大象传媒

This story has been contributed to the People's War by the 大象传媒 Learning Centre, Gloucester, on behalf of Barrie Glover with his permission.

After their marriage in London in 1938, my parents Mary and Jack moved to the Collier Row area of Romford in Essex where they were able to buy a newly build house on what was then known as the St John's Road development. It was there that I was born in January 1940, and my sister followed in September 1944.

Wartime conscription meant that most people had to either go into one of the armed services or into an occupation that was considered to be of national importance. My father joined the National Fire Service (an amalgamation of all the county brigades for the duration) and was stationed in the Dockland area of London. He travelled to and from there on his bicycle' I have vague memories of him telling my mother about some of the dreadful bombing raids and the fires and destruction they caused.

There was a knock at the front door one day in 1944, and I must have gone with my mother as she opened it because I remember a policeman standing there, and parked outside at the kerb was a grey van from which another policeman was unloading a tangled bicycle. The policeman told my mother that my Dad had been killed in a traffic accident on his way home early that morning. What I chiefly remember is the look on her face. Although it is now 61 years since it happened the memory is as fresh as ever.

I thought until recently that this happened in the spring of 1943 but my sister thought he died in 1944. We hunted for his death certificate and found she was right - he died on 8th September 1944. It is interesting that my very vivid memory was in fact a year adrift. It is also more poignant in a way, because it means that the death was just three weeks before my sister was born, and our mother must have been heavily pregnant with her. I do not recall that at all, but to receive such dreadful news just prior to giving birth.

We had a rough time of it for several years (the Welfare State didn't begin until 1947-48) and perhaps for that reason I always felt that i was the man of the house, with a duty to provide for my mother and sister.

So although my father wasn't a combatant, he would not have been in the fire service id there had been no war. He was in fact a cabinet-maker, and to this day my mother, now 91, had got a few of the things he made.

Putting this down in writing has brought back some snippets of other long-forgotten memories. For example, I can remember a flying bomb - known as a doodle-bug - passing silently along the road at first floor height with its engine cut out but the flare still coming from its tail, as I lay in bed in what must have been early 1945.

I can also remember starting school in January that year (in those days children in that area began school as soon as they passed their fifth birthday) and one day being in class when the air raid sirens sounded. We were all ushered into some shelters which we thought was wonderful, but the teacher's face showed real fear.

I can remember, too, several roads full of debris where bombs had fallen, and sometimes the craters were filled with water if a main had been burst.

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