蜜芽传媒

My name is Colin. I was born in 1931 into an extended matriarchal family, centered on the Barking Road in the East End of London. My mother was one of eleven and I was the eldest of three children, the others being Maureen (born in 1933) and Bernard, the youngest, born in 1944. My father鈥檚 family also lived nearby and at the outbreak of war he was working as a London bus conductor.
My first memory of war.
I was walking down the Barking Road with my cousin John, known as Johnny to differentiate him from our uncle John. We spent a lot of time together and were good friends. Johnny and I were only months apart in age. In those days it was not at all unusual for children to go out on their own; the area around the Barking Road was our playground. While we were ambling along, we suddenly heard the siren go and saw the formidable figure of our grandmother, Nana, almost running down the road towards us. This, more than the siren, was an unforgettable sight. 鈥淕et on home quickly鈥�, she panted as she drew near, and ushered us back home, only for the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� to sound before anything exciting could happen. It was the period of the phoney war, and our days were punctuated by false alarms.

When the bombing really started in earnest, I remember listening for the sound of the bombs whistling down and exploding into the docks but, I knew that I was safe as long as my mother was close by, and, cushioned by a large and protective family, my fear seemed to last only as long as the last bomb.
Kent
It was not long after the outbreak of war my grandparents moved to a cottage in Bedgbury Forest in Kent, where my uncle had got a job as a forester. Although none of us was to know it yet, the whole family was eventually to gravitate towards Kent, and at the end of the war many of them were to stay there and put down roots.

Johnny and I went down to Bedgbury to stay with our grandparents for a short holiday during this time. We hadn鈥檛 been evacuated with the first wave of children leaving the major cities in September 1939.
In those pre-Doctor Beeching days, you could take a train from London to Paddock Wood or Tonbridge and change onto a small branch line that went to Goudhurst and eventually to Hawkhurst. Although we were only eight years old, we made the journey alone. When we arrived at Goudhurst we were to be met by our 19-year-old Aunt Marjorie. The station platform was deserted, the night was drawing in, and we had no idea where we were supposed to be, nor where she was. So we, two little 8 year-olds, waited in the darkened station, not knowing where to go or what to do next. Eventually, Marjorie arrived, having cycled all away from the cottage in the middle of the forest; she then walked us back several miles in the pitch dark along country lanes and forest tracks, she pushing her bike and we trotting along behind her as best we could. Even now I remember that walk as one of the longest and most tiring of my life!

Dad joins up. We are bombed out.

In 1939, my father joined the Royal Corps of Signals. Between signing up and actually being called up in late 1940, he was promoted to Bus Inspector and was therefore in a reserved occupation. He could have appealed to be let out of the army, but decided to go anyway. In the RCS he rose to the rank of sergeant major, and by the end of the war had advanced through Holland and was at Luneburg Heath on VE Day.

When the Blitz started in August -September 1940 he was still living at home in Greengate Street, Plaistow. On this particular night the bombing must have been very fierce, and we all went to spend the night with a cousin who lived nearby, and his family in their cellar. He, my cousin, always known as Wag, was an auxiliary fireman, and was on duty that night. We did have our own brick built shelter, but hadn't had to use it yet. Interestingly, the authorities had decided that, as we lived very close to a five-storey YMCA building, an Anderson Shelter would not have survived its receiving a hit and falling on us, which is why we had a very solid, though, as it turned out, unused shelter. Although it is a clich茅 of the Blitz, people did sing and chat to keep their spirits up, and the presence of so many of my family was a great reassurance. The feeling of security for a child in wartime of having your family close by is immeasurable. However awful the events in the outside world might be, you are protected by the constants in your life, parents, relations, home. One of these constants was about to be brutally removed.

The morning after the raid, we left the cellar to go home and met Wag coming towards us with his face blackened and streaked with tears. This was a rare sight indeed, a grown man crying. He was weeping at the horrors he had seen during the night as he and his team had tried to rescue civilians caught in the bombing in and around the docks.

We had only gone about 300 yards, when we were stopped by police and wardens, who told us that an unexploded bomb had fallen into our back garden, and that we could under no circumstances be allowed back home. The bomb was expected to go off at any time. 鈥淐ould not鈥� was not something you said to my mother! She argued with the wardens until she wore them down; they relented and allowed us five minutes to get into the house, round up as many essentials as we could and then leave. My mother bundled Maureen and me into as many layers of clothes as we could put on; she and Dad gathered vital possessions, papers etc, before we waddled out looking like little Michelin men, and glowing with the heat! Not a minute too soon, either, because later that day the bomb went off and blew out the back of the house!

