大象传媒

I spent all of WW2 in Woodford. The first V2 rocket fell behind our house on Ashton Playing fields and caused immense devastation. I started school in 1941 at Ray Lodge sch, Snakes Lane. Most lessons in my early years were in an Air Raid shelter in the grounds. My father worked in a hospital in a "reserved occupation" and was secretary of a church in Snakes Lane. On many Sundays POWs would be brought in open topped lorries from the local camps to the morning service. Our nearest camp was in Forest Edge Buckhurst Hill and contained a lot of Italians and Germans whom we visited at times like Easter and Christmas. One of them made my old neighbour a toy like a table tennis bat with a woman feeding chickens worked by a pendulum weight underneath. All made from waste timber and fashioned with a hot poker. The congregation donated various gifts mostly cigarettes in various shapes and sizes. I would wait in the vestry with the cigarettes on a table and my father would come in during the service and tell me the number of POWs. I would then apportion the cigarettes accordingly and distribute them at the end of the service. The local 'phone book in the 50's used to contain the names of descendants of many of them who stayed behind after the war, typically Averillo and Wohs. Some of their children were in same class as my children in the 60's. A lot who stayed behind worked for W C French Construction now French Kier. They built the Finchingfield Estate off Snakes Lane and the Staines Bridge over the Thames. As children we spent some time at the ARP posts filling sand bags and were rewarded with a cheese wad and a cup of cocoa. A lot of time was spent "Digging for Victory" tending our allotment. The deprivation we suffered was mainly interruption in gas, water and electricity supplies. The transport system also was occasionally affected by bombing.

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