大象传媒

It was a benign, warm, sunny afternoon 鈥� September 7, 1940 鈥� with just a hint of autumn in the air. The late afternoon sky was almost all blue. It was a day on which it felt good to be alive.

I went round to my step-aunt鈥檚 and had a cup of tea. I left in, in Leigh Road East Ham, just before four thirty. It was then that I heard the sound of aircraft. I looked up. I had never seen such a sight in my life 鈥� there were, perhaps, fifty of them, flying relatively low from the East. Anti-aircraft guns had opened fire, but were firing too low.

The aircraft moved slowly on, coming from the Thames Estuary. I could see the crosses on them. I was 18. Where, I wondered, were they heading?

Bits of metal were falling into the street or clattering down roofs. This was my first experience of shrapnel.

By nightfall I knew only too well the target of they were heading for. It was mainly the Surrey commercial docks. There, huge stacks of new timber stood, all needed for the war, and all highly flammable.

Soon after the planes had moved westward I heard an explosion, followed by others. My father (a newsagent) arrived home with the night papers, from our High Street. He was visibly disturbed. A bomb had fallen near East Ham station, destroying a Woolworth stores.

Another came down alongside the outer wall of East Ham Palace. It had burst a water main and mud and water shot up against the theatre wall.

On the wireless we heard that a West Ham sports stadium had been hit. There was no word of any casualties. That night proved one to remember. I recall it vividly as though it were yesterday.

When dusk fell more aircraft were overhead. The sky to the south was bright with orange and yellow flame. Surrey Docks were on fire.

We had an air raid shelter in our backyard, made from U-shaped sheets of corrugated iron, inverted and shored up and covered with soil. Eight of us spent the night in this confined space, sitting upright on forms along each side. It was both exciting and terrifying. But no more bombs fell close to our terrace house before the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� sounded.

The bombers came back every night for weeks after that. After three weeks I was so tired I said I would sleep alone in our house and take my chances. I didn鈥檛 care any longer, I needed sleep.

In fact our house never did receive a direct hit, though some, close by, did. All the windows went however, and the sashes were boarded up with black asphalt sheeting.

I was working as an office boy in Fleet Street from three in the afternoon until eleven at night. All the bound paper files had been sent fro salvage from the basement and on their racks were mattresses bought for three pounds each from Gamages store.

A teleprinter was installed so that we could continue to send news to our head office in Edinburgh.

One night a gas main was hit in Bouverie Street alongside the basement.

Our caretaker hung a kettle on an iron bar and boiled water for our tea. The Black and White Milk Bar on the corner of Whitefriars Street, somehow managed to keep going, and served hot tea and soup. Occasionally there was no gas; we boiled the kettle on an oil stove.

A river bus service was started from the city to Woolwich because so many of the city centre streets were choked with fallen buildings and broken glass. It took three hours to get to North Woolwich, past destroyed wharf warehouses.

When I arrived in our street in East Ham I was alarmed to find that two houses opposite had gone. My parents by then, were sleeping in two shelters behind these houses their owners having left. The houses had fallen on the shelters. We got my mother and father out safely. They were not injured.

One night, after some days of rain, I went to bed in an unoccupied shelter alone, with my supper and a bottle of beer. During the night the bombers came. Suddenly I felt damp. I reached out. The shelter was slowly flooding! I climbed out and went back to our house.

One good thing Hitler achieved. He drove all the bedbugs out of the East End because the humans on whom they feed were no longer at home!!

But meanwhile whole rows of terraced cottages were being destroyed. Many people were killed as they tried to sleep.

For three weeks I lived at my Fleet Street office. It was much easier than attempting to travel the 7 miles to my home. Often, when I did try to get to East Ham, it would mean a long walk across the debris strewn city, past snaking fire hoses and falling walls to Aldgate or even further. There I might catch a bus.

My paper, the Scotsman, then gave me four days off a week, so that I worked for only three. By now, in my spare time, I was driving a small Ford 8 mobile canteen from the YMCA Red Triangle Club at Plaistow, East London.

As the bombing onslaught continued, we all became very tired. My parents both worked at Woolwich Arsenal making munitions. I decided to leave London for a weekend and went by Green Line coach to High Wycombe to stay with a cousin. That night we looked towards London. It was a strange experience. The sky over London was filled with light from fires, from the flashes of guns, and from the fingers of searchlights.

On December 29th 1940, a friend and I drove from Plaistow to St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral where there were some small fires. Firemen were grateful for the hot mugs of tea. We were totally unaware of any danger. More incendiary bombs fell, and we felt it wise to move further down Ludgate Hill. Soon both sides of Ludgate Hill were ablaze. We reached home in the early hours. I never cease to wonder at the pictures of that night round St Paul鈥檚, released by the ministry of information and published round the world. The Cathedral was ringed by fire and billowing smoke. If anything these historic pictures signified the continuing courage of millions of Londoners.

Early in 1941 I volunteered to train as a pilot with the Royal Air Force. But that is another story.

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