大象传媒

On the 14th. March 1932, in the days when it was not the 鈥渨ith-it鈥� place it is today, I was born in Fulham, South West London at number 5 Horder Road.and was christened Peter Raymond. One of my earliest memories is at the age of five years going with my father, to collect my mother and newly born sister Pamela from a nursing home in nearby Fulham Road. When I was seven and Pam was just two I heard words which I did not understand - but were set to change our lives for ever - WAR & BOMBING. I remember on the 1st September 1939 the pair of us standing on Putney Bridge underground station complete with a small suitcase, gas mask and big labels fixed to the lapels of our coats giving our names & details. We were being evacuated. When the train arrived we were herded aboard and taken to Wimbledon where we were put on another train for Guildford from whence we were taken to an address in nearby Merrow. I cannot remember the name of the lady with whom we were billeted but do recall that she let us listen to songs like Flanagan & Allan鈥檚 鈥淩un Rabbit Run鈥� on an old horn-type gramophone. At that time Dad, who had been a bus conductor since the late 1920鈥檚, was under driver instruction by London Transport. This involved several would-be drivers, picking up an old bus at Putney garage and taking turns to drive under an instructor鈥檚 supervision. Somehow Dad convinced the instructor that the A3 from Putney to Guildford would be just the route to give the prospective drivers the best experience and also managed to get him to agree to allow Pam and me to get on the bus in Merrow and be taken home to Fulham for the odd weekend. Of course this was strictly illegal and whenever the driver at the time saw an inspector we had to hide under the seat until we had passed him. At that time there was no bombing taking place and eventually, like many other parents, ours decided Pam and I should return to Fulham. This we did and all was peaceful until early 1940 when the blitz started in earnest with the bombing of the London Docks. One night from Fulham looking northwards all of the sky was bright red, illuminated by the fires at the sugar refinery in Silvertown some twelve or so miles away. Soon the aircraft were coming every night. At first we took cover in the brick-built shelters that had been constructed in Horder Road but later Dad found out that the families of London Transport employees could shelter on the platforms of underground stations, which we did for several months. This involved Mum, Pam and me leaving home every evening about 7pm to catch a trolleybus from Fulham to Hammersmith, then a Piccadilly line train to Knightsbridge where, once the last train had gone, we were allowed to make up our beds on the platform and sleep until about 6am, just before the first train was due, when we would re-trace our journey to Fulham arriving back at Horder Road about 6.45. By this time Dad had passed his driving exams and was involved in several harrowing experiences driving a bus in London during the war years. On one occasion he was on the No. 28 route and, because of a heavy air raid, he, his conductor and passengers sheltered at Kensington High Street tube station. When the raid calmed down they set off up Church Street only to be diverted down a side turning because of bomb damage. Suddenly he had a premonition that all was not well so he got down from the cab with his torch and found a thirty foot deep bomb crater about a yard in front of his bus. Another night, because of a heavy raid, five No. 30 buses were held up at Hackney Wick. When things quietened down a bit, they set off back to Putney with Dad driving the last of the five. Passing through the City a set of traffic lights at a junction suddenly changed to red and he stopped just in time to let someone come out of the side road. As he waited for the lights to change a bomb dropped between the second and third buses ahead of him killing all four crews. It was not only when driving that he had this sort of good fortune. He frequently called in at a snooker hall in Putney for a frame or two when he finished work. One night because of tiredness he decided to give the game a miss. A short while later a bomb dropped on the snooker hall and killed all the players. By mid 1940 with the blitz at its height Mum was in a very nervous state due in part to the continual worry about Dads safety and the strain of the daily trips to and from Knightsbridge. This anxiety came to a head when we returned to Fulham one morning to find that a land-mine had dropped on our road and destroyed many of the houses as well as the corresponding houses in two roads either side. As all our windows were broken and parts of the walls were badly damaged Pam, Mum and I were invited to stay with relatives at Fulwell, which we did until one night when we were all huddled in their Anderson shelter a bomb landed on the house across the road. We all survived but Mum was close to a nervous breakdown when we returned to our patched up home in Fulham and the doctor was called who advised that Pam and I should be re-evacuated and Mum should come too. So at 7am one morning the three of us reported at a school in Battersea to be taken by bus to Paddington Station where, because an air-raid was in progress, two or three hundred women and children were packed tightly into an underground passageway where many of the younger children were crying. Suddenly there was a loud bang and around us everyone was showered with liquid and broken glass. Immediately the crying intensified. When peace was finally restored it was discovered that the loud bang and shower had been caused by a child shaking a glass bottle full of fizzy lemonade until it finally exploded. We stayed in the passageway dripping wet for what seemed like an eternity until we were finally loaded onto a train, although we still had no idea where we were going. That train journey was a nightmare in itself. We left Paddington about 9.30am and slowly made our way towards the West Country, stopping first at Reading, where because there was no food or water on the train, several adults got off to find something and were promptly left behind when the train pulled out. One little girl in our compartment lost her mother and was finally re-united with her some days later. During that long, long day we stopped, sometimes for quite extended periods, at many places including Bristol, Taunton and Exeter before coming to a halt just outside Plymouth for about an hour because there was an air raid in progress there. Finally we moved off and after a while were aware that the clunkety-clunk of the train wheels had become much louder. Although we did not realise it at the time we were crossing the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall and at 11.30pm, some 14 hours after we left Paddington, we arrived at Penzance where, as we wearily trudged down the platform, the air raid sirens started up and we were rushed into waiting buses in which the only illumination was a pale glimmer of blue light every yard or so along the roof. Many of us were so hungry and tired we just went to sleep, to be woken outside a village hall about three miles along the A30 road from Penzance. Here we were finally given food and drink, in our case the first we鈥檇 had since about 5.30 in the morning. We were then loaded into cars and taken to the homes of people who had said they would be pleased to accept evacuees, but they were not quite so pleased when those evacuees arrived at about 2 o鈥檆lock in the morning ! After being turned away two or three times we were finally accepted by a lady in Long Rock, a small village between Penzance and Marazion. Here we finally laid our heads to rest at about 3am. It had been a long, long day. !

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