大象传媒

In September 1939 I had just completed four weeks holiday at the school camp at Seaton, Devon. Fifty or so tanned and happy boys crowded onto the train to Waterloo Station London, many of them with tins of Devonshire cream for Mum bearing the imprint of sooty fingers on the contents as we checked from time to time that it hadn't gone bad.

The weeks before we left for camp had been concerned with preparations for war, collecting gas masks, reading all about air-raid precautions, and listening to the news on the "wireless". While we were away our parents must have received details of arrangements to move children to the relative safety of the country should war break out. As kids we weren't concerned about such things. Adults doubtless fretted and worried but schoolboys carried on much as before, collecting cigarette cards, playing cricket in the street, hanging about outside the Arsenal stadium for autographs, etc. So when I was told by Mum that I had to go to school with my gas mask in its cardboard box, a little suitcase with a few clothes and some sandwiches for lunch, I was surprised as the summer holidays were still in force. However I went off on the bus and found all my school pals were there in the Hall with a large number of others from various forms. We sat in groups and played cards to while away the time and for about three or four days we went back home at around 4pm. Then one day we were formed up in the playground with our suit-cases, gas masks and lunchboxes, and we marched out of the school gate in a long crocodile. We walked the length of Blackstock Road, all the way to Finsbury Park Station, where we boarded a steam train that took us up the line to Kimbolton in what was then Huntingdonshire. At least that is what I have learned from a conversation with an old school friend some years ago. My own memory has been wiped totally regarding all the events of that day (probably the last of August or the start of September 1939). It is only now that I realise what a traumatic time some children must have experienced then. Some of them would have been little tots who perhaps had never before left their parents. Some would have been unwell, some would have been travel-sick, some would have wet themselves (or worse), some were doubtless hungry, frightened and unhappy. Left in the care of teachers who only knew them as pupils - teachers themselves worried, harrassed and in unfamiliar waters - it must have been chaotic for some groups.

As far as we were concerned it was not very far, just up the line to Kimbolton, where we gathered in the village hall and awaited our fate. Our poor mothers knew nothing but the fact that we didn't arrive home from school at the usual time. In fact we didn't come home at all, until some months had elapsed. We were now "Evacuees". We spoke with a strange accent to which the locals were not attuned, and we had absolutely no idea about animals and country matters generally. For a long time we had no schooling at all which we thought was grand. I was billeted, with two or three other lads, on what I came to learn was a smallholding - a little farm run by a tenant farmer, who lived with a wife and two little kids in a small house at the edge of the village. How the billeting officer came to place anyone at all in this house was a matter for conjecture, because they were ill - equipped to deal with "guests". The evacuees all slept together on the floor of the parlour, in which was kept all the best furniture. Mice ran over us in the night and left their droppings on the bed clothes. I don't think we ever even washed let alone bathed, and at least one boy went to bed in his clothes, but put his pyjamas over the top ! Oddly enough we were totally happy. We got the cows in for milking in the evening, and stayed playing hide and seek for ages in the barns which smelled of sweet hay which we had never experienced before. During the day we sometimes "helped" the farmer. I remember gathering sheaves of corn and arranging them into "stooks" so that they dried in the wind and sun. We would take a cart pulled by two horses in tandem up a hill to a farmyard where we would fork off the straw onto a stack, then a couple would go back on the cart while one "rode" the spare horse along behind .Riding simply involved hanging on grimly with legs stretched to their limits across the back of the great animal. The country was just one big adventure-park for many of the evacuees, but the animals were somewhat disconcerting. At first we were a bit wary of the cows, expecting to be tossed in the air by horns or trampled underfoot, but within a week or so we could round them up for milking like old hands. Horses were not so placid as we were to discover when the farmer announced "Squire's 'osses are out on the road". Whereupon he opened a gate to his field, stationed us across the road a yard or so beyond this gate, and made his way along behind the hedge to come back into the road behind the unwary animals. Suddenly he waved his cap and whooped and hollered, setting them off at full gallop towards us. Had we imitated him when they reached our vicinity they would have veered off towards their only escape route, through the gate into his field. Then he could have shut them in and gone off to receive the thanks of a grateful Squire. Unfortunately his little band of cowboys were more frightened than the horses and when we saw them charging down the road towards us like a cavalry troop we just dived for cover and they galloped past. Farmer threw down his cap in disgust and jumped on it, swearing mightily, but being town boys we had only seen horses pulling milk-floats and coalmens' carts ; standing in the path of hunters in full flight was not within our experience. We looked for eggs around the cow sheds, went to market with the farmer and scarily held on to the legs of chickens who'd just had their necks pulled, but flapped frantically just the same. I fell in love for the first time and held hands at every opportunity with a plump little flirt who lived along the road, with her actress "Mummy" and her brother. I don't know where "Daddy" was, but they were evacuees too, although of a superior sort, they all spoke with very plummy accents, and were familiar with foreign travel.

