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This story has been written to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of Stan Cornish. The story has been added to the site with his permission and Stan fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

My earliest recollection was at the age of 3 years, in East Ham in East London, when my mother put me on her knee and told my to be quiet for 3 minutes. My birthday was November 11th 1916. It was however the first observed silence which became traditional throughout the years since. All the time, however, I thought why should I be good on my birthday?

I also confused the ‘Germans’ with the word ‘germs’, both terms having connotations of doing us harm!

Our family would go on holiday, for a fortnight each year, to either Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, where there were lovely sandy beaches, or to Ilfracombe in North Devon and often visit Lynton. My father, George Henry Cornish, had anticipated the bombing of London, and especially of Poplar, in East London, where the Regent’s Canal Docks were situated, and he had rented 2 Eastwood Cottages, just above the Cottage Inn in Lynton. We would go down there twice a year during the war to see everything was O.K. and to have a respite from the intense bombing during the Blitz.

The Mission we attended before the war had over a thousand Sunday school scholars and nearly one hundred Sunday school teachers. When the war broke out, most of them were evacuated to safe areas leaving just a remnant behind. We also ha a large Youth Club with over 200 members. It was modelled on Clubland in Bermondsey and had a ‘Parliament’, with ‘Cabinet’ Ministers and Officers, which held regular meetings. When war broke out many had to eventually join up. Some were strong pacifists, including some of the Junior Ministers attached to the Mission.

Both sides volunteered to act as stretcher bearers, on an ‘unpaid’ basis, at the local voluntary hospital, which was only a mile from the Royal Docks. We got on well together without any recriminations. The Memorial Hospital was hit several times but fortunately nobody was killed. We acted as a clearing station from other areas who received very heavy casualties. We used to unload the ambulances, which were often queuing up in the forecourt. We would carry the dead and wounded into a Casualty Ward in the hospital, with the doctors tying labels to the casualties, coloured according to whether they were dead or alive. Sometimes there were only parts of bodies. These intakes of dead and wounded were evacuated to safer areas within a short time.

I, as a registered C.O., became a stretcher bearer there throughout the war. Even off-duty at home I was called and had to cycle to the hospital which was over a mile away. Shrapnel was falling from the anti-aircraft guns, which were firing at the approaching German ???

Early in the war, my brother, Len Cornish, who was a pacifist, worked at Kingsley Hall in Bow, East London, and did ???? work there. It was a settlement where Ghandi used to lodge when he came over to the U.K. to negotiate terms with the British Government, that they both agreed on, when India was partitioned. The night before the start of the Blitz, I happened to be on duty at Kingsley Hall and actually slept in the room Ghandi used to occupy.

The day of the Blitz, I was cycling home to East Ham, and passing by Canning Town Station I was in the middle of the road, to avoid parked cars, when two cyclists came to pass me, but one on each side. Seeing one on my right, I slightly swerved to the left and collided with the one on my left. My foot caught in my front wheel and I shot over my front handle-bars landing on my wrist. I felt rather sore, but putting my arm into my jacket, I re-mounted and continued on my way home. The ARP warning sounded, so I reported to my hospital, where they examined my arm and told me that my wrist was fractured. As I was of no use in carrying stretchers, I went to the Mission to help there at the Rest Centre. It was often full but people were evacuated as soon as possible to safer areas.

In the afternoon, there was a sound of roaring planes. I climbed up to the roof and saw line after line of German bombers approaching, following the River Thames from the East. Then all hell broke loose as they began to unload their deadly cargo on the Royal Docks, and also on us as we were only a mile away. I saw a 3-storey school sliced down the middle, but fortunately no children were in there as it was Saturday afternoon. However, shops in the High Street were crowded with shoppers many of whom received direct hits, and many were killed, including the parent of one of my close friends.

Normally, on a Saturday afternoon I would be working on the Club allotment, cheek by jowl with the docks, but with my injured arm I had decided not to go. If I had, I would probably been killed! It seemed that Dame Providence, resulting in the cycle accident, prevented me from going down there!

I made my way back to the hospital, in case I could help, and saw Wandsworth ablaze. After reporting to the Memorial, there was a temporary lull until a repeat performance of the afternoon’s raid occurred in the evening. The Germans’ chief aim was to destroy the shipping in the docks, and as I walked home, to see whether my parents were O.K., there was over a mile long line of fire engines, ambulances and other rescue vehicles lined up in Rotherhithe Road, waiting their turn to enter the docks. My brother-in-law, as fire officer of one of the rescue crews, was one of the first to enter the docks, and stayed there all night, fighting fires on various ships. My sister, although she could have been evacuated to Lynton, had decided to stay in London with her husband.

