大象传媒

I was born in Brixton, London SW2 and lived in Endymion Road, Brixton Hill from before and during the war.
My wartime recollections commence in Sept 1938 at the time of the Munich crisis. I remember feeling slightly disappointed as a 12 year old that there wasn鈥檛 going to be a war, having heard stories from my uncles of WW1, which didn鈥檛 feature the horrors and sounded exciting. We had been to a local school to collect our gas masks and afterwards went to the pictures to see 鈥淪now White and the Seven Dwarfs鈥� the first full length Walt Disney cartoon film.
1939 started with a personal event as I had an appendicitis operation in March. The hospital situation was different then. My father had joined the hospital savings association through a group run by an employee of his company and this paid for my operation and stay in St. Thomas鈥檚 hospital at Westminster, where the financial side was run by the Lady Almoner (treasurer). My stay lasted five weeks as I had been near to peritonitis. I was in the men鈥檚 ward and in a bed next to a blind veteran of WW1 from the St Dunstan鈥檚 Home. He had a kidney problem. One treat was that your family could provide you with new laid eggs for your tea, these would have your bed number marked on your shell and boiled. I recently discovered the letters that I had written to my mother and one mentioned that the air raid sirens had been tried out in the area, a sign of the preparation in case of war. The letters were written in pencil for the ball point pen or biro as it was originally known had not been invented.
In May we had a holiday in Littlehampton. This was the first holiday that we had had and it was partly convalescence for me. Photographs show that beneath my clothes I was still bandaged after the operation, a sign of how long healing took then. The war preparations could be seen as we used to watch the Territorial Army drilling on the green just above the beach. There was a Pierrot show on the green and I went in for a children鈥檚 talent show playing the piano and won a box of liquorice allsorts. Later I received a card inviting me to the final competition of Sunday 3rd September. We couldn鈥檛 go and maybe it was cancelled as it was the day that war broke out. Perhaps a career in music was blighted by the war!
In August I changed schools to Clark鈥檚 College, to prepare for Civil Service examinations. Two weeks after starting, the War commenced. I could have been evacuated with the school, but my parents wanted the family to stay together and so I took a postal tuition that was offered, this was not satisfactory and was discontinued after a couple of months, ending my formal schooling at about age thirteen and a half. We lived in my grandmother's house and I then helped to serve in the little tobacconist's kiosk that she had opened at the back of the house.
During that summer the council had erected an Anderson air raid shelter in our back garden. On Sunday morning of 3rd September at 11.00 we listed to Neville Chamberlain鈥檚 broadcast saying that we had declared war on Germany, during this broadcast the air raid sirens sounded and we all went down the shelter. It was the only time that we used it as it would have been too small for us all to sleep in, so when the Blitz started in September 1940 my parents, sister and I all slept in the cellar of the house and my grandmother and aunt stayed in their bedroom on the ground floor.
The period from September 1939 to May 1940 became known as the 鈥淧honey War鈥�. It was anticipated that it would be like World War 1 with armies in lines facing each other and newspapers published wall maps of the front together with paper flags of the nations involved to mark the opposing positions. I had one of these maps on the bedroom wall. The Blitzkrieg of May 1940 ended that idea with the German army invading Holland and Belgium and surrounding our troops at Dunkirk. I remember seeing a train passing through Brixton station loaded with troops who had been rescued from Dunkirk, leaning out of the windows and waving.
An invasion of Britain was expected after Dunkirk and the Local Defence Volunteers ( LDV ) which later became the Home Guard was formed and I remember seeing an uncle of mine, a World War 1 veteran drilling with them in the local park. There was a fear at this time of spies among the foreign refugees who had fled from the Nazis before the war so they were rounded up and sent to the Isle of Man. My grandmother who let rooms in her house had an Austrian refugee staying with her. He was taken away by the police and first sent to the Isle of Man and eventually to Canada.
The Battle of Britain was in August and September 1940 and was followed by the Blitz. The war was well reported in the press but I remember some of the claims of German aircraft shot down in the Battle of Britain, 184 on one day, being much reduced later. This was probably a mixture of propaganda and double claims.
