大象传媒

My name is Len Smith, I was born in 1928 and was about to commence my secondary education at the time when the war broke out in 1939.

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I was not evacuated to a 鈥榮afe area.鈥� I lived throughout the war years in one of the most heavily bombed areas of Britain - the County Borough of West Ham.

I have experienced life as a schoolboy and then as an adult under these extreme and traumatic conditions, since family circumstances deemed it necessary for me to start earning my living at the minimum school leaving age of 14.

It is worth mentioning that following the first big air raid of September 7th 1940, we were under attack for 57 consecutive nights and thereafter from heavy raids several times per week until the end of May 1941.

Put into perspective, each of those nights, from dusk to dawn, was spent in the musty confines of an Anderson shelter with only a candle or oil lamp for lighting. After May 1941, the air attacks became more sporadic, until the nightmare onset of the V-weapons assault in 1944 and 1945.

In September 1939, following the mass evacuation of children from London and other vulnerable areas, many schools closed. A large number of teachers were evacuated along with their pupils, while younger male teachers were conscripted for military service.

Initially, no provision was made for pupils remaining in London. We were simply told to go home and await instructions about our future education. After about 6 weeks, I was allocated a place for part-time education in a local mission hall, 2 afternoons a week from 1.30 to 3.30pm. The subjects were English and arithmetic.

In February 1940, with the situation at home remaining quiet, many evacuees and some teachers returned and I was able to resume full-time classes.

In September 1940, following the first major air assault of the blitz, the school promptly closed again and there was another mass exodus of people fleeing the capital. Main line railway stations and coach stations were besieged. For the next 3 months, there was no organised education. During this period, a number of schools were destroyed or seriously damaged, while some provided temporary accommodation for bombed out families. Others provided makeshift mortuary accommodation for the large number of fatalities resulting from the bombing.

Meanwhile, the children with no schools to attend were just running wild in the streets. Who cared about education? Personal survival was all that mattered, tonight we may be dead!

Sadly, it was a school that featured in West Ham's single worst air raid incident. Several hundred people bombed out of their homes in the Tidal Basin area of the borough were being housed in the South Hallsville School in Agate Street, Canning Town, while waiting to be evacuated to a safer area. The buses arranged to transport them out on Monday afternoon of 9th September failed to arrive.

It was rumoured that the buses had been sent to Camden Town by mistake, and this meant that the homeless people were obliged to spend another night in the school. In the early hours of Tuesday morning 10th September, the school received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb. The official death toll was estimated between 70 and 80, with scores injured, many seriously. Locally, it us believed that the number of the dead was considerably higher. Whole families were wiped out in this terrible incident.

In January 1941, I was able to resume my erratic education when a total of 80 pupils were mustered, including an intake from a nearby school which had been destroyed. Conditions were far from ideal for studying. We were all under stress, including the teachers. Any homework had to be completed before the nightly trip to the Anderson shelter, as we were still under attack from heavy night raids. Occasionally there were daylight raids, and when these occurred, we would be marshalled into the corridors which had been reinforced with blast walls. Such was the uncertainty of life at this stage, that as I was walking out of the schoolyard with a colleague one afternoon and we turned to go our respective ways, he said to me, 鈥楽ee you tomorrow, I hope.鈥� I said yes and he replied, 鈥楾hat鈥檚 all we can say now, isn鈥檛 it?鈥�

I can still remember a chorus we would sometimes sing at morning assembly. I think it may have been composed by one of the teachers. It went something like this:

鈥楯esus is with you, don鈥檛 be afraid
He will protect you, all through the raid
When bombs are falling, and danger is near
He will be with you, till the all clear鈥�

My school survived several near misses and sustained blast damage to windows and roof once during school hours.

Many people owe their lives to the Anderson shelter. Named after Sir John Anderson, Minister of Home Security in Neville Chamberlain鈥檚 cabinet, they were supplied to all homes with a back garden. A charge was made according to family income, the maximum being 拢7. They were a crude structure in heavy gauge, galvanised corrugated steel, set into a 3鈥� 6鈥� deep pit in the ground and covered with earth from the excavation. They were also one of the best life savers of the war. I have seen them mangled and distorted by the bomb blast but their occupants survived. Obviously, they couldn鈥檛 withstand a direct hit and sadly, a number of such incidents did occur. In a neighbouring street, all five occupants of the shelter were killed instantly including my mother鈥檚 friend and her teenage daughter.

