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Threat of invasion, bombs and gasmasks
I was born in 1934 in Eastbourne and was five when war was declared. My father (a printer by trade) joined the Auxiliary Fire Service and spent the war fighting fires along the south coast from Dover through to Portsmouth. He looked smart in his uniform with silver buttons. Although he never talked about his life as a fireman I was aware of his tiredness whenever he came home on leave. At the firestation, when not fighting fires, he made wooden toys. I remember he made a cut out parrot that swung on a perch, and an acrobat threaded on two strands of taut twine which would go head over heels when the wooden struts on either side were squeezed. My father was practical. He was good with tools.

For a while my mother and I stayed at home in Tideswell Road in Eastbourne. In an odd sort of way life carried on. We were aware of preparations. Great scaffold barricades with barbed wire were erected; they stretched along Eastbourne beaches from east to west as far as the eye could see. Between unmarked selected breakwaters the beaches were mined. Out in the nearby countryside there were concrete blocks placed near road junctions and, I was told, could be moved into the road, should the need arise, to hinder the progress of enemy tanks. Also, scattered through the flatlands of Pevensey, with the Downs in the distance, were machine gun enplacements called "pill boxes". There was a feeling we were getting ready to do our best to fight the invaders.

Eastbourne becomes a target.
The first air raid was on a Sunday. A house was bombed in Whitley Road. As it was near where I lived I walked round to look at it. The house was gashed open leaving forlorn bedroom furniture dangling from broken floorboards over bricks and debris. Bombing was indiscriminate, hotels, large houses, shops, cottages, even St John's church in Meads, in the slightly elevated posh part of town, suffered a direct hit.

For shelter, in the not so posh part, to the east of Terminus Road, the road that runs from the railway station to the sea front and divides the town in two, we would gather, my mother and I, with neighbours in a nearby garage and sing songs until the long wailing note of the all clear.

Then there was the gas mask. Fortunately it was never used. It was a nasty uncomfortable object and was kept hidden in its plain cardboard box. At the beginning of the war, we tried to remember to carry it with us all the time. I was always forgetting mine. The mask was tight and difficult to place over the face. It hurt and smelt of rubber. I hated it.

Tinned tomatoes, meat stew and beans
Early in the war a merchant ship called 'The Barnhill' was attacked by German planes just off Beachy Head. It drifted and broke in two and went aground at Langney Point. There was much local excitement. My father went off to have a look at the broken ship and came home with a tins of tomatoes, meat stew and baked beans. He had, or a friend had, somehow 'rescued' the tins from the wreckage. Many Eastbourne families had increased rations when the time 'The Barnhill' came ashore.

Planes in the sky
In July 1940 school children and teachers were evacuated. Eastbourne seemed almost deserted. We moved briefly to Lingfield, near East Grinstead. It was there I remember standing on raised ground looking up into the sky which was full of black dots moving and swirling leaving trails of exhaust fumes, cream and white, trailing slowly across a blue sky. It must have been at the time of the Battle of Britain. Many years later when I saw Hope and Glory, John Boorman's film of his childhood, almost a mirror of my own, in which a Spitfire flies over the heads of the characters and performs a victory roll, I cried. My favourite comic character was Rockfist Rogan in The Champion the weekly magazine for boys. Rockfist boxed, flew Spitfires, had 'dog fights' and outwitted the Germans. The Spitfire was my favourite aeroplane.

Bungalow, blackout and the wireless
Later we moved to my grandparent's bungalow in Lower Willingdon, a village under the downs, just outside Eastbourne. Here, my mother managed the household with a combination of flair and pragmatism. She was a good cook, my Mum. Although there was rationing we never went hungry. We ate a lot of rabbit. And scrambled egg made of dried egg out of tins. We had a garden out the back maintained by my father and grandfather Jim where I helped to sow seeds and do some weeding.

I also helped my father peel reels of sticky brown tape over the windows in the shape of Union Jacks. It was to reduce the amount of shattered glass from possible bomb blasts. My grandmother, Ada, was virtually bedridden. The only times I remember her getting out of bed was in the evening to take drawing pins to all the doors and windows to pin the black out curtains so as not to allow the merest chink of light to escape. She left tiny pin holes around the corners of doors and window frames. It looked as though a woodworm had been at work. She died soon after the war started.

Grandfather Jim, who sported a military moustache, was a veteran of the Boar and First World Wars. He was also very deaf. He had a hearing aid made of large, round, black ear phones connected to a box battery which he packed into his breast pocket. He seemed always to be adjusting the battery connections and volume control. I guess it wasn't very effective.

The wireless remained on throughout the day. News was important. Grandfather seemed glued to it. I sang along with my mother to Worker's Playtime, and listened to ITMA with Tommy Handley, and Children's Hour presented by Uncle Mac and to the boy detectives Norman and Henry Bones and Toy Town and Wurzle Gummidge and later, as a treat, to In Town Tonight and to Paul Temple. I remember listening to the musical V sign. It seemed to be full of, not victory but, mystery and foboding. It was not until much later did I learn that those dominating musical notes belonged to the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

A fear and soldiers
I went to the local junior school set on the crest of a hill beside the steepled church and attendant graveyard at Upper Willingdon about a mile away. The headteacher was Mr Wills, he was also a member of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard. I remember singing, or rather shouting, with friends, across the playground, to the tune of Colonel Bogey: "Hitler, he's only got one ball, Goering, his are very small, Himmler has something sim'lar, but poor old Goebles has no balls at all". I do not know if Mr Wills heard our singing or not. If he did I like to think he smiled and went home and told his wife.

I remember often thinking what if after school I went home and found the bungalow bombed and my mother and grandfather killed. This remained a private fear which I never shared.