When we played hide and seek in the barns, I and my lady-love would always go off
together and find some corner where we stood in the dark and cuddled each other. Nothing
else, not even a chaste kiss. When the other kids found us we'd tell them to push off and
leave us alone. I was thirteen and she was about the same, now I can't even remember
her name. We were happy as larks until our parents came down on a Sunday outing and,
as soon as I saw my mum I just wanted to go home. To her eyes I must have seemed
incredibly dirty and I probably didn't smell too sweet. So when I told her about the conditions under which we lived she stormed off to see the billeting officer. I guess our farmer and his wife had probably taken on as many as they could for the sake of the money, and the billeting officer was just glad to get us off his hands. Whatever the reason, looking back now I can't imagine how anybody charged with finding a home for a bunch of kids away from their parents for the first time in their lives, could have dumped them in such a place without first checking that at least they had beds to sleep in. The people concerned, I am sure were not bad people, just very poor and they saw an opportunity to get a bit of cash in hand. They both looked extremely hard-worked and having a group of willing little labourers
to ferret around for eggs, fetch in the cows, and do odd jobs like mixing up cattle feed,
and be paid 42.5p per week per child for having them, must have seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity too good to miss. However Mum put paid to that as far as I was concerned and I was taken to live with two old dears in East Street Kimbolton. An ancient cottage with no lighting other than oil lamps and candles, the living accommodation was more lacking in modern conveniences than even the farmhouse (which was really an up-to-date council house of recent vintage). But at least I had a proper bedroom and a lovely comfortable bed to which I used to repair each night with my candle to light the way, and my " po" to go under the bed. There was no bathroom so I had to wash in the bedroom from a basin supplied with water from a jug.

The old dears were very fond of me, saying I had hair the colour of ripe corn ! I'd no idea
what colour corn was, ripe or not. I was a "townee" and totally ignorant of country life
apart from my recent few weeks. I don't know what happened to my true love, she just
dropped out of my life. I expect she was heart - broken !

Within a few weeks of my relocation the whole school was on the move again. This time we
really made a long journey, all the way to Midsomer Norton in Somerset, where I stayed until 1942. I was billeted with Mick Miller, a lad of about the same age but with a certain air about him that hinted at middle-class, rather than the very definite working class I represented. He spoke more careful English, came from Dulwich and his father was an Estate Agent. We shared a room and bed in a semi. near the Fosse Way at first, but after a few weeks, for reasons not made clear to us, we were moved to the care of a lovely little dumpy Scots lady and her husband, in Radstock - almost an extension of Midsomer Norton. David Sharp was the manager of the local coal mine which, being in the days of pre-nationalisation, was owned by a Sir Frank Beecham (maybe Beauchamp). The Sharps had had a large family, one son had died in South America where he had been managing a silver mine, another was the Chief Engineer at the local pit, living with his wife in Bristol, and a pretty young daughter named Cathy lived at home. Mrs Sharp had a strong Scots accent and used many words I'd never before heard. She used to call her husband "Hen", or so I thought, but it might have been "Hin" short for the endearment "Hinny". She had a maid who used to come in daily to help with cooking and managing what was a fairly large house.

We had a fine big room, a proper bathroom, good healthy meals in a dining room downstairs, access to the library which was well stocked out, and all-in-all a pretty fine billet. We were here when the Germans sent a large force of bombers in daylight to attack Bath , which lay eight miles North Whatever the reason, it was a pretty risky venture to attack a town so far west as Bath, in daylight, and the bombers paid the price. They were accompanied on this mission by Messerschmitt 110 twin engined fighters as protection against the Spifires and Hurricanes of the RAF and, as we stood in the garden gazing at the tiny silver shapes twenty thousand feet above us, one of them became detached from the formation and came plunging earthwards. Damaged, and out of control, it lost its tail assembly shortly before hitting the ground about a mile away. Mr. Sharp being one of the few locals who ran a car, as a "perk" of his job, got the Standard out of the garage and we piled in to drive to the crash site. This was just a question of following the crowd until we came to the field in which the burning wreckage lay. People swarmed across the field intent on grabbing souvenirs. Soldiers and Home Guards made ineffectual efforts to stop people getting too close to the wreck which emitted a constant stream of pops and bangs as the ammunition exploded. Police shouted against the noise of Hurricanes swooping low across the scene and slow-rolling their victory celebration in the customary fashion. I wondered why they didn't get back up there among the survivors but one has to presume they were short of fuel or ammunition, or that by the time they'd got up to the required height they would have had no fuel left to get home. It may have simply been high spirits which compelled them to perform this aerial ballet in aircraft which could have been damaged, but it certainly pleased the onlookers. Of the German crew of two there was no sign but I heard later that one fell with his unopened parachute in the same field and lay dead as the crowd excitedly milled around. Certainly the Headmaster took a very dim view of the happenings when he visited each class in the afternoon and lectured on the horrors of war. He felt bound to point out that this dead young man was somebody's son and his death was not something to delight in. From him we learned that somebody had desecrated the body by stealing a medal from his uniform. People were not really conditioned to take this kind of talk One saying which was current was "The only good German is a dead German". The other crew member had parachuted safely to earth somewhere in the vicinity and, before we went back to school we accompanied Mr. Sharp in the car on a quick tour of the surrounding countryside to look for him. During this short ride we came upon a farmer's wife with a child in one hand and a shotgun in the other who was engaged on the same mission I hope the police or Army found him first.

