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My father worked at the Bank of England and they would not release him to serve in the forces. Apart from being in the ARP (‘anging round pubs as it was called!) he had been on duty some nights at the bank. This included fire watching from the roof of the Bank where they had profiles of notable buildings so that they could easily line up when fires were starting. In those days, the Bank had a military picket, which marched to the Bank each evening, ignoring all traffic lights! Visiting the Bank as a schoolboy at weekends, one could easily go round the corner to be met by a bayonet pointing at you! A cousin lived with us (who also worked at the Bank) and we spent many nights in the Air raid shelter. We had an old wind up gramophone and an oil heater, which used to get bunged up with bits of angora wool my cousin used for knitting. I believe that my cousin was the only Bank employee to be hurt whilst duty — she fell on the stairs whilst running for the shelter during an air raid!

I was first evacuated to Kilburn Hall, which had a large entrance hall, often full of the members of the WVS knitting comforts for the soldiers! Most of the East End of London seemed to be evacuated to Kilburn, and I arrived home with a cockney accent!

At home, a low flying German plane in bad weather crashed in to the escarpment at ‘View Point’ at Caterham. The following day, we boy s were up at the crash scene to see what we could find. On e boy managed to gat a nice watch of an arm he found! All I took home was a fairly large piece of fuselage.
Walking to school on time, we had to be very careful, as a lot of butterfly bombs had been dropped and some were hanging from the trees or in the grass verge.
When the war broke out, it was the time when even bank clerks like my father had a maid living in the house. Bridget, our maid, was from Southern Ireland and so she had to be repatriated. She was engaged to a Guardsman who was captured and finished up in a POW camp. He could not write direct to Bridget so he used to write to my mother who then sent the messages on to Bridget, and she wrote back via my mother. After the ear, they did get married and settled down at Caterham on the Hill.

Kathleen Jackson (artist and sculptor) who did a lot for Madame Tussauds was bombed out and used grandmothers’ attic as a studio. She took me to her bombed house and we found a St George and Dragon figure which was not too badly damaged and I still have it. She also painted me in oils!

A memory of travelling by train was that we always seemed to change at Crewe and I remember waiting for hours at the station! In addition, one had to be very careful getting off the train, as there were no lights on the platforms and one could too easily get out on the wrong side.

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