大象传媒

It is easy to recall that Sunday morning in September 1939 when war was declared. I was fourteen years鈥� of age, and the early sounding of the air raid sirens, unfamiliar and frightening, would become very familiar over the next few years. Even at such an early age I was happy with my lot, living in a third floor LCC (London County Council) flat in the Peckham Road, with a very loving family. It was a fine sunny morning and together with the rest of the family was on our way to Lamberhurst in Kent. We were in he back of a lorry, our destination being a hop farm where we hoped to spend the next few weeks. Hop picking was a working holiday. You picked hops from a vine suspended from overhead wires, set before the hops started to grow. You picked the hops trying not to pick too many leaves as well. As you picked the hops, you fed them into a bin, which was about two yards in length. Crossed wooden poles at each end from, which ran wooden poles to connect one end to the other. One each side of the crossed poles from which was suspended sacking making a big bag two by one yard in depth. Hops were picked for a length of time and then you were told to clean your hops meaning the farm owner was about to come round and measure the hops you had picked. The idea then was to try and take some of the leaves out that had fallen in when picking the hops. You naturally left some of the leaves in. The farm owner came along accompanied by his foreman. The owner carried a bushel basket the foreman a big sack. He dipped his basket into the bin filled it with hops then put them into the sack carried by the foreman. He continued to do this as long as he could get full bushels of hops from your bin. He then entered the number of bushels he had weighed in a notebook he carried also in one kept by my mother. You were paid for all the bushels you picked when all his fields were picked clean. Usually that took three weeks. For the parents or I should say the mother, because the father had to return home to his job it was terribly hard work. They still had the same chores to do, as at home only it was more primitive on the farm. The cooking was carried out round a campfire with no cover, which had to be lit firstly. All the other hard jobs that you mother did at home had to be accomplished. For the children, boys in particular it was an adventure. The weather always seemed to be fine and sunny, you had green fields all around you. Fields with apple and pear trees, which dared you to enter and try to pick, unseen by adults. Rabbits running around and not hanging in a butcher鈥檚 window. And the excitement at weekends when Dad was able to come down. Saturday evening and Sunday when the adults were able to relax and meet at the local pub. The laughter and noise usually resulted with a pianist playing popular and old songs and the drinkers happily singing. Time spent out of doors in the fresh air and sunshine appeared to make people seem happier and look healthier. The future was forgotten for an hour or so, because it was 1939 and we were at war. When all the hops had been picked, we would have to return to London. On returning things did not appear to have changed much. I suppose the memory cannot remember too much about what was changing and also what was happening. I never returned to school, and being fourteen years of age would have to look for a job. That was the first drastic change the war brought about for me, it stopped me finishing my education. The next few years I was to learn would be my growing up years. It would be a lie to say that some experiences were not happy or pleasant but you do not need a war for them to happen.
We all owned gas masks so it was deemed we carry them about with us at all times. The blackout was something that took some getting used to at first. A lot of white paint was used, painting corners of buildings edges of pavements, stairs outdoors. All likely places that you would walk into when the streets were all in darkness. Many people carried small torches with them when out and about in the darkness. The windows of houses and buildings had to be fully blacked out either painted out or have black curtains hung. Our brick bomb shelters were built but not used for some months but little did we know then how much they were to be used in the future. Spending fifty to sixty consecutive nights sleeping down in that shelter because of air raids made you appreciate them at that time. When the bombing of our cities did start in the summer of 1940, it got named 鈥� The Blitz鈥�. My two older brothers had been called to the services when the 鈥淏litz鈥� started. The oldest Harry was in the army, the Royal Artillery and the other brother Fred the Royal Navy. My eldest sister Florrie now married lived on the Glebe Estate, in a block of flats on the opposite side of the road. It made the number in our family three less when we moved down to sanctuary of the shelter every night. I found employment working in the London offices of a Bristol newspaper named 鈥淭he Western Daily Press鈥�. I use the word offices lightly because it was two small rooms over a sports goods shop owned by the famous Surrey cricket batsman Jack Hobbs in later years to become Sir Jack Hobbs. The main room looked down on to Fleet Street. Much of my time was spent just looking down watching the hustle and bustle of the busy newspaper centre. The only other member of staff was the man that ran the London office Ted Winfield. He was