大象传媒

This story was submitted to the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by Wymondham Learning Centre on behalf of the author, Hugh Morgan, who fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was born in Wandsworth in April 1930. In about 1936 we moved to Epsom, but when war began three years later I had been sent to live with my grandmother in Barry, Wales. I was picking blackberries in her garden when war was declared and remember her and an old friend being very distressed by the turn of events - they had been through it all once and lost sons in the first war, including my uncle Albert who was a sailor, but at the age of nine I suppose I was more interested in picking blackberries and going to the beach. After a few weeks of the 鈥減honey war鈥� I was sent back to Epsom.

My first memory of the war proper is of being awoken in bed by 鈥渟creech鈥� bombs. These were bombs with fins, which made a high-pitched screaming noise as they came down and I was terrified by the noise. However we soon got used to the wail of air-raid sirens and the noise of anti-aircraft guns and I remember being in the garden looking up at the searchlight beams.

My father was working at Battersea and Bankside power stations and spent many nights on fire-watching duty on the power station roof. He was also in the Home Guard and my somewhat eccentric mother was an Air-raid Warden complete with hat and whistle. The family story goes that, having heard a bomb fall, she ran out of the house, fell flat on her face, lost her tin hat and blew her whistle! Mum鈥檚 Army!

Father was an engineer and built us a very substantial shelter sunk into the floor of the garage that was attached to the house. It had walls and roof of reinforced concrete slabs with an entrance opposite the house chimneybreast, this being the part of the house most likely to remain standing in the event of a direct hit. He filled the space between the shelter and the garage walls with earth or sandbags. My parents and my sister and I slept in it throughout the worst of the blitz, three on mattresses on the floor and one in a bunk. We listened to the wireless a lot and one of my favourite programmes was 鈥淗appidrome鈥� starring a comedian called Harry Korris. The theme song began: 鈥淲e three in Happidrome, working for the 大象传媒, Ramsbottom and Enoch and Me.鈥� Another I liked was 鈥淗i, Gang!鈥� with Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyons. And of course we listened to ITMA.

We sang lots of songs about the Germans 鈥� 鈥淗ang Out Your Washing on the Siegfried Line鈥�, 鈥淩un Rabbit, Run鈥� and so on. We assiduously followed the battles in the papers and listening to the war news was a daily ritual.

Our road led up to Epsom Downs and I suppose it was one of the major routes to the south coast from London. At one time there was a constant stream of military convoys up the road and I used to hang over the gate to watch them go by 鈥� soldiers in trucks and an occasional gun or tank. There were houses on only one side of the road. Canadian soldiers were camped under canvas in the woods opposite and at times my mother invited some over for tea. British troops were living in the grandstand on Epsom Downs racecourse and King George VI came down to inspect them. It was a target for bombs but not seriously damaged.

In the field opposite us a deep bomb-shelter was dug out of the chalk. It consisted of a grid of tunnels with a ramped entrance and was big enough for about a thousand people. Wire netting lined the tunnels, probably to prevent bits of chalk from falling onto people, but there was no concrete lining and no pit props. It was usually damp. During the blitz people would walk up the road at dusk carrying their bedding and ground-sheets, the children with their teddies, and sleep there. We slept there ourselves two or three times 鈥� I don鈥檛 remember why. Usually we slept in our own shelter in the garage, which was quite dry and comfortable. After the war the tunnels were used to grow mushrooms for a while, but eventually flooded.

Although it is about sixteen miles out of London there were some bombs dropped on Epsom, perhaps sometimes by aircraft that turned back and jettisoned their bomb loads on the way to the coast. Land mines were bombs dropped on a parachute, designed to explode on the surface. One fell in the fields near us and the crater is still visible. Whenever there was a new bombsite my mother would take me to see it. It seems rather ghoulish now, but other people did the same. We鈥檇 see houses demolished, beds hanging half-out of upper floors. There was the odd plank placed across gaps that we could cross to get a better view. It seems bizarre, but I suppose there was a certain propaganda value in letting the public see the damage the enemy was doing.

The war was fun, really, for small boys. We鈥檇 watch dogfights between planes (until some responsible adult dragged us to safety) and occasionally see one shot down. Of course we knew all the planes, and we鈥檇 run inside and tell mum whether it was one of theirs or one of ours. We鈥檇 collect bits of shrapnel that fell and compare it with bits collected by school friends. After a dogfight the place would be littered with metal. If there were a crash, we鈥檇 go to look at the site. On the Downs I dug up unexploded incendiary bombs, which my father took away from me and carried off to the police station to be defused. I was lucky not to have blown my hand off!

