大象传媒

Tom Lavell. Born in Tottenham,North London,1928.

I was 10years old when the war started. The whole school was evacuated by bus and train to an unknown destination, which turned out to be Cambridge. We each had a gas mask and a small bag of goodies, including a very large bar of chocolate, which seemed to make it all worthwhile.

When we got to Cambridge, we were taken in small groups to houses where people had agreed to take evacuees. Each householder was given the choice to pick who they wanted. This meant the nicest looking kids went first, and the most unpleasant were left until last. Unfortunately I had agreed with a mate that we would try to stick together, which turned out to be a bad decision because we were the last to be picked. In retrospect I think this was a cunning move on my mates part, because I was quite angelic looking, whereas he looked pretty obnoxious.I was not happy with the digs. They let it be known that we were expected in the house as little as possible. Plus they nicked some of my bar of chocolate.

We had very little schooling to start with and by the time they had sorted out proper schooling, I had had enough and asked my mum to let me come home. I did after just 3 months.

When I returned to London there were no schools open for about another 3 months. Then we went to the local library once a week, for about one hour. They gave us homework to do and bring back the following week.

After a few more months a proper school opened. We attended, mornings only, and afternnoons only, the second week. This carried on for some months. The afternoons were spent mainly playing board games which we took in. It was just the morning periods that were spent actually teaching us anything.

When the Blitz started, we slept in the Anderson Shelter buried in the garden. That inc luded my mum, dad, brother and sister,also our dog, Nigger. We didn't realise that our main danger was not from the bombs, but from T.B. which spread from my father to my sister, my brother and my self. My sister was the first to be affected. She spent 2 years in a sanatorium before coming home to die. It did'nt develop in the rest of us until some years later, when luckily treatment had improved, although I was to spend 4 years in and out of hospitals, having surgery etc., before Streptomycin came along to give us the miracle cure.

When we were on morning sessions at school, and had a very bad night raid, our parents were allowed to let us catch up on our lost sleep. We were excused school and didn't even have to hand in a note. The consequence of this was we were often "bunking off school".

We had some great times during these truancy sessions. We went fishing on the river Lee, scrumping and climbing trees at Alexandra Palace and Hadley Woods, are a few of the things that come to mind. It was whilst we were scrumping one day in Hadley Woods, that a German plane flew over firing his guns, for some reason. I know I was very scared, because I thoughtif we got shot, they would know we hadn't been to school. Really for boys of our age with no worries or responsibilities, it was all very exciting.

We were quite hard up so if I wanted any treats I had to earn them. I helped on a milk round on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Starting a 7am in the blackout, helping push a three wheeled barrow and deliver milk to the houses, until about 2pm. I used to get 1/6d a day for that.

Another time I helped a greengrocer with a horse and cart and a dog with similar markings to the horse, they looked like something out of the circus. I got a similar wage for this job.

There was one amusing incedent during a daylight raid. I was about to knock on the door of a house when the bombers dropped a stick of bombs that screamed down, this combined with the screaming of the woman about to open the door. I dived on the ground and noticed the greengrocer diving under the cart, unfortunately for him, the horse decided to move somewhere safer, which left him a comical looking figure lying in the road. He didn't see the funny side of it. The bombs passed over us and landed in the next road. A couple of people were killed and a few were injured.
The windows in our house were blown in and the ceilings came down. 'Nigger' was in the house on his own. He escaped and was missing for three days before he returned with bloody paws. After that he was always first down the Anderson shelter when the siren sounded.

My pride and joy was a wheelbarrow my dad made for me with a couple of pram wheels. I used the barrow a lot on my various business ventures. I collected horse manure and sold it for 3d a bucket. The danger with that was from the opposition. That was a dwarf who we called"Charlie Horsedung" he did it for a living. He had a very tall barrow with steps fixed to it so he could climb up. If he saw any boys collecting it, he would chase them off, waving his shovel at them. I also collected wood from the bombed houses, I cut and chopped it up during the week and sold it for 3d a bowlfull on a Saturday. I later did a paper round, going out early in the mornings gave me the chance to pick up the best bits of shrapnel, shell caps and anything else that had fallen out of the sky.
Most boys had a collection, including pieces of bombs, oil bombs, incendary bombs, parachute-land mines and an array of other bits and pieces.

During this period and up to the age of 17 , I belonged to the Boy's Brigade. I think this was a great help in my developent because most of the boys were rather posh and well educated at a very good high school. This helped "lift" me.

I left school at 14 and started work January 1943. I was trained as an aircraft fitter and mainly worked on Lancaster Bomber floors. I can't remembeer how much we were paid but it was very good. We were on bonus, which encouraged us to be "the fastest riveter in the factory" We worked from 8am to 5.45pm and 8am to 12noon on Saturday. We had 1 weeks holiday a year without pay.

Towards the end of the war we had the doodle-bugs and rockets to put up with. Whilst at work we three blasts on a claxton horn to let us know a doodle-bug was aproaching. For those of us furthest from the shelter, we used to go out the back and get down behind a garden wall for shelter.
The trouble was that when the engine cut out, you usually only had a few seconds before the bomb dived down and exploded. Sometimes, however, the bomb would circle and glide for quite some time before crashing. I recall one time when about 15 of us dived behind a wall when the egine
cut out, only to glide around to our side. We quickly clambered over the wall to the other side, when low and behold the bomb carried on circling. We could see the funny side of it afterwards. It wasn't so funny when sitting on top of a double-decker bus with nowhere to hide.

There was no pre-warning from the rockets (V2s). My closest encounter was when riveting a tallsheet of duraluminiam, It lit up red with the flash of the explosion. I was just able to jumpdown off the planking I was working on, and shelter under it, before the roof came crashing down.

D-Day came and we started to look forward to the ending of the war.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.