大象传媒

When the war began in September 1939, three related households of our family left their respective homes in Walthamstow or Hackney and took a large house in Horsham. When there was no bombing or other enemy action for the period now referred to, as the `phoney` war, one of the households decided that `it is not going to amount to anything` and that they would return home. My mother did not share this view but my father could not sustain the mortgage repayments on the house in Hackney together with the whole of the rent in Horsham , so we returned home too.

The raids began, and we would leave our beds and come into the living room and sit under the dining table. One morning I woke in my father`s bed and he told me that he had sent my mother to hospital to have her new baby delivered. He could not leave me alone and so she had gone on her own, with a helpful cab driver.

We then moved to South Hackney where my grandfather`s house had an `Anderson Shelter`. Only my father`s sister her husband and their daughter at who at 6, was two months older than me, were there and there was room for us. It was felt that `under the table ` was no place for a nursing mother. The blitz had begun in earnest and so the first bedroom that my brother Christopher, later to become a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet, and to win a CBE, for services to the theatre, had to sleep in was an air raid shelter in the garden.

After a week or two when the raids showed no signs of abating, my mother and my aunt together with two six year olds and a baby in arms decided to go down to Westhumble, a village in Surrey at the foot of Box Hill, where my mother`s sister had been `evacuated` by the LCC as a teacher. We took a taxi to Waterloo which was temporarily out of action from `enemy action`. We were told we must go to Clapham Junction. The sympathetic cab driver said that he would like to take us there , but was nearly out of petrol. He found a colleague, with enough petrol, who was anxious to help a family with children and a baby. Soon after we arrived at Clapham Junction the air raid siren went and a policeman told my mother that as she had a baby in arms she must go in the shelter. My mother did not want to miss the train and hid in the ladies lavatory.

We scrambled into the train as best we could, and found ourselves in the first class. Soon after it began to move, we could hear an aeroplane over head and machine guns shooting. Whether the train was being straffed I do not know, but a man in the compartment put the cushions from the seats over the windows , just in case. We reached Box Hill station without further incident, and next day after much walking and entreating, a kind farmer let us have a tied cottage on the understanding that we would move if he needed it. He did not do do until 1944 and then gave us time to search for alternative accommodation

II

Shortly after Christmas 1943, one side of the dual carriageway to the west of Box Hill which ran from Leatherhead to Dorking North station was closed and fenced off with barbed wire. A week or two later it began to fill with military vehicles of all kinds, including amphibious ones. One day two soldiers asked my cousin John and I (we were 7 and 9 respectively) if we would like a ride in a `jeep` . We said that we would and they took us up nearly to Leatherhead. When we were there, they saw two officers and so they put us in a stack of tyres until the officers had passed. They then took us back . The soldiers, many of whom had children of their own, were always kind to us.

One day later that year we woke to find that all the vehicles had suddenly disappeared. Two days later we were told by the ladies serving school meals in St. Martin`s church Hall that the 鈥淒鈥� landings ngs in Normandy had taken place.

III

Later in 1944, I stood on the pavement in Westhumble opposite the public house called the `Railway Arms`. It is still there but is now called `The Stepping Stones`. As I stood there, I saw a large number of aeroplanes towing gliders. They were passing just south of Box Hill and travelling in a roughly South - Easterly direction. I did not know what they were doing, nor did my mother when I got home. A day or two later we did know because then the news of the airborne landings at Arnhem broke.

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