On a lighter note, the air raids during the first eight weeks of the blitz were so regular that the proprietor of our local corner shop chalked on his boarded up window, 鈥極PEN TILL WARNING.鈥� The local baker went one better with this:

鈥楾hough bombs and blast come thick and fast
We鈥檒l carry on quite gaily.
While we鈥檙e still here,
We鈥檒l persevere,
To bake out Hovis daily鈥�

During the summer of 1941, our school, along with others in the area, were given the task each afternoon for a period of 2 weeks of filling in names, addresses and National Registration numbers on hundreds of new issue ration books. We were told that we would be helping the war effort by relieving the overworked staff at the local food office and, moreoever, the exercise would help to improve our handwriting skills.

My 鈥榦n and off鈥� education finally drew to a close at Christmas 1942 when I left to commence my working life and thus complete my early transition from childhood.
I have often been asked what we did for pleasure during those trying years. The answer - by today鈥檚 standards - was very little. We made the best of the situation we found ourselves in. There was, of course, no television but we had the radio, known then as the wireless. There were just 2 stations, the 大象传媒 Home Service and the Forces Programme the latter providing mainly light music and entertainment shows. However, broadcasting would go off air when a raid was imminent. Cinemas generally remained open, even during air raids. A notice would appear on the screen as follows:

鈥楾he air raid warning has just been sounded. Those who wish to leave the theatre should do so immediately. Meanwhile the show will continue.鈥�

It was decision time, whether to take pot luck and stay or whether to make a swift dash for home, hopefully before the raid intensified. Either way it was a gamble.

Confined to the musty Anderson shelter during the long evenings and nights of the early weeks of the blitz we would sometimes play card games by the light of a paraffin lamp as a welcome distraction from the noisy and dangerous environment outside.

Parks and public open spaces provided some pleasure although some were occupied by anti-aircraft gun batteries and searchlight units, while other housed RAF barrage balloons. With all the coastal resorts of Essex, Kent and Sussex off limits by a government imposed ban, and with notices displayed at railway stations asking, 鈥�'Is your journey really necessary?'鈥� most people spent what few holidays they had at home. There was some municipal entertainment provided during the summer months in local parks and recreation grounds with bands and amateur singers. Fruit picking and agricultural camps provided a welcome getaway for some.

Occasionally, we would attend a football match at Upton Park ground. Because most players were serving in the Armed Forces, the West Ham team would often include a number of guest players, if their regular team members were unavailable. The team sheet would always include the player鈥檚 military designation, thus there would be names such as Sgt Medhurst, Gnr Gregory, Cpl Corbett and a/c Foxhall, etc.

Ballroom dancing became popular when night raids were less regular, and the favourite local venues were Stratford Town Hall and Canning Town Public Hall.

If anything good arose from the 1940s, it was surely the comradeship that was fostered by the circumstances we were in. We cared for one another as never before, and when someone lost their home or worse when they lost loved ones, there were genuine feelings of sympathy and as much help as it was in our power to give. When a major incident occurred in an adjacent street, our air raid warden came round asking for volunteers to provide tea and refreshments for the rescue teams who had been toiling all night to recover the victims. The response was magnificent in spite of the rationing. We raided our larders to make sandwiches and my mother made tea in a large enamel jug which I took to the grim scene along with a number of other neighbours.

Throughout this story, I have tried to provide just a small insight into our way of life on the Home Front during those troubled times from a teenager鈥檚 view. There is so much more to relate, including London鈥檚 most terrifying period of the war, namely the nine month assault by the notorious V-weapons of 1944/45.

My unpublished book, 鈥楾he Way We Were鈥� is at the Local Studies Section of Stratford Public Library. It is a portrayal of life in London鈥檚 East End from the early 1930s to 1952. It includes a detailed section on the Second World War and its effect on the local population. The book contains archive photographs of wartime scenes and there is also a local civilian roll of honour of the many who lost their lives, some of whom were my friends and neighbours.

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