大象传媒

On 3rd September 1939, I was nearly 8 years old. To an 8 year old boy, the thought of fighting and bombs wer quite attractive and so I settled down for what was to come. At first, very disappointing because nothing happened at all in my little world. When the blitz started, at the sound of the first siren, my young sister, Kath, used to panic and this panic was not abated until she was down in the Anderson Shelter in our garden. When the bombing started, it was obvious that poor Kath was a bag of nerves, so, although Mum and Dad had had the option of my sister and I being evacuated and having refused that option, she now made arrangement for Kath to go away to Somersham in Huntingdonshire where she stayed for the whole of the duration of the war.
Dad was in a reserved occupation, working for The Gas Light and Coke Company as a ganger on one of their Heavy Road Gangs employed in the installation and maintenance
of Gas Mains. When the bombing started, Mum and I never knew when we would see Dad, he used to be on duty sometimes for days and days. When the East End and the Docks were bombed and set on fire, he was missing from home for over a week and when he came home, he had to go to bed for a prolonged period whilst he recovered from the effects of inhalation of the Coal Gas escaping from broken mains that were on fire and that his team had to extinguish. I sometimes feel that during that time he saw more action than a lot of people that were actually in uniform. Mum was working as a staff canteen manageress in the Holborn area and some mornings and evenings she had to walk to and from work between Stockwell and Holborn because of problems with the buses and trams. Life for a young boy was thrilling, each day I used to search the streets for shrapnel (sometimes it was still hot) and sometimes I would find the nose cone of a shell, all of this from the ack ack guns ( one of which used to go up and down the railway close to our home, pulled by a steam train) shooting at enemy planes.
Then came the day when a very large hall complex of about four floors, including a basement, were occupied by The London Irish Rifles. The building had been commandeered for the billeting and training of newly-called up soldiers in the required arts of infantry soldiers! ! ! ! !
We young lads had a front seat experience of the training in rifle shooting, bayonet practice, physical training and marching.
Once a week, the Regimental Band used to march with pipes and drums round the streets, the new soldiers dressed in their best uniforms of dark orange kilts, uniform jackets and their dark green berets with their Silver Harp Badges. Sadly came the day when they completed their training and had to go off to join the fray.
Some time later, when the V1 Doodlebugs started to descend upon London, I used to get up on top of a girder bridge which crossed the London Victoria/Kent Coast Line and see the V1s coming over Kent and the ack ack guns trying to shoot them down, those that escaped used to continue their journey into London and from my vantage point, watch them fall and explode - at that age one never thought of the pain and misery that they caused. Then came the V2s. I was very annoyed that I couldn't see them, but by then Mum had decided that it was time for ME to be evacuated. She somehow found a place for me to go to in Somersham where my sister was. I was to be billeted with a Mr. and Mrs. Green, he was a retired Postmaster from Ilford in Essex. I stood it for a while until one day Mrs. Green decided she was going to BATH me. I immediately wrote to my Mum to come and fetch me home or I was going to find my own way back to London(I was after all now 13 years of age).
I returned to London, went back to school and the next thing I did was to join the Army Cadets (Loved it) I felt very grown up in my uniform, so much so that on 8th May 1945, my pal George and I donned our uniforms and went to Picadilly Circus to join the celebrating throng.

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