大象传媒

This contribution to WW2 People's War website was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk, with the permission and on behalf of Brian Goffin and submitted to the website by a volunteer.

I was born on January 20th 1932 and was almost eight years old when war was declared. I had a brother and three sisters. My brother had left home and was an air force apprentice. The first thing I remember - I think it was a Sunday - is hearing the Prime Minister on the radio, announcing that we were at war with Germany. I was doing a bit of work in the garden for my father, knocking down an old coal bunker. The radio was on indoors and I could hear it through the open French windows.

The next thing I remember is being at a Cubs meeting on Mitcham Common and seeing all these planes flying over. They were Stuka dive-bombers. We stood and watched them diving down, making a screaming noise, as they bombed Croydon airfield. We just stood and watched in amazement as the bombs fell. I think that was the first attack on London.

After that my sisters and I and two boys from next door were evacuated to Brighton, in the charge of the oldest of my three sisters, who was about eighteen and newly married. All of us were billeted at the same house. The owner was a bit weird. If there was an air-raid warning he made us all go into the cellar and put on our gas masks, which we didn鈥檛 like at all. We decided we wouldn鈥檛 stay. Over the next few weeks we saved up our money until we had enough to buy a second-hand suitcase at the junk shop opposite the house, and then we packed it and went back home.

I spent most of the rest of the war in Croydon. Our mother was a bit upset about us being at risk and took us to stay with our grandmother in Lowestoft a couple of times. We were coming home from a funeral there one day when we were machine-gunned by a German plane. It flew low enough for me to see the pilot, and bullets flew all around us, but amazingly, no one was hit. The plane flew on and was shot down.

My grandmother moved to Saxmundham, to a cottage with a well in the garden. We stayed there for a while. The locals didn鈥檛 welcome us. At the general store we were told 鈥淵ou Londoners come up here bringing diseases!鈥� and we were made to put our money in a saucer of disinfectant.

The air-raid shelters at my school in Croydon were not big enough to hold everyone, so it was arranged that some of us would go to other shelters when the warning sounded. I used to go with a friend to a shelter at his house. During night raids the family went into our Anderson shelter, except for my father and I who slept indoors. I couldn鈥檛 stand the shelter and slept under the table. My father鈥檚 philosophy was that if your number was up, it was up. I lost some school mates as did others, but we came to accept it.

Then the doodle-bugs (the V1s) began. We were in bed one night, heard a peculiar noise, went out and saw what looked like a plane on fire. It flew over and disappeared. Then there was a huge bang. More of these seemed to hit Croydon than anywhere else. My school was never hit though. When the V-2s came over we children sometimes saw them explode in the distance as we sat with our lemonade and crisps outside the local pub, the Ravensbury Arms on Mitcham Common, while our parents were inside. The V2s were particularly deadly because when they landed, a whole street was destroyed. Fortunately none of them landed near enough to do us any harm.

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