大象传媒

My name is John Edward Birch, I was born on the 21st March, 1936 in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. My father, John Albert Birch, was a driver/gravedigger, my mother, Agnes Maud Birch (nee Lowe), was a dressmaker. Soon after my birth my parents moved to 48 Fordingley Road, Paddington, London, W9, and it was here that I spent most of the war. My father was called up on outbreak of war, he joined the RASC,(Royal Army Service Corps) as a driver and within months he was sent to Egypt. While serving there he had the luck to meet both his brothers, George, a Naval Officer,(who had been on HMS Ajax at the Battle of the River Plate and had given me a model of that ship), was on board HMS Queen Elizabeth when it was mined in the harbour at Alexandra and and Tom, who was with The Queen's Royal Regiment, who were in Egypt, just prior to the invasion of Italy at Salerno.

Uncle Tom was captured by the Germans in Italy and was made to march through the Brena Pass in winter (a death march, anyone falling out was shot), he spent the rest of the war as a P.O.W. in a camp next to a Concentration camp. He saw some terrible things but only rarely would he talk about them to the others after he returned home. Mum's elder half brother, Harry Rye, was a sailor, a Chief Stoker on Aircraft Carriers, his wife was called Vie and they lived in the middle flat next door. He came home on leave a couple of times but I was not to see my father for six years, until the night of VJ day.

My mother, her younger sister Rose, my baby sister Marion and I were evacuated to Leeds where I seemed to have made a blunder and shown up the family by eating my pudding and gravy and refusing the meal as I had 'already eaten'. It was the period of the 'phoney war', there did not seem to be anything happening, so we, like many others returned to our homes in London. The wireless was our link to he world, mother did not buy a newspaper. I soon learnt to tune in to the Home service and the many other stations. I recall with a smile ITMA with Tommy Handly. I heard many voices on the air including that of 'Lord Hawhaw' with his "Chermany calling", a 'horrid' man my mother said.

The men came and took our iron railings away and then they came and dug up the back garden and built an Anderson shelter. I remember that they dug up a log and when they broke it, water was pouring through it like a pipe. The shelter never was any good, it was always full of water. Mother put my sister an me into the base of a heavy built kitchen dresser in the kitchen and she slept under the table. There was a public shelter built in the road outside but we only used it once. It smelt horrible, a smell I will never forget, I think it was the bricks, someone said they were London Bricks and contained sewage. It was that, plus the smell of urine, vomit, alcohol and parafin, I think it was the only time during the war when I was near terrified. Mum told us that her Mother, our Nan, who had recently died, would look after us. We believed her and she may well have been right for we did not get even a broken window during the whole course of the war, despit the heavy raids and a house amost oposite getting a direct hit. It looked like a dolls house with the front open.

Our house was split, like all the others in the road, into three flats, we lived on the ground floor. We had two rooms, a kitchen with a solid fuel range and a scullery with a large copper which was heated by a fire. There was a toilet just outside the back door. The kitchen with its range was the heart of the household. My Mother was the hub of the extended family and gradualy all the Aunts came to live either next door or very close. Rations were tight and the ration books for everyone in our extended family were pooled. The younger aunts grumbled sometimes but Mum was strict. My favourite food was bread and dripping, mum would render down lumps of suet for the fat and us children then had the treat of the crackling bits. I remember being cold, the kitchen was the only room with a fire.

We would be put to bed in the dresser and I vividly recall waking one night to seeing Mum and my aunts sitting round the kitchen table asking questions and a glass they all had a finger on was spelling out replies. The women seemed to know were the men folk were and how they were fairing despite cencership of the letters and news reports.

All the women had jobs, including Mum who worked in High Street, Kensington as a tailoress /seamstress. The employer was a White Russian, jewish I think, who had fled here as a result of a pogrom. My sister and I would go with Mum if we were not at school, they taught me to sew, I would get two squares of scrap material and carefully sew them together. I would then collect all the scraps on the floor and after turning my squares inside out fill them tight with scaps, finaly sewing up carefully the small hole left for filling. I would then walk round the workshop with a magnet on a string picking up all the pins and these I would place into the pincushion I had made. If I had done a good job I may have been given a Joey (a threepenny bit), if not so good I got tupence.

I would sit in the corner sewing and the customers, diplomats wives and society ladies would come in for fittings. The people ignored me but I learnt a lot about women and how they dressed. I remember the Russians saying that Stalin was a lot worse than Hitler. I did not fully understand this untill after the war. I liked the Russians, they were serious but kind. One, he was called Joseph, had a very deep voice and when he sang it made my tummy tingle, it was a loverly sound and I enjoyed hearing him sing.

Mum also made wedding dresses at home for the girls in the neibourhood using all sorts of material, begged and borrowed. I was fairly tall for my age and would be used by Mum as a dressmakers dummy(I think I've worn more wedding dresses than Elizabeth Taylor). I was always woried in case a friend came in when one was being pinned on me by my Mother and being called a sissy.

The air-raids became very heavy, our house was between two railway lines, one from Paddington and one from Marylebone, the Grand Union Canal also ran nearby. One night, I think it was in May, Mum's younger sister Rose had just married Richard Dean, a solider, and the raid started. Every house, except ours, was hit by at least one incendary bomb and the Church on the corner was alight. My new uncle Dick, still in his best uniform from the wedding, went into the church with the wardens in an attempt to save the building. He came out with a bomb in each hand and as he stood up a third incendary bomb fell out of the back of his battle dress blouse and went of behind him. I think it shows they were past fear at the time for everyone thought it was funny. Uncle was not hurt and it became a family story of a wedding to remember.

