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MY YOUNG WAR

They said the war was my fault. It was a joke of course, but little kids aren’t very good at getting jokes. I simply knew it wasn’t true.
Being born in late November 1939 I really was just a little kid, right through the war.
Which means my memories are both few and hazy.
There were the broken nights for example. We lived in Chingford, the the east of London, and I can remember my mum coming in and lifting me out of my bed or cot in the middle of the night, wrapping me in a blanket and carrying me down stairs and outside to our Anderson shelter in the garden. My father carried my elder brother.
Our shelter was a dark, damp, cold and smelly place where sleep, even for an infant, didn’t come easily. Each night ended with the wailing of the "all clear" after which we we’re returned to our beds.
Later in the war we enjoyed the luxury of a Morrison shelter, so far as I remember a steel caged affair with a steel roof which lived in our dining room and allowed all four of us to cram inside.
It was here that one night which is clear in my memory, there was the sound of a ‘flying bomb’, either a V1 or V2. It’s sound approached until, when it seemed almost overhead it cut-out, silence.
In an instant my mum threw herself over me and my dad threw himself over my brother. I was not, of course, really aware of what was happening, but I know it scared me. Over 60 years later I haven’t forgotten.
The fact that my dad was around all this time was because he was a draughtsman in an engineering company and continued to be employed on ‘essential services’ rather than be called up into the armed services.
His mum, my grandmother and only surviving grandparent at the time, lived in Rotherhithe close to the London docks. A large, no nonsense lady, she would visit us occasionally, I have only vague memories of her.
It was a day late in the war when I seemed to notice a change in my dad, he wasn’t around for a while and he didn’t seem to be himself when he returned.
Some while later I learned that his mother had been killed in an air raid.
Her house had been damaged previously and she had returned to collect some belongings when, whilst standing at her garden gate chatting with a neighbour, a German bomb was dropped close by, it was aimed at the railway bridge at the end of the road. My grandmother was killed intantly, her neighbour was untouched I believe.
Hence my father’s somewhat off-hand mood.
I also learned later that the old lady had been a money lender, small time of course, probably the off half-crown or ten bob to local ladies to eke out their week’s housekeeping money. Her own husband, my grandad, had left and (I believe) died some while earlier, so she had to make a living someway, how she got started I’ll never know, or where she got the funds. The fact is that the bomb destroyed her accounts books, which bears out the old saying "it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good".
However, I recall that my dad was left around £1,000, at a time when that sum would have bought a decent house, but instead of investing in property he mistakenly invested in his sons’ education and sent my brother and I off to a private school.
Had he have realised the abysmal state of the education system at that time (and after the war) he might have changed his mind.
It was when I was aged about 12 or so and in central London with my dad, that we went into Westminster Abbey and stopped at a large glass case just inside one door.
The case contained a huge book which I gathered contained 365 pages and that one was turned each day of the year. Written by hand in this great book was the name of all the civilan people in London who were killed during WW2. So I guess my surname is there, under my grandmother’s christian names.
Is it still there? I hope to return one day to find out.
My only other personal memory of WW2 is of my dad going off for periods, and returning with all sorts of goodies, a mouth organ for me, a big lump of cheese for all of us and nylon stocking for my mum (tied around his belly). I subsequently discovered that he had to visit southern Ireland in order to deal with the servicing of Royal Navy ships which came into dock there and, as they were a neutral company, he was able to buy things not available here. He also assured me that he was not a spy. As if I thought he was!
So that was my war.
Now, on 7th July 2005, London is again under attack.
It seems there are still plenty of ‘would be’ Hitlers around and no shortage of easily led (brain washed) young people to carry out their ghastly plans.
After 60 years the madness continues.

John Harburt
2 Glawin Road
Colchester
Essex CO2 7HS
Tel. (Home) 01206 514 399 (Office) 020 7377 2424
Email: jharburt@cavendishmedia.com

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