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On the whole our family were quite well fed. I did not think much about this until long after the war. However, my father being a roundsman was in an ideal position to help with the distribution of black market goods — especially as his work was in a dockland area. He regularly visited a shop in Lambeth walk. I knew its proprietor as ‘Uncle Charlie’. There never seemed to be anything much actually on sale except for some ‘brawn’ made in a filthy earthen floored back room. Indeed I used to like playing with the till which was grimy and greasy through disuse. However there was a constant coming and going of people to chat to Uncle Charlie. There was quite a lot of betting going on in a fashion which was then illegal and rumour had it that there was a very cosy relationship with the police. Certain locations (such as the blue ‘Tardis’ police telephone boxes) were used to leave bribes of black market meat and other things. In return, warning would be given if a police raid was in prospect. In this way only small infractions were ever discovered whilst senior police officers could claim satisfaction that vigilance was being exercised! I think dad may well have been involved.

Clothes were in short supply and I hated being taken to the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service —‘Royal’ was added later) clothing exchange shop at Catford for ‘new’ second-hand clothes. I recall one occasion having to wear some black shoes with shaped heels clearly female footwear, possibly from the WAAF! On the subject of clothes, early in the war my mother made me a one-piece garment rather like a small boiler suit. It was quite brightly coloured and my name was prominently embroidered on it — this of course was to facilitate identification — not of the garment but of the wearer if killed or injured. It was called a ‘Siren suit’ because it would be worn during an air-raid which in turn would have been signalled by loud sirens located at police stations. In fact I often slept in it. It was exciting sometimes to be wakened in the middle of the night and go out into the street where grown-up neighbours might be found sharing fear but also a novel sense of camaraderie.

Our house was never actually hit by a bomb but was frequently damaged by the blast from bombs falling nearby. My father’s letters (displayed elsewhere) make this clear. However the reality of living with no windows in some rooms — the broken panes replaced with sheets of white translucent linen or sometimes even with opaque black material was depressing. The Government organised an insurance scheme that provided for (amongst other things) ‘First Aid Repairs’. Operated via the local council (I think) gangs of workers — many of them women — visited damaged houses and did what they could to re-hang unhinged doors and reglaze windows with whatever materials were available, and generally patch up homes to make them habitable if not comfortable. More radical repairs were carried out after the war and were the subject of a good deal of fraud as our family was to discover. However in January 1944 I survived, a most dramatic experience following the reglazing of windows in our home. It is still hard to understand what happened.

The V2 attack was characterized by sudden explosions that happened without warning. These rocket weapons landed at a speed of some 2000 mph. It was not possible to see them coming. On January 6th 1944 I was 7 years old. I was sitting on a stool in front of newly glazed windows. The repair team had fitted thick plate glass. My back was to the window and I was using a dining room chair to support a book I was looking at. My mother was in the room standing at the table preparing vegetables. It was cold and we had a small fire in the grate. Suddenly there was a hiatus. I do not recall the details but in the next instant I was lying on the floor under the table, squashed by my (fairly bulky) mother. The room was a wreck. Mortar had come down the chimney and spread hot coals over the floor, The ceiling was damaged and there was broken glass everywhere. The window had been blasted and shards of glass had severed one of the vertical rails of the chair in front of which I had just been sitting and a large piece was embedded in a sideboard across the room. Had my mother not reacted so quickly I must surely have been badly injured or worse. However it remains a mystery what it was that triggered her reaction. A V2 had landed in Telegraph Hill Park some 300 yards away. It had blown a large London plane tree through the air. It had landed in the roof of a house opposite — in number 14 Aspinall Road. Shortly afterwards the elderly lady who lived there knocked to see if my father was at home. Would he be able to help her remove the tree she had asked? This tree was huge and it had gone through the slate roof, the upstairs ceiling and the first storey floor. Part of it was dangling through the ceiling of a ground-floor room! It was weeks before a crane was available for the job! Perhaps my mother had seen the tree, I do not know but although it seems unlikely it really happened.

There was another occasion on which a lucky fluke saved our lives. One morning — a Sunday I think — my parents were chatting to our next door neighbours Mr Arthur Patton and his wife. Somewhere a V1 flying bomb had come to the end of its powered flight. Its engine now silent, it was descending. Suddenly we saw it. It was very low, not much above rooftop level and looking likely to fall very close to us. I recall someone screaming. Again there was a hiatus in which detail was not taken in. I do not even remember an explosion but explosion there was — in an adjacent street. Perhaps fortunately for us there were some tall poplar trees in a garden on the corner of St Asaph Road and Avignon Road Brockley. It is generally thought that the V1 hit these trees and was deflected. It landed in Avignon Road and killed 6 people — a surprisingly low toll given the physical destruction it caused. My father took a photograph of the site a week or so later and I include it. I returned to the same spot in 2002 and took a photo from approximately the same place and include this too.

My father became a civil defence warden. Generally he was reticent about what he did however I recall once that he returned home very dirty and distressed. He was crying but I was not told why this was until much later. Apparently a bomb had fallen in Shardeloes Road Brockley and he had been with the rescue team. People had been sheltering in the cellar of a house. Among the people was a young woman, who was pregnant. The gas pipe to the meter for the house was in the same cellar and the pipe had been severed and caught fire. The rescuers had succeeded with several others but could not get near her to rescue her because of the flames and they had to watch her slowly roast to death. Our home was in the borough of Deptford, now part of Lewisham. Deptford Town hall was in New Cross Road near a branch of Woolworths. This was a shop perhaps more popular then than now. It sold a wider range of inexpensive domestic items and was always crowded especially on a Saturday. One particular Saturday, at lunch-time a V2 landed on the New Cross branch and 168 people were killed. Many more injured. We heard the explosion and my mother took me with her to see what had happened. The police had roped of the road but I can still recall the dreadful scene. Most prominent were the hundreds of floorboards that seemed to be growing out of the dusty rubble. My father told us that for some weeks after this tragedy there were body parts being found some even on the roof of the Town Hall.

My grand-parents were ‘bombed out’. They lived in Credon Road Bermondsey SE 16. This comprised of rows of bay-windowed Victorian artisans’ terraced houses with outside lavatories. Much was made of the Londoner’s sense of humour in retailing their experiences. My grandfather told us that he woke in the middle of the night with a desire to relieve himself. A chamber pot was kept under the bed to avoid a trip outside in the night. He said he got out of bed and seized the vessel and began to use it when he felt his feet becoming wet. The bottom of this artefact had disappeared. It was at this point he said that he realised that the wardrobe appeared to be propping up the ceiling and that the house was wrecked. I recall seeing the ruined house and saw how a slat from a venitan blind was sticking out of the centre of the quite substantial front room door just as if it had been pierced by a swordsman.

Finally Victory. There was a street party and I recall street games for the children but in particular there was a huge bonfire in the middle of the road outside number 69 St Asaph Road. It damaged the surface of the road and ever afterwards one could hear traffic bump as vehicles went over that damaged spot — certainly till the 1980s. I recall there were many such bonfires and that pianos were often burned. The piano in our house was a prized possession so I was amazed to see them being burned (I eventually became a music teacher!) I also had a bad time in the VE day celebrations. My parents took me to Whitehall. I’m not sure what they expected to see. However the crowd was so dense there was danger of suffocation if you were a small child in the midst of such a press of people. My mother was most alarmed on my behalf. There was a local cinema privately owned, not one of the major chains. It was called the ‘Ritz’. Its proprietor treated the children from all the local schools to a free show — and during school hours. In one of the films Will Hay starred as the driver of a railway train.

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