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I was 6½ years old when the Second World War was declared.
My first memory was that of being taken (with Teddy tucked under my arm) by my mother through the local park where we lived, to get the bus to go to my grandmother’s house in Harold Wood. I was being “evacuated”, (a distance of some 10 miles) because we lived in northeast London only 2 miles as the spitfire flies from the new fighter aerodrome of Fairlop, which was obviously a possible target for air raids. I was not at granny’s with my cousins for more than a couple of weeks, because I went down with glandular fever, and had to be brought back home. I then spent the next several weeks in my bed upstairs, sitting up and watching the comings and goings of the fighters.
My next vivid memory is of standing outside the “air-raid” shelter we had at the bottom of the garden one evening, watching German bombers illuminated by the search-lights, dropping their bombs on the London dock area. The sky was a deep red with the glow from the flames. I do not recall feeling afraid; as far as I was concerned it was all a long way away, exciting and unreal.
We did not sleep in the shelter for long because it was damp and cold, and I often suffered from asthma, so my bed was brought downstairs into the ‘drawing room’ and placed against the main internal weight-bearing wall of the house. One Sunday night the air-raid warning went at a few minutes to midnight — now that sound did make me frightened. Soon afterwards one could hear the bombers coming over with their peculiar oscillating engine sound. Then the Ack-Ack guns would open up. Sometimes they were mobile units, which came right down our road, and being so near made a terrific noise. Then there was a whistling noise as a bomb came down and exploded in our road about ten houses away. This was followed by the noise of falling debris, and shrapnel. Then there was a lot of shouting and running of feet. My father was one of the “Fire Guards”, and he and all our neighbours came rushing out of their houses trying to help our neighbours. Next morning I went down the road to see the damaged house. I had already been told that no one had been killed because they were not at home at the time. It was strange to see the house all broken, with rafters sticking out at strange angles, and walls with wallpaper still on them looking very sad.
Whenever there was a raid, the next day on our way to school my friends and I would try to find shrapnel and other ‘treasures’ as trophies to swap at school. We soon became quite expert at recognising the difference in the shrapnel between bombs and shells. I can remember being very proud one day when I was able to show a nosecone from an Ack-Ack shell — that earned me much admiration.
My next memory was of the following Sunday night, when at the same time even to the minute, there was another raid, and another bomb was dropped right next door to the terraced house damaged the previous week. When I went to look at the damage next morning before going to school, all that was there was a pile of rubble with the wall and chimneys forming the partition between the two houses still standing up all on its own - weird.
Another memory was standing outside the shelter again, watching fascinated by what I was later to learn was the “Battle of Britain” going on in the skies above us. It was a brilliant Saturday afternoon, and the sky was filled with what seemed like a swarm of flies, but which were in fact hundreds of aircraft, with condensation trails making cat’s cradles in the sky. Wave after wave of bombers seemed to be coming over flying north, with Spitfires and Hurricanes dashing here and there in between them. A lot of the fighters were from our local aerodrome and all the people that were home that day were out in their gardens watching “their boys”. Suddenly one of the aircraft was coming down out of the sky with smoke trailing behind of it. There was a cheer that went up all down the road at this sight with comments like “got you”, until the aircraft turned over and we could see its ‘roundels’. At this sight a complete and deep silence fell over the street. Then someone said “did he get out?” — “yes there he is — there’s his parachute”, followed by spontaneous clapping, we then all watched sadly as the aircraft spun down and down, finally crashing a mile or so away. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
One day we had to wend our way carefully through roadblocks and diversions to get to school because a ‘delayed action bomb’ had been dropped nearby. We had been told that the bomb disposal people were attending to it. We were well into our lesson, when all of a sudden there was a colossal bang, and we could see out of the classroom window a great column of smoke and ‘stuff’ flying up into the air. We were later to learn that some of the ‘stuff’ was the poor devil that had died trying to defuse the bomb.
After the main blitz there was a fairly quiet period, and it was during this time that I contracted ‘Scarlet Fever’. I was later to learn that this disease was extremely serious in those days. I only remember being taken to an isolation hospital, and could not understand why my mother could not come into the ward to see me, and can only remember seeing her through a window in the outside of the ward. While there I met another little boy who was in hospital with the same problem, and after the initial fever had subsided we played together in the hospital gardens. It was there that I remember being terrified one day when two of our fighters came over at roof top level on their way back from somewhere and “buzzed” us. The noise was so loud and sudden we ran for cover.
Once more back home things were more relaxed until the V1’s “Doodle-bugs” started. They were nasty; they had an engine that sounded like a single-cylindered motorbike. This in itself was not too much of a problem, while you could hear them, because if you could hear them then they were flying. But as soon as the engine sound stopped, then you knew they were about to dive down and explode. The trouble was that when the engine stopped their giro would topple and they would change direction in a random fashion, and dive for the ground. You therefore never knew quite which way they were coming.
At this period of the war if an air raid was fairly quiet, those of us with parental permission that lived near the school were allowed to run home. It was on one such occasion that as I neared the house, I suddenly heard the sound of a “Doodle-bug” approaching, so I ran. My parents were already looking out for me and we rushed indoors, but we hesitated in the hallway not knowing whether to go into the front room, or the back. All of a sudden the decision was made for us. There was an enormous explosion, the front door blew open and we were all blown into the front room. I finished up under both my parents on an eiderdown, which happened to be on the floor by the piano. We quickly picked ourselves up and soon realised much to our relief that we were all OK and that our damage was fairly superficial. Had we gone into the back room someone could have been badly injured because when the French doors blew open, their central catch had been sheared off and projected right across the room to bury itself in the plaster of the opposite wall. So had we been in there it could have buried itself I one of us! While surveying the damage we became aware of a lot of noise outside in the street. It turned out that the ‘Doodle-Bug’ had landed on the farm about 150 yards away at the end of our street, which was by now well alight, and I lent out of the upstairs back window and watched as the old oak beams and thatch blazed away. Up till then these barns had contained several hundred pigs, and one of them managed to escape and came running down our street. The terrified and squealing pig was quickly followed by a fireman who was trying to catch it, when he caught up with it, he held it by the tail until a policeman came to help him. They then picked him up by the ears and tail to carry him back up the road. I can still hear the poor pig screaming in terror — he was not amused by this undignified treatment — what a noise.
I think my mother was rather disappointed that he had been caught — her father had run his own grocery business in East Ham for many years, and I am sure that had she had the opportunity, it would have been ‘diverted’ to make many splendid meals for us and our neighbours at this time of rationing. The farm blazed for many hours, and we were later to learn that the poor ‘pig-man’ had been killed when the pigs stampeded as he tried to let them out of the blazing barns.
There were other childhood memories,
· of squawking gulls flying around in the night, having been put to flight when the bombers dropped flairs to navigate their way to the fighter station, but left flying in the dark when the flairs went out, and they couldn’t see to land again
· of cycling over to the airfield with my friend to see the fighters take off, and land and counting them out and back again
· of meeting a couple of GI’s in our road who gave us a real baseball ball to play with,
but they were not so vivid.
I am not conscious of any real lasting fear, except when the air-raid warning went off in the early days of the blitz, and the “Doodle-bugs” when their engine stopped. However my stomach still churns when a fire siren starts up, even though it sound like the “All Clear”, one is not quite sure at the start whether it will be a constant pitch or whether it will go up and down as the old air-raid warning did.
My real lasting impression of those times is one of excitement and fascination, with some occasional fear.

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