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What a difference!

As I remember it the Anglican Service of Matins stopped just after the second lesson in Little Darenth Church just out of Dartford. The Vicar's wife came quietly into Church,went into the chancel and whispered to the Vicar. He nodded and ,after the word's 'here endeth the second lesson' turned to the dozen or so congregation of which we were the major part and told us " Mr Chamberlain has announced on the wireless that war has broken out. If you wish to go home go now". No one moved. We sang the Benedictus which contained the words ' that we should be saved from our enemies; and from the hands of all that hate us'!

Passing slowly out of Church we left the few grown ups in quiet but ernest conversation as we made our way back across the fields to St.John's , Jerusalem in Sutton at Hone. We had been evacuated from our council estate in Eltham, SE London to this historic house two days before. There was six of us children aged from 5 to 14 and our Mum. Thankfully we had all been selected right at the end of the 'choosing' session in the village hall to be billeted on Sir Stephen and Lady Tallents at St. John's. This was our home for a year and a very happy year it was for we children. Dad was in the RAF and the war seemed for a while a long way off as the 'phoney war' went it's fragile way.

Sir Stephen was a senior civil servant and a Director of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. A kindly man who made us welcome whilst Lady Tallents bore the brunt of having all of us about the place.

We were given what used to be the nursery wing of four rooms and the controlled use of the bathroom with a toilet in the kitchen yard. The run of the gardens and park land was ours but as Mum said to her three sons' Just behave yourselves, boys'.

On his weekends at home Sir Stephen would come up to the nursery to read us stories like The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Poo. On other occasions he would help on the estate dredging the moat, sawing logs with Edgar the head gardener ( and much of a replacement dad to us)and other labouring work.

In spite of the vast distance in culture, lifestyle a finances ( Dad was a gardener for the LCC) we were well treated and understood and on our part we tried very hard to appreciate our good fortune in this dramatic change in the life we had lead up to then in SE London. It did afford us some private family amusement when we were told to address the Tallent's children as Miss Persius, Miss Miranda, Mr Tim, Mr Martin yet not Mr Allan the adopted son! I think this information came from Edgar which I suppose was his mode of address to them. It seemed very odd and one sided to me and became a bit of a family joke.....why should I not be called Mr Ken.? They were just that bit older ( 6 years or so) than us so we thought perhaps that was the reason.

The evacuation of Dunkirk came and went with the Headmaster of Dartford West Central School announcing at Assembly the seriousness of at all. It was a beautiful summer during that dreadful time as we 12 year olds sat on the playing field trying to make something of the news as it was given to us. Of course we would win in the end....the Germans were no real match for the British forces....we always won, defeat was impossible....but where was Dad and why did he not come home and tell us what was really happening? Could the Germans get to Sutton at Hone?

Had they done so they would have found the whole household, gentry, servants, gardeners,evacuees, the dog and even possibly Mr Moody , who grew watercress adjacent to our moat and the River Darenth, in the large ancient skullery at the back of the cook's kitchen. This had been strengthened with steel supports and was said to withstand a direct hit by a bomb! We had a couple of practise efforts at skuttling into this semi-cellar.

Then things started to change. Biggin Hill and other airfields were quite close. The siren sounded and wherever we were we had to run for the skullery and run we did . The Battle of Britain with all it's heroism and suffering was fought overhead. My brothers and I stood in the kitchen garden and watched. We knew little of that heroism and suffering since it was something to us of the adventures in the Hotspur and Champion comics with the invincible Rockfist Rogan and his comrades always winning. We saw no death nor injury. We just went on with our protected, idyllic life on that wonderful estate.

Then came the shock. It shook we children , the Tallents, the gardeners Edgar, Eric and Maurice, the maids Janet Beatrice, Francis and Mary and even an Austrian refugee, Herr Hoffman, taken in by the Tallents on his way to the Isle of Man to be interned. The evacuees were returning to London!! Everyone thought we should stay....except Mum and Dad. Mum, understandably, wanted her council house back again and both she and Dad thought Sutton at Hone was more dangerous than 369 Eochester Way, Eltham SE9.!

It was horror of horrors to we children. 'Why Mum?' was the continuing, urgent question. It made no difference. Edgar, who was also chauffeur, got out the big car, we piled in and were soon back on that dreary, culturally sterile housing estate .

We had left an open air life, helping the gardeners, ranging far and wide. Birdnesting , sailing home-made boats on the moat, climbing great trees for Rooks eggs. We swam on the gravel pits in summer and ice skated on them in that very cold winter of '39-'40 I had been taught to drive the little converted Austin 7 truck by Edgar, been taught to swim by Mr Martin and oh!, so much more.

Whilst all the time the country , indeed the world, was heading for killing , cruelty, starvation, and suffering of every kind which was soon to come much nearer to our family. A week after we got home the blitz started. After four months of virually living in an Anderson Shelter we were bombed out. Our house gone we were all sent to Nidderdale in Yorkshire and THAT is another story but I shall never forget 'St John's'. It influences me still even as a retired priest living in rural Lincolnshire 65 years on.

