大象传媒

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am proud of my birth certificate because it has a King Edward 8th. stamp on it. He was not monarch of England for very long, and abdicated the throne 21 days after I was born. He did this for love of his lady (wow!), who it was argued by government was not suitable to be Queen of England as she was a divorcee. They did live happily ever after, but the burden placed upon his younger brother, who became King George 6th., and did not enjoy the best of health, was very great.

I was born in West Ham (of football fame), in the east end of London, and have never quite lost my 鈥榗ockney鈥� accent. When the war started, the enemy failed in their mission to destroy the defending Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes of the Royal Air Force. This as you know was termed 鈥楾he Battle of Britain鈥�. Instead they turned their attention to bombing quite severely our capital city of London. This was called the 鈥楤litz鈥�.

The night it started I had gone with Mum and Dad down town on the bus, as they wanted to show me the sights, you know, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. The air raid siren went off and we had to dive into a shelter. The explosions were terrible, and when the 鈥榓ll clear鈥� sounded we headed for the bus stop to get home as soon as possible. The red glow in the sky to the east of the city was immense, and Mum and Dad were anxious that the problem was between the city and our home. The buses had green gauze stuck to the windows with just a small diamond cut out in the middle to see out from. This was to protect the passengers from flying glass caused by the blast of an explosion. I wanted to be upstairs in the bus and up the front to observe what was going on.

Along the Commercial Road clearly the East India Docks had been destroyed. Dad said the flames were 100 feet high, as the fires were well alight by the time we were passing. There were no street lights allowed (this was part of what was termed the '鈥榖lackout鈥�), but the fires illuminated the bus driver鈥檚 way home quite clearly. Fire engines were dashing all over the place, and they had warning bells whose clangers were rung by hand. In the middle of the road ahead a bomb had dropped and had made a very substantial crater. Some poor motorist had clearly not seen this earlier in the darkness and had driven down the hole. The bus stopped and the conductor (two employees on a bus in those days), went to investigate, but the car had no occupants. Our driver with his No.25 double decker bus mounted the pavement on the far right hand side and with what little road was left got by the bomb crater and we continued on our way home. In the sky there were fires too, and Dad explained that the enemy had shot up barrage balloons which were full of combustible gas. These were intended to hold steel wires in the path on the enemy bombers to knock them out of the sky.
We did get home unscathed. Strangely I felt no fear about all of this, more awe-inspired, but later things did change.

A number of semi-circular and flat sheets of corrugated iron arrived at home, and Dad hurriedly dug a deep hole in the garden, bolted the sheets together and covered the resulting structure with earth and turves cut from the lawn. This was called an Anderson Shelter. We spent the nights there, and it was dark, a little damp, and a bit cold. One night of the Blitz, the near suburb of Silvertown was annihilated, and Tate and Lyle鈥檚 sugar factory was no more. On another night the enemy dropped incendiary bombs on the city and most of it was burnt down save St. Paul鈥檚 Cathedral standing proud amidst the ruins. Mum鈥檚 nerve broke, and along with Gran we set out for Gran鈥檚 sister Alice鈥檚 chicken farm in Suffolk. Dad worked for the West Ham Borough Council, and had been put in charge of the salvage department in Carpenter鈥檚 Road on the Stratford marshes, so he could not come. Later I went there with him, and saw mountains of rubble, hills of baths, sinks, and loos, and heaps of pipes and partially burnt timbers.

All was peace in Suffolk, and I helped feed the chickens and collect the eggs. There were probably a few hundred chickens, and at the back of the runs there was a field of potatoes which were mainly for feeding the chickens. The potatoes were boiled in a zinc bath, and then was mixed with chicken meal. I still remember with some pleasure in the shed where the chicken meal was kept the wonderful smell of chicken meal when it was mixed with the hot potatoes. (Sadly, in keeping chickens at Links Cottage I could never find this product with the wonderful aroma). I was kept happy also, as the main railway line between London and Norwich was at the bottom of the potato field. Here the steam engines would roar by with their expresses, and two of the engines had blue streamlined cases, they were called 鈥楥ity of London鈥�, and 鈥楨ast Anglian鈥�. Great Aunt Alice鈥檚 daughter who lived in north east London later took fright from the bombing, and so we had to move out. The only accommodation that could be found was a gypsy caravan in the middle of a field of wild flowers. To me it was paradise. I played shops behind the steps up to the van, and 鈥榮old鈥� bunches of flowers, grasses, and sticks for the fire. Pebbles were used for money.

