大象传媒

I was just eight years old when World War II started in September 1939, and it is a dreadful thing to say now, but I enjoyed the war years - for a small boy it was exciting, & different, & sometimes dangerous.

My school was at Tadworth, "Chinthurst", and I cycled there every day throughout the war. Bicycles were essential items in our family, for the car was laid up in the garage for the duration, and the only means of transport for my mother, my sister and I - to the shops at Kingswood and Tadworth, to the farms at Banstead, and to school - was by bike. So it was on our bikes that my sister and I pedalled like fury up to the crossroads at Kingswood Church (St. Andrew's), to see the wreckage of the German fighter plane that had crashed there. It was ablaze and the cannon ammunition was exploding in every direction, but, kids being kids, we scrabbled around collecting souvenirs without a thought to our safety.

Of course, children never understand danger, so for instance, when a large number of incendiary bombs fell on the house and garden during the night, turning the garden into a wonderland of light, explosions and flashes, I went around the next day collecting all the unexploded bombs as souvenirs - my mother and the ARP Warden had a fit when they found out what I was up to.

I suppose I was only really frightened on a couple of occasions. First, when a stick of bombs fell on the high ground opposite Robert's Stores at Kingswood - obviously aiming to hit the railway line - and again, when my class from Chinthurst was out on Walton Heath on a nature study, when we were machine-gunned from the air, no doubt because we had strayed too close to the Canadians deployed there, prior to D Day.

And the only time that I was truly anxious was when I was called out of school by Mrs Bradley, the headmaster's wife, to tell me to go home straight away because a doodle-bug had landed in Beech Drive where we lived. So I pedalled home as fast as I could to find that it had actually landed in Bears Den, but it had been a close thing for my mother because she was coming back from the shops, and was at the corner of Beech Drive & Bears Den when it landed, and it blew her off her bike.

My old grandfather, a retired soldier, then aged 84, who had fought in numerous wars during his lifetime, was standing at the gate when I pedalled up and, looking very white, said to me "where's your mother? where's your mother?" and then, there she was!

As I say, I enjoyed the war years, because I just didn't understand what it was all about - now as a professional soldier myself, I know all too well the horrors of war.

Contributed by Michael Steele.

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