大象传媒

Typed by a UCN Community Volunteer

鈥淭he day war broke out鈥� I remember very well. It was on Sunday, 3rd September 1939 and I was at home with the family. At 11.15am the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced over the air waves that we were at 鈥渨ar with Germany.鈥� Almost immediately the air raid siren sounded its warning. I went into our front room (hardly ever used!) to look out of the windows on the street to see what was going on. There was nothing to see or hear, and the all-clear sounded shortly afterwards.

Memory can play tricks at times, I know, and this happened 50 odd years ago. I must confess that I have never been 100% certain of the details of this day which changed our lives so much.

However, much later whilst reading Winston Churchill鈥檚 鈥淭he Second World War,鈥� first published in 1948, I came across something that confirmed that, in this case, my memory had not let me down. In Volume II Chapter 1, 鈥淲ar,鈥� of this great work, he writes:

鈥淭he Prime Minister鈥檚 broadcast informed us that we were already at war, and he had scarcely ceased speaking when a strange, prolonged wailing noise, afterwards to become familiar, broke upon the ear. My wife came into the room braced by the crisis and commented favourably upon the German promptitude and precision, and we went up to the flat top of the house to see what was going on.鈥�

He describes how they made their way to the shelter designated for them, and then continues, 鈥淎fter about ten minutes had passed the wailing broke out again. I was myself not sure that this was not a reiteration of the previous warning, but a man came running along the street shouting, 鈥淎ll clear,鈥� and we dispersed to our dwellings and went about our business.鈥�

These were sounds and activities which would become all too familiar in the next few years.

Having passed the 11+ examination earlier that same year (much to the surprise of the Headmistress of Bromley Road Junior Mixed School, Beckenham, a Miss Turner), I was looking forward to starting at the grammar school (Beckenham and Penpe Grammar School for Boys) that fateful September. Adolf Hitler had different ideas! He had ordered his troops into Poland on the 1st and, as we have seen, by the 3rd we were at war.

So my school career was set back about a month while some shelters were being constructed at the school and brick walls were built to make the gymnasium as safe as possible. They would eventually come into frequent use.

At first nothing much seemed to be happening on the home front, at least nothing that affected us directly. Once we got to school in October daily life went on much as usual. Then, in 1940, things really hotted up. Dunkirk was followed by the Battle of Britain.

When the Allied forces were rescued from the beaches of the French port under the noses of the enemy, and then brought safely to England by the armada of little ships, we thought it was nothing short of a miracle.

Beyond the playing fields at the back of our school ran a railway line from the South coast. Many of the returning troops passed by in trains going to London. Sometimes a train would stop opposite the school. We would raid the tuck shop, scramble up the embankment to the train and share the goodies with the soldiers. Some of us tried out our French, for not all the men were British. My recollection is that the ones we saw looked so tired and dishevelled.

Later that year (late summer) came the Battle of Britain fought entirely in the air and won eventually by the marvellous 鈥淔ew鈥� of the R.A.F. The odds against them were overwhelming and afterwards we realised that if their struggle had been lost, the way would have been wide open for a Nazi invasion of our islands. With mastery in the air in German hands it is difficult to think that anything could have stopped their onslaught had they decided to cross the Channel.

That summer the skies always seemed to be clear and blue. Some of the dog-fights between R.A.F. and Luftwaffe planes took place over head in the daylight hours. (We lived in Beckenham, Kent, just to the South-east of London). Biggin Hill and Croyden airfields were fairly near us. We used to stand outside in the garden and watch the battles thousands of feet above us. The climax came on August 15th when 180 enemy aircraft were shot down.

I have no way of remembering the precise timing of what came next. But I do know that soon after the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz on London began and all-night raids became part of every day life for weeks (if not months) and I can remember individual incidents which happened both night and day during the months when Hitler sought to bomb us into submission.

To begin with we had neither an 鈥淎nderson鈥� nor a 鈥淢orrison鈥� shelter. We used to huddle together as best we could under the stairs from about 6pm to 6am on each night there were raids.

My father was an air raid warden and had certain duties, including fire-watching at various times. He had an armband and a steel helmet with A.R.P. on it. We learned to use a stirrup-pump in case of emergency, but fortunately never had to use one ourselves. Our own home suffered only superficial damage from bomb blast and shrapnel.

During the Autumn of 1940 London suffered particularly heavy raids. Other places suffered as well. I remember watching the smoke rise from the London docks when the Germans tried to set that area alight with incendiary bombs.

Memories of happenings during air raids

Although our house did not suffer any serious damage and no one was injured, we knew others nearby who suffered and lost a great deal, and in some cases people were tragically killed.

One family we knew was completely wiped out. They lived in a nearby road called Greenways. News came to us that their house had been bombed. We knew nothing more than that and so one day we made our way round there to have a look. Imagine our feelings when we reached their home 鈥� there was nothing left but a few bits of brick and mortar lying about where the house had stood. They and their property had been blown to smithereens by a landmine. There was nothing worse for the destruction caused than the landmines which came down on parachutes and caused horrendous destruction. Sometimes the chutes got caught up in trees and remained a threat just hanging there. I saw one or two.

