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On September 3rd 1939, I was ten and a half years old. I was the eldest of three brothers living on the L.C.C. Watling Council Estate bordering the Hendon Aerodrome. In those days it was traffic free and a pleasant place for children to grow up in. My father was a newspaper print worker on Fleet St. and there were spells when he was unemployed. We were visited by inspectors from the National Assistance Board who checked to see whether the family had possessions they might be able to sell before they granted food vouchers to us over lean times.
I was doing well at nearby Woodcroft Junior School.I was an avid reader of the Daily Mirror, Dandy and Beano comics and books from the Public Library at Mill Hill. I must have been aware of trouble looming because we did listen to B.B.C. for news and entertainment. However, my father only seemed interested in the football pools results.
So, on that sunny Sunday morning 3/9/39 when war was declared and the air raid sirens sounded, Father pulled the living-room curtains, fixed some garden trellis in the window space and ordered his three scallywags to stay put inside.(Mother carried on cooking.) We sat in puzzled boredom for about 20 minutes before we tried to escape to see what was going on. Father tried to keep us confined and was probably relieved when the 'all clear' siren went and neighbours gathered outside to talk.
After that day things became more interesting. Gangs of men installed Anderson Shelters in all backgardens and we collected gasmasks at my school. My 4 year old brother had a Mickey Mouse one and the rest of the family received smelly black ones. These masks became burdensome because we had to carry them to school every day.
Things seemed quiet on the war front for a while. Food and clothes rationing began and posters urged people to 'Dig for Victory' / 'Be like Dad-Keep Mum' / 'Remember that Walls have Ears!'
Dad was allocated an allotment in the local park and attempted to grow potatoes, he also became a volunteer Air Raid Warden. A blackout was imposed and we soon heard shouts of,'PUT THAT LIGHT OUT! Dad was not a good family DIY man. He put up blackout curtains downstairs but just removed all lightbulbs upstairs. The Wardens' Post in the local park became a retreat for crafty husbands. Card schools, darts, booze and the air thick with fag smoke, it was a popular club. My parents had always had a love/hate relationship and my mother sussed out what was going on and kicked up enough fuss so that Father resigned his allotment (Gratefully?) and ceased to be a warden.
On our living-room wall a Daily Express war-map showed the moving positions of the frontlines. The Swastika line moved rapidly forward until the 'Victory' of Dunkirk occurred and we began to feel depressed. The cinema newsreels tried to boost morale and I remember the audience laughing hilariously at Hitler's troops goose-stepping to the 'Lambeth Walk'.
For an eleven year old boy 1940 was an exciting time. Air battle con-trails could be seen high above London skies and the papers/radio told us that the R.A.F. was doing well. Films showed scared Luftwaffe aircrew shouting, 'Achtung!Spitfire! and receiving their just desserts. A sprinkling of bombs fell locally and unexploded ones were a nuisance causing us to make detours to school. A real bonus for us kids was collecting ack-ack shrapnel on the way to school and finding incendiary bombs sticking up in nearby fields.My brothers and I were made to sleep in the Anderson Shelter. I organised a sentry roster. Wearing a 6d Woolworth's tinhat and armed with a chairleg rifle the sentry stood 'on guard' at the entrance scanning the sky and listening to ack-ack shrapnel tinkling down on roof-tiles. Luckily, this caper didn't last very long due to the sentries falling asleep. Other memories were having to sleep in the shelter while my grandmother and her father were put up after being bombed out in the East-End; lighting a coke fire in the shelter and suffering from fume inhalation; finding our cat curled up on bunk rigidly stone dead. The shelter soon became unused, we preferred to meet our fate in relative comfort.(The concrete base became a pond after the war.)
My brothers were evacuated to Worksop for a while. My mother somehow found out that they were having a rough time and went and brought them home. Hunger and cold became realities in our lives. We did have school dinners and mother did her best but we always felt hungry. Bread soaked in hot milk and brown sauce on bread and marg were fillers. We never had been well clothed and shivering in the winter outside at play was normal. When coal was unobtainable mother would roll and fold newspapers to make 'crackers' which gave off some heat in the grate, if you sat close. Bedrooms were ice-boxes.
My secondary schooling was a disaster. Many lessons ended up in school premises shelters and teachers were called up. At one time we met in private houses for a couple of hours a day. The school, Orange Hill Central, was not a happy one. The cane was used freely, I received 3 on each hand for going to the wrong shelter and a couple for not understanding my maths homework!. I remember the whole form being whacked for not handing in geography H/W on time. The Head was known to the boys (and maybe staff) as Charlie Cheesecake Chief of the Gestapo. Many boys, including me left at fourteen with no qualifications.
My father must have been about forty years old when he was called up to the Signals Corps, he was sent to India. I wrote all my mother's letters to him as, she unfortunately, due to a hard childhood, hardly received any schooling. (He did, on return, bring me a magnificent set of Gurkri knives. They were used chop up firewood.)
My first job was as a messenger boy at the Daily Express. £1 for a five and a half day week, one week a year holiday. After a time I became a teleprinter news sorter,serving the sub-editors at 25/-.When they wanted me to work nights at 15 years of age I left.
During this time flying bombs droned over London and a couple fell near home. We would sit on a hill in Mill Hill park and watch them chugging along the Hendon valley.
A 'Doodle-bug' would knock out one or two houses but Hitler's V2 rocket was a nasty one. No warning, no protection, and a whole street demolished. I can remember people getting down on the pavement near Russell Square on hearing an explosion. Useless, but a natural reaction I suppose. I found it too embarrassing to follow suit. The R.A.F. bombing of Germany, as far as I was concerned, was paying them back for what they had happily handed out to others, but more so. Losing so many bombers was a reminder of the price the R.A.F. paid. News reporting of Japanese atrocities against captured troops and countries came to light and I could never understand why people bought Japanese goods so soon after the war. News pictures of Nazi concentration camp victims made me feel sick. As a fifteen-year-old I listened to the radio on D-Day and crossed my fingers fervently.
I finished the war years working on a farm in Dorset. I had joined a Y.M.C.A. scheme;'British Boys for British Farms'. I met Conscientious Objectors, Italian and German prisoners of war and accepted them as fellow workers. The dropping of the atom bomb and the end of the war with Japan was a non-event in the village of Bourton, Dorset. I just looked forward to being called-up to the R.A.F.

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