My school was in Essendine Road. It was a large Victorian red brick building with seperate entrance and playgrounds for girls and boys. Woe betide you if you were found using or in the wrong one. One of the class rooms was reinforced with bulks of timber and when the alarm went signaling a raid all the school crowded in it. The headmaster, a Mr Strong, played us music on the Gramaphone. He told us that not all the Germans were evil and to prove it he played to us the music of Bethoven, Brahms, Motzart and others. It was here that I learnt my love of the classics, but some pieces still take me back to that cramped classroom with the sound of aircraft, guns and bombs.

To us children the inability of the Jerry's to hit such a large stucture as our school and give us a couple of days off seemed to show that the Luftwaffe were not much good and we were bound win, but there was a lot more to come before that day. I remember looking up at night and seeing the searchlights pick up a plane, it looked like a silver moth, then the puffs of smoke alround it and Mum calling me in in case I was hit by the falling scrapnel. We collected this metal plus whatever else we could find, sometimes the objects were still live. We were warned at school against this dangerous hobby and shown examples of what was dangerous like 'butterfly bombs and other boobytraps.

If a class mate did not show up for lessons they had either moved or 'bought it'. If it was the latter their name was mentioned at morning assembly and included in the prayers, I can't recall any sadness or emotion, it was just one of those things. I remember one boy being called out of class, the teacher, said something to him, gave him some sweets and he went out, he did not return. I learnt later that his Mother had been killed by a bomb, his Father was already dead, and he had been sent to the country as an evacuee. We took this sort of this as normal.

Clothing, like everthing else, was on ration so we had to take care and we had to change when we got home into 'playclothes'. My sister and I were lucky as we had shoes to wear for school which we were not allowed to scuff, they had studs on the soles and blakeys on the heels. I remember Mum was a dab hand at repairing them, in fact she seemed to be able to make new clothes from old. We wore wellingtons out of school, some children wore wellingtons all the time as they had no shoes. Boys then wore short trousers until the age of 14. They made your legs sore where the bottom of the leg rubbed just above the knee, it was worse when the were wet. The wellingtons made the lower leg sore where they rubbed so we would role our socks over the top to try to pad them, again it was worse in the rain and cold. In doors we went barefoot.

We were evacuated again, this time to Devon, Cleve Farm near Morleigh. My sister and I went to school in Kingsbridge which entailed a long early morning walk to the station then a train to the town. If you were not much good at the lesson, or you skived, you were sent to work in the garden. Mum would visit the town sometimes to shop and she would pass the school, we were told that if she ever saw us working in the garden we would get a hidding. We made sure we never were. We helped out on the farm with the haymaking, taking the horses to Morleigh to the Blacksmith and other chores. My sister and I would search the hedges around the farm yard for eggs, the chickens were not particular where they laid them.

At harvest, we followed the reaper binder and put the sheves of corn into stooks, then we brought them into the yard and onto the rick. Riding back on the cart with a sheath of corn on my fork held in the air, the last sheath, stays with me. Then there was the threshing, a steam tractor came with a big box of a threshing machine. I can still smell the steam and straw, it was the first time I ever tasted cider, it was wonderful, but I was told off by my Mum when she found out. I learnt a love for the countryside then and that has stayed with me.

Living conditions were primative, no electricity only oil lamps or candles. We had a large open fire for heat and cooking, pots held on hooks in the chimney or on a trivet, no wonder Mum did not like it in the country, "Not enough chimneys" about she would say. The area became full of Yanks, then one day they were all gone and we heard of the invasion. My mother said that this was the end of the war and we could return to London, just in time for the V1 flying bombs, or doodle bugs as we called them, and the V2 rockets.

When we returned the rationing seemed worse, maybe it was myself getting bigger or being on a farm we had scrounged a bit more food. I recall buying large very hard 'dog bicuits', you got four for a penny, and nibbling them in secret, one would last a whole day or more. We would watch the doodle bugs pass over, if they stopped we dived for cover, they made a woomwoom noise, then silence followed by a great bang of an explosion. The V2's were different, there was an enormous explosion followed by a rushing sound, you had no warning what so ever. We were given a Morrison shelter, a large iron table with wire round the sides. We were so confidant that Nan was taking care of us by now that although Mum put us inside she slept on top.

Mum managed to take us on holiday to Dorset about this time. We stayed in an old bus in an orchard just outside Wareham. We walked to the 'Blue Pool' and visited Swanage were we saw on big stone globe just where Egypt was. There were the Tillywhim caves and best of all Corfe Castle. One day we visited Lulworth cove, there was a party of men, it tuned out they were Italian prisoners of war, with a big yellow life raft. My sister and I wanted to go and play with them but Mum would not allow this as they were still the enemy. I feel, even now, we would have been quite safe, but Mum had become very protective of us, she saw the war through adult eyes.

VE day (the day Germany surrendered)was such a celebration, it was half expected and we were told at school it would be a holiday. I heard the news on the wireless so did no go to school that day but was told off by the headmaster as it was not the official surender and the next day was the holiday. There were street parties, we were still rationed but the food appeared on the tables in the road. There were bonfires in the street. We went to Marble arch to see a Victory parade.

On VJ day (the day Japan surrendered), I was the last boy at the street bonfire, keeping it going, it was late when I was called in for bed. A short while after laying down this man came in with a real leather football, my Dad had returned. The war was realy over for me.