大象传媒

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF WAR
LIFE IN COSHAM, PORTSMOUTH

By Derek Leach

I was 18 months old at the outbreak of war and lived in Freshwater Road at Cosham on what was known as the Isle of Wight estate with my parents and three older siblings, my brother and two sisters. My father came from a military family and worked at the army workshops at Hilsea. His eldest brother was killed near the Belgian border a week before the 1918 armistice and his younger brother was to be lost on HMS Royal Oak six weeks after the war started. My father became a member of the Home Guard, having been in the territorial army before the war.
As I was very young at the start of the war my recollections of early events are limited and are not necessarily in strict chronological order but certainly are those that made the greatest impression on me.
My earliest memory is of being held up by my mother to the windows of a bus or coach so that I could wave goodbye to my brother and sisters who were being evacuated to rural Wiltshire, considered to be safer than staying in the Portsmouth area because of the threat of air raids and the bombs. In later years I learnt that many of the local children had mustered at a Cosham school in Albert Road and it was from there that their transport had left. My mother was evacuated with me shortly afterwards but she decided not to stay and we returned to Cosham for the duration. Shortly afterwards my younger sister was born.
We had an Anderson shelter in the back garden which was made of formed corrugated steel sheets bolted together at the top in the shape of an arch. The shelter was sunk three or four feet into the ground with a concrete wall up to surface level and was covered overall with the earth which had come from the big hole dug to accommodate the structure. It was damp with basic wooden bunks and lit only by candles. Sometimes, when the raids were most frequent, we went straight into the shelter at bedtime complete with our red rubber gasmasks which had big round glass 鈥榚yes鈥� and a floppy tongue sticking out at the front. I assume these features were intended to make them less frightening for us kids. On other occasions we would be roused and hurried out into this bolthole as the air raid sirens wailed. I have a vivid recollection of standing outside the entrance to our shelter one dark night watching the searchlights which had captured a german intruder in their cone, and listening to the sounds of the ack-ack whilst my mother and the people next door chatted excitedly over the fence about events.
Although the primary targets for the Luftwaffe were the naval dockyard and surrounding establishments, bombs did fall in Cosham and the local area, and during one of these raids a cousin of ours was killed at Farlington, some two miles away. Her name was Barbara and she was six years old. She is commemorated on the civilian memorial in Kingston cemetery in Portsmouth.
By late 1941, I had another baby brother who was obviously too small to have a gasmask like we older kids and he slept in a black crib-like container with a big perspex window in it.
As the air raids continued my mother, with two infants in the pram and me hanging on to the side, would join the evening exodus from the Cosham estate to the communal shelters buried deep in Portsdown Hill which were accessed through tunnel entrances in the chalk pit above the Wymering estate.
These shelters were basically concrete-lined tunnels with steel bed frames in places and floors which always seemed wet. There was a constant hum of conversation and clatter of tea cups and mugs. We were totally insulated from the outside world within the confines of these shelters and slept undisturbed by air raid sirens. We would leave for home at daybreak and walked the mile or so back to Freshwater Road. Going home was all downhill so the return trip was quicker than the evening trudge.
Sometime before my 5th birthday I started at Wymering School which was just round the corner in Southampton Road. One of my older sisters had come home from evacuation as the two eldest siblings attended the evacuated Portsmouth Northern Secondary school in the Winchester area, and it was she who took me to school that first morning. At the mid-morning break, 鈥榩laytime鈥� I think we called it, I made my way home, assuming that was the finish for the day. I was taken back in the afternoon to resume my education. At some time after I started school, due to the shortage of teachers or pupils or both, a regime of 鈥榤ornings one week/afternoons the next鈥� was imposed, somewhat confusing for us kids. There were times when we spent the whole morning or afternoon in the surface built brick air raid shelter situated on the edge of the playground, with our teacher leading us in community singing or persuading the more extrovert amongst us to stand on a chair and recite rhymes and poems. One day we were allowed to stand at the entrance to the shelter and watched one of the barrage balloons anchored along the northern shore of Portsmouth harbour descending in flames, whether brought down by gunfire or lightning we never did know. The balloons were like giant elephants with big ears, curled-up trunks and shiny silver-grey in colour.
My elder brother appeared from time to time, having travelled from his school in Winchester. He seemed to spend a lot of time collecting shrapnel around the local area which he carried in an old galvanised bucket. I never knew what he and his mates did with it. He also liked to demonstrate the bolt action on my father鈥檚 303 home guard rifle to us younger ones and also drew pictures of Spitfires and Hurricanes in dogfights with the Luftwaffe. The boy next door, who was a few years older than me, stuck spent cartridge cases into the earth covering our Anderson shelters and told me we had been machine-gunned by enemy aircraft. I think I knew even then that the brass cases were not the business ends of bullets!
In the weeks leading up to what we came to know as D-Day, there was a lot of activity along the Southampton Road and the roar of tank engines was the signal for the local kids to rush to the roadside and wave to the vehicle crews as they rumbled by, barking the kerbstones with their tracks. We always got packets of chewing gum thrown to us by the Americans and if we were really lucky, a Hershey chocolate bar.
Days before the invasion, all the roads on the Isle of Wight estate were turned into vehicle parks and were packed nose to tail with tanks and trucks, some piled high with jerricans full of petrol. What excitement for us boys, real tanks and big guns! A tank was parked right in front of our house, and the crew, who I think were Americans, passed the time chatting with us and playing cards. One of these soldiers modelled animals for us in plasticine, to our eyes perfect in every detail.
Suddenly they were all gone and on the wet and windy morning of June 6th we were all gathered into the school hall where the headmistress told us that the invasion of France had begun. We prayed for the soldiers and sang the navy hymn 鈥淔or Those in Peril on the Sea鈥�.
In the following months, we seemed to spend less and less time in shelters, and attendance at school became full time.
We all seemed to get measles and chicken pox, and some of the kids had scabies which was treated by painting purple patches on to their arms, legs and faces. My mother urged us to keep our distance from anyone wearing this 鈥榳arpaint鈥� and none of my family succumbed to this particular complaint, although this was probably more down to luck than anything else. I later learnt that the purple patches were caused by the application of a skin medicine called gentian violet.
Came Christmas 1944 and a party was organised at the army workshops where my father was employed for children of the staff. Fortunately for us there was a large contingent of US military personnel on the base and they plied us kids with as much jelly, custard, ice cream, sweets, chocolate and oranges as we could eat and carry home afterwards. We thought we had been transported to wonderland and could talk of nothing else for days after!
It was one morning in 1945 and my mother called to those of us still in bed that President Roosevelt had died, an event which seemed to sadden parents and neighbours.
Then it was VE day and it was all over. I remember asking someone what 鈥榁E鈥� stood for, probably not being as familiar with the term 鈥楨urope鈥� as I was with 鈥楪ermany鈥�.
A street party was organised as if by magic and there was a lot of jubilation up and down the road. Every household contributed sandwiches, home-made cakes and whatever other little luxuries were available, although the choices were somewhat limited. There was a plentiful supply of tea, delivered from big enamel teapots. There were bonfires as well, and some garden fences and the picket fence from the static water tank around the corner mysteriously became fuel for these celebratory beacons.
The celebrations were repeated a few months later when VJ day arrived.
Most of the evacuees who had stayed away for the duration came home, the servicemen returned, and all the houses in our road now had their full complement of residents.
Thereafter we began life鈥檚 journey in what was thought to be a peaceful world鈥︹�︹��

10th November 2003.

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