大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jean Brown and has been added to the website on behalf of Brian Price with his permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions".

Apart from a 6 weeks evacuation to Heysham in September 1939 I spent the whole of the war at home in Riverhead, Kent. I went to Riverhead School from 1939 to 1944 and thence to Judd School, Tonbridge.

In 1938 I went with my mother to Sevenoaks Council offices to have our gas masks tested. I was pleased not to have a small child's 'Mickey Mouse' mask. Gas masks had to be taken everywhere in the early part of the war.

During 1939/40 my family, including my elder brother aged 11, went on holiday to a guesthouse in Coombe Martin, Devon. On my fifth birthday I was given a large toy fire engine. That evening we had to hurriedly return to Riverhead, Kent, as my father had instructions to report to his office at the GPO headquarters in Aldersgate, London. After a short sleep in Riverhead we were driven to Heysham by my father and mother - the next day was 3rd September 1939! I stayed with my grand parents for 6 weeks before being collected and returned to Kent to belatedly start school. The kindly headmaster was Mr Andrews who was not called up for service because of his heart problems.

I next remember hearing a distant rumble of explosions and guns as the Dunkirk invasion took place.

Children from London were evacuated to Kent at the outset of the war but then hastily sent off elsewhere as France fell.

Road signs were taken down and 'dragons' teeth' and other portable roadblocks constructed with slots in the road to fit them. I saw a line of old cars, carts, poles and other junk strewn over a field next to the A25 near Limpsfield to hinder any German planes from landing.

Blackout blinds had to be fitted to all buildings. Most homes had a stirrup pump to extinguish incendiary bombs. My father made an indoor air raid shelter of corrugated iron and wood and filled up sandbags, placing them over the windows of our 'safety' room. Auxiliary lighting was provided by torches and an old 12-volt car battery.

Two public air raid shelters were built, one in the north west side of Chipstead Common, the second under a railway arch near the River Darenth.

A mesh of sticky tapes to counteract flying glass from bomb blasts masked windows of buses, trains and some buildings.

There were two 'overflow' classes at the Parish Rooms and the pupils there had to shelter in the crypt of St Mary's Church during air raids. The main school had a surface shelter in the playground in which I had some lessons.

Smelly Valor stoves heated the Parish Rooms (long since replaced by a housing estate) and on cold winters' mornings the pupils there had a 'nature walk' to begin with until the rooms got a bit warmer. The main schoolrooms had a coal fire in each classroom.

Coastal areas were 'restricted' to local residents and essential personnel only. Everyone had an identity card and mine was numbered DJPH 270/4 - '4' was because I was the fourth in the family. One Saturday my parents wished to drive to Herne Bay (in a restricted area) and our car was stopped on the A20 east of Maidstone by the police. My mother did some clever navigation and we got to Herne Bay successfully by narrow back roads (and back) to see their friends.

We had a week's holiday in 1940 in Woolacombe, each evening the local Home Guard trooped out to their slit trenches in the dunes. One morning there was a rattle of machine gun fire and a Junker 88 flew down the valley at low altitude seawards.

Shortly after most private car owners had to hand in the rotor arms of their vehicle to the local police. The remaining essential user vehicles had masked headlights and the streetlights were switched off.

One of the Sunday afternoon pastimes was to go on a family cycle ride. I recall cycling past the brick walls outside 'Chartwell' whose gates were overlooked by armed soldiers. I am told I stuck my tongue out at them and was chastised for being so rude.

When the Battle of Britain began I saw the many twisting vapour trails. One weekend dinnertime we all went out to our back garden because of an unusual loud noise. It was a German bomber in flames, which crashed on to the public tennis courts by Walthamstow Hall School.

Air raid sirens sounded the alert and also the all clear. The school rule was that if you were over halfway to school when the alert siren sounded you quickly continued; if not, you hastened home - 'halfway' was a very flexible position!