Interestingly, I don鈥檛 think anything was looted, although there are stories of looters in other parts of London. The bomb did destroy all our toys and books, and probably many of the family鈥檚 more vital possessions too, though, with the selfishness of childhood I didn鈥檛 worry about those.
Off to Kent
My mother was a doughty and determined woman, who rose above adversity, but even she must have wilted under the blows of fate, because, no fewer than three of the flats she attempted to rent for us after that in London were bombed before we could move into them! Someone, somewhere was trying to tell us that the future and the safety of the family lay in Kent. After a brief stay with relatives in London we packed up and moved to Bedgbury to live with my Grandparents and my uncle in his forester's cottage.
The Battle of Britain
We were living in the forest during the Battle of Britain. I remember watching the dogfights going on overhead with the long vapour trails and the noisy wheeling of the planes overhead. I remember one day in particular being in the cottage garden with my mother at the well, when a German bomber crashed near Bedgbury School. The explosion nearly blew my mother down the well! About half and hour later we saw a figure staggering towards us down the forest track. It was the Spitfire pilot whose plane had shot the German down and who had then crash-landed in the Forest. He was dazed and battered and bleeding from an injury under the eye. My mother told me to run over to the forest warden鈥檚 house: they were the only ones to have a telephone; the medics came, with the police, who took the pilot to hospital. I, knowing the Forest, went back to the site of the crash with the Police. The plane was intact, but the undercarriage had been shot away. One of the Policemen asked me if I would like to sit in the plane. By the headrest in the cockpit I remember seeing a bullet hole. It had nearly cost the pilot his life. He had been up three times already that day, from Biggin Hill. I think I saw the reality of war differently after that day.
It was sixty years later that, in a bookshop I picked up a book on the Battle of Britain and read that sadly, that pilot had been killed six weeks later in a dogfight over Canterbury.

It was only a couple of weeks later that I experienced my own brush with death. Nana told me to run to a farm about three-quarters of a mile away to get some milk. I took the tin billycan, my aunt鈥檚 dog, Chum, and set off. As I passed Marshall鈥檚 Lake on the way back I heard whining noises, the dirt by my feet started to spit up as if it was pouring with rain, but I suddenly realized鈥�. they were bullets kicking up the dirt, and overhead there was a fierce dogfight going on! I put the billycan of milk down under a tree and raced home with Chum at my heels. Nana鈥檚 first reaction was to ask what I had done with the milk, and when we judged it was safe I went back for it. The billycan was where I had left it鈥�. but it was empty!

Back to London

I have already described my grandmother as a formidable woman, and she and my mother managed to live together for so long鈥�.but no longer. And so it was that we moved back to London. We went to live with my father鈥檚 family. There was no school at the time. Not only had the children been evacuated, but the teachers had gone too. I spent quite a few days riding with my aunty Gladys on her bus (she was a conductress) as she went from Barking Broadway to Holborn and back. Apart from this delight, I was free to come and go, wandering about and probably getting into all kinds of mischief, but I have no recollection of danger or boredom.

Evacuation

But that wasn鈥檛 to last. In early January 1941, not long after my father went off to the army, my sister Maureen, our cousin Rita and I were evacuated. Johnny had already gone to Cornwall, but we? Well, we landed up in Doncaster! I remember that we gathered at the West Ham Central Mission and were taken to the station for a five-hour train journey to Doncaster and then a bus ride to the village that was to be our home. Despite my pleas to the woman organizer that my sister and I had to be billeted together, we were separated. My mother had impressed upon me that I should look after her and Rita, but to no avail. Rita was placed with a family who absolutely adored her and treated her like a daughter and she stayed there till the end of the war. Whenever Maureen and I went over to see her, we were always well treated and very well fed. Maureen wasn鈥檛 unhappy and wasn鈥檛 badly treated, but 鈥渉er鈥� family required her to be out of the house for the whole day and to return only for meals. I wonder what they thought a small girl was going do for all those hours of the day. Children were expected to make their own entertainment, and did, but this was altogether more unreasonable.