One afternoon walking home from school I was surprised to see the main road full of khaki lorries and hundreds of soldiers in groups, some sitting on the roadside curb stones, some lounging against their vehicles. On arriving at the bungalow it seemed full of giants, all in uniform and black boots, smelling of polish and tobacco, filling the space and almost, or so it seemed, exploding the walls with their weight while my mother made them cups of tea. They were there only briefly and went off joining, a great endless convoy of heavy military vehicles heading south towards the sea. It must have been close to D-Day.

'Big' and 'Little' Ted
My Aunt Doll and Uncle 'Big' Ted had a bungalow, a downland small holding, built high enough on the side of a hill to overlook the town of Eastbourne and out to sea. The reason why my mother's sister's husband was called 'Big' was because she had a younger brother who was known as 'Little' Ted. 'Little' Ted served in the Merchant Navy. He spent much of the war crossing the Atlantic, avoiding German U-Boats, to bring much needed supplies from America. We saw little of him at this time. I'm happy to record he survived.

Uncle 'Big' Ted built an Anderson shelter just outside the back door of his bungalow. He dug deep into the clay. Raised a hillock of a roof covered in a foot or two of soil and turf. But somehow it was always water logged. So to use the shelter and escape an air raid you had to make sure you wore wellington boots. It smelt wet and earthy.

Hit and run raiders
From my uncle's bungalow you could watch the hit-and-run raiders, a swift, fierce method of attack. German fighter bombers, two or three at a time, Messerschmitts I think, would fly in low over the channel to avoid detection by RADA, sweep across the town and bomb and machine gun at ramdom, then swiftly turn and race back across the channel. During one such attack, and after dropping its bombs, a Messerschmitt flew straight towards us. My uncle and I were standing on the back steps. He suddenly pushed me down and onto the ground. He fell on top of me. We heard gunfire and the deafening sound of the plane's engine, it sounded harsh and metalic and so very close, until the sound of its engine faded away to silence. It was all so quick. After, we found bullet holes in the back wall of the bungalow.

Morrison shelter
We had a Morrison shelter at Lower Willingdon, a great table like structure made of brown metal with a square pattened wire mesh positioned from leg to leg around three sides. My mother made up two double beds, one on top and one below on the floor. If there was an air raid warning we would sleep below and allow room for granddad and for my father should he be home on leave.

Buzzbombs
Towards the end of the war the Germans brought into operation pilotless flying bombs, the V1s, known as Buzzbombs or Doodlebugs, blind, terrifying rocket propelled bombs with stubby wings aimed, I think, to hit London. They had an alarmingly, unmistakable growly, deep throated buzz. Eastbourne was on their flight path. They would fly over day or night. At night we would watch them fly over the Crumbles, a low lying stretch of shingled scrubland to the east of Eastbourne where there were anti-aircraft gun emplacements; and we would watch a tiny red flame of light coming out of the bomb's rocket and the gun's tracer shells climbing up to try to hit it. I never saw one hit or explode mid-air. Sometimes the 'buzzbomb's' engines failed when they would glide for miles before dropping to explode, at other times the engine would splutter and cut out and the bomb would immediately nose dive. We watched once, in broad daylight, my father, my mother and I, a buzzbomb coming directly over our bungalow at Lower Willingdon. Its engine cut out. The silence was sudden and absolute. My father pushed and dragged my mother and I into the Morrison shelter. We waited. Not breathing. Then, nothing. Moments later we heard a distant explosion somewhere north of us. The bomb had glided over. We prayed that it had landed in an open field.

Playing at one time on the Downs overlooking the springline villages and beyond with my cousin Harold, we heard the growly sound of a buzzbomb. And as we had climbed quite high up the hill, we saw it, only slightly elevated, just above eyelevel, flying absolutely straight. We then saw a Typhoon, a fighter plane, flying faster than the rocket bomb. The Typhoon moved in to catch the flying bomb's wing with its own wing in an attempt to tip the bomb harmlessly off course. This the Typhoon did. And the bomb tipped and fell and exploded on the small town of Polegate. It was like watching a film. It was all in the distance. In silence we saw the explosion and the rising plume of smoke. Seconds later we heard the sound of the impact. Mixed with this vision was the feeling of elation and excitement in watching the Typhoon and admiring the skill and courage of the pilot only to be alarmed and dismayed at seeing it land on houses and, most likely, people.

Imaginary battle
Both my cousin and I were fond of drawing. We would sit side by side at the kitchen table with our paper and pencils and I would draw battles. Little matchstick men shooting and being shot, and tanks and diving aircraft and exploding bombs and as I drew so I would make the sounds.
"Y .e . e . o. w . w. w ! . . B.o.o.o.m ! . . .d.d.a! d.d.a! d.d.a! d.d.a! d.d.a!. . . A.g.h.h.h.h.h !" Like I had been shown by American comics.

The accordion player
At Christmas the family gathered at the small holding, made up of my Uncles 'Big' Ted and Will (both in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard), my mother's sisters, Aunts Doll, Marje and Hylda, their mother, my mother and father (if he was not on duty), my cousins Harold and Doreen, and Peggy and Fred. Fred had joined the Fleet Air Arm. He flew Swordfish and was based on HMS Illustrious. He also played the piano accordion. At Christmas, with Aunt Marj, who played the piano with lively enthusiasm, accompanied Fred on his accordian. Fred would lead us in singing Roll Out the Barrell, Run Rabbit Run, A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square and what seemed like an inexhaustable number of comic, romantic and sentimental songs. Cousin Fred was shot down whilst on active service in the Mediterranean. Life was never the same for his mother, Aunt Doll, or his father, Uncle 'Big' Ted. Or for us.

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