大象传媒

Regarding your request for memories of the Second World War. Here are the memories of our Uncle Ron where he recalls growing up during the war in Kent (Hell Fire Corner).

鈥淎s a lad of eight years in 1939 I well remember the outbreak of that war. My parents, my sister and I were on holiday in Margate, staying B&B. (Yes, people did only go thirty odd miles for a holiday and very many could not afford even that). At the time of Neville Chamerlain's broadcast, Eleven AM I believe, we were in The British Home Stores restaurant, it was broadcast over the stores loudspeaker system, I had a toy tank with a sparking gun which I was playing with. We had to return home at once as my father was an engine driver with the Southern Railway and had to report for duty if needed. (Yes again, the Steam strains ran and were always on time. Progress?) My elder brother volunteered for the Royal navy serving as a signaller aboard HMS St. Helier which was torpedoed in the north sea but limped into port and survived the war, one of its last duties, showing the Flag in the devastated port of Nagasaki.

The eldest of my two sisters joined the newly formed Food office locally, until getting married. The huge national bureaucracy initially did an excellent job of feeding the nation but got out of control towards the end of the war. One even had to seek a permit to purchase a Thermos Flask and return the broken parts for a renewal! I still have my late wife鈥檚 ration book for 1954 and both our Identity Cards with the number one had to memorise which had to be produced on demand by the Police or Military. They should be reintroduced today.

As children, we walked or cycled to school, in my case, one and a half miles, in safety apart from the attentions of Hitler鈥檚 air force. One got blas茅 about the Air Raid Siren, but if the spotters warning sounded one took cover ASAP, if out on the streets we were told to knock on the nearest door and ask to be taken in for shelter. I was never refused or heard any refusal. The family had an Andersen Shelter in the back garden, as different from a Morrison Shelter which was a metal cage for internal use such as flats etc. These often took the place of the kitchen table to save room. Our shelter, which had to be half buried in earth, was always filing with water and it was my daily job, before school, to pump it out with a reciprocating pump, failing to do so, the boards on the floor would float and the bunk bedding would get wet.

One day the dog fights over head got really bad with bullet cases and shrapnel falling everywhere. We kids got down inside but my mother, who was a big woman (not fat, there was not the food to get fat), got stuck in the hatchway, much to our delight, with our father pushing and us pulling, the danger outside seemed to be forgotten and we all fell about laughing when she finally got in. I can never remember being frightened and would have to be almost dragged to take cover from wanting to watch the bombs falling or the dogfights above.

There must have been some Jewish families temporarily living in the district as one day a lad our age arrives in class at school, we were asked by the teacher to be his friend as he had no home now and came from Germany, his name was Hans, well dressed and could speak good English. He moved away after a week or two.

One memory is very clear. At the time of Dunkirk we did no see my father for a whole week. He like many others worked all hours moving the troop trains too and from channel ports, and slept at the train depots. My mother made packs of sandwiches, cakes and bottles of lemonade made with lemonade powder (off ration then) which us kits took up to the sidings just outside Ashford station and handed out to the troops or the ones that were not too exhausted to lean own to get them. A very sad sight.

As regard food 鈥� living in the country must have helped. I do not remember being hungry. One standing memory is of Apricot jam. The jam seemed to be mysteriously inexhaustible and appeared on the breakfast and tea table, also in the form of jam tarts and Roly Poly pudding, for weeks on end. The standing complaint from us children was 鈥淣ot Apricot jam again Mum?鈥� The reply was always the same, 鈥淭hink yourself lucky and eat it.鈥� It makes me smile even today when I see that jam on the super market shelves.

The mothers used to bottle fruit, make jam and store apples etc. We picked black berries, collected watercress from the river, father grew our own vegetables it was a lot different in the cities and big towns. We must have been a very clean family as we were always short of soap and washing powder. I well remember asking the shopkeeper for six shaving sticks (to supplement the wash as they were off ration). I was given only two, so went to the Co-Op and got a few more. We children had to also help with the shopping and in our case take the Accumulators too to the electrical shop for charging once a week for the radio.

One thing perhaps not many people today realise, one could only shop where you were registered for rationed food, usually the nearest grocer, butcher or baker. You could not shop where you pleased. Again perhaps not thought of, the whole sea shores around Kent and Sussex were mined and out of bounds to the public covered with barbed wire and anti tank scaffolding etc.

The time of the heaviest Luftwaffe raids on London, I will never forget seeing the whole sky area full of aircraft. The big Dorniers and Heinkels all in big diamond formations with fighter escorts weaving around them. The RAF having a good go at them and as it turned out getting the better of them. One cannot describe it and no film or television programme could replicate it, wherever one looked there were aircraft up there. We had three or four emergency grass airstrips here about, mostly for fighters, but one had light bombers based and was American. When they came to our aid in 1943 they were like a breath of fresh air, all looked smart, well fed and loads of money and to us kids they were very generous, 鈥淕ot any gum chum?鈥� was the call we all used. Bars of chocolate, tins of fruit and SPAM were always welcome but mother would be cross, 鈥渋t鈥檚 begging鈥� she maintained. They also all smelt nice, having soap and cologne, bot like us, having one bath a week and only use nine inches of hot water in order to save energy, as urged by the government.

We did have a good laugh at their expense one time though. Coming home from the cinema on Saturday, a crowd of rookies straight over from the States liked travelling on the top deck of the bus. At one stop the air raid siren went off, before the bus started off, the Yanks rushed down the stair and across the road to a public shelter. This had long been abandoned as it was always water logged, usually with four or five foot of water in it, which they soon found out! The driver waited for them to get back on board with very wet legs and drop them at the camp. Someone explained we did not take much notice of the siren. Hope they were impressed with the 鈥榮tiff upper lip鈥�! A great bunch, never the less.