My other Gran and Grandad lived at Selsdon in Surrey and it was thought to be safer to live there rather than in London, which turned out to be an unfortunate decision. After a while an empty house was found for us to rent. In order to be lucky enough to get some food Mum had to queue up for hours outside the butchers, the grocers and the bakers before they opened. Sometimes those at the back of the queue were unlucky. Frequent hunger sent my friend Keith Griffin and I on what were called scrumping expeditions, which amounted to stealing apples from orchards. Dad was able to be at Selsdon but each day cycled all the way back to work in West Ham, a daily round trip of 22 miles. The food situation looked up when all of the vegetables that Dad had planted in the garden came up to maturity. At home I had only four things to keep me amused, some cuddly animals who in my imagination all played musical instruments and I would line them up along the settee and conduct the silent performance. One day Gran came in and asked me what they were playing, and I said, 鈥淥rpheus in the Underworld鈥�. She was so amused she gave me half a crown which was a lot of money in those days (12.1/2p). I had an atlas of the counties of Great Britain, some bricks that Dad had made from salvaged timber, and an old tear-out invoice book, each set had three copies with carbon paper that was moved up as the sets were torn out. Only the back copy was not used or carbon paper placed in front of it. The third copy therefore was a blank piece of paper and there were an hundred in the book. So this was for drawing which I enjoyed a lot.

One day three enemy aircraft bombed a school in Lewisham killing all of the children, and in order to escape they flew almost at rooftop height and I saw them from the front room window over the houses on the opposite side of the road. They all got drawn in the book, and I took their numbers, which I expect I got wrong it all happened so quickly. It is a shame that the book has not survived. It was fun listening to Children鈥檚 Hour at 5 p.m. on the 大象传媒 Home Service (now known as Radio 4). The man on the radio was called 鈥楿ncle Mac鈥�, and I enjoyed the weekly serial called 鈥楽aid the Cat to the Dog鈥�. Their names were Mompty and Peckham and of course they could talk to one another. I also recall that the wonderful cat like voice was created by a lady called Vivienne Chatterton.

The unfortunate thing about Selsdon was that it was half way between the front line Royal Air Force bases of Biggin Hill and Kenley, which were a constant target for the enemy bombers, but sometimes they did not get it right, lost their way etc. One night we could hear one of them overhead, the unsynchronised sound of their engines causing a drone. Dad said, 鈥溾�楤etter get under the dining room table, I鈥檒l go outside to see what is going on鈥�. He was just about to put his hand on the front door catch when an high explosive bomb whistled down and went off with such a loud bang it caused me to be completely deaf. My hearing returned slowly, but I have suffered from tinnitus ever since. All the glass from every window was blown into the dining room and all of the ceiling came down in clouds of dust, and ornaments were strewn everywhere. I do still have a statuette of the composer Beethoven where you can see the repair where his feet parted company with his pedestal. The blast blew my Dad off his feet the length of the hall. Fortunately the kitchen door was open, and he passed through, by now blown over to be thrown against the kitchen cupboards under the sink. His main concern was that he was being followed by the heavy front door, which was miraculously stopped by the door frame of the kitchen door. He only suffered some minor bruising, and Mum and I were saved by the substantial table. Two neighbours were killed. I then decided that it was time to be frightened. Next day ladies of the Woman鈥檚 Voluntary Service came into the house to help clear up the mess.

Then in 1944 came the V1 Flying Bombs, so it was back to Suffolk. This time American airmen based at USAAF Great Ashfield, came each day in their jeep to buy Alice鈥檚 eggs by the crate load, they always flew on eggs and bacon. The habit was adopted of saying to them, 鈥淕ot any Gum chum?鈥�, and the reward was often extended to chocolate. Any pretty village girls would get packs of nylon stockings which were heavily prized. The faces of the airmen changed frequently, and we knew that one鈥檚 we had seen had not come back to Suffolk. I used to enjoy helping in the fields to bring the harvest in, but Mill Farm had a number of Italian prisoners-of-war hoeing the vegetable fields. We were told not to go near them for some reason.

At last the war ended and we joined in the celebrations in Trafalgar Square. When they were over the crush of people trying to get into Charing Cross station was very alarming. Dad leaned back on the crowd to prevent me from being trampled underfoot. We escaped fortunately into a shopping arcade, and Dad thumbed a lift in a posh Daimler most of the way back to Selsdon.

I had had precious little schooling. On the rare occasions that I did make it, a lot of the day was spent in air-raid shelters in the playground where it was impossible to teach because of the noise of the guns going off. Later, I was very very fortunate to have a very dear teacher called Mrs.Try who in two years gave me five years of missed learning such that I passed what was the eleven plus examination and went to Grammar School. Food was still rationed, but slowly but surely things did eventually get back to normal.

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