Our first experience of bombing was on October 10th when an oil bomb fell in the front garden of the house next-door-but-one and the burning oil ran along the gutter past our house and we could see the flames through the cellar grill. As a 13 year old I did not experience any fear and took pleasure with my friends in collecting shrapnel that had fallen in the streets on the night before. Sadly the next night after our oil bomb an uncle of mine was killed by a bomb near to his house in Epsom. He had moved there with his family as his son had been apprenticed the year before to a racing stables and my uncle thought that the family would be safer out of London. That night he had left the shelter and gone to meet his daughter coming home from work and was killed by a direct hit.
Our second experience was on 19th March 1941 when we were hit by 2 incendiary bombs. The first was by our chicken house, kept to supplement wartime rations, and was put out by my father and me. We came in from the garden and were going to have a congratulatory cup of tea when burning was smelt. We went upstairs and found that a second incendiary had fallen through the roof into our living room and through the floor there to my grandmother鈥檚 room on the ground floor. Fortunately she was with us in the cellar. The fire brigade was called and came to put out the fire, air raid wardens were also present and an amusing mistake occurred as senior wardens wore white tin hats and we thought that we had one there but it turned out to be a neighbour who had put an enamel vegetable colander on his head. He was known from then on as Colonel Colander.
The continuous Blitz ended in August 1941. I started work as a junior clerk with Lambeth Borough Council. Instead of being employed at the nearby town hall I was given a job at the Council's cemetery office, a tram or cycle ride away at Tooting. Fortunately the mass burials of the Blitz had finished and the task was not too hard. I felt as if I was working in a park. At this time I started at evening classes to make up for my lost schooling and to prepare for matriculation. I had also earlier studied shorthand and typing.
After the Blitz life seemed to settle. Everyone went about their work and their leisure, going to the pictures ( cinema ) and to shows. We had rationing but accepted that and I certainly never felt deprived. The war was well reported on the radio and in the papers. Virtually everybody had a relation or friend in the armed forces and sadly there were some who were killed in action.
Earlier in the war many coal miners were called up leaving a shortage, so that when in 1943 the call up age was reduced to 18 some of those conscripted were drafted down the mines. These were known as Bevin boys after the minister of Labour Ernest Bevin. As I thought this change would prevent me sitting the matriculation exam ( although I recently discovered that I could have applied for a delay in call up ), and as I did not wish to go down the coal mines I volunteered in February 1944 to join the Navy. I had always been interested in the sea and I followed in the footsteps of a friend who had joined a few months earlier. I could have entered the Navy when I volunteered or wait until I was 18, which I chose to do and was called up the day after my 18th birthday on 3rd May 1944. I joined at HMS Royal Arthur an ex Butlins holiday camp in Skegness.
I was then sent for training to HMS Ganges at Shotley, near Ipswich and was there when the D-Day landings occurred. I remember lads from my course being drafted from the Navy in to the Army where they we needed more. I was probably all right as I was a volunteer.
On 23rd June the family house was hit again, this time by one of the first V1 flying bombs ( see photo at top ). It fell in the next road and blew the back of our house off. Fortunately none of the family were injured, but warden鈥檚 records show that 8 people were killed, 14 seriously injured, 42 houses demolished and 48 badly damaged by the bomb. I was granted compassionate leave to be with my family. There were emergency services there including a mobile laundry, supplied by the makers of Rinso. As this was the site of one of earliest V1 bombs it was visited by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Frank Newsom-Smith and the Mayor of Lambeth, Alderman Lockyer - see the next story for a photo of the visit. While home I went into Brixton and was there when another V1 bomb fell near to Lambeth Town Hall. In the incident 23 were killed and 41 seriously injured. I was in Woolworth鈥檚 store and the blast came through the doors and a soldier standing next to me was cut by flying glass. I returned from leave and on 21st July my grandmother died of pneumonia, I suspect brought on by the shock of the bomb. She was 82.
