大象传媒

I was born in January 1934 and we were living in Sidcup in Kent when war broke out. It was terribly bombed so we moved to the centre of London for some reason or other, which must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but we were bombed out three times.

The bombers used to come over in the evening. My Dad was a London copper. He wasn鈥檛 fit to be called up so he stayed a policeman on patrol to prevent looting from bombed shops and the like. When the air raid siren went he used to tell us to get into the Anderson shelter, a big reinforced iron box under the stairs, while a lot of other London people went down in the Underground. He used to stand at the door looking at the sky until he saw the bombers coming. I鈥檒l never forget the doodlebugs with their droning noise and when it stopped, down they came.

The first time Kennington was bombed the whole thing came down on top of us and we managed to climb out. I thought it was funny. It was an adventure, though the whole street was completely obliterated 鈥� no m,ore shops, no more houses it was all flat. Then we were in Dante Road near Kennington in a house near the bottom of a hill and when it was bombed they all came down like a pack of cards, bang, bang, bang, there was nothing left on that side of the street.

For a boy it was kind of exciting. That鈥檚 what sticks in my mind. You used to watch the planes come over and dropping the bombs and it was just like Guy Fawkes night, all these giant displays of fire and destruction but I was never ever frightened. The noise of the planes and the roar of the flames. I thought it was really good! I never thought of myself getting blown up or anything like that. Other people got blown up, not us.

I used to laugh at my little brother, he was completely sealed into the child鈥檚 gas mask with Mickey Mouse ears and all I could see was his little face peeping out of the window in the front. He鈥檇 be crying his eyes out but you couldn鈥檛 hear anything because he was completely sealed in.

At another house after we had been bombed out twice I remember helping our Dad build a shelter in the back garden, out of corrugated iron and humping all the earth on top. About a week after it was finished there was a really violent raid and we all dived out into this shelter in the garden. But it had been raining hard and it had filled up with about four foot of water, it was like a mini swimming pool and we were all splashing about, and being a littlun it was almost over my head. But we didn鈥檛 have to go in it again because by the time we got out that house had also been bombed. That鈥檚 when my Dad said 鈥淭hat鈥檚 it. No more, we鈥檙e going to evacuate you to a safe place in the countryside.鈥�

We were sent to Dorchester in Dorset on the train, a lot of us kids all with our suitcases and our gas-masks. I鈥檇 never been on a train before and then we were out in the country with people telling us we鈥檙e you鈥檙e new Mum and Dad. School was fine because so many schools were bombed that so everyone could have lessons we only went for half the day.

The lady we were staying with, her son was on the Russian convoys and he got torpedoed and was in the water a long time and they brought him home. I鈥檒l never forget watching them unwrapping his feet and they were jet-black with what I now know was frostbite, and his toes actually dropped off into the bandage. But the family had to look after him so we were sent away to an orphanage in Sherborne.

I would rather have stuck it out in London than in the orphan鈥檚 home where I ended up. It was a dreadful place and things went on in there that I didn鈥檛 understand at the time but I know now were child abuse. When I was that small I didn鈥檛 understand what was going on and you had no mum or dad around to tell or ask if it was right or wrong.

I was forever running away. There was a lot of forest around there and I used to hide in the trees. The Americans were training in the woods ready for D-Day and I used to sleep in the back of their trucks and they would give me K rations and that was wonderful. I had chocolate for the first time in my life, big chunky chocolate it was, and there were biscuits, all in kind of waxy packages. I thought it was brilliant.

A couple of times I ran away with another boy we used to pretend we were Robin Hood and make bows and arrows and try to shoot deer to live off them. But every time we were found and taken back to the orphanage.

One day I was called and told 鈥淵our Mum and Dad are here, they鈥檝e come to take you away.鈥� I remember going to the entrance and there was this bloke standing there in an Army uniform and a strange woman and he said: 鈥淗ere鈥檚 your Mum鈥� and I thought, no that鈥檚 not MY Mum, not how I remember her. And it turned out that unbeknown to me something had happened during the war and he had married again and this was my stepmother, but he was calling her my mum

They took us away from the orphanage to Portishead where he was on the gun emplacements to shoot down the enemy planes that came to bomb Avonmouth and the dockyards.

Those are my war memories.

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