´óÏó´«Ã½

A Near Miss

It was a good war. Exciting; full of danger and escape from the routine of settled life-but then, I was only 6 years old.

My older sister Thelma and I returned to London in 1944 from three years evacuation in Mrs. Daniel’s thatched roofed farm house and an idyllic country life in Devon. I wonder now if I would be able to send my young children away to the country even with the terror of the Blitz all around in 1940, but what choice did my mum and dad have.
The timing was perfect. The development of the V1 had just reached sufficient perfection for a sustained bombardment of London.

As you walked down our Clapham street, the red beach tree in the small front garden behind the dusty overgrown privets was the only thing that distinguished our home from the row of modest attached red brick Victorian houses. At the back of our house there was a long yard where my father, with the help of a neighbor on leave from the wars, erected an Anderson shelter in the middle of what we pretentiously called ‘the lawn’. For reasons that the adults never explained to a 6 year old, the shelter was dug only half way down the garden. Was the entrance cunningly placed facing the house to catch the last glimpse of our world in a deluge of falling masonry? This slight design flaw must have struck my father, as it does me now, and a row of heavy railway sleepers smelling of tar were planted deep across the entrance. These added greatly to our sense of security, who would not feel secure behind a wall purloined from what was then the rock solid Western Railway?

Our air raid drill went into action at the first warning wail. We fumbled for our dressing gowns; actually old overcoats which doubled as blankets, and tumbled out into the garden. Blackie, our very mixed breed dog, waited anxiously at the door until we were all out, but somehow he was always first into the shelter especially if it was raining. My dad built bunks across the end of the back wall for my sister and me where Blackie kept us warm and comforted. The Anderson shelter seemed like a wonderful secret cave to me although in reality it was very crowded for two grown ups, two kids and a shaggy dog. It saved many lives I sure, but whoever Lord Anderson was, and I’m sure he was knighted for his war effort, he didn’t think working class families cared for, or wanted, comfort. Imagine a concrete coffin set half into the ground roofed with corrugated curved steel and covered with several feet of garden soil. It was wet and cold in the winter, the air oily from the feeble paraffin heater. As the days got warmer it became the hidey hole for all species of biting insect.

By summer the shelter was covered in a profusion of flowers grown from seed packets carefully tended by my mother, especially her favorite lupines in every color. It became quite piquresque, a tiny steel country cottage. Our charming refuge against half a ton of high explosives. By chance a tree seedling happened at about my height on the sod roof and I carefully measured it every day. It was transplanted to the end of the garden when the shelter came down. When the diameter grew to engraveable size it became the carved record of our friends and neighbors.

At this stage in the war bombing from airplanes had stopped and a more highly technical bombardment by pilotless V1 rocket planes had become the Nazis favorite way of making our lives terrifying, miserable, but exciting. Before they reached London a large number were shot down by the RAF and the heavy AA guns moved out into the open country of the South Downs. There was no piloting after launch and their lack of evasive maneuvers made for efficient shooting. This was much appreciated by us sitting ducks in our tin shelters covered with a few feet of earth. Our safety depended on the skill and ingenuity of unknown men on both sides of the Channel.

On warm summer nights we would emerge from the shelter and watch the V1s coming over from the South. You couldn’t miss the unmistakable pulsating roar of the rocket motor, like a poorly tuned motor cycle. I was just a little boy fascinated by the bright flame jetting from the very rear of the stubby airplane; they were the Roman Candles I was allowed to light on Guy Fawkes Day. They appeared day and night, suddenly emerging over the big houses on the next street, flying low as though they had been launched from their roofs. It was fine entertainment for us kids watching the buss bombs or doodle bugs as we also called them, roar over our house and disappear into the lower districts nearer the city centre. We counted until we heard a close ripping explosion of a near miss that rattled the windows, or the distant thud with some poor devil way off being blasted in his Anderson.

One night our entertainment turned sour. The long wait for the exciting night show made the appearance over the roof line of the little plane rather a relief. We immediately realized it was much bigger, or more likely from the intense roar, much lower than usual. Then the nose dropped, a few sputters, and silence! The bomb was diving at a steep angle directly at #4 Turret Grove! This time Blackie wasn’t fast enough and all landed in a heap in the shelter. Suddenly our game ended. We saw the terror in our parents faces. These were our last moments. Silence. Another sputter, and then another, and the roar hesitantly started again for a few seconds. Through the crack in the door barricade we saw the flaming tail disappear over our roof and ten seconds later there was a huge explosion off towards Battersea and Chelsea. A miracle. We scrambled outside rejoicing at being alive, a pitiful group shivering in our old overcoats.

We heard later that the bomb had fallen smack on a signal box controlling the Western Railway’s main lines from Clapham Junction to Victoria Station, completely destroying it, killing many nearby and disrupting traffic for several weeks.

And so, in spite of all their efforts and technology the Germans ultimately failed to get the Marchants at #4! A small defect in aircraft manufacture and by chance we survived. I came of age and now, so many years later, I am able through the wavy mirror of memory to write this history.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.