In 1940 we still had 'Empire Day' in the grounds of the Memorial Hall when the Union Flag was hoisted and we sang patriotic songs such as 'There'll always be an England". I lost the paper given to every pupil from the King.

There was only one radio channel; the 大象传媒 and to identify themselves the news announcers had to give their names to avoid enemy impersonation, eg "This is the 9 o'clock news and Alvar Liddell reading it." The first provincially accented newsreader was Wilfred Pickles - later a quiz presenter. At school Betty Driver used the precious radio for broadcasts for 'music and movement'. We had to pretend to be trees waving in the wind or birds flying in time to the music. At teatime there was 'Children's Hour' with Uncle Mac (Derek McCullough) and David, which included 'Toy toon', the 'Bones boy brother detectives.' On Saturday evening about 7.00pm there was 'In Town Tonight' opening with the Knightsbridge March by Eric Coates, a weekly topical programme. Other regular broadcasts included advice from 'The Radio Doctor' - Charles Hill, Henry Hall's Guest Night', 'ITMA ' - It's that man again (Tommy Hanley), and 'Hi Gang - the Gang Show' presented by three Americans, Ben Lyon, Bebe Daniels (his wife) and Vic Oliver (later married to Sarah Churchill).

The aerial 'dogfights' went on through the late summer and I collected spent cartridge cases, shrapnel, incendiary bombfins, ammunition clips and other junk. Later on there were also 'Windors', a metallic strip dropped from aircraft to mess up the enemy radar.

A large bomb exploded in the millstream by the A25 in Sundridge near the then laundry and its crater still exists. I saw two crashed fighter aircraft, one each side of the minor road from Combe Bank to the Pilgrims Way. There was an aircraft scrapped in the field next to Combe Bank and long RAF lorries, known as Queen Marys, and I collected the pieces. My mother had an airman from the scrap dump billeted with us, James Cole from Gloucester. There was a national appeal to hand in any unused metal items such as aluminium pans; iron railings were cut down, all intended to be used for military equipment after being smelted down.

A large time bomb fell in Chipstead Place Gardens, run by Mr Morgan. He did not notice it at first but in digging holes for cabbages came across a metal fin. The bomb disposal squad came but could not get their lorry under a brick arch at the nursery boundary. A police car toured the area telling everyone to open all doors and windows at 2.00pm when the bomb would be detonated - nothing then happened. The message was later repeated and the new deadline fixed at 3.00pm when there was a loud bang, blast, and swirling dust. The next door neighbour's front door was blown off its' hinges as they refused to open it. We learned later the defused bomb had slipped off a makeshift trolley. It was blown up in a sandpit where Sandiland Estate now stands.

I was taken to see the ruins of the 'Club Hall' in Sevenoaks, which had suffered a direct hit. It was never rebuilt and the site is now a small garden next to Sevenoaks Vine cricket ground.

One cloudy morning we were awoken by the sound of machine gun fire. A Heuschel bi-plane dipped out of the low clouds and fired on a military convoy on Worships Hill on the A25 but then climbed back into the murky sky quickly.

There was an army camp throughout the war, and later used for displaced persons where the present Riverhead Infants school stands. The Holmesdale sports ground was commandeered by the Army. Some of the billeted soldiers had exercises with the local Home Guard acting as 'the enemy'. The Home Guard blocked some of the local roads on Sunday mornings crawling past my mother's front garden wall with blackened faces.

The London Blitz began in late 1940. My father, born in 1887, was too old to be called up but was the Chief ARP Warden at the London GPO HQ building and was awarded the MBE for his services just after the war ended. He still had a Service Revolver and live ammunition from his 4 years in the trenches in the 1914-18 war and one Sunday morning alarmed the neighbours by firing several live rounds up our long back garden. He would be in London for the whole week whilst the rest of us cowered in our air raid shelter at night. I recall standing in our front porch and seeing a pulsing glow in the sky over the North Downs when London's docks were ablaze. One evening many flares were dropped by enemy aircraft on the Downs searching for Fort Halstead, a research station used for Artillery and AA Guns.

