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Don Church (Age 70)
Worcester Park
Surrey

World War 2 Memories of a 7year old.

I was 20 days short of my seven birthday when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation on Sunday 3rd September 1939 to say “We are at war with Germany”.

We lived in Headington Road,Earlsfield,South West London,my sister Queenie still lives there. It is not far from Clapham Junction which at that time was the worlds largest railway junction and a prime target for the Germans.

It was a lovely sunny day and having listened to the speech with other members of the family and at that age not appreciating the full gravity of the situation I went out to play with a friend in the next road, some time later an air-raid siren sounded (we had had practise runs with the sirens,the first warning of a raid was a wailing sound which we all came to dread,the second ‘All Clear’ was a contiuous sound.On that Sunday when the first siren sounded my friend said “Blimey their here already”we both ran to our homes,my father had prepared the dining-room ready for Gas attacks,with buckets of water, blankets and sheets to cover windows,doors and fireplace.An Aunt,Uncle and their son Ron were visiting,so we all shut ourselves in the room I can remember it being very quite and after a while and my mother saying “I think I can hear gunfire,everyone listened and then Ron said “its me banging my head against the wall”that helped to ease the tension and eventually the ‘All Clear’sounded we never did find out if there had been a raid.

Gas seemed to be the biggest fear,everyone was issued with gas masks which came in cardboard boxes with a loop of string that you carried everywhere,either on your shoulder or round your neck,young children had special masks coloured blue and red with a flap where the nose would be,to try and make children accept them,the others were black and looked quite frightening.At school we regularly had gas mask practises to get them on as quickly as possible

We were all issued with Identity Cards,my number was.XOBB-161-5, the last digit denoted your position in the family,Dad Albert.(Age 37) being 1.Mum Winifred (Age 38) 2. Sister Queenie (Age 19) 3.Brother Alan (Age 9) 4.myself Don (Age 6) 5.Brother David (Age 2) 6.Brother Colin (born June 1943) 7.

It was decided that Mum and us three boys should get out of London,we went to live with two widowed great aunts who lived in Abergavenny,in Wales,my brother Alan and I stayed with aunt Edie and her two grown up daughters .Mum and youngest David stayed with aunt Amy..We had a great time,climbing the Sugar Loaf mountain and generally being spoilt.We went to the local school where I think we were a bit of a rarity,especially when it came to singing in Welsh. After Christmas 1939 things were still fairly quiet back in London and we all came back to be with Dad and sister Queenie who had stayed behind because they had to go to work.

Anderson Air Raid shelters were eventually supplied for erection in gardens,they must have been distributed in some sort of priority basis as not everyone had them,I can only think we got one because of the number of children in the family.Made from corrugated metal we helped Dad to erect it in the back garden,first we dug a hole I think about 3ft deep and a 8ft X 6ft.the side pieces were put into the ground and where they curved over the top and overlapped they were bolted together,the front and back ends were then put in place and the whole shelter was then covered with soil,wooden shuttering was fixed all round the inside about four inches in from the sides and this space was filled with concrete,the front opening was not very big and the adults had difficulty in getting in and down.A sandbag wall was built a couple of feet from the entrance to protect from blast.We later heard that four people died in their shelter two roads away from the blast from a bomb that fell in Openview Road the story goes that their clothes were ripped off them but their bodies were not marked.

The radio and newspapers were our only source of information we listened to the radio all the time,the fall of France in 1940 was I remember a terrible blow,I can remember my parents saying “we are on our own now”.Dunkirk where hundreds of British troops were stranded on the beaches for days, occupied all the news bulletins and the papers had pictures of lines of soldiers wading out into the water to get aboard the ships and boats that had sailed across the channel to bring them back,all the time being attacked by the Germans,we had an uncle Dick who was one of those who survived that.

Soon after the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans I remember Mum saying “if they invade we will shut ourselves in the kitchen and turn on the Gas oven”now I was beginning to appreciate the seriousness of our situation.

The day and night air raids of the ‘Blitz’ began about June 1940 the sirens were sounding all the time so we were taking shelter continuously,sometimes we would watch the “dogfights” as they came to be called between the German aircraft both bombers and fighters and the R.A.F mainly Hurricanes and Spitfires,the sky at times would be full of white vapour trails.My brother and I became experts at identifying all the aircraft by the sound of their engines,the Spitfire was the most distinctive and the German Heinkel bomber had a very heavy droning sound.When a plane was hit we watched to see if the pilot managed to get out.

During night raids the sky was full of searchlights we would cheer whenever they picked out an enemy bomber,when they did the anti-aircraft guns that were positioned on most of the Commons and Parks would open up, the noise was deafening.As the bombing got nearer we would dive down the shelter..You could hear the bombs falling with a whistling sound then everything shook as it exploded,we used to try and work out how far away it was.In the mornings Alan and I would go out looking for shrapnel (pieces of shell and bomb casings) and any other debris that we could find a lot of the shrapnel would be embedded in the tarmac of the roads and pavements.bigger pieces were always taken to school to see who had found the biggest bit. Complete shell nose cones were a real find. I seem to remember some polished and made into table cigarette lighters.

The raids were so regular that eventually we did not wait for the siren but have our meal and go to the shelter.Whenever anyone was not well they slept in the house under the stairs,I used to suffer from chesty colds and remember sleeping under the stairs with my sister.We would make a dash for the shelter if the bombing got close,on one occasion my sister put a teacosy on her head,not a lot of protection but caused a laugh.

