大象传媒

Bill Cole of the Elephant and Castle, London and later of Feltham, Middlesex, remembers the outbreak of World War II.

I was born in the district of the Elephant and Castle, South East London, where I lived happily till the age of twelve years old when my life was suddenly disrupted. Black clouds had gathered and a new word was creeping into everyone鈥檚 conversation鈥AR!
Mum and Dad and my Grandma began speaking about it in hushed whispers. My young brother Peter and I were not supposed to know what was about to happen but I was intensely excited about it all.
After all, I knew all about war! I鈥檇 played it often enough. We all dashed about shooting at each other with two fingers joined together and falling down dead with impressive cries and groans and then our Mums would call us in and we would all go indoors for tea.
It grew more serious. We heard stories on the wireless, to which we were forbidden to listen. We saw newsreels at the 鈥減ictures鈥� about things which were happening in a far-off country called Poland and saw men shooting at each other and getting shot themselves and falling down dead just like we did in 鈥渢he Square鈥�, which was our playground behind the block of flats we lived in. But these men didn鈥檛 get up again!
We heard patriotic songs and saw marching and banners with a crooked black cross on them and thousands of black-shirted men with outstretched right arms shouting 鈥淪eig Heil鈥� to a ranting man on a podium. But we didn鈥檛 worry. Everything would be all right. Mr. Chamberlain, our Prime Minister had come back from a meeting with the man on the podium and as he got off his aeroplane he waved a piece of paper at everybody and shouted 鈥淧eace in our time鈥�, so that was all right. And we believed him! But Adolf Hitler had other ideas. He sent his Panzer hordes into Poland.
We went over the road to the Methodist Church where we were issued with Gas Masks. They adjusted straps over our heads to fit our various head sizes, half stunned us by pulling out the rubber sides and letting them go with a 鈥渢hwack鈥� on our cheeks to make sure they made a gas-tight seal and we were sent off to face the enemy
I had an adult mask but Peter, who was only six, had a junior one, which was called a 鈥淢ickey Mouse鈥� and made in a grotesque imitation of everyone鈥檚 favourite character. He had great fun with this, blowing his hardest through the yellow nosepiece and making rude noises at everyone.
When we took them off at home Mum hugged us both and cried.
We never went anywhere without our gas mask. We carried them in a square brown cardboard box which we hung across our backs with a piece of string and they were very cumbersome and banged everything we passed, especially in our games, but we were allowed to take them off in the Square so we could play our favourite games such as 鈥淜ingy鈥�. This was a game that involved a lot of running about and shouting. It was also a very rough game. We split into two teams and one team would scatter and the other would chase them until you contrived to hit them with a well-aimed old tennis ball. It was a game in which very few of the girls would take part. Girls were not quite as robust in those times as today; they were a lot more feminine.
War came nearer and people became more nervous of the horrors being perpetrated in Poland. They seemed to tiptoe around as if that would avert the war they knew was coming. Then, on Sunday the third of September 1939 the world suddenly changed. My Uncle Albert came rushing down from the flat above us where he and Aunt Min lived, shouting 鈥淨uick Emmy, turn on the wireless鈥�. A quavering voice came through the loudspeaker saying, 鈥漟rom twelve-o-clock, mid-day today, a State of War will exist between Great Britain and Germany鈥�. It was the sad little man who led our country. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the man who had been so grievously misled by Hitler in Munich such a short time before.
My Dad had taken my brother out to play in Embankment Gardens down by the River beside the Houses of Parliament and Grandma was at work in the 鈥淕ibraltar鈥� Public House next door to our flats where she was preparing the Sunday Lunches. She came rushing back to us and the place was in turmoil. All three of us expected to see Germans bursting in the door, guns blazing, or there to be a sudden great explosion and the world as we knew it to suddenly disappear. But no such thing happened.