Awaiting The Parachutists

In the summer of 1940, following the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force from France and the occupation of that country by the Germans, the so-called Battle of Britain was thought generally to be the prelude to invasion. In the countryside about us we could see the preparations being made to meet the threat; from our classroom windows we could see the deep red scar of a tank trap stretching across the adjacent fields; concrete pill-boxes appeared in the hedgerows, and the Local Defence Volunteers ( the original name for the Home Guard ) were seen drilling in their denim uniforms complete with LDV armbands. News on the radio seemed to be nothing but reports of "strategic withdrawals", the RAF dropping leaflets over Germany, Nazi parachutists' tendency to dress up as nuns, and extravagant claims of German bombers shot down by our fighters. There was a brisk trade at school in bits of metal reputedly from Messerschmitt, Heinkel, Junkers and Dornier aircraft of the German Luftwaffe. Bomb splinters and "shrapnel" from burst anti-aircraft shells were also keenly sought, as were bullets, cannon shell cases and the fins of incendiary bombs. The start of term brought an influx of such items as boys returned from holidays spent in London under blue skies scarred by the condensation trails of battling aircraft twenty thousand feet above.

I had spent that summer with my family in North London, crouching for much of the time in the Anderson Shelter inserted brutally into our lovely garden by council workmen, as part of the Government's air raid precautions. The heavy London clay drained very slowly and the water table was so high that, when the winter rains came, we had to dig a sump in the corner and bale it out at intervals. But in the dry hot summer of 1940 there was just an earthen floor to the little corrugated steel shelter with its arched roof covered with earth to resemble a rockery from the outside. Mum had read in the daily paper, within which "experts" gave their opinion on every war- oriented topic, that the best way to avoid the effects of bomb-blast during air raids was to sit with one's head between the knees and keep the mouth open. So this is how we all sat, as outside in the blue heavens drama unfolded. One of the defining periods in British history was occurring and we had seats in the dress circle, but we sat in a fashion which denied us any view other than what we might catch through the small entrance, peeping at a patch of blue sky under our hands. But we heard plenty ! We learned to recognise the sound of the German planes' engines which were very distinctive, as were the Rolls Royce "Merlins" of the Spitfires and Hurricanes opposing them. The anti-aircraft guns would stop firing once the fighters had engaged with the formations of enemy aircraft and we would hear the shouts and exclamations from our neighbours, the Searles, as they stood in their garden watching with interest. "Oh look there's one coming down ", one would say " There's a parachute, look !" and "There's one on fire!". Oh how I longed to look out and see all this excitement - but it wasn't allowed. The "All-Clear" would sound on the sirens and out of the shelter we trooped with just a sky full of white scribble to indicate where the show had taken place. As night fell the skies to the south-east glowed red from the fires started during the day, and the radio news gave out the scores for that day's "game".

At the end of the summer and during the school Xmas break I went home again and experienced the night raids of what became known as the "Blitz" Before the Autumn days grew short, my brother Mic would go up to the "Park Tavern" for a pint or two, then come home armed with a few bottles, in readiness for "Jerry" who seemed to come at the same time every night - just like a German ! The barrage balloons would all start to rise on their steel cables and we knew the siren would soon sound the "Alert", so we were ready to go out into the garden and down the shelter. As night fell the throb of German engines appeared to fill the sky and one plane would seemingly take forever to pass over. For a long period at this phase of the "Blitz" there would be virtually no response from our guns. Maybe a few searchlights would waver about all over the sky, and the crump of distant bombs would be heard. As silence fell we would get out and relieve ourselves in the garden, then get back again and wait for the next aircraft to come along. The German aircraft engine noise was reckoned to be distinctive because the two engines on each bomber were not synchronised to run as one. Thus, at first one would hear a steady "Thrum- thrum" as each beat in turn. But as one began to beat a little faster than the other, the intervals between the "thrumming" grew less and the effect was to give the impression that the plane was increasing in speed. It was ominous and rather frightening as one could imagine it diving down towards the little shelter, and soon there would be the whistle of a falling bomb. In truth we had relatively few bombs in north London compared with the East End, the Docks, and south London. But we didn't know that at the time because the news given on the radio was very selective and careful not to disseminate alarmist stories. Nevertheless one could see whole streets of houses badly damaged by land mines, released on parachutes and designed to explode above ground and cause maximum blast damage. Incendiary bombs started fires which then attracted high explosive bombs and, while docks and railways were obvious targets, it seems plain that really anything in the huge sprawl of London stretched out below in the moonlight was a legitimate target in this war.

