大象传媒

I was hardly two years old at the outset of he War and my recollections are like an old rediscovered photo album with some crisp pictures and others that are feint or blurred. It is an incomplete album that the winds of passing years have scoured and mellowed. It is an unusual album because it includes many sounds and smells: of our kitchen and the washhouse on Mondays, of Air Raid Sirens and the 鈥渁ll clear鈥�, the crack of guns and staccato of Pom-poms, the drone of aircraft and of whistling from falling unseen bombs, of sudden deep silences and then great shaking explosions, the rumble of falling buildings, the clouds of dust and the crunch and mud from walking across ruins. My snapshots cover the haphazard re-arrangement of Devonport鈥檚 streets from bombing and the unremitting smell of damp, burnt-out houses and shops. There are glimpses of silver barrage balloons careening at the end of wire tethers and the silvered beams from searchlights piercing thin scudding clouds and blotting out the stars. In contrast another picture of those days, shows a swathe of silver Britt, three foot wide, being chased along the waters edge by frenzied fish and above them ranks of eager people catching mackerel hand-over-hand.

A glance into my Album reveals we lived in James Street, Devonport, throughout the war and that immediately behind our row of houses is a cobbled lane flanked by the high granite wall of the Naval Dockyard A click of the shutter captures everything in flickering orange, the whole dockyard wall is topped with fire and our window panes are hot to my reaching hand. Outside the night is day, lit bright by high flames interspersed with volcanoes of crackling sparks and the air filled with the hungry, roaring sound of a rampaging fire. The Dockyard Ropery had received a direct hit and behind the wall it savagely burned to the ground. The ropery was a huge building from the days of making the cordage and sheets for sailing ships and its mix of wood and tar produced an inferno.

Although our house was bomb damaged, I don鈥檛 remember how it happened and anyway it was considered live-able until the end of the war when we were moved into an American prefabricated house. We moved to a compact bungalow with a fitted kitchen and an inside bathroom and toilet that was both advanced and comfortable for the times despite being thought by many people to be made from sheets of cardboard.

The old James Street house was in a terrace and home to two families. We live on the upper floors with attics above us and a damaged roof requiring tin baths and buckets rushed into place whenever it rains, all creating a mournful concerto of drips as the rain finds the holes in the the roof. In the small back garden there is an Anderson shelter part buried beneath a grassy mound and looking a bit like Sammy our pet tortoise. Some steps lead down into it, benches for four people line each side and a hurricane lamp is near the heavy sacking that acts as a door. At the end of the garden is the toilet and alongside the path is my father鈥檚 lean-to Aviary where he bred budgerigars and canaries until we moved house. During the blitz the garden wpuld be strewn with great shards of shrapnel that had fallen during the night.

My father had been invalided out of the Marines and worked in the dockyard. At night he became a fire-watcher, working at the top of Devonport Column (a 125ft local monument alongside the old Town Hall), and spent most nights up on top spotting for the Fire Brigade. He said of one air raid, that only a French Navy ship was firing at the enemy. From the column they could see a great distance including the lines of vehicles heading out from Plymouth to Dartmoor each evening 鈥� those who stayed behind called it 鈥榯he yellow convoy.鈥� My father was skilled with his hands and in his spare time made little silver spitfire broaches out of old coins and he鈥檇 cut out the galleon from halfpennies and mount them on clips 鈥� he did it using a home made blow-pipe which he hooked up to the gas stove and blew down with great rounded cheeks. Every so often He would exclaim 鈥淥h, I can鈥檛 dance, she said, as she waved her wooden leg and whirled it in the air.鈥� He made the trinkets just for relaxation and gave them away along with bracelets made from silver three-penny pieces.

When Mum went out she took me with her. Going to the shops was often subject to long diversions because of the bombing and for a while the route seemed to change daily as Devonport鈥檚 main shopping streets disintegrate into rubble leaving just the occasional cluster of shops and many newly isolated buildings. Some entrances are screened by sandbags. Woolworth鈥檚 moved into a long narrow temporary building with just room for counters on each side of a central gangway. The trams and buses still run, sometimes edging round obstructions, but our journeys are all local so we walk. The buses are all double decked and painted a mid-grey. On one corner the Forum Cinema remains open and across Fore Street is the main Post Office in an isolated block surrounded by ruins. Most of the buildings that lined the road leading to the dockyard gates have been destroyed. Nearer home the old market carries on minus its roof and a clock tower that鈥檚 now empty for all time. Sometimes we鈥檇 buy a large crimson apple from a round lady farmer at the main door. Then across to the Co-op, a shop which I liked because of its catapulted overhead cash dispensers that whizzed back and forth to the cash desk and for the open sacks of oats and things and the sawdust on the floor that that gave out a comforting smell. I hear Mum giving her membership giving her co-op number of 鈥�38742.鈥�

My pictures indicate buildings and churches scattered like icebergs across a sea of debris that was once homes, in the distance a tram rumbles between the gaps. There are buildings where the insides gape showing walls where the lathes grin like teeth and floors dip while curtains flap at empty windows, the doors and stairs lead nowhere, bright wallpaper gleams wet and fireplaces look out into space. Some days we would carefully pick our way around the streets. One day to avoid a long diversion, we duck under ropes and clamber across a big area of broken walls and rubble that had been the Sailors Rest, at the other side a policeman waves and stops us and tells Mum off 鈥� there is an unexploded bomb beneath those ruins. Mum would regularly take me in the push chair to the railway station and watch the trains: except on this particular day it鈥檚 closed, walls are down, carters lorries half covered by stones, the footbridge shut and gangs of men clearing up the damage, next day it is open again.

Every Tuesday afternoon Mum attended the Methodist Church meetings and when the Church was bombed these were held at a private house in Stoke 鈥� we always walked, cutting across the ruins between boarded-up buildings and along Kings Road. We鈥檇 cross through Devonport Park, partly closed-off for temporary billets and home to barrage balloons and Ack-Ack guns and, from where the memorials had been removed leaving empty plinths. I鈥檇 play on a solitary bandstand bereft of all its railings and try drinking fountains all filled with leaves and had their water shut off. I enjoyed going to the Methodist Women鈥檚 Meeting with Mum because after the short service they鈥檇 have talks, demonstrations or slide shows or put on one-act plays. All was forgotten, the war had never happened, when they performed the sketch about the reading of a will, with its refrain 鈥�. 鈥渁nd what about little Emily?鈥�

The nights were dark - although mostly I was inside and in bed - but I remember a few clear nights, each with a myriad of stars all over. Although the war could not dim them - strangely the years of peace and increased lighting has near extinguished such vibrant views of our skies. Yes, it was all a long time ago, and memories of the ordinary things dim and yet the sound of a fire siren can instantly bring it back and of the times rushing into the shelter.

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