大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Robin Payne, on behalf of Ken Johnson, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

For as long as I can remember, there has been a certain book in our house. Published in 1933, it contains hundreds of photographs of events mainly from 1914 to 1918, lots of wounded and dead people, ruined towns and devastation in what people called 鈥楾he War鈥� or 鈥楾he Great War鈥�. Oddly enough, the title of the book is 鈥楾he First World War鈥�, as if there was going to be another one. Knowing this book so well, my reaction when we heard Mr Chamberlain鈥檚 broadcast on 3 September 1939 was perhaps natural for a nine year old. I burst into tears and ran into my bedroom, where my mother came to comfort me and tell me it would be all right. I still don鈥檛 know whether she believed that herself.

Curiously enough, things were all right for us. I hated the smell of the rubber gas mask that I had to try on for size when someone (air raid wardens, I suppose) came round with them for everybody; but for many months I duly carried mine to school and back in its thick cardboard box. We never had to use gas masks, but I did learn how to put it on and make the loud farting noises at the side of my face as I breathed out. Small boards on posts, like bird tables, painted sickly green, appeared all over the town, and we were told they would change colour if the Nazis attacked us with poison gas. They never did, but it was part of the interesting possibilities that made life almost fun. Square brick huts on street corners were there to be emergency shelters during air raids, and there were deep covered trenches in the Town Square gardens, though I don鈥檛 know of anybody going into any of them, for there were no air raids in Letchworth.

The wailing sirens were frequent, but there were no bombs, no devastation here. The blackout was simply what we had to do, not letting out any chink of light through the heavy black curtains after dark. Everyone carried a torch at night, but they had to be masked with tissue paper and never, ever, pointed upwards. Coming home in the train from London at night was interesting, for the light in each compartment was also masked so that only a dim strip of light fell on passengers鈥� knees. If there was a corridor, there would just be a blue-painted bulb at the end of each carriage; and you had to know the stations, because the name boards were removed in order to confuse the German parachutists who were expected at any time. Walking in the countryside was also a good training in initiative, for all signposts had been taken away for the same reason, and the only map you might have was possibly a pre-war motoring map on a small scale. I longed for the Ordnance Survey one-inch to be on sale again, but these were unobtainable until about 1944, when a few small sheets of the 鈥淪econd War Revision 1940鈥� were released with military grid numbers overprinted. I still have them, for their historical interest.

Other things remembered from pre-war days of course included Rice Krispies, bananas, and ice cream, all of which disappeared completely for about six years. My mother had to get a letter from my art teacher before she was allowed to buy me a paintbox. Newspapers were all reduced in size to four pages but remained at the pre-war price of one penny. The wireless was the main source of news, as well as entertainment like the unmissable 鈥淚tma鈥� once a week, but frequently the evening programmes were very hard to hear because the power of the transmitters was reduced, which was presumably to make things more difficult for enemy aircraft. On some nights we heard the steady low throb of German bombers passing on their way to places such as Coventry. The in 1944 when going to stay with my aunt in Finsbury Park, we head one evening the destructive sound of a V1 flying bomb or 鈥渄oodlebug鈥�. As it suddenly ceased, my aunt said the one word 鈥淕liding鈥�, and we all held our breath until a distant boom was enough to assure us that one had missed us. Next time we went to stay in Finsbury Park (which was an odd thing to do at the time) the V2 rockets were the main feature by day or night, and I remember being in the house while my mother and aunt were out shopping. I was quite aware that at any moment a V2 might kill either them or me, but this didn鈥檛 worry me at all. One evening while I was just going to bed, the windows of the bedroom, and the front door, were blown in by some enemy missile (bomb or rocket) which we later found had killed a lot of people in Green Lanes nearby. This is really my only genuine war story, except for an earlier occasion in 1943 when staying with my cousin Jean who was then living at Cullane in East Lothian. Her young brother Peter and I went exploring one afternoon over the golf links, which like the rest of the British coastline were closed to public access with barbed wire and other obstacles. We had been watching a Beau fighter bomber circling over Aberlady Bay making practice runs with cannon fire on a range we could not see. Soon as we wandered among the dunes, Peter and I thought the firing was rather close, and so dived into one of the golf bunkers. The aircraft stopped circling, and an airman appeared on the near skyline, shouting something at us, so we hurried back the way we had come.

