大象传媒

I AM HELPING WITH THE SHEPWAY W W 2 TO ATTEMPT THE MAINTAINING OF MEMORIES OF WAR.

GROWING UP 1939-1944.

Sunday the 3rd of September 1939, was a fine sunny day. I went to a morning church parade with the local scout group. When the air raid siren sounded,we were ordered home. The scoutmaster was no believer in God`s care of the congregation. So down the road towards home, where I met dad cycling to the church with my gas mask. Home we went, the all clear sounded, and the country was at war.

The war did not really worry the school children. On my part, the grammar school shut for just over a month. To us it was a great holiday. War was something we saw in films. The British always won. It was like a game. Many children were evacuated to the most amazing places. Deal - Folkestone - Hull and I believe Swansea. We lived far enough from London not to be affected by this. The N.W. of London at Kenton near to Harrow. There was a quite large industrial estate at Queensbury about a mile away.

There was a lovely story (Children of the Blitz, Penguin 1985.) of the East End boy who was evacuated to Deal in Kent. His father visited him ,on the sea front,asked where the land visible in the distance was." France dad ",was the reply. "Blimey! get your things mate, you are coming home - bloody safer in London than here." Many parents did bring their children back prior to Dunkirk, during the phoney war period.

We listened to the news. School started again. All was fairly normal. Then Belgium, France and Holland fell. We had the Dunkirk fiasco and England stood alone. To us, as children, it was quite exciting. Britain would win. It was still a game. A game soon to stop, and the fact of war to be brought home to us. Churchill's speeches were listened to. Parents were far more worried than children.

When the Battle of Britain started, mum and dad taped the windows with paper tape in a lattice effect. They started a large vegetable patch in the garden, and made a sort of shelter under the stairs- all exciting stuff. In retrospect this shelter under the stairs, where I was to spend many nights in the future, had all the main service supplies - Gas-Water-Electricity. Not really the safest place to be.

School continued as usual but with a lot of air raid drill. All to the shelters in a orderly fashion. These were only used in practice for, when the Blitz started, three bombs were dropped in the playing fields one night.Then on,if a daylight siren sounded, all were to go home as fast as possible.Being typical kids,we were more interested in trying to see the German bombers than hurrying home. We watched the fighters going over towards the coast. Although the sirens sounded often ,little action until the Blitz proper. The first raid on London was 25th August 1940.The start of sirens every night.Our war had started.
We would watch the searchlights and the anti-aircraft-shell explosions .Then if It got close," Inside" was the order. The ping- ping you heard was shrapnel falling, a thing to be collected and swapped at school.

Dad once threw mother and me over the settee and then jumping on us, as a bomb screamed down and exploded near. He seemed to know which were dud anti-aircraft shells and which were bombs. The experience of the First War came back. Mother would sometimes cry. Dad would say:" Its OK that鈥檚 some way away and they are going away from us." Other times it would be: "Under the stairs, they are coming our way." He would count the explosions about 7-8 seconds as bombs fell in a rough line. One on one side, the next the other, we were all right it had passed over. Fear is a strange thing. Were we frightened? I know not.

About this time dad built a mud and brick oven in the garden. Also he had an oil can in which he put a piece of tube through the middle and the bottom as well. Filled it with sawdust he got from a factory. Packed it hard,withdrew the tube. Raised on bricks ,placed on a concrete area outside. When lit it would burn for 6-8 hours, you could boil a kettle or cook a stew on top, putting a few bars of metal across the top to stand the pot on. A trick learned in the trenches,no visible flame so could be used after dark. Mother had a hay box in which food could be kept hot.Very basic,not very hygienic, but it worked. So even if gas and electricity failed we could still have hot food and drinks.

For us, the raids were not that bad, although, some times the teacher would be upset when calling the register. Death was accepted. Some friends just did not turn up at school again.
There were the incendiary bombs, which fell with a plop and fizz. Luckily none hit the house.The garden and road but not the roof. Some did not explode and were very much sought after. A silver coloured tube with fins, about 2ft tall, and 4" in diameter. People did not realise the danger of them.

A friend (Rhys Johns, Kenton Park Crescent, 1941) was found in the garden shed with an incendiary bomb in the vice whilst he was trying to open it with a punch and hammer on the base, to unscrew it. It was a dud and he is still around. Others, trying to open them, were not so lucky.

My brother who was in the army Pay Corps was coming home during a air raid, he arrived home very dirty and in a state of shock. As he walked from the station, the house on the other side of the road was hit. He was blown over and suffered from shock for some time.

The Blitz went on none stop,Every night the sirens,the unmistakable sound of the Bombers,a steady uneven beat. Really the Londoners had had enough,morale was very low. You could see the glow of London and the docks burning in the sky. Also other cities were being bombed (Coventry-Birmingham-Liverpool-Southampton etc.)Dad was doing fire-fighting duties at work two nights a week as well as a warden at home. All in the same boat caused a community spirit, people started to help one another.

In May 1941, after nine months, came one of the worst raids on London. During that time a lot of damage occurred locally. Mum and Dad were showing the strain,tempers became frayed. The only time that I was hit by dad.A plane was on fire and crashed nearby. There was no sign of a parachute, I said " Poor Bastards",as it crashed and received a swift smack for using bad language.

Then having passed the exam for the Technical College at Hendon.This involved a 8 mile journey each day. Continued at a new school, for the most part ignoring the war. Going to the park, generally being a typical teenager. How parents put up with us all puzzles me still. I left school owing to the fact it was to much of a strain on the finances at home. So I worked in a office in London, then a factory locally. The work was dirty, noisy but fun as long as you left your brains outside. The same thing every day .Pay was good, so I paid my way and had money to spend. Unable to really settle down to anything I left the factory going to work for the Middlesex Agricultural Society. At that time, all parks and open spaces had been cultivated. So round the county you went to hoe and help with the harvest. Stooking corn in the summer and on to the threshing gang in the Autumn .

In February 1944 I went to Acton to volunteer for the Army. " Too young", I was told, so I went away, returned the next day. Said I was 17-1/2, all my papers had been destroyed in the Blitz. No questions asked. Filled in the forms- attested, returned home to await call up. Having signed up for 7 years and 5 years on the reserve. I had requested the Armoured Corps. What I did not know that the casualty rate was extremley high.
Days past and then a letter and a travel warrant to join the 52nd Armoured Brigade at Bovington Camp in Dorset. The Armoured Vehicle Training Centre .

So at the age of 16 1/2 I had been bombed and known people who had died. Seen the devastation in London as well as locally. One event did affect me very much a girl from the Hendon Girls School, Marian. Each day I would get of the bus at West Hendon, cross the road, wait for Marian and ride to school on another bus, about 2 miles. Sometimes, after school we would walk to her street together. One morning I got off the bus at West Hendon crossed the road to her street: A cordon across the street, no house,no Marian, just a smoking heap of rubble.I think for the first time in the war,I cried.

Also found that fear could make your trousers messy. Hearing a "Doodle Bug" (Flying Bomb) engine stop I looked up and saw it head on, heading straight for me. I could not move and made a mess. The Doodle Bug swerved exploding about two streets away. So one returned home, rather shaken, ashamed as well as smelly.

Also had a lot of fun doing all the usual things. Playing Rounders in the park, getting up to mischief ; realising girls were different to boys-really a reasonably happy period for the time. The war had affected a lot of us mentally. Outside, not caring and rather callous . Inside, rather frightened and unsure of ourselves.
Now the army, to true adulthood and adventure. So another chapter in life was about to start.