Number2 The Siren

'Tis 10 O Clock the siren sounds,
all the family go to ground.
Down the garden, helter, skelter,
dive like ferrets into shelter.
Down comes father minus boot,
thinks he's left it under the bed,
brought p. pot down instead! and so on.

Such was a music hall ditty at the height of the blitz in London. It tells something of life during 1940 and '41.

The Anderson shelter became more important than any other part of our domestic establishment. It was bedroom, kitchen (with a small Bunson Burner, place where we knitted egg cosies, scarfs and ,with Mum's help ,even a tea cosy. We talked, quarrelled , made up, learnt how to get in the small doorway like lightning or ferrets!. Those of us who could, read comics 'til we knew the stories off by heart.

First, after becoming 'returned evacuees' on official lists, we piled two feet of our small council house garden in Eltham on top and all around the shelter. Then we heaved our empty coal storage box along the front as a blast protection (it was a good thing we did), made a sort of shutter with ventilation holes to fit the shelter doorway. A framework at the height of the concrete lining gave us two layers of beds in dry weather. Getting undressed and into nightwear was often a luxury and in any case warm clothes were a necessity that winter.

Six children and our Mum slept in that shelter every night for week after week and occupied it often during daytime raids. During day raids ,in spite of urgent calls from Mum to'come down', my older brother and I stood on top of the shelter watching dog fights as squadrons of 12 Messerschmidt bombers were attacked by a few Hurricanes or Spitfires.

Tony (13) and I (12) had newspaper rounds much to Mum's distress. It brought us around 2-6d a week (12 and half p).Occasionally we found houses bombed so no delivery was possible but the great value of these early morning forays into war time Eltham was that we had the pick of shrapnel on our way home. Anti aircraft shell and bomb splinters splattered the streets with fragments of splintered metal. Anything from an inch to three inches was marvellous currency among the few of us who remained in London. Later we gathered some scraps of the parachute mine which knocked the top of our house and that gave enormous prestige among the few of our mates who were still in Eltham. . School was a spasmodic burden since as soon as the siren sounded we had to rush off home so few of us went to school at the height of the blitz. During lulls we scoured the streets to find out where new bombs had dropped . A huge gas fire right on the round-a-bout at the bottom of the Woolwich road kept us interested for most of a day then half a mile towards Kidbrook we found an oil bomb crater. Saddest sight was a concrete surace shelter near to St Barnabas Church which had a near miss. it was severely damaged. It told us not to take any notice of ARP Wardens who during raids tried to get everyone in a shelter, our Anderson was safest. Our ARP Warden was a Mr Cremer who lived just across the alley at the bottom of our garden. He really did say when necessary ' put that light out'

Five houses down Rochester Way from us a house was completely destroyed by a direct hit. Mr and Mrs Pratt had lived there but survived in the Anderson Shelter. Their canary survived in the ruins!

We were surrounded by barrage balloons and it was one of our enjoyments to watch when one broke loose and soared and drifted far away. Another point of savage interest was when an aircraft was shot down or poured out smoke as it came to earth. With a patriotism suited to the moment we treated these cruel events with a levity more suited to a film at the local Odeon in Well Hall than the probable deaths of human beings.

During a day time raid we were sheltering when dad in Don R gear ( Dispatch Rider) burst into the shelter. He had been taking a message at the height of the raid which was bad enough but to get to us he had to dodge under barriers on his motorbike round a section of Rochester Way cordoned off because of a time bomb right in the middle of the road . It shook him when he realised what he was driving over.

These delayed action bombs caused a great deal of disruption during the blitz. People were moved away from the immediate area, traffic was diverted and then worst of all those determined,brave members of the unexploded bomb squads had to try and de-fuse the bomb. But first a space had to be dug round the bomb. Another way was to just leave the bomb and let it explode when it was ready with all the consequent damage in built up areas. It was an occasional sight in Rochester Way to see a lorry driven at speed with hooter honking madly to an open space where the bomb could explode harmlessly.

All this period of our wartime life came to an end when, I gather Herr Goering decided that mines dropped on parachutes would cower the British.The one that got us was about 70 yards away. We were trying to sleep thro. yet another raid when a huge explosion rocked our shelter . It seem to rise out of the ground and crash back again throwing us all over the place and covering us with soil. It mystified us because we had no heard the usual bomb whistle as these projectiles came closer.....just a big bang.

We cleaned ourselves as well we might and stayed inthe shelter until brother Tony and I determined to go out and deliver our papers when day dawned. The sight that met us must have later distressed our Mum deeply. Much of her precious belongings, furniture, crockery , bedclothes everything was scattered about the house and garden. The sight of our roof all around, windows all gone and fragments of curtains and bedclothes hanging round the ruins and blowing in the small Stagshorne Sumach tree Dad had planted and nutured in our garden , was a shock.

Tony and I clambered over the ruins went out of the gap where the front door had been and on our way to deliver our newspapers. It amazes me today to think that we found an imperitive for this task yet when you have spent months as many people did with bombing all around we accepted the fact of our own vulnerability We missed the pay for that job since when we got home we were soon whisked away onto a train and up to Nidderdale in Yorkshire. Here yet another phase of our wartime life began.

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