and grass. It was strange spending the night in there, unsettled. Once when the siren sounded we couldn鈥檛 get to the shelter in time and Mum made us sit under the dining table in the front room. The sound of the siren has lodged in my psyche. Our siren was at Chadwell Heath. As an adult I鈥檝e heard that sound a few times. Eerie, it makes the skin on your back shiver.
Except when the searchlights were swinging to and fro night was always black. For a long time I was afraid of the dark. There was no sympathy for that, only ridicule.
When we were confident of victory Mum made two big flags. On VE day she hung them from the bedroom window overlooking the street, on one side the Union Flag, or the Union Jack as we called it, and on the other, the Hammer and Sickle. My parents always maintained that we wouldn鈥檛 have won the war without the help of the Russians. Dad often spoke of their courage and the 鈥榖urnt earth鈥� policy. Mum and dad believed fervently in the war against fascism. Dad had been one of those who鈥檇 turned out to confront Moseley鈥檚 blackshirts in the East End, and he鈥檇 also worked to raise funds for the Republicans in Spain. Unfortunately my war was against the Germans, and for many years after, fighting them in the air was a frequent feature of breaks in the school playground. When I was nine or ten years old I found a collection of newspapers that an aunt had kept. They reported the liberation of Belsen by British troops. I can never forget the photographs of living skeletons and the piles of emaciated corpses.
I suppose you could say that the war blighted my childhood, but I鈥檝e never felt like that. It was my experience, and at least partly as a result of the horrors of world war, I have escaped being asked to fight in one.

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