大象传媒

You asked for memories. It can be difficult to distinguish between memories and what one was told later. I have one of each type.

As I was far too young to remember, the first event relies on what I have been told since. We lived in what I discovered later in life was a desirable three-bedroomed detached house called Earlham in a road called Pentley Park in Welwyn Garden City, some twenty miles north of London. I was born in May 1940. One night later that year a German bomber put a high explosive bomb into a house in or off the next road, Mandeville Rise or Mandeville Close (?) some 200 yards as the crow (or the debris) flies from us. It could have been a poor aim for Welwyn Viaduct about two miles from us on the King's Cross to Edinburgh line; or a marginally better shot at the White Bridge about a quarter of a mile away where Digswell Road crosses the railway line that branched off the main line just North of WGC station and wandered through Sherrards Woods on its way to Luton; or he just wanted / needed rid. A large chunk of something heavy, probably concrete foundations, was thrown very high and came down on the centre of our house. It broke the longest roof ridge-pole in the road and took out six stairs. Considering the electricity meter was in the cupboard under the stairs it is a miracle there was no fire. I am told that my parents used to put me to sleep in my cot in the hall at the bottom of the stairs. That night for some reason, however, I was with them in our "air raid shelter" constructed by reinforcing with bricks and concrete the walls and roof of the back half (or maybe the back two-thirds) of the attached garage. Else I might not be here now to write this. Many houses in Pentley Park were peppered with debris, and the wife of the gentleman in the house on the corner of Mandeville Rise and Pentley Park was killed by debris as she lay in bed. I can remember my mother recounting all this later and praising the emergency workers who put a tarpaulin over the hole in the roof.

Much later, presumably in 1944, I have something which I believe is a true if fragmentary memory of another event, retained first because I was awake and second because of the emotional charge of the situation. My father, A. J. White, worked for George G. Harrap and Co. and when he was not on "incendiary watch" on the roof of Harrap's building in High Holborn in London he was with us in our "air raid shelter", plus perhaps one of the evacuees which we took in at various times. One night he / we heard the distinctive sound of the pulse jet of a V1 flying bomb, and what I remember is that my father wanted to go outside to watch, while my mother implored him not to. I believe that is the V1 that went down in or near Essenden; if that was targeted on London it was only an 18 mile overshoot.

My mother was encouraged by her sister to sell Earlham when my father died around 1968 but I have been back a few times to look, e.g. by making a detour when driving down the A1 from Yorkshire to London. One of the times that I passed by, I can not remember which year, the house was being extended by building over the area where we had a wooden coal store and garden shed, the flat roof of which had served as many things for me including a sailing boat and a space ship. But I noticed the whole long roof of the house was off and being redone. When I saw that, I wondered whether some damp or some parasite had got in on the night of the bomb, and, hidden in the beams, had been working away slowly ever since, eventually rendering the roof unsafe. I guess I shall never know.

If any of the other residents of Pentley Park from those days are still around, I would love to hear from them.

Submitted 20/8/04, v1.0

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