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I was born on the 3rd of September 1935 and was brought up in Walthamstow, East London, in a terraced house. Although very young at the time I do still have some very vivid memories of the blitz and various other aspects of the war. Our family consisted of my father, who was a London policeman working at Scotland Yard, my mother, and my older sister, Jean.

Evacuation:
Just before war was declared my sister and I were evacuated to Rushden, Northamptonshire. On the 4th of September, the day after the declaration, the sirens sounded the rise and fall, wail of danger, and for some reason, Jean and I went to the house next door. To our amazement and amusement, we saw the family standing very still, by the window of their sitting room with their gas masks on. The siren turned out to be a false alarm.
After less than a month we found we were very unhappy at Rushden. We were staying with a middle aged childless couple, and I do remember that they were very strict, and after my sister and I had moaned to our Mother, she brought us back home.

The Black Out:
All buildings which could be considered in any way within, or even near potential enemy target areas, had to be prevented from showing any light at night, which may have given away their position to enemy aircraft. I remember the special frames being made with the black out material for each window of our house, and the not infrequent yell at night from the air raid warden "put that light out", when someone had opened an outside door, forgetting to switch the light off first.

Air Raids:
One would hear the first siren quite a long way off and then another not so far away, and then another closer, and another, and another and so on until there was a great cacophony of sirens with the local one about 300 yards away really telling you to take cover. We would also hear the local factory klaxon being sounded, to warn the workforce of an imminent attack, and to take cover. It seemed to me at the time that there was a competition between the factory klaxon and the public siren as to who would be first to give a warning of an air raid. It was very soon after that, that one would hear the drone of the enemy aircraft, the crump of the bombs exploding and our own Ack-Ack pounding away. But it is here that my memory does fail me as I am not sure in which order one heard these at the start of a raid, although it was not difficult to distinguish which were bombs and which were our guns. I also remember that the AckAck must have had mobile flak units as we frequently heard our A.A. guns firing from what seemed to be right outside our front door.

I seem to remember that most of the air raids were at night Initially when we first heard the siren we would go down to the Anderson shelter that was about 50 yards down the garden. It didn't take many of these trips, particularly on wet and cold nights, for the family to decide that Mr Hitler was not going to make this family suffer any more of these very uncomfortable excursions. When the siren sounded in future we decided to all sleep together under our very substantial, but not very big dining room table. although this was very cramped it was infinitely better than the "Anderson procedure"!! However it wasn't long before four bodies sleeping in about ten square feet, began to show up problems. It ended up on one night my father getting very irritated by my sister keeping coughing, he had to go to work in the morning and needed his sleep more than any of us. This resulted in my mother and father deciding to take their chances in bed upstairs, leaving Jean and I to sleep under the table.
The highlight of the day after the raid was for my sister and I to go out early, before going to school to collect shrapnel, the bigger the lump, the better, but the real prize was the piece that was still warm. By the end of the war we must have collected about 2 to 3 hundredweight, which included 2 dud incendiary bombs. Thinking about it now, I never did know what eventually happened to our collection. We also used to collect "window', the matt black strips of foil dropped by German aircraft to confuse our Radar.
We were much luckier than a lot of others in that although there were plenty of bombs falling all around us, our house, other than having a couple of ceilings down and some broken windows, remained basically intact The nights of bombing seemed to go on and on but it wasn't long after my sister and I had started sleeping under the table, that we decided to look outside and see for ourselves what was going on during a raid. I remember very well on a moonlight night what a dramatic sight it was, to see the tremendous number of searchlights sweeping across the vast sky, and then one of their planes caught in a searchlight that would then attract one, two or maybe even three more searchlights. There were also the flashes from either bombs exploding on the ground or anti-aircraft shells exploding in the sky, and the vast red glows from the buildings on fire, and not infrequently, parachute flares that turned night into day. All this of course was accompanied by a tremendous variety of noise; bangs, thumps, crumps, screeches, whistles, woofs, sirens, hooters, bells, and at times human voices from the shouts of instruction and command from the authorities to the screams of anxiety and fear from the populace. Although I find it difficult to believe now, there was also the noise of the airborne debris (shrapnel) hitting the ground.
My father, during overnight fire watch, brought home an incendiary bomb that hadn't "gone off". The UXB squad said it was filled with sand, and suggested that it had probably been manufactured in a french factory and sabotaged by the locals?! I still have that piece of ordanance.

At school when an air raid was expected, all the pupils were shepherded into the cloakrooms, made to sit on the floor with emphatic instructions to keep our backs well away from the walls.

