大象传媒

When I was about six, we were sent away from London. We each had a carrier bag, a packet of sandwiches and a tag tied on us, and went on a train. I was put with a group of older boys, with only one friend, Tommy Tucker. We arrived in the dark and were taken to a hall with rows of folding beds, and a dim blue light, given milk or cocoa and told to go to sleep. No-one told us where the toilet was. During the night some of us needed to use the toilet, but could not find anywhere in the dark. However, the stranger in charge of us, I suppose a schoolmaster, had taken off his tall boots and left them at the side of his bed. Problem solved 鈥� some of us filled them up. I still laugh recalling the look on his face when he tried to put them on, and the contents spurted out of the lace holes!

We were at a place called Coalville. Tommy went off with an old lady. I went to the house of a strange woman who had two boys of her own. We soon had our first fight with gas-mask cases! The food was terrible; I hated it there, and after two weeks found my way to Leicester station. Some soldiers gave me a sandwich and some tea. I got on the London train to Liverpool Street, and walked home. My Mum cried. She said Grandma was going to Kent for fruit and hop picking, so I went too.

When we came back we found our flat had taken a bomb meant for Dewrances, a big engineering company in Great Dover Street. We rescued as much of our furniture as we could from the rubble, and moved to the cellars underneath Barclay鈥檚 brewery (where Dad worked). We made rooms built of beer crates which reached up to the pipes slung from the cellar roof and when in bed we could see rats running along the pipes.

My Mum would not let me go away again and I am glad, because shortly after she became ill with cancer, but I remember her walking in the freezing cold to the Elephant and Castle to collect coal for us and other people, and pushing the heavy barrow home all by herself. We moved out of the cellars to another flat and I went back to school, but only for two mornings a week. For the rest of the time we boys were out collecting shrapnel, nose-caps and shell cases for salvage; also incendiary bombs which, when they fell on the tarry blocks in the road or in the park, would often not ignite.

I had a cart with large ball-bearing wheels for salvage collecting. All the railings at our building had been removed for the war effort, and the ground dug up. An oil bomb struck the side of the wall and then fell down and stuck in the soft earth. With a wooden pole I moved it to the path, got it on to my cart, and wheeled it to the police station. They were not as pleased as I had thought they would be to be presented with an unexploded bomb, said I should have left it for the army, and that my Dad would be told!

When I was nine my Mum died, and I spent some time with my Gran and various other relatives and friends.

The bombing had now broken the water mains, and pipes were put along the roadsides, and where they crossed the road ramps were built over them for the carts to go over. The cellars of some of the bombed-out houses were sealed with a black finish and flooded with water as static water tanks. Some men collected fish from the Thames and put them in so that we could now fish in the tanks.

Several of my uncles joined the AFS and had a taxi with a ladder as a fire engine. When they were out fighting a fire we would go to find them with tea flasks and sandwiches. Once at one of the wharves wooden boxes of enormous tins were being pulled out, some on fire. They cut off the tops of some of the tins, and found they were filled with pineapple chunks, so we all had a treat of nice (hot) pineapple!

Our flat in Bermondsey was demolished by the blast from a 鈥淒oodlebug鈥�, destroying most of our possessions, so we moved yet again to another building. I had not been to school for ages but now did go back to school for two-and-a-half days a week. On our way there, we were able to pinch Seville oranges being brought into the docks, and then as we walked over the bridge down to Bermondsey wharf we would find brown sugar spilled onto the barges from where the hooks had torn some of the sacks. We would peel the orange and dip it into the spilled sugar so that we could eat it. It was lovely!

We never went short, despite food rationing. We could always get sheep鈥檚 heads and pigs trotters, and Uncle Toby, who had a shop, provided a few things 鈥渙ff the ration鈥�; he had a few deals going with the 鈥淵anks鈥� and got me some chewing gum. I remember helping him to wrap up cigarettes in packs of five in blue sugar paper; people would come in and ask for a 鈥渢wist鈥� and get American cigarettes.

I was eleven when the war ended. I spent most of it in London in the thick of the bombing, but I cannot remember feeling frightened. It was just an adventure. On VE night I kissed all the girls. When the 50th anniversary celebrations were being held I asked my wife if she minded me kissing all the girls again; she said not at all 鈥� provided they were the same girls!

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