We passed many nights like this, to the obvious puzzlement of our dog, Pete, who would come out from time to time ( we always left the back door open ), have a pee, look in the shelter and then go back to bed in his armchair in the kitchen. Whilst he would bark like mad at the postman's knock, or at the appearance of a cat in the garden, he totally ignored gunfire, bomb explosions aircraft noise, and sirens. Eventually the army Anti-Aircraft Command got its act together and assembled sufficient guns and ammunition within the capital to greet the intruders with a tremendous barrage of fire. I don't think much of it was accurate, one only had to look at the night sky to see that the bursting shells were rarely concentrated, but then the technology was not very advanced. The girls on the instruments in Finsbury Park twirled the handles on their range-finders and sound locators, yelled their readings to the gunners, who set fuses on the shells, loaded aimed and fired the guns, but I don't ever recall hearing the whine of a stricken aircraft falling earthwards.

On winter weekends during the school holidays my sisters would often take me to the West End to see a film - maybe Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy picture or some other American musical. Raids would invariably start, and the theatre would sometimes shudder to the thump of bombs, whilst above the dialogue or music of the film could be heard the bells of emergency vehicles. We never came out until the film was over. It may seem unbelievable now, but we just seemed to think we were inviolate. It was the "others" who got killed. Of course we did not say as much; we just didn't seem to talk about the risks involved. There wasn't much else you could do other than sit in an air raid shelter all night or share a Tube station platform with hundreds of others. As we travelled home on the Piccadilly Line to Finsbury Park every station had its quota of sleeping families lying on the platforms with just a few feet left for travellers to embark and disembark from trains. One night we came through the exits at Finsbury Park into the long underground tunnels which gradually ramped up to street level, to find the exit to the street was blocked by a crowd which had backed up and prevented egress . The noise of gunfire could be heard and, as it stopped, another sound impinged on the senses. Shell splinters fell like hailstones, clattering on roofs of houses, sparking on the pavements and lying glowing in the gutters. We all waited as if for a shower of rain to pass and then streamed into the street, to run like mad for home before the next barrage opened up. One of those splinters would have been to a head like a knife to a boiled egg. We had no helmets, but we were young and totally heedless, because despite the destruction going on all around us, not one of us had seen a dead or wounded person, a shocked or injured child, a terrified victim of any sort. We were silly and ignorant and immortal. The war was an inconvenience, sometimes exciting, sometimes dirty and boring, sometimes cold and dark and noisy. But none of us had experienced the raw terror that some people knew as war. None of us had seen a loved one torn and bleeding from shards of glass, crushed under masonry, choked by dust and rubble or drowned underground by smashed sewers flooding tunnels used as shelters. All these things happened but there was no TV coverage because there was no TV, and the cinema newsreels only showed smiling gutsy people giving the thumbs up sign, while an upbeat commentary told the audience that we were not downhearted. It was all rather unreal and in due course I went back to Somerset and school. Even there when we learned that our nice friendly School Secretary, Mr. Parker, had died with his family in the Blitz, we still did not dwell on the possibility of our own deaths.

I joined the ARP as a telephonist/messenger and one evening per week I sat in a small room in some Council Office doing my homework and waiting for the phone to ring. I was almost more frightened of the phone than the bombers as very few private households of the working class owned phones in those days, and I'd been given no instructions in telephone technique. So when the old two-piece set jangled for the first time I placed the hearing piece to my ear and whispered a trembling "Yes?" into the separate mouthpiece. A strong Somerset accented voice reported that "X first Aid Post was reporting present and ready for duty", which message I had to convey to our school French master who was the acting air raid Warden for the night, in the front office. "Which post was it ?" he said. "I don't know Sir", I had to say for I hadn't understood the message and I was too confused and stupid to ask "What did you say ?"

Eventually, of course I got used to this new technology and when the hard-pressed firefighters of Bath requested more appliances during a bad raid one night, I was able to pass the message on without panicking. I'm glad I wasn't asked to go out on my bike delivering messages, had the lines been cut by bombs.

At the end of my stint I had to cycle home through the "blackout" to my digs in Radstock, some miles away. All car and cycle lamps were very small but one was still required to show a light to front and rear, and on one particular night I had no lights on my bike. As I trundled along I passed a policeman, very possibly a "Special" recruited for the period of the war, of whom there were many, and who at times could be over-zealous. "Oi,"he shouted "where's your lights ?" Now I have always been most concerned to act respectfully when faced by authority of some sort, especially the representatives of the law. But on this occasion, for some reason I just stood up on the pedals and went as fast as I could off into the darkness. I heard his footsteps running behind me as he shouted "Stop, stop" and "Come back here you". But with a heart pounding with the effort and amazed at my own daring I pedalled on. There were no mobile phones, no walkie-talkies, so even if he thought I was a spy or a saboteur (about which rumours were rife) there was nothing he could do until he reached a phone box, other than note the incident in his book. I might have set off a hunt for a parachutist for all I know - what else would a spy do other than make off like I did in that situation. An honest man with nothing to hide would have stopped,- wouldn't he ?