One other hindrance to the war effort was with another cousin, David, three months older than myself, when he came to stay a few days in Letchworth. Where the present 鈥淣exus鈥� building now stands was the grassy wasteland, with a large brick static water tank for use by the National Fire Service. Idly throwing a few stones into it, as any twelve-year-old boys would do, we were rightly ordered to stop and clear off by a special constable, and did as we were told.

A better example was the time at school when I spent two or three weeks collecting pennies and halfpennies from anyone who would put them in my tin to help the Red Cross fund for prisoners of war in Germany. When we opened the tin and found I had collected the splendid sum of five pounds, my mother took the money to the bank and exchanged it for a large white 拢5 note 鈥� the first I had ever seen 鈥� which was sent to the Red Cross.

Italian prisoners of war were employed in road work for a while, and some waved cheerfully as I walked to school. A very di9fferent experience was one summer afternoon when there were some one-act plays being staged at school in the evening, and rather than walk home and back again, I decided to take a stroll to Willian and along Baldock Lane. I knew the route previously, but did not know that Letchworth Gate had been closed to the public and was being used to store quantities of tanks in preparation for the 鈥淪econd Front鈥� invasion of France. There was no barrier from Baldock Lane, so I simply trotted on, staring at the lines of huge fighting vehicles, until I found an armed sentry at the Baldock Road end. He turned and said 鈥淲here鈥檇 you come from?鈥� so I told him, wondering if I would be arrested. But he merely said 鈥淕et off, then,鈥� and I hurried back to school along the A505.

Next year, on 6 June 1944, while crossing this road on my way home, I had the unforgettable sight of many gliders being towed southward, just above the elm trees that have now vanished. The white painted stripes around the aircraft, for easy identification, were a striking sight that has stayed with me ever since.

Another lingering image is from a day in London shortly after the Blitz. We were in a bus going along Oxford Street, and through the diamond-shaped space in the netting (which was glued to the windows to stop them being shattered) I glimpsed the front of the John Lewis shop, open to the street, with rolls of drapery on the shelves, blackened by fire.

For some years, it seemed, some of the buses in London and at home were different colours. The bright green of our Eastern National services was changed to a dull grey, either as camouflage or for economy, and it was not unusual to find oneself getting on a blue or maroon bus from some entirely different company in a midland or northern town. During that stay in East Lothian in 1943, we travelled in single-decker Scottish Motor Traction company buses which were fuelled by gas from balloon-like containers which they towed on small trailers. It was not unusual anywhere to see private cars 鈥� such as were still used 鈥� with these silvery gas containers billowing on their roof racks.

There is no denying that for a small boy, well away from the cities, World War 2 was not horrifying but interesting, and sometimes almost fun. We saw terrible things from other places at the cinema in the Gaumont British News (鈥淏ringing the truth to the Free People of the World!鈥�) and if the air raid siren went, the lights came up and the typed notice on the screen invited people to go and take shelter if they wished to do so, but no one did. This kind of fun had finished by 1945, and there was that newsreel when they added red light at the bottom of the screen when the title came on without the usual music, and then we saw for the first time what had been discovered at Duchenwald and Belsen. And that was sixty years ago.

Sixty years ago today, all the excitement of the war reports was over, and I wondered what kind of news could be found for the papers which had already grown to six pages a day. Everything was still rationed, though they hadn鈥檛 even started to include bread or potatoes (which came later) but we had been able to buy flags of the Allies and tie them on a string outside the front windows. When we came home from walking round looking at lights showing freely in the darkness, and people dancing and singing in the Arena and other open spaces, then we discovered that someone had come in and cut the string and stolen the Soviet flag, and we never found out who or why. But after all, it didn鈥檛 matter.

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