´óÏó´«Ã½

I was only five years old when WW2 started and like many other children I was evacuated from London, in my case to a farm near Letchworth in Hertfordshire, the city where in fact I had been born. But since Hitler spent the first autumn and winter of the war trying to digest what was left of Poland the prediction that London would soon be devastated by mass bomber raids did not occur. The result was that by the spring of 1940 my parents decided to bring me back home to Barnes in south west London. I am not quite clear what happened next but it appears that when the Fuehrer learnt that I had returned safely to London he flew into a rage and ordered the Blitzkrieg in the West!
There is no need for me to recount the familiar swift march of events that followed, except to state that from the start of the Battle of Britain to the end of the war I remained in London. Most people that had to endure the bombing raids on the cities of Britain can claim to have had several close shaves during the attacks, and I am no exception. But the incident that almost did finish me, and which left the most dramatic impression of the war on my young mind, did not occur until the second Sunday of October 1944.
By then I was ten years of age and suffering badly from Asthma, but my parents had managed to get me a place in a convalescent home run by catholic nuns on the edge of Epping Forest. Early that morning about one hundred boys and several dozen nuns were mustered in the convent chapel for the Holy Communion mass. I do not recall hearing the Air Raid siren, but about halfway through the service we all became suddenly aware of a V1 that was rapidly approaching. The deep and all too familiar throbbing sound of its pulse jet engine was unmistakable. The usual way that these ‘Doodle Bugs’ attacked was to fly straight and level under power until they reached their target, then the engine would cut out, and there would be a pregnant silence while it dived, swiftly followed by a terrific explosion. But something must have gone wrong with our V1 because it was clearly diving under full power. The throbbing sound soon seemed to make everything in the chapel vibrate in unison with it. We boys leapt to our feet and looked anxiously at each other and the Nuns, wondering why we didn’t try to race for the shelters. But the priest calmly continued with the service, and since the Nuns were certainly not going to quit the chapel without his approval, they grabbed us and pushed us down in between the pews and then knelt over us, praying furiously for deliverance!
I think that by this stage if you had been standing outside the convent you would have seen a diving V1, with its engine still flaming like a torch, clear the chapel roof by the narrowest of margins. In fact it hit the ground several hundred yards beyond our buildings. Fortunately, there was only a farm across the road and the V1 exploded harmlessly in a freshly ploughed field.
Inside the chapel at the moment of impact the whole building appeared to leap a foot into the air and I heard the crashing sound of all the alter ornaments falling to the floor. I dared to raise my head and peer over the top of the pew, and through a swirling white mist (which may have been ceiling dust) I saw the priest still standing at the alter holding the chalice high above his head!
I don’t know whether it was due to the shock effect of the attack but it seemed only a moment later that I was standing outside the chapel in a milling crowd of boys, who like myself, were absolutely stunned to find that the convalescent home was still standing.
There is a happy ending to this story because that afternoon my parents came to visit me. When my mother’s eye measured the distance between the home and the huge crater in the field she marched straight in to see the Mother Superior and demanded that I must pack my bags and return home with her that very day. For as she explained to me as we walked out of the gates, if we are going to die in this war we are all going to go together!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.