大象传媒

Part one of an edited oral history interview with Mr. David Sharwood about his schoolboy experiences of living in Pinner during World War II. The interview was conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

鈥淚 was born in South Farnborough, Hampshire on 17th October 1929 so I was nearly 10 years old when the war started. In fact the war started on the early side for me relatively. My father had been working out of London, he worked for the Air Ministry and then he was posted into London in late summer of 1938 and he decided that we鈥檇 live in Pinner, Middlesex now part of Greater London. We went into lodgings while looking for a house to rent and when a house had been found and we moved into it, probably September 1938. My mother took myself and my five years younger sister along to the nearest school to register me. The school was Cannon Lane Infants and Junior School, it was in Cannonbury Avenue. There was a lot of activity in the play ground when we got there and when we got out from seeing the Head Teacher, he said, 鈥榃hile you are here, get your gas masks.鈥� So mum, myself and my sister were fitted out with gas masks and that was my introduction to the beginning of the war. We hoped to carry on as usual when war was declared. We had that warning siren on the morning war was declared but beyond that it all went quiet. A lot of people had been called-up. At Junior school we lost Mr. Hodges, he was called-up quite early on, he was my favourite teacher. Mr. Gearey the male teacher there, he was the only other male teacher there, he didn鈥檛 go. At Scouts the Assistant Scout Masters, Geoff Stocker and Alan Peterkin both went. But when we got to the County School, I started there in September 1941 and stayed there until the summer of 1946 there was a Woodwork master there, we started learning Woodwork from the boys point of view while the girls did Domestic Science. But then he was called-up and because he wasn鈥檛 there the licence to purchase a limited amount of wood wasn鈥檛 renewed so when we lost him we lost the wood supply as well. We never did have a woodwork lesson after that. There was quite a large woodwork shop - the classroom was left redundant. It was cleared later. I can鈥檛 remember his name but a Polish gentleman came in. He had to learn English, we helped him a lot with his English and he taught us Surveying which came in useful later on in life. It helped with the geometry and trigonometry. We learnt a lot from him eventually but we didn鈥檛 take it as an exam subject.

My father was a civilian, he was an aeronautical engineer. And then came 1939 - he and all the London offices were sent to Harrogate so there was mum, myself and my sister living on our own in Pinner - he came home occasionally. Then, part way through the Blitz he was brought back to London and obviously living with us.

Where we were living we were on the approach route for the fighters coming back to Northolt so we were very much aware of the 鈥楤attle of Britian鈥�. There was a Polish Squadron there amongst the other RAF Squadrons and it was good to see them coming back, often in formation. We always counted - were the 12 there that had gone off, had they all come back? Yes, they flew in very low coming in past us. We didn鈥檛 see the dog fights but for one or two days we saw the vapour trails in the sky but most of the dog fighting was further over the south of London and east of London.

Quite early on in the bombing there had been a new extension built on the playing field side of the school and this was all classrooms upstairs and a big cloakroom downstairs. Then the whole school took the Eleven Plus exam. The classes were apparently segregated, we didn鈥檛 realise that at the time, but the class I was in was the successful candidates. So, as we were virtually the senior class we had a class room upstairs that was above the main hall. At the beginning of the war it was decided that the cloakroom would be a shelter for the Infants part of the school. They put blast walls all round the outside of it and one evening early in the bombing a single German came over and dropped three bombs. One went into the ground in the corner of the playing field, one went straight through the roof of the new extension into the area that was intended for the Infants shelter and another one went in the other side of the playing field, just missing a pylon. Luckily this happened at six o鈥檆lock at night so there was no one about, very lucky. So from the time of that incident, we in the senior class - nobody could use the cloakrooms anyway - so all our coats were hung on hooks fastened to the wall in the corridor outside the classroom, I and another boy, I forget his name now much as I have tried over the years to remember it, had the first desk inside the classroom. When the alarm bell went off we had to get out of our seats, through the door, grab our coats off the first two hooks, dash down the corridor, down the stairs, along the corridor back towards the room underneath us open those doors, across it and open the crash barrier doors on the outside so that everybody in the school could stream out from that end of the school to the shelters which where on the far side of the playground. So we did that quite frequently but luckily we had no more raids in our locality.

When we were in the shelter we sang songs, played games with a little bit of a learning element in some of it, it wasn鈥檛 very good lighting in there obviously. The shelter was made out of giant sewerage pipes, long sewerage pipes half buried in the ground and the ground that had been dug out was heaped up over the top of them. There was a duckboard virtually down the centre and part of that woodwork there was a bench on either side. When we weren鈥檛 singing or chattering, when there was better lighting in there we used to play games of write a name on the stop of a strip of paper and then fold it over and then write something else - built up a story and then at the end some very hilarious stories came out of that.

The shelters were very long and narrow, yes. An entrance at one end and an escape hatch at the other and there was a shelter for virtually each year. I think there were about four or five shelters there and of course the Infants part had to go into these shelters as well because their intended shelter had been damaged. Then we all moved across (to the Pinner County School). In that class, before I moved to Secondary School, there were four David鈥檚 and seven Pamela鈥檚. I can鈥檛 remember all their surnames. Several people joined the class during the year. We don鈥檛 know where they came from. One was Vivian Singh, an Indian, a very good English speaker though, you wouldn鈥檛 know he was black when you heard him speak. Another one, we were told he came from the Channel Islands, this must have been about 1940, fairly early on, his name was Leslie Bricusse. Now whether that鈥檚 the same Leslie Bricusse who later went to America in the music industry, we just don鈥檛 know, I鈥檇 like to find that out. He and Michael Skilicorn and Ronald Whittaker I think didn鈥檛 come to Pinner County School, which was the local Grammar School, but most of the others went to Pinner County which is diagonally across the huge playing field there in Pinner. Then as the years went on they had shelters which where a little bit better than the ones at the Junior school. But again we had lots of dashes down to these shelters when the daytime raids were going on.

Oh, another thing the 大象传媒 might be able to help here. In our English language lessons one of the things was teaching us to write a letter besides writing essays. One day, Mrs. Annets, I鈥檒l always remember her name, she was our teacher at that time, she came in and said, 鈥業 need you to write a letter to somebody of your own age in Holland.鈥� Because the 大象传媒 had had through the underground network as it was called, a letter from a Dutch child telling people in England what their life was like, how they got on at school and such like. The suggestion was that we should write a letter in reply telling them what our life was like to be broadcast in Dutch to the Dutch Nation. I won that! I didn鈥檛 get a prize. I just cannot remember what I put in it but the fact that I would have been cycling a lot and that we had put up these Morrison shelters, I remember that part of it. But whether the Archive still have the original letter from Holland and my reply I鈥檇 be interested to know. Like so many things that were recorded they were destroyed in the clear outs after the war. But if they have got it I鈥檇 be interested to hear it. I don鈥檛 know the lady who had spoken to Mrs. Annetts who was apparently a Producer in 大象传媒.鈥�

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