There was virtually no traffic on the roads other than Army vehicles in those days, as petrol was only available for those car owners considered to need transport, such as doctors, and those on essential war work. David Sharp, in whose house I lived for over two years, owned and ran a "Standard", a name which disappeared in post-war amalgamations of car makers, but it was a popular car at that time. None of the school staff made use of cars, I suppose there was no petrol available for schoolteachers, so bicycles were a common form of transport. Very often during a school day we would spend certain periods in one location and then have to cycle or walk to another. One of these locations was a chapel which was equipped with trestles supporting boarded table-tops, instead of the normal school desks of that era. Books, ink bottles , papers, satchels and suchlike paraphernalia were strewn along these tables, behind which sat the inky, spotty, noisy adolescents making up my classmates of 1941/42. They soon realised that small movements on the legs of the supporting trestles could be made without drawing the attention of the teacher, and these constructions could be made dangerously unstable quite unobtrusively. They hatched their devilish plans to operate during the English lessons given by "Nobby" Knowles, a gentle, harmless, and unfortunately impotent little man who was quite unable to maintain discipline among adolescent boys. Reading "The Merchant of Venice" was not a popular activity and bored, disinterested boys could and did create diversions in all manner of ways. Boys were allocated parts in the play and would stand out in front of the class to read their lines from the book, going "off" when the script indicated, and disappearing behind the organ which served the chapel congregation. Here they would accidentally lean on the keys at inappropriate times during the reading, apologising to Nobby for the "accident". Then one of the supportng trestles would reach the point where a small nudge would send it over and the table top would fall down at one end sending a cascade of articles tumbling in an untidy mess on the floor. The ensuing noise and confusion could easily be made much worse as boys trampled about among the debris, supposedly retrieving their property, and inadvertenly upsetting other tables in the process. All this took a long time to sort out and whilst "Nobby" tried vainly to bring about some order to the chaos he might well not have noticed two or three pupils slip out to attend to his bike parked outside with those of his charges. Here the air was let out of his tyres and the nut keeping his saddle stem positioned was loosened. In due course we watched him cycle off to his next class with flat tyres and gradually slipping down lower as he pedalled along. He was such a nice inoffensive little man, it seems wicked to me now that he should have had such cruel monsters let loose on him to make his life a misery. But he didn't give up, and in due course was running one of the harvest camps which operated in the summer on the farms around Dulverton, so perhaps he learned a thing or two about coping with teenagers.

The school whose premises we used for some of our lessons was a secondary school of similar standing to ours so it had facilities such as laboratories, and the necessary equipment. It also had girls, who provided an unaccustomed diversion for us, for our own school was "single-sex" at least as far as the pupils were concerned. We had a couple of women teachers, "Ma" Bradley and "Ma" Griffiths, but they were very far from sex objects. Having real live girls sharing the same building was a totally new and (for some ) heady experience. Notes were constantly being furtively passed around and assignations arranged. One Zeligman was seen during a lesson by "Leo" Lincoln the Latin master to be doodling on a piece of paper instead of paying attention. Commanded to "hand it over boy", Leo discovered that Zeligman had been drawing a naked woman. "A naked woman !" he exploded, " You don't know what a naked woman looks like". Such was his fury and so over the top considering the paltry nature of the offence, I begin now to wonder if it wasn't Leo who was unaquainted with the feminine form. Zeligman remained cool contained and quite unabashed, with just a quiet smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.

I found myself an object of desire by a young lady in whom I had not the slightest interest. One of the boys in my class was billeted with a family which included the girl and she pestered him for a time to bring me messages protesting her undying admiration and asking for me to acknowledge her. But I remained aloof and disinterested. I can't remember being attracted to any particular girl until I met Jean Nash. Jean was a girl of about my age who lived in a bungalow on the Fosse Way about half way between the school and my digs in Radstock. She had some sort of reputation and I guess you would say she was a flirt. Although she was not pretty she had a cool and bold manner, which made her attractive to boys, and she seemed knowledgeable enough about the opposite sex to be able to get them hopping around. I found myself after school one day walking along in a group of kids, of which she was one, pushing my bike as we strolled along chatting. I had no particular feelings for this girl, any more than the others I saw from day to day, until her gloved hand closed over mine which was resting on my bike saddle. Silly as it seems now, I can still remember the feeling as if an electric current passed from her to me. The first stirrings of adolescent love I guess, was what I was experiencing, and it knocked me for six. Probably at her instigation, we arranged to meet, and I remember moonlit walks along a path at the foot of a slag-heap down towards the railway line which might have been for me, no different from a stroll along a Pacific beach in the surf or under the palms. How often we met, how long it lasted and when and why it came to an end I do not now recall - but the touch of hands remains in my memory as vivid as if it were yesterday.

