大象传媒

I was born in 1935 and lived with my parents at Lee, in the Borough of Lewisham, southeast London throughout the war. I was not one of the children evacuated to the country perhaps because I was an only child and rather molly-coddled. This became embarrassing in later childhood, when for example my parents came to see I was "all right" at a cub camp held only half a mile away from my home! We occupied the two lower floors of a large Victorian house in Dorville Road, Mr and Mrs Robertson having the upper two floors. An Anderson shelter was dug into the back garden, a site previously used by rats because hundreds of broken eggshells were found there. It seems we alone used the shelter, although we stopped doing so at some stage. I was told this was because my father cut open his head on the metal door in the dark. Perhpas this was an excuse because my parents didn't like the idea of the Robertsons being at risk in the house while we were protected in the shelter. My mother was too prudish to have contemplated us all sharing the shelter. Anyway we stayed in the house, sleeping on the floor with our heads and uppr bodies under a sturdy table.
I must have attended a private schol, held in a house in the next road, before going to the local LCC school, because it was an early casualty in the war, being completely destroyed by a bomb. So I went to manor Lane school which was itself closed due to an "oil bomb". The oil spread over the buildings, but no incendiary device ignited it, so it was possible to clean up. Thus I had to walk to Hither Green School for some weks where I remember that we assembled during air raids and sang to keep up our spirits. My various schools were spared the experience of children at Sangley Road School nearby where children were machine-gunned by a German pilot as they waved to the plane thinking it was British. My grandmother lived in an odjoining road and remembered how the plane flew so low it darkened the windows of her house. I don't know how many children died but the pilot, if found, was threatened with serious consequences after the war ended. He probably didn't survive it, like so many others.
Boys used to go out to collect shapnel, and were especially proud of shiny pieces. An incenduary bomb which fell in our garden was painted gren by my father and used as a flower vase. We kept chickens and rabbits in the long garden, the latter kept in hutches over the doorway to the shelter. One night my father heard a strange sound from the garden and went to investigate. It was abnormally dark outside because a barrage balloon had come down completely blocking any light from the moon or stars. It straddled several gargens but when deflated could be taken out through the side door from the back garden to the front.
Most of my recollections are from the latter part of the war when the V1 and V2 rockets were fired on London and elsewhere. During the day, if at home, my mother and I used the shelter after the siren sounded. However I became quite blase if she wasn't paying attention and would stand at the door watching for any action overhead. We knew that the V1's didn't fall untill their engines cut out, so any flying overhead were destined to fall elsewhere. Thus I watched them with no fear. This, of course, was misplaced confidence because one "with my name on it" might have cut out a mile to the south!

I recall being really frightened only twice, once when the siren went when I was much further from home collecting shrapnel than I should have been, and ran for my life. The other was much worse. The V2 rockets were silent, except in the case of one that dropped on Lewisham Market. On this occasion I was in the house and my mother in the garden. The rocket made a screaming noise as it descended and I thought it would strike the house as I threw myself flat on the floor. My father, who had fought throughout the First World War, and was in the ARP during this war, was a rescuer on the scene soon after, and it was chaotic, with horses and people killed.

After the war my family took me to VJ Day celebrations in London, after the fall of Japan (I didn't attend the earlier VE Day events), and the huge crowds were as frightening to a small boy as the threats from the air from the Germans.

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