大象传媒

"I'm the king of the Castle. You're the dirty rascals". . The words were half shouted, half sung by Tommy Carroll, a six-year-old, standing atop a large heap of yellow building sand, it was both a boast and a challenge to the other young and very grubby boys, gathered around the base of the castle. The lads all wore short trousers and knee length socks down around their ankles. They had been playing with and around the sand for some time and it showed. Sand in their shoes, sand in their hair, sand covering the grazes on their knees.It was in the spring of 1940.

A communal air raid shelter was being built in the road outside numbers 97 to 107 Hemingford Road, Islington, London, N1. This was a little part of the preparations for the expected mass raids by the Luftwaffe.

The boys were too young to appreciate the dire times in which they lived and as boys of all nations will, they found some fun in almost all circumstances. As the builders had knocked off for the day, the boys naturally put the building materials to a good boyish use.Tommy was doing his dance at the top of his castle when one of the lads ran up the hill to dethrone him. After a brief struggle the lad came sliding back down. Another attempt was made without effect and then up went little Georgie Chamberlaine. Now it was Tommy's turn to take the slide to the bottom. "I'm the king of the castle. You're the dirty rascals" shouted Georgie. One abortive attempt was successfully fought off and then Terry Khober took a turn. Terry was victorious and this time it was Georgie's turn to take the slide. But he went down head first and in so doing struck his skull on the granite kerb at the bottom. His friends gathered around him to ascertain whether he was badly hurt, he had a bloody cut on the head. "Looks bad they said, we had better take him home." So a small procession went to 93, though he was quite capable of walking unaided, one boy on each side supported their injured comrade. They knocked at the door and presented Mrs Chamberlaine with her injured son.George was the youngest of Elsie Violet Chamberlaine's four children. He had come six years after the youngest of three girls, Elsie who was now twelve and at school. In answer to the enquiries of the concerned parent the boys said, "We were only playing on the sand Mrs Chamberlaine and George hit his head." "You boys know that is not a playground." she reprimanded them and took her son indoors.

Once the blood and dirt were washed from the wound with an antiseptic solution it was found not to be serious. Within half an hour, having had a slice of buttered toast with jam and that well known British elixir, a cup of tea he was back outside with his friends, sporting a white bandage which he had been instructed to keep clean and not play anymore on the sand pile, which instruction he immediately forgot.

There were three of these street shelters in Hemingford Road and another around the corner in Ripplevale Grove. They were squat looking buildings of brick and reinforced concrete. While being proof against blast they would not withstand a direct hit without serious damage to the structure and to at least some of the occupants. However they were relatively safe as compared with the houses. This was early days in the great conflict. Later the lads would stand on the steps of their houses, witnessing the skies to the south being turned red as incendiary bombs and high explosives dropped by the Luftwaffe turned the East End and the largest port in the world into a blazing inferno.

Hemingford Road was a different place then. There were never more than two cars parked in this street of about 200 houses. Much of the traffic, of which there was little, that came by was horse drawn. Games of cricket were played in the middle of the road, hopscotch was marked out in chalk. All these war children could think of was ways to enjoy themselves, their parents though were thinking about the war.

Mothers had to find how best to make meagre food rations go as far as possible with ever hungry young children to care for. The young ones did not realise it at the time but this was often accomplished by the mothers giving up part of their own ration for their children.

The Anderson Shelter

93 Hemingford Road was a substantial terraced Victorian house of four storeys with basement rooms. Part of a terrace built in 1846. Fred Chamberlaine, the father, worked at Harris Lebus in Tottenham. Lebus had been a furniture manufacturer but now it was an aircraft production facility building for Mosquito fighter bombers, an aircraft that was to become famous as the war progressed. Later they would also build Hotspur gliders to carry men and armour to the liberation of Europe. Fred would go off to work each morning very early, taking the workmen's bus which offered a cheap fare, and he would return late each evening. As the air raids intensified Fred became a fire watcher and with his comrades carried out fire watching duties on the roof of the local synagogue in Lofting Road. From this vantage point the fire watchers would spot fires and keep the fire brigade informed by telephone. After a sleepless night on duty he would then again be off to his job at Lebus. There was little rest for any able-bodied civilian.