My brother and I had made a four wheel cart out of a long piece of plank and wheels from a pram at the back and smaller wheels at the front we were on our way round the “block” a continuous pavement round Headington ,Lidiard and Leckford Roads when a siren sounded,we left the contraption at the far end of Headington Road and ran home,sometime later we were all in the shelter when someone knocked on the door,did we jump,could it be a german parachutist ? No it was Mr Rutt the air raid warden,my sisters future father-in-law,he wanted to know if the machine which he had on his shoulder had been left on the pavement by one of us.more laughter.

Incendiary bombs were smallish bombs that were dropped in clusters and would ignite on impacted,if they penetrated the roof the house would be in flames in seconds,there were times when you could hear them rolling down the roof’s,my brother recalls my father finding an unexploded one,putting it in a bucket of sand,and with a broom handle through the bucket handle starting to carry it away with someone else on the other end of the broom handle and the the broom snapping,panic all round but fortunately it did not explode. The ‘Blitz lasted for several months.

Food became short and although we all had ration books there was not always food in the shops,Mum used to try and improvise, she had read that you could make cheese with sour milk,she had this piece of cloth filled with sour milk tied to a tap over the sink it seemed to hang there for days by time she unwrapped it no one fancied eating it,it smelt awful.We had no fruit or sweets,you never knew when the greengrocer,butcher or baker would get supplies in,sometimes they would put notices in their window to say delivery expected on a certain day but that was never certain.Usually a neighbour knocked and said “Pritchards have got bread in”,there would be a rush to get down to Garrett Lane about a mile, and then you could queue for anything up to an hour for your bread.Our front garden was dug up and we grew vegetables,the slogan at the time was “Dig for Victory”.

My wife Margaret who was the same age as myself recalls hoping the shopkeeper would use a pencil to tick the ration book,so she could rub the tick out.She survived the war together with her widowed mother her father having died in July 1940.she also remembers taking a pushchair to collect supplies of coal,her mother being crippled with arthritis

Father worked for the ��ѿ��ý and they transferred a lot of their operations to Worcestershire and he was based at Hampton House outside Evesham he eventually found somewhere for the rest of the family to stay but we were all in different homes,we were keen to be together and he found a house up on the hill at Ashton-on-the-Hill,it had no running water or electric,with the help of a local man Bert Enstone they managed to get the Well working so we moved in together with Uncle Charlie and Auntie Ena who had just learned that their son Reg had been killed at the battle for Caen in France,he was only 20 yrs of age.

We stayed in the house for about ten weeks it seemed a lot longer it was so peaceful and quiet the nearest neighbour must have been at least a mile away.Dad was in the ��ѿ��ý Guard in Evesham and had a rifle which he kept at home for protection being so isolated,he taught Alan and I how to use it,we would shoot rabbits for the pot,it became my job to skin and de-gut them not pleasant but no one else would do it.We asked the local Estate Manager if we could work on the estate and he let Alan and I help picking up and sacking the potato crop, it was in a large field also working there were Italian prisoners of war with their guards, they were friendly and put potatos in our sacks,at the end of the day we took a sack of potatos back to the house dragging the sack up and over a coupl;e of hills.On another occasion a plane flew over dropping strips of silver foil we did not know what it was for but thinking back it could have been something to do with radar which we would not have known about at the time.

Whilst we were away a bomb fell behind the houses opposite ours, about eight of them were left derelect,all but one of the ceilings in our house came down,windows and front door were blown out. Mr Rutt the warden supervised the repairs so when we returned the house was habitable,we were given a Morrison shelter that was put up in the front room,it was made of steel and was like a big table with mesh sides,only about three to four feet high,we had mattresses on the floor so we could crawl in and sleep.

It was at this time that the first V1 bombs (Doodlebugs) were used by the Germans,these were like pilotless planes that flew in a straight line with a horrible droneing sound,as soon as the engine cut out you knew the bomb was gliding down to explode on impact,you would hear them first and during the day you would see them they used to come straight over our house we used to pray the engine kept going until it was past us.The RAF used to try and intercept them over the Channel and shoot them down some even got alongside them and flipped them over wing to wing.

I changed schools in 1943 going to the Bec Grammar school about a mile and a half from home,we were issued with extra clothing coupons so I could have the school blazer,cap and sports kit .It was a different school to what I had been used too,very disciplined,masters in gowns and mortarboards.A large section of the school had been evacuated I seem to remember to Lewes in Sussex but I am not sure of that.Because of the air-raids we used to go to the school on one day and be given work for the next few days that we would do at home.We used to sit in an underground shelter to write our assignments.

6th June 1944 not only was it Mums birthday but the news on the radio was that we had invaded France on the Normandy beaches,the excitement, we had been waiting for this news for so long,Mum said it was the best birthday present she could have had,we did not know at that time the terrible casualties being suffered. But at last we appeared to have the upperhand and the Germans were in retreat.The whole mood changed there was tremendous excitement I think we all thought the war would soon be over, not another eleven months as it turned out.

The Germans started to send over their latest weapon the V2 Rocket,unlike the V1 doodlebug you could not hear the V2 the first you knew of it was a huge explosion much bigger than anything we had heard previously causing a lot more damage.The attitude was if you hear the explosion you are safe,otherwise you would not know anything about it.

The Rockets gradually stopped coming as the Allied forces overran the launching pads.

We now spent lots of time listening to the radio following all the news,particularly near the end in 1945 wondering if Hitler,Goering,Goebbels and Lord Haw Haw,would be captured.

When the surrender came,everbody went wild all the neighbours organised a street party and in the evening we had a big bonfire at the junction of Headington and Lidiard roads.

For sometime after, individual houses were decorated with flags and bunting to welcome home a member of the family.We had eight relations who served seven of whom came home,sadly cousin Reg did not.

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