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Anna Merz, Née Ann Fawell.

I am not always sure of dates or even exact places, but those memories I have are still startlingly clear. We spent the summer before the war started at 'Porth Sawsen', my parent’s holiday home on the Helford Estuary in Cornwall and there we had several refugees, even before the war got going. One was a little girl called Jill, perhaps a year younger than me, she arrived with her grandparents and 5 dachshunds. I have no recollection of her or her grandparents but I rejoiced in the dogs. Better still 2 small boys, Michael and Tim arrived with 3 ponies. Michael I remember, said he was going to be either a bishop or a jockey, I was in cordial agreement with the latter ambition which I achieved many years later in Ghana, I wonder if he did too. Just after the war started I was dispatched to a boarding school in Dorset. It was a small school with a farm and several ponies and I was given one to ride and help look after; but life there only lasted for a few weeks. I think it was a Sunday and we were all out on a picnic when there was a huge bang and up went the whole school in flames, that must have been near the beginning of the daylight raids. It was certainly the end of that school. Soon after this I managed to catch the unfortunate combination of whooping cough and mumps. By this stage we were back in Radlett, just to the north of London whence my farther commuted daily, and my beloved nanny, Ricky, had joined the ATS. I went, with whom I do not remember, to recover somewhere on the south coast. What I do remember, and most vividly, is walking on a beach and seeing a plane hurtling down the beach, so low you could see the face of the pilot, and firing at people on the beach as it came. I know I stood, frozen in terror, then a man who I do not think I even saw, threw me down and himself on top of me. I remember screaming and screaming, half choked with blood which was not mine. What happened next I have no idea, nor how I got home. What I do remember is my father saying to me that I should never forget that a total stranger had given his life to save mine. I have not forgotten.

I think it must have been after this that the question arose of sending me to America for the duration. I believe the American Bar Association had offered members of the London Bar, my father was a Chancery Court barrister, to provide homes for their children. The judge who had offered to have me sent photos of the lovely Arab horses he bred, but even thus tempted I did not want to leave my parents and protested loud and long. This discussion came to an abrupt end when a boat carrying children to the States was torpedoed in mid Atlantic. I was then sent to boarding school at St Margaret’s at Bushey, some 5 or 6 miles away. I loathed that school and, no doubt, was most unpopular with the authorities, still more did I loathed the allegedly bomb proof shelters deep underground to which we were herded each night. I think there were 3 shelters with about 100 children in each packed head to toe in layers of bunks. I felt trapped and suffocated. When young I had amazingly good night eye sight so it was not difficult in the confusion of the black out, to escape and walk home to Radlett. The first time I did so I arrived triumphantly in the middle of a bad raid with sirens wailing and received a very unhappy reception from my papa and was well and truly slippered and returned to school by pony trap the next morning. There I was consigned to spending several hours kneeling on the stone floor of the chapel, supposedly repenting of my sins, but actually plotting my next escape. Thereafter, and there were several thereafters, I contented myself with only making my presence known to our beloved old cook, Wingy, who slept in the kitchen during the blitz with my much loved spaniel. I would be fed, loved, scolded and then would return to school for the next session kneeling in the chapel, or worse, outside the headmistress’s door.

Radlett had 3 or 4 large airfields in the fairly immediate vicinity and we always seemed to have at least 2 airmen billeted with us in the house. On the opposite side of the road the whole house was taken over by the R.A.F. and I remember sometimes going over to see them and being fed chocolate which they had and we as civilians did not, I had a very sweet tooth, even for those blocks of cooking chocolate. I also well remember seeing suitcases being carried down our stairs by strange men. Then the next day or so a new young flier would appear and I would wet my spaniel with tears shed over a friend lost and probably dead. Most vividly do I recall the day I rode my old pony, Ginny, through the water meadows near home when a fighter plane, ours, dropped out of the sky and landed in flames virtually beside me. Ginny, terrified, deposited me and fled for home. 2 men, also aflame, emerged screaming from the plane. Those screams sounded in my nightmares for many years and returned after Sep. 11th as I was in America at the time, and, but for a last minute change of schedule, I should have been in New York.

Whether before or after this I parted company with my appendix I do not know, all I know is that the appendix problem occurred during the Battle of Britain and my bed was in the top floor of the hospital and by a window from which I had a most amazing view of some of the dog fights raging around. It may have been around this time that my gentle, artistic and semi crippled mother, she had a broken back, installed a small table behind the front door on which were placed a pepper pot and a hammer. She had decided that this was how she was going to sort out any German invaders, and there they stayed until the war was over. Once a bomb landed with a thud but not a bang in our back garden. It made a very large hole in the lawn and we were evacuated while it was dug out and removed, luckily it was a dud. At a later stage in the war the doodlebugs would come over but that did not feel as bad as being bombed by planes with people in them out to get you personally. Still it was a nasty feeling if they cut out overhead and you counted till you heard them crash somewhere, thankfully not on you. Once I saw 2 of our fighters fly beside one and deposit it safely in the golf course near our house where it made a huge hole and a big bang but killed no one. Our fighters got very skilful at dealing with doodlebugs, including some who were billeted with us and told us gleefully of their escapades. The V2’s I don’t think anyone minded to much, if you heard them they had missed you and that was that.

During the period before D. Day the school was hit by some fairly serious sort of bug and those children not affected were sent home. I was one of the lucky ones and my mother took me down to Cornwall, where in due course, my father joined us. All round the Helford estuary were pill boxes manned by troops, every tree seemed to hide a tank or vehicle and the lanes were packed with them. The estuary itself was full of strange looking landing craft called Mulberries, and to provide security for all the goings on within, the mouth of the estuary was guarded by submarine nets. Our gardener then was an old man called Sydney Pascoe. Most of his life he had been a fisherman in the nearby village of Durgan and he thought that growing cabbages and potatoes was poor sport compared with fishing. We had a little dinghy and were allowed to fish within strict limits of the beach and only by day, but Sydney fired me with his talk of night hunts after great conger eels. Somehow I managed to prevail upon him to take me out on a conger hunt one night. I crept out of my bedroom and met him on the beach, we thought we could easily slip over the submarine net and try for conger below the old church near the headland, it was not far. We were just close to the net when up popped a submarine very close. That was a nasty moment, especially as we did not know whose it was. We were not left in doubt on that score for long as a very English voice asked us what the b— b— h---- we thought we were up to. I think I replied that we were only going congering, but that was not too well received. Before we knew what was happening we were in the submarine and my precious dinghy was scuppered to be seen no more. Once on the submarine I had a great time, though I doubt that poor Sydney enjoyed it so much. Next morning we were landed at Falmouth harbour and one of the officers rang my papa and told him to come and retrieve us. That was not a happy meeting. Again I fear I got off more lightly than poor Sydney though it was all my fault. Thereafter I was locked up at night for quite a long time.

Anna Merz, Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary, Lewa, KENYA.

anna@meudon.co.uk

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