Dog Fights:
My memories of dogfights over our part of London was that they always seemed to be at high level One could see the aircraft, but could not tell which were ours and which were theirs; this was very frustrating for all us lads intensely watching the activities. In a clear blue sky the contrails being made by the fighters were incredibly numerous and interwoven. On one occasion we saw an aircraft that had obviously been damaged, leave the foray with thick black smoke trailing from it and come down somewhere very close to where we were. We all made off to where we thought it had crashed, and discovered it had made a wheels up "landing" in the playing field of the local grammar school When we arrived soldiers, policemen, and the ARP were already there, but to our disgust and horror the plane was one of ours, a Hurricane, but a policeman did tell us that the pilot was O.K.
During dogfights we did occasionally see parachutes descending, but although we tried very hard to find them, running or riding our bikes furiously in the direction of the descending 'chute, we never did see one on the ground.

Air Raid Warden (The ARP)
An ARP post was built on the corner of the road where I lived, What fascinated me was a painted dustbin lid nailed to a wooden stake. The dustbin lid was supposed to turn a different colour if there was any "lethal" gas about The ARP were active in giving out instructions on what to do, 'if', and I also remember very well their demonstrations on how to use a stirrup pump, and particularly, how to cope with a burning incendiary bomb. This was usually carried out in some ones back garden with groups of neighbours looking on.

Allied Operations:
The sight and sound of very large bomber formations were not uncommon, as was the sight of what seemed endless convoys of army vehicles heading towards the coast along the North Circular Road, (A406). It was also a familiar scene to see "Queen Mary's ". (very long articulated trucks used by the RAF to move dismantled aircraft or aircraft parts) . There were barrage balloon stations in the district and I saw on two separate occasions, balloons coming down in flames, either hit by enemy fire or lightning.

Anderson Shelter:
As I mentioned earlier we had an Anderson shelter 50 yards down our garden. It measured about 6 ft by 4 ft and how four people managed to sleep in there is beyond me! My father was 6 ft+ !! I also remember that in wet weather it would have several inches of water in it, and would require regular bailing out If we hadn't decided to stop using the shelter when we did, I think more than one of us would have suffered from some sort of respiratory problem.
After the war we used the base as a fish pond.

Morrison Shelter:
This was basically a steel framed open box to shelter under during an air raid, and meant to be used in the house, doubling as a table at other times. I used to think my best friend's family were very posh, as they had a Morrison shelter in their dining room.

Our Estate's War Effort:
The estate on which we lived had small gardens at the corners of the roads, and large ash trees at intervals along the roads, these were protected by iron fences surrounding them. I remember one day a group of workmen coming with oxyacetylene cutting torches to remove the railings for the war effort

Housewives were asked to voluntarily give up as many aluminium cooking utensils as they could as a contribution to the manufacture of warplanes. I remember seeing horses pulling carts stacked high with these. I did read somewhere that these pots and pans were in fact never used, and there are still" mountains" of these in some remote warehouses. At regular locations around the estate there were pairs of "dustbin" style bins that were there for the local's to place food waste for pig's swill.

Anti-Tank Defences
I remember anti-tank trenches up to 30 to 40 feet wide and around 15 feet deep being dug in our local piece of Epping forest Very large blocks of concrete were also placed in parts of the forest, and anti-tank steel frames that could be assembled at short notice into special sockets that had been set into the road.

V1's and V2's:
V1's [jet propelled (ram jets), pilot less, flying bombs, often called Doodle bugs or Buzz bombs] I saw at least 6 or 7 of these on separate occasions, in flight, and heard a lot more by day and night, and terrifying things they were too. If you could see them, it wasn't too bad as at least you had a good idea where they were going, and knew whether to take cover or not When you couldn't see them but just hear the distinctive 'pulse jet' throb, you just hoped you would not hear it stop, but when and if it did stop, it was a scary 10 seconds or so waiting for the explosion. One of the V1's that hit Walthamstow, killed two of the residents of our road, while they were queuing for food in Walthamstow High Street. V2's, (large, rocket powered missiles) the successor to the V1, were a very different proposition, as they did not warn of their coming with any noises, not that it would have been of much use anyway, due to their speed. They came silently and you only knew they had arrived by a massive explosion, with far greater destruction than a V1. Not surprisingly, I never saw a V2, lam sure not many people over here did. At least one did arrive in Walthamstow, about half a mile from our house, with devastating results.

Odd Items Remembered:
Mr. Chad (wot no....). Ration books. "Don't be a" Squander bug". "Careless talk costs lives" "Dig for Victory" (The home growing of vegetables campaign). "Walls have ears"! My father taking me to see a German prisoner of war camp on the heath land at Whipps Cross, Wanstead, and seeing several 'U' boats in the Pool of London. I did actually go inside a 'U' boat. This was very soon after Germany's surrender. Seeing a virtually intact Focke Wulf 190 that had made a wheels up crash landing on Chingford plains. My best friend's mother finding a human thumb in her back garden. The London Underground station platforms being the shelters for Londoners living in far more vulnerable areas than ours. The foreign radio stations constantly broadcasting 'V' for victory in Morse. (... — ).

Finally, I do feel rather "honoured" that Neville Chamberlain chose my birthday to declare war on Germany!!

Brian Peacock

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