At times during 1941 I spent school holidays at home when London was experiencing air raids of varying intensity. What later became known as the "Blitz" was over and raids became spasmodic and valuable to the Germans only as far as their nuisance was concerned. A few raiders coming in from the south could cause disruption in factories on night work over a large area, loss of sleep, irritation and lowering of morale out of all proportion to their numbers. People continued to be killed though as a proportion of the populace it was probably a tiny number. Dr. McKay's house was hit and the old man died in the rubble. The bonnet of his ancient car protruded from under the debris and so remained for many months. Then one winter's night a bomb fell behind our house in the street which ran parallel to ours. We were all in the back room sitting round the fire, with the shutters fastened across the French doors. The guns were firing and a bomber's engines could be heard above the racket, when we suddenly heard the rushing whistle of a falling bomb. It was not really a familiar sound to us. Explosions we had heard aplenty, the crump of shells, the throb of engines, the crash of guns, the changing note of aircraft noise as they took evasive action, the shower of metal objects that followed from the bursting of clusters of shells above us, all these were familiar, but the noise of falling bombs was something we instinctively recognised when we heard it but it was not from familiarity. The nearest destruction on a large scale was perhaps a mile or so away and had been caused by a landmine on Mitford Road, off Hornsey Road. These things descended quietly on parachutes and detonated above ground when some object came into contact with them so they caused considerable damage by blast. The bomb we heard rushing down towards us made us throw ourselves to the floor. The explosion did not seem particularly loud, the full force of this was deflected by the buildings in between, but the old house seemed to lift from its foundations, windows shattered, the old lathe and plaster ceilings shook loose from the joists in the weak spots and chunks burst onto floors. Heavy slabs of imitation marble surrounding the fireplace came loose and fell on the hearth. Lights went out as dust filled the air, whilst the fire in the grate disappeared under a fall of soot. We were all shaken but unhurt, but we would have to wait for daylight to begin the damage assessment and effect what repairs we could to keep out the cold and rain. In the meantime I walked around the corner into Stroud Green Road to look at the devastation. Several houses were damaged beyond repair and one was on fire with flames leaping from the roof. As I watched, a man came out of the front door of the burning building carrying some possesions in one hand and a torch in the other. Such was the obsession of ARP wardens with lights and blackout that one could not prevent the shout of "Put that light out", aimed at the man with the feeble little torch, whilst behind him the blaze from his burning roof would be seen from bombers twenty miles away.

The threat of invasion seemed to have died away and back at school our studies for next year's "School Certificate" continued without interruption save for spasmodic attacks on Bristol and Bath which did not affect us too much. The only leisure activity that I took part in was cycling, which a group of us enjoyed at weekends. We had trips to Wells where we visited the cathedral, Cheddar Gorge, Wookey Hole, Weston- Super-Mare, and when we were feeling really energetic we even reached Minehead. My first bicycle was a highly dangerous machine insofar as it had only one brake. This was operated by a short lever at the centre of the handlebars which acted directly onto the front wheel. So a sudden emergency calling for hard braking could send the rider over the handlebars. One memorable weekend I set off for Cheddar Gorge accompanied by John Slade and we began the long descent of the gradient, down towards the entrance to the caves. As we gained speed it became obvious that my brake was not man enough to cope with the steep incline and I was going to have to bring my feet into play to slow my descent. The inevitable happened and I was flung off my bike. On rising I found I was unable to put any weight on my ankle which hurt abominably and was rapidly swelling. John 's advice, based on experience, was to jump on it and unfortunately I obeyed. Although the ankle wasn't broken it was badly sprained and very swollen, so that put an end to my cycling for some weeks. Somebody gave me a lift back to Radstock in a car, but I can't remember how my bike was recovered. Maybe it never was, but I eventually became the proud possessor of a brand new Raleigh All Steel bicycle complete with Sturmey Archer 3 speed gears, which served me well until about 1946. I had to hop about on a crutch for a bit and couldn't participate in games or PE, whilst the ankle never regained its original size.

