大象传媒

Growing up in the Second World War.

I was born in January 1935 which made me four and nine months on the out break of war on 3rd September 1939.
Although very young I can distinctly remember my father going off to war from Watford Junction Railway station in 1940. In those days the Bakerloo line on the London Underground terminated over ground at Watford and my father was saying good bye from the door of a carriage when the doors closed catching his trilby hat. Strange the little things we remember even when so young. He had been a regular soldier serving in India before meeting my mother so he had been "called to the colours" as he put it in later life.
He was part of the British Expeditionary Force and was evacuated from Dunkirk in one of the many ships and boats. As far as I can remember he came home for a few days only to be sent out to North Africa as part of the 8th Army. We received letters and the odd parcel from him from time to time and after the victory against Rommel he was posted to India, familiar territory to him, where he eventually joined Wingate's original column fighting the Japanese as a Chindit.
During this time, as a child, the war seemed unreal to me until the day the Germans bombed in our road. There was a munitions factory at the top of the road and one night the sirens sounded but there was no time to get out of bed and go to the shelter before the bombs started falling. Later I learnt that it was something called a Molotov Bread Basket which had been dropped containing incendiaries one of which slid down the roof of the bedroom I was sleeping in,into next doors garden. Every house had a bucket of sand, a bucket of water and a styrrup pump and the man next door was so nervous that he threw all three out of his bedroom window which did not help in the least.
We had relatives in Coventry and my mother thought that it would be a good idea to evacuate me to live up there during the bombing but the first night the Luftwaffe decided to bomb Coventry so the next day we caught the first train home. Another vivid memory was of a "Doodle Bug" (Flying Bomb). It was a bright summer's day; I had been playing in some woods where my friends and I should not have been as they were part of the grounds for a girl's private school. We heard this noise like a motor cycle engine and looking up saw this aircraft trailing smoke as we thought. It was a V1 Flying Bomb of course. The motor suddenly cut out and my friends and I ran for the high railings which bordered the woods to get out into the open,although I don't know what good that would have done had it landed near us. The others made it but I was in the process of clambering over when there was an enormous explosion followed by a blast of hot air which literally blew me off of the railings onto some soft grass. We later found that the bomb had destroyed two bungalows a short distance away.
By 1945 I was 10 years old and still at Callowland Junior School which meant that I had not seen my father for 5 years. One day I remained in the class room finishing some work after school when a boy came in and said that there was an Australian soldier waiting at the gate asking for me; of course it was my dad complete with bush hat having come straight home on leave from Burma. My mother was still at work as like all wives of servicemen she had to support us while my father was away.
It was quite amusing when a story circulated finally reaching my grand mother intimated that my mother was going out with an Australian while dad was away.
I cherished that bush hat but one day it went missing and found that my mother had thrown it into the dust bin; she said "you don't know where that dirty thing has been and it probably had a lot of bugs in it"
There are many more memories like cooking chips in a tin lid over a candle down the air raid shelter and perhaps I will write them all down one day for my grand children and great grand children to read.
My generation were only children and too young to go to war but we were all part of history.
It would a nice thought that when I have shuffled off of this mortal coil it will be recorded and read by someone.
Cyril Print

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