蜜芽传媒

My war - Stuart Hoskins

I was born in 1935 and the family home at that time was in Welling in North Kent. At the outbreak of war my fathers company whose design office was based in Regents St in central London decided to move it to the factory location in Langley, Buckinghamshire away from what was to become target London, only a distance of 18 miles but enough.
Our new home was directly on the A4 Bath Rd and my bedroom was at the front so I had a good view of all the military traffic that passed in either direction, one memory was that at night in the blackout I could hear the steam powered lorries that had been pressed back into service due to the shortage of fuel and see the sparks of the red hot cinders as they fell from the fire into the ashpan underneath. In the field across the road from us the RAF had based a barrage balloon, we had an early warning system of our own as the balloon was always sent up before the air raid warning was sounded, those airman could sure run from their hut to the winch in the middle of the field.
The A4 was lined for much of its length approaching London with 鈥榮moke pots鈥�, these were placed every 25 yards or so and were about 6 feet high and circular in section about 12鈥� in diameter with a larger diameter base and a chinamans hat type cowl on top, these pots were designed to burn waste oil and rags to produce a thick black smoke to create an artificial fog on clear moonlit nights to deny the bombers a clear view of targets, you can imagine what it was like at ground level with all that smoke and oily smuts floating around.
The house was built in the early 30s and had a large garden for a semi- detached house so we had a brick built air raid shelter built on the back lawn, this was partly underground and had earth banked against the walls and a concrete roof, a section of the rear wall brickwork was only bedded in sand so that if the doorway became blocked we had an escape route, it was used frequently at the beginning of the war but it was cold, damp and with 2 adults and 3 children, rather cramped, so its use declined steadily, it did get one unexpected use and that was when one of the first V1 flying bombs (doodlebug) fell a few miles away, it fell in the garden of a Thames side pub in Old Windsor called 鈥楾he Bells of Ouseley鈥� it destroyed the pub and got our family into the shelter in double quick time. These things had a very characteristic throbbing noise from its ramjet engine and as they were slow by todays standard you could hear them coming, when the noise stopped was the time to get under cover quickly, some dropped like a stone and others glided on for miles but you couldn鈥檛 take any chances one way or the other.
In spite of having a large garden my father decided to join in the 鈥楧ig for Victory鈥� campaign and took an allotment in the field at the back of us that the council had ploughed and set out into plots, I can remember being given my own plot within the allotment and growing my first plants, this included a variety of potatoes called 蜜芽传媒 Guard which is still available today.
Ours was a standard 1930s 3 bedroom semi and mine was the small bedroom at the front, my two sisters having the larger rear, during 1942 the RAF set up a maintenance depot ( 71 MU ) about a mile up the road towards Slough at a place called the Premier Garage , my bedroom was taken over by two RAF corporals who were billeted on us, so I had to move into the rear bedroom with my two sisters. Their job was crane driving and they used to travel all over the area to pick up the remains of crashed aircraft and bring them back to the depot to see what could be salvaged, what was of no use was taken to a dump/breakers yard about half a mile down the Upton Court Road, this was not manned or guarded in any way so as an adventure playground for young boys it was superb, by the end of the war I had 鈥榝lown鈥� Spitfires, Hurricanes, Me 109s, Dornier, Wellington, Halifax and Lancaster bombers and fired all the turret guns in American B17s.
One particularly memorable occasion occurred on a sunny Sunday morning when we were in the front garden and suddenly heard the distinctive noise of what was a lone German bomber, we all looked up and saw this plane had come over very low and because of this it had escaped detection and no air raid warning had sounded, as we watched a stick of bombs started to fall, my father bundled us all into a heap against the house wall and waited for the explosions, fortunately the fell on the car park and airfield of the Hawkers aircraft factory about a mile away, they tried several times to hit the factory but thankfully always missed.
A wartime Christmas was a pretty bleak affair by modern standards as there were very few luxuries around and no toys or decorations, my parents made toys etc from what could be found, thanks to the scientists of the day developing 鈥榃indow鈥� which was strong strips of paper and aluminium foil designed to be dropped from aircraft to confuse enemy radar, the strips were about a yard long and 1 inch wide and were retrived from the country side after use, painted on one side, and a pair were then cross folded to form a long concertina like chain that were then joined together to make paper chains for Christmas. They must have been very strong as they were used for many years after the war had ended鈥︹�︹��

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