Some time in 1941 the Air Training Corps came into being ostensibly for youths of 16 and over, but there must have been some relaxation of the age stipulation because a unit was formed at school. The numbers were too small for a squadron so we were given the title of Flight and the number 653. Mr. Woods the English master was given the rank of Flying Officer and appointed Commanding Officer, whilst Mr. Dorrington, the Physics master became a Pilot Officer. They both had regular RAF officers' uniforms with RAFVR lapel badges. The cadets had ugly rough uniforms of the same colour and material as RAF "other ranks", with tunics that buttoned up to the neck, being designed to be worn (unlike regular RAF tunics) without a collar and tie. They were rough, shapeless, and itchy round the neck. The buttons and cap badges were not of brass but some bright metal with a silver finish and the tunic belts either sagged on their wearers' skinny frames or were pulled in tight to give a "sack tied round the middle" effect. No boots were issued so this often ill-fitting attire was worn with all sorts of odd footwear. Authority could not dictate on this because shoes were rationed, as was all clothing, and clothing coupons were needed for all purchases. One pair of shoes had to suffice for many different purposes. The end result was a somewhat unmilitary turnout but what they lacked in smartness they made up for in enthusiasm. Everything went well and we learned to drill and march, to send and receive messages in Morse code, to recognise different aircraft from silhouettes on charts, to idenify different cloud formations and what the weather portents were for each. We solved navigational problems, learned why an aeroplane flew, saw machine guns stripped and named the parts. We could name all the different ranks and knew who to salute and who was addressed as "Sir". From time-to-time we visited RAF stations and some people even got the odd flight. Then one day a boy named Fox entered the school in the 5th. or 6th. form and immediately enrolled in the ATC with the rank of Sergeant. It was rumoured that his father was a Colonel and he evidently was more familiar than the rest of us with things military. Whatever his background, Fox immediately made his presence felt, and started shouting at us like a "real" sergeant when we drilled in the playground. This led to mutterings of discontent and, one lunchtime, as he marched us out of the school gates and along the road there was a murmured agreement between the cadets that they would ignore further commands from him. So as we swung along in step the order came "About turn" and 40 or so lads feigned deafness and marched on. Fox shouted and threatened in the approved NCO fashion but to no avail and we marched on up the road sniggering and guffawing until we realised that we would have to go back and face the music. Of course we were mutineers but if they treated us too harshly I expect they suspected we would say "We're not playing anymore so you can keep your rotten uniforms." In the event we had to stand to attention in the playground for a while whilst Fox paraded up and down the ranks and files glaring and sneering and gloating until he got fed up, whereupon we were dismissed with a wigging. In due course I was made a Corporal but I was careful not to behave with the arrogance of Fox !

Harvest camps were arranged in the summer and I went with EG Taylor to the camp at Winsford, on Exmoor where our bell tents were erected on flat ground between woods and a river. The once trim white tents were now stained brown and thin branches with plenty of leaves were laid on the sides to camouflage the outline from the air. Local farmers would apply for our services and we were hired out for all sorts of jobs at the rate of 6d. (2.5p) per hour. We did a lot of thinning of kale, back-breaking work with a hoe, general weeding of crops by hand, and pulling of ragwort which we piled up and burned on huge bonfires for reasons which were not clear to us. This latter task, Ollie Hills John Slade and I carried out on behalf of a gentleman farmer we christened "Ole Charley", whose land seemed to grow no crops and grazed no animals but horses. Occasionally Ole Charley would ride by accompanied by retired cavalry officer types and shout in a plummy upper-class accent "Thats the way boys, burn the damn stuff, burn it!" Then off they would canter across the fields. On the way home each evening we would do a little "apple scrumping" from his orchard - one of the perks of the job. Our town origins brought trouble down on our heads from time to time, as when I was issued with a scythe on another farm to cut the long grass around the edge of a field making a clear path for the horse-drawn mower at haymaking time. I was given no instructions on how to use it, just supplied with a sharpening stone and left to get on with it. Of course I dug the point in the ground countless times and brought it back bent and misshapen, much to the disgust of the farmer who flew into a rage and told me all sorts of nonsense about how he'd had this scythe "man and boy" since the dawn of time and now I'd ruined it. He was a little man with a glass eye, a bad temper, and a reputation for getting out of paying on every excuse he could dream up.

Another farmer gave me and John Slade the job of putting the harness on a large cart-horse and attaching him to a cart to take up a track to a field for some purpose. Well neither of us was at ease with horses, but we sorted out the harness without too much of a problem, even getting the huge collar over his head. Getting him into the shafts of the cart was a big problem. We grasped his bridle and pulled his head back, shouting "Gibback, gibback" in what sounded like an authentic style and he backed away towards the shafts lying on the ground - but countless times he got one back hoof the wrong side of a shaft. So we would pull him out again by his bridle and have another go. After several attempts he was beginning to make it clear that he was getting fed up with this and got a bit frisky. Eventually, by rearranging the shafts and coming in from a slightly different direction we got him in the right position and quickly hitched the collar to the shafts and all the other straps and buckles. I think John got on the cart and I took the horses head and started off up the track. But I was frightened of his great hooves, kept further ahead of him than I should have and walked too fast. In his efforts to keep up with me he was forced into a trot and then a gallop, whereupon I let go, and I think John must have leapt off the cart. The poor frightened beast just kept on going until he reached a gate, when we caught up with him.

I got quite accustomed to the country eventually and was happy with any job which didn't involve killing animals but when a woman who ran a farm with two daughters told me to go and inspect the rabbit traps set around the edge of fields, I prayed I wouln't come across an animal caught in one of those ghastly things. But of course, I did, and was horrified to see it struggle to get away whilst trapped in the steel jaws by one leg. I stood helplessly watching it for some time, unable to touch it to get it out of the trap and unable to walk away and leave it to suffer. In the end I got a piece of branch about ten times longer than necessary and whacked the poor thing on the head, taking the corpse back to the farmer. I was never going to be a real country boy !

