大象传媒

My war. The home front. Before I understood what was going on in the world at the age of six, war broke out. My sister at two years of age and I found ourselves sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs, this was novel at first, then we progressed to a Morrison shelter which was a large steel frame with a thick steel sheet top and metal grill to the ends and one side, this was positioned in our front room taking up most of the room. Starting junior school at St. Johns Green school in Colchester Essex, I remember being taken to school by my mother with our gas masks in a cardboard box slung over our shoulders, we were shown how to use them, and had many practices in class to get them on as fast as possible. During playtime in the school playground one day we heard the drone of an aircraft overhead, this was not unusual, but we looked up by habit and noticed that the plane was circling overhead about our school, we then saw a black shape dropping from under it, the teachers in the play ground realising what it was blew their whistles and made us go into the class rooms quickly and hide under desks. There was a large bang and rumble, we were told later that it was a German bomber that had gone to bomb a city, but having to turn back with its pay load saw our school and released its bomb on us. This I understand was their usual practice when a bombing raid was foiled, It missed the school but landed in the street next to our school, it bounced along the houses destroying the whole row on one side of the street before going off and destroying more houses at the end of the street. At that time we did not know how lucky we had been. Over a period of time we got used to the sound of the sirens as East Anglia was a favoured route for German planes and bombers to attack cities like Chelmsford, Coventry, Birmingham, etc. Erected in the middle of the road outside our house, (the road being a cul-de-sac) was built two large concrete Anderson shelters, these were never used but good for playing in. Walking through the fields nearby to St. Helena our senior school we had to pass ak ak guns which were positioned on the hill top next to the lane we used to go to school, after school we often would go and talk to the gunners and ogle at the what appeared to be very large guns from our perspective. East Anglia being the route across the English Channel we heard night after night planes going overhead, B52鈥檚 from Lakenheath and other Suffolk airfields. When the sirens sounded I would rush outside and could often when dark, see the flames from the rockets and V2鈥檚 coming over. Flame outs often occured and we tried to guess where they might land, often somewhere near Chelmsford. If we saw the flame out followed by silence we knew it would be close. Walking around Colchester it was easy to collect shrapnel and bullets from destroyed buildings, which we traded at school. My nearest brush with danger was when a little older I and a friend went onto the fields nearby at night to see what we could see, we heard and saw a Doodlbug very low, large and black but glowing at the back, we could feel the heat of it, suddenly the noise stopped so we dived into hole and waited, soon there was a very large crump to the west, we ran all the way home very frightened. We got used to the black outs and rationing as because of our age knew little else before that. Coal was scarce I can remember going to the other side of Colchester to the dock area and queuing up for a bag of coal and carrying it home, about three miles. Later on there was a dumping area near the docks for discarded fuel tanks off planes and other equipment, a few friends and I clubbed together to buy a fuel tank to make a canoe, we cut a hole in the top and with a sort of paddle took it onto the river Colne that runs around Colchester, rivers were freely accessible then, I can remember, that being the smallest I was shoved up the sharp end out of sight of the opening with two big boys paddling, with no stabilisers it was not very safe, I don鈥檛 know how I would have got out if it had overturned. Although I was briefly evacuated to Wales I seem to have spent a lot of time during the war in Colchester and witnessing the everyday activities including the Yanks and some locals with their suitcases full of Nylons, Bourbon and cigarettes for sale at contraband prices. As my father was away during the war in the royal navy we looked forward to parcels of souveniers, etc. also having an uncle in Pretoria, South Africa, we at Christmas time always had a parcel from him of nuts, chocolate and dried fruit which we had not seen much of before. Compared with the older generation my war was very mundane. W.J.Price