My father was part of a relief ARP unit called upon if required, to help fire watching at St Paul's Cathedral. Each member, in turn, had to be a 'pretend' casualty and I was told that he was lowered from the "Whispering Gallery" strapped to a stretcher when it was his turn.

After the Blitz had ended in London I saw only rubble from the roof of his six-storey office in Aldersgate, down to the Thames, apart from the damaged east end of St Paul's whose dust covered inside and the wrecked altar we saw later that day.

There was a unit of three searchlights in a field to the west of Witches Lane (now built over) which was bombed, damaging the largest searchlight. We sat, frightened, in our shelter listening to the whistle of the falling six bombs and their explosions, some bombs had whistles fixed to their fins. The garage and house were only slightly damaged and the unlatched doors and windows flew open. The twin engines of the German bombers were unsynchronised producing a 'zoom-zoom' noise. During the Blitz the bath had 6 inches of cold water in it for use in case of incendiaries.

The blitz fizzled out in 1941 with only sporadic nuisance raids by fast fighter-bombers, ME1009s, FW190s etc. The instruction to pupils on trains being strafed was to lie down on the floor.

1944 It became obvious military moves were afoot early during the summer. Open-ended Nissen huts appeared by the road to Ide Hill followed by the storage of ammunition and crates of explosives but no guards. At school we were told not to touch them or the anti personnel bombs dropped by visiting German aircraft known as 'butterfly' bombs because of their opened shape.

Many military vehicles were lined up under the trees in Knole Park, each with a five pointed white star painted on them. Convoys of troops and stores went through the village and temporary tented camps set up; eg Canadians on Limpsfield Chart.

In the evening many high vapour trails leading southwards were to be seen in the sky; Allied bombers on their way to attack Northern France.

In early 1944 the pupils were lined up outside the school by the side of Amhurst Hill to cheer General Montgomery passing by in a large khaki coloured car on his way to lunch at Knole. After school I saw him in the distance from my mother's bedroom window addressing his troops on Chipstead Common.

Our local here was Hedley Hazleden, who went to Riverhead School and whose father lived in Chipstead Lane. One day, he brought his Lancaster bomber low over the village with his crew waving from the windows. Later he became the chief test pilot for Handley Page and did a similar low pass over Riverhead in his prototype V Bomber.

It was a great shock when the V1s (doodlebugs) arrived one summer's night. By this time everyone slept upstairs and we awoke to rumbles in the sky and the sight of small flames going overhead. In the previous weeks metal mesh aprons appeared in fields and commons rumoured to be the site of 'death rays'.

One afternoon a large RAF convoy came and parked on Chipstead Common to form the tented local HQ for barrage balloons. The local balloon brought down a V1 but its severed cable snagged the telephone wires in Chipstead Lane. My mother let many of the airmen have hot baths and I think, in return we were given sugar, butter and other rationed food. She also 'adopted' a balloon crew stationed near Polhill railway tunnel and we would cycle there with fruitcakes. One day their balloon brought down a V1 in a nearby cabbage field with the shredded plants radiating from the small crater. It was said that if there were no barrage balloons up in the sky it was a sure sign of forthcoming bad weather.

I saw the destruction of two airborne V1s. The first was when a RAF pilot placed the wing of his aircraft close to that of a V1 rocket destabilising the missile's controlling gyroscope causing it to crash near Sundridge. The second was early one morning when a V1 was hit by machine gun fire from the local Home Guard unit causing the missile to explode in mid air.

The V2 rockets followed the V1s but fortunately their launch sites were over run by Allied troops fairly quickly.

In 1945 when VE Day came we hung some old Christmas Lights in the front of the house in the shape of a 'V'. There was a large bonfire on the common with an effigy of Hitler on it. Similar festivities took place on VJ night but with a Japanese figure instead.

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