鈥淢y鈥� family lived in a two bedroomed cottage, the father was a painter and decorator, a diffident man who rarely spoke; there were two children, a boy and a girl, who shared a bedroom, and a mother who was, I think, looking for an unpaid skivvy. She found one in me.

I was given a camp bed, which had to be taken down and put up every night between the children鈥檚 beds. There was no mattress, and I was an occasional bed-wetter. This was not the worst. I was expected to do most of the household chores, though I can鈥檛 remember why the children of the house didn鈥檛 seem to help too much.

I had to race home from school at lunchtime on Mondays to 鈥榙olly鈥� the copper, push and pull the paddle that sat on the top of the wash boiler, until the clothes were thoroughly clean. This took up most of my lunchtime, after which I was given a penny to run to the corner shop and buy a packet of Symingtons鈥� soup mix, which I was supposed to prepare for my lunch. Often I had too little time for this and had to race back to school tired and hungry.

The very worst job of all was bringing the coal in. As the village was in a coal-mining area the coal was delivered by lorry and dumped by the ton outside the house. It was one of my jobs to shovel it into buckets and to carry it round to the coal shed at the back of the house, a back-breaking job and one I hated the most. During the time I was evacuated I lost half a stone in weight, and although tall, I wasn鈥檛 very big to start with.

I was behind the other children at school because of having missed so many lessons in London and because of moving around so much. Like many children I endured the casual brutality of bullying from other children and slaps from the teachers, but I did at least have two uninterrupted terms of schooling and I learned to stand up for myself against the bullies.

The end of my evacuation came, blissfully, when I was shovelling coal one day in the road in front of the house. I filled two buckets, stretched, lifted them and looked down the road. 鈥� That looks just like my mum鈥� I remember thinking to myself鈥�. and it was. 鈥淚鈥檝e come to take you home鈥�, she said. The sweetest words you can ever hear鈥� Parents have the ability with a few words to turn your world upside down and plunge you into the most intense misery, or to make everything right.

Back to Kent

So Maureen and I and Mum went back South. She had taken a cottage in a tiny hamlet near Bedgbury. We were to spend a many of the remaining war years here. Life was good. I spent a lot of time 鈥渓oping about 鈥� the Forest, I was at a primary school where I finally settled and proved to be good at sports, I went hop-picking and had my own 鈥榟alf-bin鈥�, and went fruit-picking in the summer months, so that I always had pocket money. It was a good time. But the family鈥檚 life was to change irrevocably, in the most tragic way.

Jean
Nana and Grandfather lived nearby, in a cottage on the main Cranbrook to Hawkhurst road. My little cousin Jean came to live with them, as her mother, my aunt Gladys was working in London, and her father, Jim, was serving in the RAF. Jean was nearly five and started at the primary school in October 1941. We all used to ride home in the back of a lorry, which picked us up morning and afternoon. On the Friday of her first week at school, Jean jumped down from the lorry, ran round the back of it and out into the road to cross to where my grandparents were waiting for her鈥�. The army motorbike dispatch rider didn鈥檛 see her until it was too late. She was lifted into the air on his handlebars and fell to the ground. My sister and I were in the garden, which had a high hedge. We heard the screech and the crash, and the screams from the other children. One of Jean鈥檚 shoes came flying over the hedge and landed at my feet. Mum ran out into the road and cradled Jean in her arms. She was just alive, but died minutes later. I think it is true to say that none of the family was ever quite the same again. She was pretty, sweet natured and lively and she was only four years and ten months old.

John

The next tragedy to befall the family was the death of my uncle John in July 1942. He had enlisted in the RAF in Bomber Command and was flying Lancasters as a wireless-operator/ gunner. He and I had spent a lot of time together swimming in Marshalls Lake and roaming the Forest, and because he was the baby of the family he was the darling of not only his parents but also his brother and sisters. His plane was shot down and the whole crew was lost over Germany. He is buried in a British War Cemetery near Hamlin. He was only 19 years old. He is commemorated in the Roll of Honour in St Dunstan鈥檚 Church, Cranbrook. His death, like that of little Jean, cast a shadow over the family which was never erased.

My war was not an unusual one. It deprived me of four years of my father鈥檚 presence, . It introduced me to death and separation but it also taught me self-sufficiency and independence. I lived with shortages, but learned to appreciate the treats I had.

October 2005

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