大象传媒

I was six when war broke out and we were on a caravan holiday at West Wittering. Living at Sanderstead, my father decided that we were too near London and so we moved first to Sussex and then in 1940 to Caterham. Father worked in London and was also in the ARP. I found the Battle of Britain quite exciting lying on the lawn, watching the dog fights overhead. During the Blitz, I was taken to the top of the nearby hill to see London burning. I used to search the garden for shrapnel and once found a burned out incendiary bomb. The day before my brothers birthday, there was a bad raid on Caterham. One house was hit by an incendiary bomb, which exploded but did not catch fire. The owner had made a birthday cake for my brother, so we went in to the bombed house, found the cake , blew dust off it and it was as good as new!
When things got too bad, I was evacuated to Derbyshire, to stay with relations, went to the village school and caught chicken pox! In the outhouses there were emergency stores of paper for newspapers, but more important, Reg Parnell鈥檚 racing cars. Great fun! Another evacuee and I used to spend time searching the orchard for eggs from the free range chickens. Each of us had our weekly portions of butter, jam etc which never lasted the week! I only remember one air raid whilst I was away.
It did not seem long before I returned home and off to another school (4th!) Next problem as scarlet fever! Bletchingly Isolation Hospital was next door to an Ack Ack station and we seemed to have raids most nights. The hospital was a large wooden building, which used to jump up and down in time with the Ack Ack guns. We isolated boys were good at singing 鈥渟he鈥檒l be coming round the mountains!鈥� By this time our road was full of Canadian troops with all their equipment for D Day. I remember my mother being pleased at receiving wolf whistles from them!
One morning I saw a noisy plane with a flame coming out of its tail. The engine cut out and there was an explosion. The start of the V1鈥檚. Off to be evacuated again but to different relations. I couldn鈥檛 have been there for as long as I was home in time for the V2鈥檚. They frightened me more than anything, presumably as you did not hear them coming 鈥� just two big bangs (one going through the sound barrier and the other the explosion).
My grandmother lived at Streatham and the road opposite her was flattened by a V1. The front of her house had to be shored up and the bathroom was over the front porch: I quite expected to find myself sitting in the bath in the front garden!
We moved to Plymouth in 1944 but when I saw the devastation, I realised how lucky we had been even though we had spent most of the war near Kenley and the Guards Barracks at Caterham.

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