On return to the Navy I had to change my course to make up for the time lost in training. After completing basic training I went to H.M.S. Valkyrie on the Isle of Man for Radar training. The Navy here had taken over hotels on the sea front at Douglas. More training followed at HMS Collingwood at Fareham in Hampshire, where I was able to visit at second cousin and his family at Warsash, where he was an officer in charge of servicing landing craft. This completed my training and in November 1944 I went to Chatham Barracks to await drafting to a ship.
I joined my first ship, HMS Locust in Harwich on 18th November. She was a gunboat designed for service on the China rivers and had taken part in the Dunkirk evacuation, the Dieppe raid and the D-Day landings. She remained at Harwich and I was able to get home for Christmas leave and for a day or week-end visits. The war in Europe ended on 8th May and on the 14th we went over to Holland with the Captain in charge of minesweeping. We were first at the Hook of Holland and then moved to Ijmuiden. From the Hook of Holland we were granted shore leave and the Army provided trucks to take us in to Rotterdam. We saw armed resistance workers arresting collaborators and in a struggle we saw a wig knocked off the head of a woman whose head had been shaved as she had been with the Germans. The locals wanted cigarettes, perhaps as currency and I bought a camera and film for some from a young lad.
At Ijmuiden there were German troops lining the road waiting for a ship to take them back to Germany. We were able to go freely into their deserted defence pill boxes where there were rifles and ammunition so we did some target practice at signs on the beach. We took part in a liberation parade, marching to a Canadian army band. The Canadians had liberated the town and I have since in 1995 and 2000 taken part in anniversary celebrations with them where the Dutch have been grateful and generous hosts to us.
On 7th June we returned from Holland and I took photographs of friends in the crew on the journey using the newly acquired camera. We went first to Sheerness where we were granted leave and then returned to Harwich where we were for the VJ celebrations when the war with Japan ended in August. In September the Locust went into reserve and I returned to Chatham barracks. I had various duties there including the Barracks guard where I was able to go home for week-end or night leave. I was also on a working party preparing a cruiser for transfer to the New Zealand Navy. I could have volunteered to join the crew to take her there but decided that I wanted to be near home ready for demobilisation, but that was not to be as the Navy were very slow in releasing men and I had to wait for nearly 2 years for that!
I remained in Chatham barracks until August 15th 1946 when I was drafted on to the cruiser HMS Dido, then in Chatham dockyard. We joined the home fleet in Portland harbour where as well as my Radar plotting duties I was a member of the motor-cutter's crew, maintaining contact between the ship in the harbour and the shore. On 1st February 1947 we sailed from Portland in the escort that accompanied HMS Vanguard which was taking the King and Queen and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret to South Africa. We left them at Gibraltar and then paid 鈥榮howing the flag鈥� visits to Casablanca and Oporto. We returned to Portland on 12th March having missed a very cold winter with fuel shortages.
I went on 2 weeks home leave in April but was recalled after a week as the ship was to take a Marine contingent with band to take part in the funeral procession in Copenhagen of the late King Christian on 30th April. There was also an American cruiser with marines taking part. I was in the crowd watching the procession. We left Copenhagen on 1st May and I spent the next day, my 21st birthday feeling very sea sick. We arrived at Portsmouth on the 3rd May. We returned to Portland and on the 31st sailed to Guernsey to start another goodwill cruise which also visited Haugesund in Norway, Frederichshaven in Denmark and Stockholm. At all these places we allowed visitors on board, particularly children and were entertained in town by the local community. We returned to Nairn where I had my first flight, courtesy of the Fleet Air Arm at Lossiemouth, and finished with a review of the fleet by the King at Gourock on the Clyde.
We returned to Portland and on 6th October I left the Dido for Chatham barracks and on 11th November went to Fareham for demobilisation and to collect an outfit of civilian clothes. I started work in early December at Otis elevators. I didn鈥檛 return to the local town hall as I feared that I would have to take exams to get on , but ended up years later taking accountancy exams.
My final release from the navy was on 7th January 1948, nearly 4 years after joining and 2 and a half years after the end of the war.

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