大象传媒

Date of birth 28th February 1926. First school Hamstel Road School, Southend on Sea (Infants). Then Rochford Junior and Senior School, Rochford Essex. At 13 years old I had a bad mastoid right ear and had an operation done by a German doctor who wasn't sure I would survive in Rochford hospital.
This was the time of the beginning of the WW11.
THE QUIET BEFORE THE STORM.
We were used to hearing the Royal Artillery guns at Shoeburyness and near, and as time went on we began to hear the rumble of the fighting at Dunkerque. This was a time of great excitement to my three pals, Jacky and Jimmy Bryant and Duggy Mays and myself, as the RAF had taken over Rochford Air Field for a squadron of Bristol Blenheim's and there were 4 anti-aircraft guns in the fields at the bottom of the garden. After a short stop the Blenheims left and 54(F) Squadron Spitfires came from Hornchurch to replace them. (I think the Blenheims were shot down trying to bomb the invasion barges in the French ports).
My Dad had built an air raid shelter at the bottom of our garden. I can remember being in there cold, and listening to the guns of the German Bombers overhead in the darkness.
Us lads used to go to the golf links finding golf balls, and we had little clubs and bows and arrows. We used to lend the RAF 'bods' them. One day a pilot said to me, "Would you like to sit in my Spitfire"? Well I couldn't get back to school quick enough and brag about it! "Pull the stick back" he said, "push forward" he said, "then left and right". (I realised in later years that I was doing his Rigger's check, who was missing). He said "Press the red button with your thumb". "No" I said, as I expected 8 machine guns to fire, and the houses near Warners Bridge on the far side of the airfield to vanish in a hail of lead! I didn't know that the guns would not fire unless the engine was running and the safety catch was on.

One of my school pals, Nonny Hails lived on a farm, and a ME 109 was shot down in a field. He went out to look in the hole it was in, and the German pilot's mate shot at him. Nonny also found a cannon shell in the mud, and started to scratch it with a pin. It exploded and he lost his fingers. Dangerous times, land mines, sea mines, butterfly mines in trees. One Home Guard saw what he thought was a man hung up in the trees by his parachute and challenged him, but it was a mine. If it hadn't caught up in the trees there wouldn't have been any Home Guard!

My Aunt Edna, who lived in Great Wakering about 4 miles from us, bought me a sweet over. This was a lovely surprise as we hadn't seen sweets for quite some time. I dashed off to school and was sucking this sweet in class. When the teacher said, "Are you eating a sweet in class"? "Yes sir" I said. "Go and wait outside Mr Wallace Cox, the headmaster's study". I was out there for a while before he came along and asked me that I was doing there. I then received one stroke of the cane from Wallace Cox, and it didn't half hurt, but things were different in school those days.
One thing us children used to do was wander around the street picking up anti-aircraft gun shell splinters. We soon learned to make sure that the bits had cooled off before picking them up. We used to have competitions to see who could find the biggest bits. (Like conkers, I suppose).

My Dad was a bricklayer working on Rayleigh School, and others. Large numbers of younger men had been called up for the forces, so work was on the short side, a few air raid shelters, that's all.
The guns in the field at the back had been moved 400 yards into the school playing field and the troops who had helped themselves from our apple trees were sleeping in the school.

Knowing that the war was coming, my parents thought it would be safer to move to Swindon where they had friends, for the duration of the war. So our bungalow in Rochford was locked up, and the furniture van came and took us to Swindon.
No more sea fishing, no more rabbits for dinner. I didn't like Swindon very much!
Dad and I went for a cycle ride down Regent Street. Everyone was waving to us. Dad said,
"They are a sociable lot here aren't they"?
But is was pointed out to us that we were going the wrong way down a one way street!
We were living in a big house in Broad Street in rooms. Dad got a job in the East Street Co-op Dairy, and I got a job at the Kingshill Co-op Bakery. There were three
Co-op shops in Swindon in those days. The other being in Henry Street.

One night while fast asleep in bed, an almighty bang really woke me up! A bomb had dropped in Roseberry Street. Some of the dead had just moved from London to Swindon to get away from the bombing there. I began to wonder if we wouldn't have been safer in Rochford!
I thought it was about time I did something
back to the Germans, so I left the Kingshill Co-op and went to work for Short Brothers in the Stirling Bombers Factory at Blunsdon. I was glad to get off the Co-op bread round, as I had 'snow blindness' (headaches all the time), so I was happier working a lot of the nights. Except for one night, a German aircraft came over. The red lights on the roof had gone on warning that danger was close. I got from the top of the aircraft fuselage, down the planks, then the ladder, and strolled towards the shelter entrance. I got about 15 feet from it, when the lights went out as seven bombs hit the power lines at Haydon Wick. In the darkness I dived towards where I thought the shelter entrance was, and hit the brick wall. A painful job that was!
One Blunsdon foreman came round and asked if I wanted work on the Bomb Floors. This was a reserved job that would stop me being called up for the forces. As I had enough of Germans by this time, I declined, so I was called up for the Army 16th March 1944. If I had stayed in the aircraft factory, I expect I should, with my luck, have ended up in Palestine in 1946 anyway, as a National Service man.

We had a canteen in the Blunsdon factory. Sometimes in the lunch break we would have concert parties for entertainment. Some of the workers were quite good comics, singers etc. We also had Stirling Bomber crews come and give talks on how the Stirlings were stronger than Lancasters, which, if they had to ditch, would break in the middle of the bomb bays.
We had RAF blokes working in the factory as well. All the females had green overalls. I remember an incident that caused some talk, when a fitter said to his girl mate, "Go underneath and put this long drill through the pilots seat holding holes"! Unfortunately he was in the wrong place, sat on the bomb floor at the time, the drill went up through his scrotum (painful) It could be dangerous in the factories then as now!

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