大象传媒

The Wartime memories of Peter Sutton who lived in Winchmore Hill, North London. E-mail address [ p.h.sutton1@btopenworld.com]
. At the end of August 1939 we were then in the throws of getting ready for what was deemed to be the inevitable War and were issued with Gas masks and identity cards at the St. Johns Church Hall in Palmers Green. My school had written to my parents to tell them that plans had been made to evacuate all those who wished to go to our sister School Colliers School in Horsham. So with a sad farewell from Mother I started on my great adventure on the 1st September to first go to Mercers School in Holborn, where those of us evacuating, with our cases and gas masks were marched to London bridge Station to catch the first train out which took all the evacuee passengers first to Brighton and from there we caught a train back to Horsham.
We were then marched from the station down the hill to Colliers School where we met various Billeting Officers and then marched to our Billets.
My billet was at 14 Warnham Road, Horsham a leafy wide road with houses set well back from the road and sheltered by high hedges. The billet holder was Mrs Charman a mother with two children of her own Graham and Jose - Josephine aged 2. Mr Charman was the Manager of a Building and Road making firm the other side of Horsham. I was billeted there with another boy , Roy Harding. We were given a double bedroom and slept together in a double bed. The rules were that we kept our bedroom tidy and made the bed. We were given strict meal times and required to help with the washing up and clearing away after meals. We were allowed to roam free especially at weekends and told to keep well away from the sluice gates to the Mill pond behind the house. Roaming around and exploring the town behind a Radio shop there was dumped a lot of old radios. So I asked if I could help myself and the shop owner agreed. Not so the Charmans who did not want me electrocuting myself whilst in their care. Mr. Charman had a lovely set of woodworking tools and in exchange for not having mains radio sets in his shed I was allowed to use the tools to make model aircraft. Copies to scale of the fighter aircraft and bombers. I was allowed to hang some of these in the bedroom and to supplement pocket money sold some to school friends not so gifted. Whilst talking of pocket money I had by the time I went to Horsham been allowed the princely sum of 6d. per week which on evacuation became one shilling with the requirement that I saved 6d. in National Savings each week and was not paid my shilling until I had written my weekly letter home and promised that I would pay 6d. into National savings!.
The school operated from day one at the Colliers school and on the Sunday 3rd September we were all marched to the Parish Church in Horsham where we were all placed in the Choir stalls in the Church. The service had just started, when the door burst open and an air raid Warden ran into the church with tin hat on and went up to the vicar and after a whispered conversation the Vicar announced that War had been declared and there was an Air raid warning in progress and any who wished could leave the church to go home. A few left and the Mercers Schoolboys all stayed where we were and all passed off without a problem, much to our disappointment.
There was a girls school opposite the side entrance to the Colliers school and daily at the end of school I would be walking back to Mrs Charmans and either ahead of me or behind was a rather pretty girl also going all the way to Warnham Road. so naturally we began to talk and meet each other on the way home from school. She was the daughter of The Jeweller in the town whose brother ran a prestigious Restaurant also in the High Street. Her name was Betty Wilkinson. By Christmas the war news as far as the civilian population was concerned was not too bad so during the Christmas school holidays we were all allowed to return to our homes in London.
During the War Years the Winter weather was terrible with snow and ice forming thickly on the Mill pond. In the Iron Mongers in Town you could buy ice skates to affix to the bottom of cricket boots for 1s.6d. three weeks pocket money or a model aeroplane. Most of the Mercers boys being town people had learnt to use roller skates and so with skate blade affixed to the bottom of our cricket boots we were well away. With the stricture of not going near the sluice gates. The ice on the Mill pond being up to 2 feet thick we challenged the Colliers Boys to ice hockey and because we unlike they had had the experience and acquired balance from roller skating we beat them whenever we played.
With my skills with my hands, although my school test results continued in abysmal fashion, I was always joined by those boys at the top of my class and having a girlfriend in the old fashioned sense of the word, made me popular. Betty and I went for long walks and often went through the countryside with her dogs to a local village of Friday Street where farmer relations of Mrs Charman lived. We would have drinks there and return. On many of the walks Betty would settle down and sketch in a book some of the scenes we saw and colour them at home afterwards. During the Summer school holidays I would return to London. Dad with his neighbours had dug out an air raid Shelter in the field at the bottom of our garden but it was always partly flooded as the ground was in an area of Gravel. So they set about that Summer to build a proper Concrete Air raid shelter half into the ground and half above ground.
This was covered at the sides and top with the soil that had been excavated. It accommodated all of us and two neighbouring families. Air raid warnings were frequent and of no account whilst the authorities tried to sophisticate the warning system which only really came about by the improvements to Radar. We would rush down the garden with acquired tin hats and carrying the budgerigar in his cage. Dad being in a reserved occupation joined the Home Guard to do his bit in the War Effort and used to operate the Anti Aircraft guns situated down on open ground near the river Lea in Edmonton. Later when the Air raids were for real the tin hats became essential. There was more danger from the falling debris from the A.A. shells than from Bombs. Larger parts of the shells when falling to the ground would break through tiles of the roofs of houses and end up in the house itself. School and Horsham continued much as before until it came to the Summer of 1941.
During the Summer of 1941 raids over London became frequent and we would stand out in the garden cheering our fighter pilots on their way to shoot up the enemy.
One became blas茅 about the dangers. One day that Summer, when a friend and I were in the local Grovelands Park during an Air Raid we heard a diving aeroplane and looked round to see a ME 109 Fighter plane appearing over the tops of the trees coming towards our direction. There was the sound of machine gum fire behind it. In a matter of seconds we were flat on our faces and watched as a Spitfire followed the German fighter attempting to shoot it down. It all passed in a flash and we then got up and recovered the bullet casings which we found around in the park. During the Battle of Britain as it was later called ; and at the end of the Summer holiday we were out watching the fighters with their con-trails going after the German planes and shooting them down in the distance. We had such a good view of everything from the back bedroom of the house since we could see far out to the East over the river Lea Valley several miles away from our home. More about this view later.
After my return to school an odd raider got through one night and dropped its bombs and one landed on the semi-detached house next door. It fell on the party wall.
Although it blew out the whole of the back of the houses no-one was fortunately killed. One old couple found that the blast had left them in their bed with the floor sagging down to the open air and the Mother in the other house was under the mahogany dining table which saved her life from the falling debris. Indeed years later I was given a piece of that table and it is now in the low table in my lounge.