At school, Epsom County Grammar for boys, the bomb shelter was like a long Anderson shelter, a sunken trench with hoops and a corrugated iron roof topped with earth. There were benches facing each other along each side and during raids we鈥檇 sit on these with our knees touching, and a teacher at one end conducting the lesson. It was great fun. Some of the male teachers were called up, and female teachers, a novelty to us, came in. Some were better than the men they replaced. One very glamorous girl used to sit cross-legged on the desk, taunting us and trying to teach us French. We had regular gas mask drill in class and soon discovered that the air escaping round the sides would make a very rude noise if you blew hard enough! We had to carry them all the time, in a box with a string attached for slinging over your shoulder. You could get a leatherette cover for the box to make it more waterproof and a bit smarter looking.

Lurid tales, read in the papers or heard in the playground, of how the Gestapo tortured their prisoners, made a deep impression on me. My mother had no time for the Germans. I was brought up to hate 鈥渢he dirty Bosch鈥� and even now I don鈥檛 quite like the Germans. It鈥檚 difficult to get rid of these prejudices.

I remember rationing and the small amounts of meat and butter. We were all disappointed at Christmas when we didn鈥檛 have a bird, just a little bit of stew, for Christmas dinner. Someone, perhaps an aunt, sent tinned sausages and peaches from America, which were a treat. We also ate at the British Restaurants, where you could have a meal for about a shilling without using coupons. We ate a lot of rice, and we had eggs because we kept chickens. I think my mother sometimes bought a chicken on the black market to cook. She also used dried egg but I can鈥檛 remember where we got that.

I remember the poster 鈥淐areless Talk Costs Lives.鈥� Some of our neighbours lost sons. My older sister had a boyfriend who fought in the East and came back with one eye.

I was in Epsom all through the blitz and was not evacuated again until the V-1 period in 1944. I think the school organised the evacuation. About fifty pupils went to Camelford, North Cornwall, a little market town on the edge of Bodmin Moor. We travelled by train with our gas masks and packets of sandwiches. You could lean out of the window and watch the train round the bends. There were no parents and few masters. On arrival we were taken to the village hall and each given a huge cornish pasty while local adults looked us over. My friend Colin and I were picked by the whipper-in of the North Cornish hunt, Mr Inch, who introduced himself as 鈥淢r Inch, thirty-six to the yard!鈥� He had a big house with stables and horses. The household consisted of Mrs and Mr Inch and his sister, all in their sixties I guess. Miss Inch was sometimes a bit grumpy but otherwise they were very pleasant and kind to us. Colin and I shared a room and slept on rubber sheets for the first few days 鈥� all the hosts had been out and bought those, having heard rumours of bed-wetting by evacuees!

I was there for six months and it was one of the happiest times of my life. Mr Inch taught me to trap rabbits which I sold to the dairy for pocket money, I got sent to a farm across the valley to get milk, eggs and butter, I followed the hunt on foot, I watched the nearby blacksmith shoe horses and I loved walking the country lanes, along the river or out onto Bodmin Moor. We went to St James鈥檚 Grammar School in Camelford and I particularly remember Mr Lees, the head. He once appeared in the classroom after lunch with a tray of leftover pudding, counted heads, took out a penknife, cut it up and shared it out. Apparently he sometimes took senior boys out onto the moor with a telescope to look at the night sky. I was surprised to learn that some of the local boys had to walk several miles to school from their outlying farms. We also walked quite a bit, sometimes five or six miles across to the coast at Trebarwith or Tintagel for picnics.

In general we had a good time. One farmer鈥檚 wife in particular took some trouble to invite us to parties and picnics, and I made my first girlfriends! In those days before TV there was a lot of self-entertainment in the church hall, everyone invited to do a recitation or sing, etc., and one a week the cinema arrived in a van and set up in a sort of Corn Hall in the town centre. It was 6d to sit on the floor or 9d to sit on the perch 鈥� a few benches at the back. The weekly serial was 鈥淭he Clutching Hand鈥� and I remember one film about the jungle, starring George Sanders, called Green Hell鈥�.

Back in Epsom for the end of the war, I remember huge celebratory bonfires and milling crowds on Epsom Downs on VE and VJ nights. My parents hadn鈥檛 been able to visit me in Cornwall but we corresponded regularly and they did take me back there a couple of years later, to see the Inches and the place where I鈥檇 spent such a carefree six months.

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