The drone of bombers, the whistle of falling bombs, and the noise of ack-ack guns were familiar sounds by the end of 1940 鈥� and there was still a lot more to come.

I am not sure when we finally got our 鈥淢orrison鈥� shelter. It was made of steel and was set up in the lounge at the back of our house. It sounds incredible, but the fact is that my father always slept on top of it 鈥� thus defeating the object of the exercise to protect oneself from anything falling on top of you as a result of a bomb. He found that it was too claustrophobic underneath where 4 or 5 of us, male and female, slept night after night during air raids. Modesty never came into it. One night we just could not get ourselves into the right positions for comfort. After a lot of tossing and turning we eventually finished up somehow rolling out of the shelter on to the floor and lying there in our night clothes laughing our heads off to the accompaniment of bombs and anti-aircraft gunfire.

I can recall wallpaper being stripped from the wall by blast from bombs which also took a small segment from an ornamental plate on the wall in our hall just inside the front door. No damage was done to the door or its glass panel. Blast caused some very strange things to happen.

On one occasion I was standing just outside the door which led from our living room into the garden. A bomb fell before I could get inside under my own steam but, in the event, the blast did it for me. In a flash I found myself on the other side not only of the outside door but also of the door on the far side of the room. How I got there I have never been able to fathom.

My father had a tale which presumably had been passed on by a colleague in the A.R.P. service. He swore that it was true. A woman was caught in the open during a raid and, fearful for her safety, went down some steps into what she thought was an air raid shelter. In fact it was a gentlemen鈥檚 convenience. Being asked about the experience afterwards she was reported as saying something like this, 鈥淭here wasn鈥檛 anything down there to frighten me!鈥�

My mother and I were visiting a friend nearby when a raid started. When there appeared to be a lull we decided to go home. Coming out of the front door we were terrified to see a pall of smoke rising up, as it seemed to be coming from just about where my father鈥檚 business premises were situated (he was in the building trade). I rushed round expecting to see the premises damaged, but they were still in one piece. Someone else had suffered that time. When I went into the front of the building my father was nowhere to be found. I walked through towards the back and then he appeared. He had gone to shelter in the storeroom where he kept his paint, etc. While there the blast from the bomb falling had shaken one of the shelves and one of the cans full of paint had fallen and hit him on the head. He was in a daze when I saw him and hardly knew what had happened to him. We laughed about it afterwards.

On the way home from school one afternoon there was an air raid warning in operation and the German planes were flying unusually low. (It may be they were interested in the railway line.) Soon after leaving the school there was a distinct sound of machine-gun fire in the vicinity.

My father had a clergyman friend (retired, I think) for whom he used to do some work from time to time. He lived in a large house in Copes Cope Road which was then what I think was known as 鈥渦n-adopted鈥�. At any rate it was very rough and uneven. My father was allowed to work an allotment in the very large garden. It was our bit towards 鈥淒ig for Victory鈥�.

One Saturday afternoon I was cycling with my father down to the allotment probably to get some produce. There was an air raid warning on at the time, but we went anyway. Suddenly, the dreaded sound of a doodle bug reached our ears. The thing about this kind of pilotless bomb was that, as soon as its engine cut out, you knew that it was about to come down, but you could never have any idea where it would land. We carried on cycling and then, when the sound of the engine cut out, we looked at each other, jumped off our bikes and threw them down, and rushed for the front wall of the nearest house. We were safe there lying on the ground behind the wall in someone鈥檚 front garden.

Helping the war effort from school

Once or twice we went from school to Hawkhurst (where David Gower went to school) and a place in Kent to help gather in the harvest. We slept in local schools and halls. We wielded pitchforks to make haystacks. We picked plums, which played havoc with our bowels, even when we resisted the temptation to eat them. On of the farmers, I recall, said that we could have as much bread and water as we liked. It was jolly hard work. The summers mostly were hot and dry. I don鈥檛 know how it came about, but I definitely had a drink of Kent cider during one of those visits to the country. It was very potent and when I got back to 鈥渂arracks鈥� I felt terrible. The room just would not keep still. I have never touched a drop since!

Examinations

In mid-summer 1944 before the war ended I sat for my General Schools Certificate (the equivalent of O鈥檒evels). During the period of the examination, which we sat in the bricked-up gym, air raids happened, and sometimes we had to go down into the underground shelter. We were on our honour not to discuss the paper with fellow pupils. No doubt the invigilators accompanied us to check on us.

I found out many years later when I read his obituary in the Daily Telegraph that one of our teachers, Harry Ra茅 (he taught French) was, in fact, a British agent who went to France in the war to work under cover.

In general, life in school went on pretty normally in spite of the incidents mentioned previously. We managed to keep our sports going very well 鈥� rugby, tennis, hockey, cricket. We had regular house matches and matches against other schools.

After his failure to gain mastery in the air in the Battle of Britain, followed by a concerted Blitz Krieg on the civilian population which failed to cause us to come in, Hitler unleashed two further deadly weapons at us: the Doodle Bug and the VI Rocket. No warning could be given of the approach of the Rockets. The first anyone knew about them was when they landed and exploded. There was nothing to indicate when they were coming.

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