Instead there came the wail of the Air Raid Siren. We had heard that before, but only in rehearsal. This was in earnest and the sound of it suddenly became an ominous harbinger of the grief to come. In a panic all three of us rushed into the street. As did everyone else in the district! One bomb in the road at that moment would have caused slaughter. No sooner had we reached the street than a whistle started to sound and a voice called 鈥淕et your Gas Masks! Get your Gas Masks! GAS! GAS!鈥� There was a stampede then. Everyone scattered and rushed indoors and re-appeared wearing their masks. Mum was trying to put mine over my head and to put hers on at the same time and just at that moment a policeman came cycling up. 鈥淚t鈥檚 all right, everybody, it鈥檚 a false alarm鈥� and as he said this the long single wail of an 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� siren filled the air. The Gas alarm had been somebody鈥檚 idea of a sick joke. The panic caused by the fool that had started the alarm of 鈥淕as鈥� would have got him lynched if he had been known but nobody ever found out who it was.
In the meantime, Mum was running up the road, looking for Dad and Peter and running back again to hug me and then running off again. As the siren blew for 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� we could see Dad coming past the gates of Bedlam Park with Peter on his shoulders. He had run all the way from Embankment Gardens, easily a mile away, carrying Peter on his shoulders.
Indoors, we all sat, drained and speechless. None of us knew for how long. After the War stories circulated about that first 鈥淎ir Raid鈥�. One lone plane, German or English nobody knew which, had been spotted over the Thames Estuary and it had sparked off the only real panic I saw in the war.
After that there was comparative quiet for a while. This was the 鈥淧honey War鈥� when nothing much happened in London.
Troops were moving in England though; every railway station was filled with our khaki-uniformed men being shipped out to France. Men who, days before, had been butchers, bakers, clerks in banks, and who had been members of the Territorial Army and were suddenly expected to go out and shoot people for real.
Families were torn apart, evacuation had started and thousands of children were being sent away. Station platforms were crowded with long lines of children, some shouting happily, others subdued and apprehensive, bewildered as to what was happening, where they were going, or even why. Tearful children, pathetically clinging to their equally tearful mothers, and some, the little toughies, charging around the platforms and climbing the railings determined to make the most of this sudden God-sent summer country holiday they had been presented with.
All of them were children who had probably never been farther than the end of their street. They were being packed off with their little brown-paper parcels and their gas masks in little brown cardboard boxes to far-off places in Devon or Yorkshire, to live with strangers who spoke with an accent they could barely understand. We saw them go. Mum and Dad were adamant...No! Peter and I were not to be sent away. If anything happened to us it would happen to us all. Nobody would be left behind to mourn.
One of our cheap trips out was to go to one of the big London railway stations and watch the trains. We watched them enviously because one of them was the Orient Express, a huge shiny monster that stood there huffing and puffing contentedly to itself while the elegantly-dressed passengers, women in their furs and dripping with diamonds and their men dressed like tailors dummies in black formal suits sauntered along the platform beside them to board the waiting train.
Porters and guards fawned over them, holding open the doors of the immaculate chocolate-brown Pullman Coaches with their white tablecloths and the dainty little electric table-lamp on each table.
We would watch as the huge engine pulled smoothly away and concoct stories of the countries they would visit鈥ussia maybe, or Turkestan? Which of these magic places would they end-up in?
But, with the outbreak of war, all of this had come to an end. A scruffy little tank engine happily dripping oil onto the tracks and squirting steam from every orifice, like a grubby little dragon, had replaced the gleaming steel giant. The steam had always been great fun to dash through while the driver shouted 鈥淥i!鈥� at you, as if you really cared.
The schools had been closing in London. Wilson鈥檚 Grammar School, the school Johnnie Johnson and I had passed a scholarship to attend, had been one of the first to evacuate London, for which blessing I was truly grateful. Wilson鈥檚 was a boarding school and most of its boys came from the other side of the river. Johnnie and I were day pupils. We were from south of the Thames, the 鈥渞ough鈥� side. We were not socially acceptable. Many a time in our short attendance we had found ourselves fighting as the penalty for being 鈥淓lephant Oiks鈥�, the only two scholarship boys amongst a crowd of fee-paying pupils. Johnnie was evacuated to I don鈥檛 know where by his parents and I never saw him again.

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