大象传媒

London

Ernie Croxford

When Ernie, (Drew's granddad), came to tell our group about the war this is what he said.
He was born in 1929 and was evacuated to Kettering when war broke out, aged ten. There were two air raids in Kettering. He was separated from his two sisters and younger brother. It was crowded and he did not like it where he was sent so, after two weeks, he asked a man who drove a lorry if he would give him a lift back and the man said yes. So he took him home, but all the schools were shut so aged 12 he went to Kingsland Road Labour Exchange and told them he was 14 years old and they gave him a job. The job he got was at a printer鈥檚 firm, he got 10 shillings a week (50p). He was there for a month, after which time he changed his job to being a van boy for a carter, Patterson鈥檚 in the City Road.
With their ration books they went to the shop and traded their coupons in their ration book, but once that food was gone they had to wait until the next week to use their next lot of coupons.
For Christmas he only got an apple or an orange or a train. Children played marbles, boys played football and cricket and girls played skipping and dolls. They made a football out of plain paper and screwed it up into a ball then got a piece of string and tied it up. To make a cricket bat he got some wood and carved it into shape then you had to sand it to make it smooth.
One winter it snowed and snowed for two weeks and the snow came up to your knees.
One day he was playing with his friend George when a doodle bug's engine stopped, it looked like it was heading for his house when the wind blew it four streets away. Ernie's dad told him stories about the First World War. He said how bad it was, much, much worse than the Second World War.
To build an Anderson Shelter you had to have a big garden, and then you had to dig a big hole. Anderson shelters were built like a big arch. In Anderson Shelters you only put the essentials like a few chairs, a table, some newspaper, some blankets and some games.
There was another miracle another day. As usual he went to the Anderson Shelter in the garden but all the time he could hear bombs dropping. One bomb dropped near his house, it was a really big bomb. When they heard the all clear he opened the door to the shelter. It would not open, he was bombed in! He had to stay in the bomb shelter for nine hours that night.
There was great singing and dancing to celebrate the end of the war.

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