a pleasant man and likeable, also the goalkeeper of the amateur football club Tooting and Mitcham F.C. He was out of the office most of the day trying to sell advertising space to later appear in the newspaper. It was pretty boring most of the time. The only duty during the day was to take any small advertisements that people wished to appear in the newspaper. That broke the monotony just having somebody to talk to. Writing down the advertisement and charging them for the number of words, it contained. A small amount of money was kept, mainly to give customers change when they gave me notes. It happened on a few occasions that I ran out of change to give and so I would go down to the sports shop for some. Jack Hobbs son ran the shop, was always kind, and helped me out. On a couple of odd occasions, the great man himself was there and I felt very proud when I had to approach him. Like his son he joked with me about it and was very kind. If it was possible, I liked him even more after those instances. The other important job that I had to do every late afternoon was to wrap the advertising blocks in newspaper. Together with other office papers tie them all up into a parcel and then take the parcel to Paddington Station parcel office to be put on the train to Bristol. My weekly wage was seventeen shillings and six pence the equivalent seventy-five pence today. My trip to Paddington Station every day was classed as overtime, for which I received eight pence. The weeks overtime amounted to forty pence then it was eight shillings. To get to Paddington Station I had to walk from Fleet Street to Farringdon Street Underground Station. That being about a mile and a quarter and then get on an underground train to Paddington Station. The underground station if I remember correctly was only a hundred yards from where the steam trains started their journeys. At first, it was a novelty and I quite enjoyed doing the journey every night but when the dark winter evenings came round, it got tedious. It was the winter of 1940 and the job was a dead end as far as I was concerned and I began to think about trying to find something better. We had not had any bad air raids yet and the war seemed to be what they called a 鈥減honey war鈥�. Not a lot seemed to be happening in France or Germany. The British Expeditionary Force was in France. It seemed to one so young that the French Maginot Line and the German Siegfried Line had cancelled each other out. The bomb shelters had been dug; searchlights swept the sky at night. But the expected German bombers did not appear over British and French cities. Most of the children evacuated from London on the outbreak of war were brought back after a few months because of the spirit of false optimism, only to face the full onslaught of the 鈥淏litz鈥�. The Germans occupied Norway and Denmark in April 1940. That defeat spelt the end for Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister. He had kept Britain out of a war with Hitler in 1938 when the country was totally unprepared, and had reluctantly led it to war a year later. By that time, at least the Royal Air Force had the modern Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes. He never looked a war leader and the nation fretted he was not the man for the job and. Now he was being accused of being the great appeaser. After much manoeuvring behind he scenes Winston Churchill was asked to form a government on May 10th 1940. That also was the day that the Germans crashed into Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg. They had bypassed the Maginot Line. The next couple of weeks saw them push the allied forces right back to the French coast and which resulted in the epic evacuation from Dunkirk. A defeat in military terms but a victory for the Royal Navy and all the small boats that went and brought back the soldiers to England. Early on June 4th the last defenders of Dunkirk surrendered. By then, 338,226 officers and men, 139,097 of them French had been carried to England. True, its tanks and guns littered Northern France, but the men were home.
It was frightening to think that the Germans next conquest would be the invasion of Britain. The first critical battle for survival began just 18 days after he fall of France July 10th. 120 German planes attacked a convoy of coasters in the English Channel. The battle had begun for air control of the Channel and was the opening round of the German fight to open the way for operation 鈥淪ea Lion鈥�. It was Hitler鈥檚 proposed sea borne invasion of Britain. As civilians we could only read through newspapers and listen to he radio to get some idea of the battles taking place every day. The Germans pounded the channel convoys until they forced the British ships to keep out f the Straits of Dover in daylight. The Royal Navy withdrew from Dover to Portsmouth. But the Germans had not succeeded in wearing down Fighter Command. The channel phase of the battle came to an end on August 11th. The seabed off Kent and Sussex was littered with wrecked ships and aircraft. The Battle of Britain continued on 12th August when airfields were attacked and continued in ferocity and the Royal Air Force was stretched to its limits. The air battles continued until suddenly on he 7th September the Luftwaffe headed for London and that was the beginning of the 鈥淏litz鈥�. I remember the afternoon because that was the start of the civilian鈥檚 war.

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