Fortunately, my parents had escaped injury and were safe in the cellar of our house which had suffered considerable damage from incendiaries (fire bombs). They had gone through the roof and set our attic and bedrooms ablaze, though we successfully put the blaze out. Windows had been blown in and hastily prepared blackout screens were made to cover them. An unexploded bomb had landed in the alley-way at the side of our house and was later taken away to be disposed of. Incendiaries rained down on the road in front of us and a bomb exploded in the park just the other side of the road. Above us a dog-fight raged as fighter planes from Hornchurch, South Weald, and other local aerodromes, were sent up to intercept the German bombers. Many of these were shot down and crashed on the marshland bordering the River Thames.

I was able to stay with my parents for a while, but houses along the roads had received direct hits and I helped dig out some of the dead. Land mines floated down by parachute and destroyed the White Horse Inn at the end of the road and also one on the western side of Central Park. I remember passing by a large land mine caught up by its parachute in one of the branches of a small tree.

Earlier recollections of travelling to Lynton on our bi-annual visit to Eastwood Cottages before the war were travelling from Waterloo to Barnstaple, joining the ‘Toy’ railway with scenic view of the valleys, over viaducts to Woody Bay, a remote railway station on the top of Exmoor. It had a sign pasted on the wall ‘Season Tickets This Way’. From there we either walked or caught another small bus to Lynton, where we stayed. I also obtained various lifts. Once I helped a Tate and Lyle delivery van on its rounds. Later I was given a lift by the chief organiser of Bristol A.R.P. services, also seeking to stay away for a brief respite from the raids in Bristol.

When the bombing of East London became intense my sister, Jenny Pentecost, eventually evacuated to Lynton, so stay with my Aunt Lizzie who had been bombed out of her home in Poplar earlier in the war. Aunt Lizzie had rescued numerous articles of clothing and various knick-knacks which cluttered up the cottage, but she was quite a lovely personality. Jenny entered the Main Post Office in Lynton and served there for the rest of the war as a Counter Clerk. After the war, Jenny and Will bought ‘Hillside’, a cottage with a beautiful view just above the lift overlooking Countisbury Bay. Will was related to the then owner of the lift. The owner of the bungalow was a wealthy merchant from East London. They lived there long after the war, until they both died.

My elder brother, Len Cornish, was in main charge of the maintenance of Eastwood Cottages before, during and after the war. He was fond of walking the countryside on his twice-yearly visits to Lynton. Once he walked from Lynton to Bogworthy Water where he fell asleep in the bracken. He was awakened by firing and realised he was in the middle of a wartime manoeuvre where live ammunition was being used. Bullets sped overhead, so he kept his head down until the firing stopped, before he made his way back to Lynton. He must have been fond of walking!

Once he came down by train, and went by bus to Lynton. On his return, a day or so later, as there was no convenient bus to catch his train, he hired a bicycle in Lynton and left it is Barnstaple. I was deputed to get a later bus and collect the bicycle and ride it back to Lynton. This I did, taking the coastal route and ending in bright moonlight in Lynton.

As I have previously mentioned, at the beginning of the war he was stationed at Kingsley Hall in Bow, East London until it was bombed. He then transferred to one of the Family Service Units in a much bombed area of Birmingham. While there, near the end of the war, he suffered a hit to his own house in Manor Park, East London by a rocket. Connie, his wife, had been still staying there with their 6-week old daughter, who was in a pram in the front room. The fireplace fell out over the pram and shielded Brenda from further harm. I was called out that day to clear up the mess until Len arrived from Birmingham. Connie lost all her wedding gift china. The house became uninhabitable as it had a crack right down the middle. So Connie took baby Brenda down to safety at Eastwood Cottages, to be looked after by my sister, Jenny and my mother. As there was no income entering the home, Len being paid only his keep in Birmingham, Connie had to return to London to earn some money as a bus conductor. She stayed at her mother’s home in Macauley Road. Brenda was often put in her pram to enjoy the sunshine in front of Eastwood Cottages. She stayed at Lynton until the end of the war.

We never heard anything in the U.K. of the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Belinko and elsewhere, until they were liberated after the war. All we knew was that the Jews had been put in communes in other parts of East Germany. There was no inkling of the mass extermination of millions of Jews in Hitler’s ‘final solution’, the Holocaust.

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