大象传媒

The crisis was caused by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and for the first time since 1918 war really seemed imminent. Emergency measures were started, digging trenches for bomb shelters, issuing gas masks for the general public, recruiting people for Civil Defence. The general atmosphere was very tense and everyone wondering what would happen next.

I had been due shortly to start at Guy鈥檚 Hospital on my dental course, but due to the crisis all courses had been postponed until the situation became clearer. Being at home with nothing to do, I volunteered to help the Civil Defence Services and was duly dispatched to deliver and fit Gas Masks to everyone within a certain area. With minimum training and no experience I set off on my rounds. It did not exactly encourage people who were already worried, but distribution went well enough. What was rather disconcerting was that, though I was 18 and just out of school, I was looked upon by some people as some kind of oracle who could answer all questions and set their minds at rest about the possibility of war.

However, the Prime Minister flew to Munich to talk with Hitler and then returned having concluded a rather suspect agreement with the Nazis and declared that peace would now reign. And I was once again able to continue my studies

Territorial Army 1939

Things had quietened down, but there was a strong feeling that it would not last and there remained a good chance that war might still come.

As a Dental Student at the beginning of my course, it meant that should there be a war I would be liable to be called up and sent to whatever branch of the services the authorities decided. I did not like the idea of this and determined that if I was to go into the services it would be my choice.

At school I had rather reluctantly been in the Officers Training Corps and had been part of their signals section and so decided to join the local Royal Corps of Signals Territorials - part time soldiers who trained in their spare time, but would be called up for full 鈥� time duty in case of war.

Declaration of War 鈥� September 3rd 1939

During the summer of 1939 the chances of war became more likely. Hitler was threatening to invade Poland and we were pledged to support Poland if this happened. All through July and August things got more and more tense and plans were being set up to evacuate all children from London to the countryside. Hospitals and medical staff were also to be sent to hospitals outside London and other essential services were to be evacuated.

At this time I was on holiday in Devon with my parents, who were both teachers, and towards the end of August a call went out for all teachers to return to their homes to prepare to help with the evacuation of the children. We had to cut short our holiday and go home and soon after, the evacuation began. My father and mother were sent to different places and I remember going to the station with my mother and seeing the crowds of children being \escorted onto the trains leaving their anxious parents behind. With both my parents gone an aunt of mine came to look after the household.

Soon after this all Territorials were called up. And off I went to our local Headquarters. The Units remained there for several months being trained for active service. So I could be billeted at home.

There was a state of unreadiness at the beginning and this affected us. We had Uniforms, but no Army Greatcoats so were issued with a mixed bag of civilian overcoats. I was given a long black coat with a velvet collar, while others had coats of all colours and styles! No army issue gas masks were available, so we carried our civilian ones in a little cardboard box held by a piece of string over our shoulders.

Our signalling equipment was no different. We had Field Telephones from the Great War and Semaphore Flags probably from the Boer War.

Back to Dentistry

Sometime in the early months of 1940 I received a letter from Guy鈥檚 Hospital to say that they could obtain my release from the Forces to continue my dental training. I did not think that they could, but agreed to let them try. They succeeded and soon I was back in civilian clothes. Having lived at home while in the army I now had to leave home, as the Dental School had been evacuated and I found myself living in a large country manor near Tunbridge Wells along with a number of other students continuing our training.

It was soon after this that the Battle of Britain began and as the main approach to London was over Kent we had a grand stand view of the struggle. Hundreds of bombers in tight formation would pass over on their way to their targets and shortly after would be coming back, no longer in formation, being hotly pursued by the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the RAF. Part of our building had a large flat roof and instead of seeking shelter during these raids, we students flocked onto the roof, still wearing our white jackets, to watch the dogfights going on overhead.

Even though we were out in the countryside a good many miles from London we did not escape the bombing entirely. When returning from the cinema one evening, I heard a single plane overhead, but I did not take much notice. Then all of a sudden I heard a peculiar whistling noise. For a moment it did not register and then I realised that it was the noise of a bomb descending and I got down flat on my face in the middle of the road. One bomb fell in the road some distance behind me and the next fell just off to my left in amongst some trees. And I heard earth and stones rattling down which the explosion had thrown up. On an other occasion , Sherwood Park, the house in which I lived, had a narrow escape. A stick of bombs passed over the house, the first landing on one side and the next on the other side leaving the actual house where we all lived unscathed.

About this time the Home Guard was being formed and a number of students, including myself, volunteered. This meant that from time to time we would spend a couple of hours or so during the night patrolling through the local countryside looking out for German parachutists or other invading troops. Luckily we never found any!

And so our training continued until we reached the final year. This part of the course could not be completed in Tunbridge Wells and we had to return to the hospital in London. Here once more I was able to live at home, as my mother had returned from evacuation and was helping to man one of the Rest Centres set up to house people who were bombed out of their own houses. This particular rest centre was in the school in which she had been teaching before the war. Here, people who had lost their home could live and sleep in fairly primitive conditions until alternative accommodation could be found.

During this year I was doing practical work on patients and generally preparing myself to practice dentistry on my own.

In this same year some bombing of London began again. Being no longer in the Home Guard I volunteered for Civil Defence. This meant that on certain nights during the week I would don my Air Raid Wardens Uniform and spend the time manning the Wardens Post nearby ready for any emergency. Alternatively I might be called upon to patrol the streets during an air raid so that we could report any incident as soon as possible. Mostly these were very small and did not cause too much damage. But I was involved in one major incident. One evening, I was at home, when we heard a bomb drop close by which made the house shake and blew the glass out of our lavatory window.

Putting on my uniform I went out to see what had happened. I saw that a Dance Hall over a Milk Bar in Putney High Street had been hit and lay in ruins. There were bodies lying in the road and just opposite a furniture store was in flames lighting up the whole scene. The dance hall had been crowded and there had been a large number of casualties. I spent the next few hours hunting amongst the debris. We did not find any people alive, but found a number of dead bodies. Strangely they did not look real any more, covered with dust, thrown up by the explosion they looked more like broken statues than men and women.

I had one other experience of the bombing. One evening I was taking Susan, my future wife, who had spent the weekend at my parents house, back to Guy鈥檚 where she was living. As we were crossing London Bridge an air raid warning sounded. We hurried to the hospital and spent the time till the 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� sounded in the basement there. When all was over I set off home. Though the trains were disrupted by the raids, I was lucky enough to get an underground train on my way home. However, at South Kensington, still some miles from our house in Putney, the train stopped and was not proceeding any further. I had to set off to walk the rest of the way. It was already late at night and I could not inform my parents of what had happened, as the phones were accepting only official calls. On my way I passed much evidence of the results of the raids, bombed houses where the civil defence workers were still busy, piles of rubble in the streets which had to be clambered over, burning buildings which had to be bypassed, all obstacles which had to be negotiated, until I eventually arrived home in the early hours. This was a great relief to my father who was pacing the streets looking for me.

Not long after this I passed my final exams and became a qualified Dental Surgeon. Within weeks, I was once more in the Army, this time the Army Dental Corps, destined to spend three years in the Middle East before finally returning home in 1947 to settling down to civilian life.

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