大象传媒

A Londoner鈥檚 Wartime Story

In the year 1940, my family and I lived in a suburb of London called Clapham. My brother and I had already been evacuated to a coastal town called Bognor Regis during the 鈥減honey war鈥� but as nothing seemed to be happening war-wise our parents took us back to London, I might add like so many others. Not long after our return to London the war began in earnest. Every night the air raid sirens would go and we would accompany many other people to our allocated underground shelters. I might add that during the 鈥減honey war鈥� these concrete shelters filled to the very tops steps with water and had to be pumped out once the German air raids began. These shelters were very damp and obviously many people came down with colds and various other illnesses. We soon became used to the nightly exodus to the shelters, people carrying palliases, blankets, etc there to lay huddled together through the long night wondering what was happening above.

I was nearly 9 years old at the time and the throb of German bombers and explosions was really frightening.

There came the night when we all heard the terrible shriek of a large bomb. Apparently it was a 2000-pounder; instead of hitting soft soil the bomb impacted on concrete which caused terrible damage. The next day all the families affected were sent to makeshift schools whilst the damage was cleaned up. Whilst all this was going on my youngest brother Tony contracted Chicken Pox. Mum was loath to go down the shelter because of the bad feeling with other mothers because of the chicken pox.

On a certain night a very heavy air raid developed and my family and I were sitting around in our flat which was on the 4th floor of a block of flats. The police officers in control of the area we lived in had been to our shelter and found that our family hadn鈥檛 checked in, so he came knocking on our door to demand that we go to the shelter. Mum said that she wouldn鈥檛 go down the shelter because of the bad feeling; with that the policeman said 鈥渢he hell with them, I order you to go to the shelter.鈥� If we hadn鈥檛 gone to the shelter I wouldn鈥檛 be telling this story. That night was a really rough one and when we went up to our flat the next morning the damage was terrible. There were great shards of glass blown out of the window frames which had cut right through the bed mattresses, the doors were hanging off, and worse of all the gas and electric supply were gone. Mum went shopping for candles like so many others and used some of these for a kind of cooking.

Dad set a few bricks (There was a plentiful supply of these laying around) in the remains of the fireplace and Mum set some candles under a saucepan full of potatoes which a few hours later would, she hoped, have been hot enough to eat. At the time my second brother and I were playing around when my arm caught the saucepan handle. The pan tipped over and the hot water and potatoes landed on my left leg. One of the potatoes burnt into my leg and the starch made it hard to remove the potato; it then turned septic. In the meantime, we were still going to the shelter every night. It was on the cards the we wouldn鈥檛 get away with dodging disaster for ever, so came the night when an air raid warden shouted down the shelter than an aerial torpedo had struck our flats and that it was all over for us. The next move was evacuation. But because my leg was very bad we were sent to the Norwich hospital in Norfolk. We stayed there for two weeks until my leg began to heal and were then driven by a district nurse to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Her job was to find our family accommodation with the local country people. Some of these people outright refused to take us in, then there were those who offered to take just one individual from the family. Mum was already in a bad state with what we had already been through and demanded that we be returned to London. She was thoroughly disgusted with our treatment. Of course we couldn鈥檛 return to London because we hadn鈥檛 anything there, no home no furniture no nothing.

The nurse then came up with another idea. I don鈥檛 know to this day how she achieved it, but she took us to a disused thatched cottage near a small village called 鈥淕reat Barton.鈥� It was on the estate of a General Sir Gusile Jones. The rent wasn鈥檛 too bad at the rate of Sixpence a week. There was no furniture of any kind; no beds, no lights, no heat, certainly no water supply. The toilet was a wooden board with a hole in it, a real 鈥渙ne holer鈥� outside in a shed. Mum was so distraught that she just cried and cried. It was beyond back to basics.

The nurse then took off to somewhere or other and brought back some blankets which stunk of paraffin and an old 鈥淰alor鈥� paraffin heater, also a few candles and matches. I remember that the door to the cottage never did lock; in fact in those days it was rare for anybody to think of locking doors especially in the country. The next day we set off on the 2-mile walk to the bus stop to get the bus to Bury St Edmunds where Mum intended to get some food for us. Dad arrived a week later after tying things up in London with the authorities. When the Americans arrived in 1942 that would be another story; in fact a great chunk of my life.

I will finish by saying that we lived in the most primitive conditions for nearly 7 years before returning to London in 1947.

The old oil heater and a primus stove were Mum鈥檚 only form of heating for cooking, washing, etc, and our water supply was a rusty pump outside. We went through thousands of candles and thousands of patches for the inner tubes of cycles yet to come.

Bill Andrews

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