It was about this time that during the night there had been an Air Raid by a
lone bomber which dropped a stick of Incendiary bombs. One struck a house across the railway and a second a house in the next road to ours. With my friend Peter Wakefield we followed the approximate line and sure enough found a house with its
roof gutted and then a house that was gutted completely. All were in the same line and we followed that line into Grovelands Park. In the woods we found an incendiary bomb that had detonated but as it was filled with sand had not burnt. The tail fin lay a few feet away. I picked it up knowing that as it had detonated and lain cold since dropped it would be alright to carry to the Wardens post. I went to the post and the Warden just about went crazy seeing me carrying the incendiary. He made me lay it down by the wall and covered it with sandbags. I made sure he knew it was something I wished to keep and he recorded the fact, and said I could come back the following day to claim it. That I did and when dissembled and cleaned out and fitted a new detonator needle.
It was often borrowed by the Wardens for their lectures.
At school I studied English, English Literature, Latin, French, Mathematics,
Geography, History, Chemistry and Physics. The latter two being my favourite subjects.
With the Battle of Britain won people relaxed with only sporadic raids and the school opened up again in London, I returned there to study and take my exams.

Later in the War we were at first stunned by the Doodle Bugs as they were called. Because they were not piloted as soon as one got through at the coast the Air
raid sirens would sound. Soon, however, we learned that not all were coming our way. As soon as the siren woke us up we would go to the back bedroom window (my bedroom) and look out over the valley to watch for the tail-flames of the Doodle Bugs. If they were coming our way then we took cover in the shelter but mostly their direction was towards the centre of London and we would go back to bed. One night when they were coming our way Dad and I stood in the Shelter entrance and watched
one flying overhead when the engine stopped. We stood there transfixed and saw it fall to the ground and explode in the next road to ours. We saw the blast wave of compressed air like a rainbow surrounding the explosion and forgetting that in fact the blast went in all directions suddenly found ourselves pinned against the wall by the blast of air from the explosion. Later in the war there were the rockets. I recall that for some reason I was dismounting from a bus in the Lambeth area and as I hung out of the bus going into London I saw a Rocket falling in the sunlight and it landed beside the Airforce HQ building at the Junction of Holborn Kingsway and Aldwich.
44 people died in that explosion and one of them was a neighbour in our road.
I was hopeless at Latin and with a view to getting at least 6 credit marks in my Matriculation Exam I dropped Latin. I was now in the upper fourth year and my class position was still in the region of 14th or 15th. The form Master who was the Deputy Head took me aside at the end of that year and said that I would have to stay down in the Upper 4th year for a further year. I said Dad would kill me if I was not allowed to go into the 5th Form and at the end of the conversation my pleading won the day and he said he would give me one month in the 5th but if I did not improve I would have to go back to
the upper 4th. From that day onwards I worked hard. There were different Masters in the 5th form and particularly as far as mathematics was concerned the Master had been a surveyor in The Gold Coast in Africa and explained how you used triangulation to determine the height of a hill or mountain etc. At last all the dull (learn by wrote)teaching that had occurred in the past, and with my practical approach to life, things fell into place. From that time on my marks in all subjects improved beyond all recognition and I was up with my best school friends 2nd or 3rd in the class.
It was now 1943 and the Matriculation Examinations were held in the lower playground which was a space below the main school building and sandbagged up to make a Shelter area. Sporadic bombing attacks were still taking place and indeed when I sat my English examination a raid was in progress. Bombs were dropped and
all the noises of a raid on London were evident. For the essay we were given about five subjects upon which to write and the first was write an essay commencing with the words; And the sound grew louder and louder; and finish your essay with ;And there was silence;. That needed imagination and that was not my strong point so I chose to write an essay on a practical subject;Write about the River Thames from the source to the sea; and that is what I did. Dad could not believe it. But Dad being the person he was wanted me to take the external London University Matriculation Exam as well. He believed in backing a horse both ways. He need not have worried as I passed both exams with eight credits which gave me entry into University if I wished.

Shortly after this I became an Articled pupil at Gregory Rowcliffe & Co of Bedford Row London. When the War with Germany was finally finished with friends we went up to London to join in the celebrations around Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar square.

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