Workmen came to put an Anderson shelter in the garden at the rear of No. 93. A hole of about 8 ft by 6 ft and of 4 ft in depth was dug and in this the shelter was erected, protruding about 3 or 4 ft above ground level. The sheets of corrugated iron were shaped so that the top was a semi circle, the structure was then covered with soil from the excavation forming a layer of about 18" deep. The builders erected a simple shuttering inside so that concrete could be poured to form a wall rising about 3 ft from the inner base. Almost as soon as the workmen left, the shelter flooded. Fred Chamberlaine dug a deep sump in the clay underneath to drain the water, he then made and fitted a floor of wooden slats, built a pair of bunk beds and placed a wooden wall in front of the entrance for protection from blast. Against the outside of that wall there was a rockery with a variety of flowers which could be seen from the basement kitchen window.At night during the Blitz Kreig, as the air raid sirens sounded their wailing tone, the family would get out of their comfortable beds and troop into the comparative safety of the shelter. Sometimes they would be joined by the Kays, a family who had the top part of the large Georgian house and preferred the Anderson to the street shelter. There might be as many as eight or ten people in this confined space. For lighting there was a hurricane oil lamp.The occupants would take turns resting on the bunks, two to a bunk laying head to toe, or sitting on the wooden bench. At some time an adult would go into the house to make a warm drink of tea or cocoa. To young George, sitting in the entrance of the shelter, the night sky was a fascinating sight, lit by searchlights and flares, there were barrage balloons all over and with the accompanying noise of the anti aircraft guns at Highbury Fields and the more distant crump of the bombs it was exciting.

Anti aircraft shells did not need a direct hit, they were designed to explode at the height and hopefully close to the aeroplanes. As the shells exploded in 'flak' a cloud of shrapnel or steel shards would be scattered and any Luftwaffe bomber close by would be at least heavily damaged if not brought down."Look Dad there's one in the search lights." "Yes the lights are locked on him for the gunners." "See, those are parachute flares. The Germans are dropping them to show their targets." "You Georgie come back in here." "Oh, its alright Mum.". "Your Mum's right. Come on inside, son. "George had a broken air rifle, given to him by his cousin Derek. He really wished it would work so he could have a shot at the huns. Though his dad told him that if it did work it wouldn't reach them anyway. Despite asking, his dad never did fix the gun for him, he said he didn't know how. But George knew his dad could do anything like that, he just didn't want to for some reason. Hemingford Road was not badly hit at that stage in the war. Even so the youngsters would find pieces of shrapnel laying in the road or even on the roof tops, where they should not have been looking. Some of the lads started collections of interesting items such as burned out incendiary bombs, bomb tail fins as well as the larger shrapnel pieces. Some of it was sold to the scrap merchants, enough would buy a cinema ticket.

Many Years later, George was talking to a German friend, Hans Bracht and Hans told of how when he was a child in Hamburg, he and his friends collected shrapnel to sell as scrap metal. Children are much the same the world over. What goes up must come down. One night, a house just around the corner in Ripplevale Grove was gutted by an anti aircraft shell which had failed to explode until it went through the roof, fortunately the family were in the street shelter at the time.

There were also underground shelters in Richmond Gardens at the top of Richmond Avenue and some in nearby Barnsbury Gardens. The underground shelters were a maze of concrete lined tunnels which provided a good play area for the boys. They played at Tommies and Huns, of course the Tommies always had to win. "I was a German last time, I don't want to be a German this time!"
Girls played too, they were nurses, some of the boys seemed to get wounded a lot. Another play area was the bomb houses of Sheen Grove and Box Grove just off Richmond Avenue. The houses there were not flattened at that time. Islington Boro Council did that after the war as they preferred to build a park rather than homes for the many homeless families on their housing list. These houses were gutted and roofless but at that time still standing. Floor boards were missing, they had been used by the youngsters to make push carts and by some of the grown ups to build garden sheds and the like. They made ideal club houses and the infant pretend armies could practice their house to house fighting skills. Clambering across rooves, climbing in and out of windows, running across boardless floor joists and trying to out manoeuvre the enemy. Terry Khober one day slipped off a joist and fell through two floors to the basement, so breaking a leg. But young bones mend quickly. The Armsby family lived in Ripplevale Grove. Mr Armsby was a coal merchant. Sometimes he would let his son Ronnie and a friend ride the pair of great cart horses that pulled coal wagon. They had a Morrison shelter in their house. This was a large dining table made of steel under which the family could retreat during air raids.

Later, came the Doodle Bugs and then VE Day with celebration street parties and bonfires.

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