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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Marie on behalf of Brian and has been added to the site with his permission. Brian fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

I lived at Walton-on-Thames where my dad owned a garage. We’d gone away on our holidays to East Wittering to stay in a property owned by granddad. Mum and Dad went down to the Shore Hotel to listen to the radio and I was given a brand new comic and told to sit on the stairs while they went inside. Next thing I knew, an ice cream seller grabbed me and threw my precious comic away saying “war is declared, go home”. As a 10 year old boy, war meant nothing to me — the loss of my comic was far more important!

People were concerned about the Germans landing and so defences were set up. Even as a child though I knew one Bren gun at East Wittering and another light ack-ack type of gun at West Wittering weren’t going to be enough to put off a determined invading force. And even more silly in my eyes was the fact that the defending “force” — I think they were all cooks - were given bicycles so they could cycle the 12 miles to warn the next towns along if we were invaded and the phonelines cut — I didn’t they get very far before the Germans clunked them!

We went on to live at East Sheen, one happy memory even after most severe bombing us kids would link arms and sing at the tops of our voices…”this is number one and the fun has just begun…” and all the verses right up to “number nine and baby’s fine”. Passing adults would smile at us — well, it was more noise than music to be honest! But when we got to the grocers singing would come to an abrupt stop and those with a penny would go in for bag of broken biscuits. The owner of the bag got first pick and then it would be passed along the line until it was empty. Singing would then start again until we got to school where we’d make our dignified entrance.

We all became experts at clambering over bombed buildings — which walls were safe and which you left well alone. And as children we had three things that we didn’t want

1 — we didn’t want to be evacuated because there were horrible animals with horns that made strange noises in the morning.
2 — we didn’t want to be “deaded” (killed)
3- we didn’t want shrapnel in the belly cos it took you four hours to die and was painful

Other than that the war didn’t seem to bother us though. If a friend didn’t turn up at school one day, you’d know he’s “bought it” during the night. People dying was just accepted, we took it in our stride. We soon got used to being latch-key kids as well — most of us had Dads serving away and Mums who were doing war work or whatever — so we’d get our own food, put ourselves to bed or down in the shelter. We just got on with it — and it definitely wasn’t used as an excuse for bad behaviour.

We didn’t really take that much notice of our near-misses either. I remember one day, we’d gone to the lido when we heard the bombs overhead. We all quickly dived in and stayed under the water as long as we could until we thought we’d be safe — obviously we emerged coughing and spluttering just as the bomb exploded so we were lucky we weren’t badly injured.

Another time the sirens went off and bombs started dropping when I was on the way back from Sea cadets. My friend panicked and ran off while I sheltered in a shop front. Then all the glass started rattling and shaking and I realised just how silly I’d been so I jumped on my cycles and pedalled home as fast as I could — in fact the speed I managed will probably never beaten!

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