Towards the end of my time in Radstock my fellow lodger at the Sharps' house became very homesick and, unbeknown to me wrote home letters which evidently criticised the Sharps adversely. His parents duly came down by car and took him off home, and I was aware that our kind hosts were justifiably upset. Of recent times I have read books and seen TV documentaries and dramas which told harrowing tales of the experiences of some evacuees, and I have come to realise how lucky we were to have such people as the Sharps looking after us. They were pretty affluent people so they didn't need the money. I believe Mrs. Sharp was just a kindly soul who had had a large family, mainly boys, and she missed them now they were no longer at home. So she probably liked having us around. Mick Miller must have been very unhappy to have acted as he did and I would have thought his parents would have seen through his story - they could have asked my opinion, but they didn't.

I remained at this "billet" for the remainder of my stay at school, and eventually sat for my Matriculation Certificate in the summer of 1942. We were luckier than those pupils who had gone back home, either by choice or parental decisions, in that our studies were not adversely affected by the war. We didn't suffer sleepless nights because of air raids, nor did we have to interrupt our lessons by taking shelter during the day. It was a bit of a nuisance having to trek out to outlying classrooms in unsuitable buildings, but we could cope with that. We even had some sort of a sports day and a competitive element was introduced by pitting our athletes against those of our host school. I didn't take part although I was at the sports field all day and at one time I was asked to enter a cricket-ball throwing competition. Now I was not too bad at football, but totally useless at cricket. Like a lot of reluctant schoolboy cricketers I found fielding a bore and an opportunity for my fellows to shout "Butterfingers" at every dropped catch, and other expressions of disgust at every ball which whizzed to the boundary between my legs. I was too much of a dreamer and my reactions too slow to be of any use in the slips, so I would be out near the boundary most games. Of course if a batsman skied a ball in my direction, I was confident (as my fellows were) that I would drop an easy catch. My technique as a batsman was simply to lash out at every ball that came along. On the few occasions that I made contact I would either score a four, or be caught out. Most times I missed altogether and was bowled out. But since we had minimal instruction from "Ol' Gagey" it was not to be wondered at. However there was one thing I was reasonably good at, and that was throwing the ball back fairly accurately from the boundary. My long throws were consistently better than those of my fellows, so it was natural that they should ask me to represent the school at this event on sports day. But being the diffident sort of person that I was, totally lacking in confidence and sure that with all eyes watching me I would forget to let go of the ball and it would hit me on the foot, I repeatedly refused all entreaties to take part and put the school ahead in this competition. This must have puzzled my friends and possibly annoyed them, but nobody seemed to hold grudges and I was never short of friends Although I was never made a prefect, I gradually rose in the ranks of the ATC and at school camp I was a "tent leader", so I got used to having a little authority over my companions. I evidently did not abuse this, because when the time came to leave camp, and school, I was surprised to find my tent had a collection for me and bought me a small leather-bound copy of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam" which I still have, over 60 years later.

In the last few weeks at harvest camp I worked on a farm near Tarr Steps on Exmoor and, heavy with fatigue would cycle back across the moor each evening. Most times I would not see another human being on the way. Then one day, I noticed groups of walking figures all making their way in the same direction and I found myself among armed soldiers with unfamiliar steel helmets that I didn't recognize. Were these the Nazi paratroopers we had long expected and then forgotten about ? Then, "Say kid, sell us your bike " , one after the other would shout, and I realized they were American troops on an exercise. For years I believed they were paratroopers who were dropped on the moor but recent research has revealed that no such units were stationed in Devon at that time. Whatever they were, they were friendly and cheerful and when I got back to camp I found several were being fed and watered in our marquee dining hall. One showed great interest in what he called "That pig-stabber" - the knife I wore on my old scout belt, and offered me five pounds for it which I immediately accepted. I'm glad to say he didn't retract his offer when one of the other boys said "You can get one o' them for a tanner dahn Caledonian Market ". He didn't know that a "tanner" was slang for 6d. (2 .5 p in today's currency), nor did he know where Caledonian Market was. I wouldn't like to speculate on the real value of the knife which was given to me by Mr. Sharp and had been brought from South America by his mining engineer son. It had a bright steel blade which was embellished with decorations and the word "Hidalgo" engraved on it. Anyway he seemed happy with it, and it was going to be of more use where he was going than it was to me.

Boggy came down to Winsford in the dying days of summer in 1942, bringing with him our exam. results I was happy to learn that I had achieved a "Distinction" for French, (80 or 90% I think), "credits" (over 50%) in English and English Literature, History and Geography, and "Passes" (over 40%) in a number of other subjects, including Chemistry. I failed in Physics which didn't surprise me as I was always much less interested in Science and Maths than Languages and the Arts. How strange that in later life I made no use of my strengths but embarked on a career which needed a good command of Maths !

So my friend John Slade and I packed our kit, drew our wages from EG (less deductions for our keep) and cycled the nine or ten miles to Dulverton station and, as far as I was concerned, passed out of the world of school for ever.

In the years that remained before peace came in 1945 I was to become acquainted with "doodle bugs" and rockets, whilst living in North London. Cycling to work at the Pearl Assurance Company in High Holborn, I had a tin hat fastened to my saddle stem in case an alert sounded. But that's another story.

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