Our infant鈥檚 school was his by a bomb and badly damaged in 1940. The teachers got the children into the school block house (a brick built air raid shelter), the school being one hundred yards (or roughly ninety meters) from Ashford railway station, whenever the siren went off, which saved many lives as there was not as much as a scratch to any of the pupils. Mr. White, the Head master, was treated as the local hero for many months. I had Mumps so was not a school that day.

At the time of the Doodle Bug raids, there were three paths they seemed to follow. One to our left, one over head and one to the right of Ashford at roughly fifteen minute intervals. There were zones of attack. The RAF attacked over the channel, the coastal guns took over and then the RAF again over the countryside. One method used was to nudge the wing of the flying bomb with the fighter wing tip, thus upsetting its gyros often sending them down, but one we witnessed went up and to its right towards Canterbury. I wonder where it came down. Little did I then realise I would visit some of the very sights they were launched from some fifty years ahead. I still have the Kent Messenger鈥檚 map of all the downed bugs in Kent, and there were hundreds, so saving London from even worse devastation.

We as children used to watch all this with great excitement. If out in the lanes on our bikes and we heard a British fighter coming, we would wave like mad. If they saw us they would waggle their wings, making us feel great and hopefully helping their morale. Most people could distinguish between the heavy throb of the diesel engine heavy bombers, which in large formations seemed to throb when in unison, making the air vibrate. The petrol engine bombers droned. There was no mistaking the sound of a Merlin engine and still is not. As for the V1 pulse jet, it can still make ones neck tighten today.

One rather gruesome memory. During an air raid in the night a Messerschmitt 110 bomber was caught in the searchlights and shot down. It exploded on impact across the fields not far away. A friend and me went to find it the following dawn. Perspex, parachute silk and any ammunition were great prizes and good for 鈥淪waps鈥�. There was a great big hole full of water and oil where it came down, hardly anything left. My mate found a flying boot with part of its former owner in it. We were chased off by the soldiers who came to guard the site.

At the time of the invasion the whole of Kent seemed to be full of military, tanks guns, personnel carriers, lorries and to help guard this assembly there appeared in our school playing field, a radar unit and its bank of rocket launchers. These were only fired once or twice but the noise was tremendous. We all thought our science master was rather useless not knowing what that green box with its aerial was for, that went round and round day and night with two men in it! (Placed right on the cricket pitch, which I did not mind as I hated the game). All seemed to disappear in a day or two. The whole of Kent must have seen the Dakotas towing the Horsa gliders heading for France, what a sight that was.

There was a German prisoner of war camp in what was a reform school for young offenders, (about time they were re-introduced for the hooligans of today). The Nazis wore striped suits and had armed guards whilst being put to work in the local brickfields. The ordinary soldiers were let out on parole and were very well behaved, often coming round selling rope and string made sandals, these were very hard wearing, also toys made of wood. A local shopkeeper who us kids called 鈥極ld Grumpy鈥� had a sign hung out in German 鈥淕erman Spoken Here鈥�. We all thought he was a German spy and should be arrested. When the concentration camps were found they were all confined to camp in case of reprisals, but were made to watch the newsreel in the local cinema, that being a special film made by British Movietone News if my memory is right.

Most people went to the Cinema twice a week, there being two different programmes in a week, and the Mickey Mouse Club on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and Tom Mix, Will Rogers the Cowboys, also Flash Gordon. If there was an air raid a warning was over screened so one could leave. Not many people used to. One Saturday during the films there was a big bang, the whole building seemed to lift up and down. Bits of plaster came down and thick dust made it almost impossible to se the screen. The film stopped and the lights came on. The manager came on stage to say a bomb had hit the railway signal box near by and was anyone hurt 鈥� to which there was no reply, and would we all like to see the end of the film. A resounding 鈥榊es鈥�. It was only a small bomb and there were no casualties even in the signal box.

An uncle of mine also an engine driver, had a lucky escape on the footplate. A German fighter machined gunned his engine. When he got home my Aunt said that he was black from the coal dust, having been blown out of the cab, and covered with mud.

My family survived the war intact, others were not so lucky. A neighbour lost her husband in a raid on the Railway workshops, and family friends lost their son in a Lancaster raid over Bremen.

Food wise, we were all worse off at the end of the war and the years after, than we were during. The already sparse rations were reduced even further when the 鈥淗elp Feed Europe鈥� campaign was opened. The food consumed today by one person in a day would probably have to last a week or more in some cases a month.

My late wife had some Dutch friends, who like us, had lived through the war years as children and described to her the occupation and the fact that they were all starving at the liberation and were so grateful for all the food supplied by the British and American people, often dropped by plane in the remote areas.

It makes me very angry to hear the modern generations both here and in Europe, belittle the people of this Country and it鈥檚 Empire in those years of sacrifice. If it were not for the ultimate sacrifice made by brave people, these young, ungrateful, self-opinionated rabble would not have the free speech they enjoy today. Shameful.

I would hope you find something of use in these pages of memories from an age when drugs were not needed, when girls could walk the streets home safely in the early hours, when attacks on nurses, firemen, doctors, policemen, ambulance men were unheard of. When one had no need of locks on every door and window in order to keep out thieving hooligans allowed to go unpunished and virtually encouraged by 鈥楧o Gooders鈥� in society today.

Finally, I, like many of my generation are eternally grateful to our parents, who鈥檚 sacrifice, fortitude, bravery and above all love, made our childhood a happy time in a very unhappy world.鈥�

Ron F
Ashford, Kent

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