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FOR A NINE YEAR OLD - WARTIME WAS FUN

I was nine years old when the 2nd world war began. Lucky me! Old enough to be excited by all that was happening, but not old enough to be frightened or to be called up for service. As soon as the first siren sounded on the night of 3rd September 1939, my two brothers and I raced down to the air-raid shelter in the garden and put our gas masks on to make those ridiculous raspberry noises as the air escaped at the side vents. It was just a laugh - and that made the visor steam up so we laughed more. Later on, like everyone else, we abandoned the cold damp outside shelter for the indoor steel Morrison that served as a table in the day but had all our bedclothes underneath where my sister, our faithful spaniel, and us boys snuggled together during the night-time raids.

We lived in Shoebury near Southend on the Thames Estuary, which was a great vantage place to see the bombers on their way to London. I was always trying to stay out to watch the dogfights up in the blue sky by day and the crisscrossing searchlights by night, which all too rarely caught an aeroplane like a silver moth; then the others beams would swing across as though to pin their victim to the sky while the anti-aircraft batteries opened up. But my father hastened me too soon to the shelter, so some of my most vivid memories are of sounds - the stomach-churning rise and fall of the warning siren, the deep sinister throb of the German bombers, the higher pitched friendly sound of our own aircraft, the tremendous noise of the Thorpe Bay anti-aircraft batteries sounding like the devil blowing through organ pipes, the long drawn out slow descending whistle of a falling bomb, the heavy thud and shake as it exploded, and finally the high happy note of the all-clear. Later on there was the raucous buzz of the V1's and the eerie silence when one cut out before its devastating descent; later still the strange noise of the V2 which fell faster than sound, so that its explosion came first and was followed by the whistling roar of its descent. The V1s flew up the Thames on their way to London seeming by day always to avoid the funny clumsy silver barrage balloons festooning the river, or at night their inexorable straight course revealed by a glowing bright orange exhaust, oblivious of the weaving tracer bullets snaking up towards it. The next day I would cycle around the streets picking up jagged bright steel shrapnel remains of the anti-aircraft shells. I had a large collection, but they soon rusted and were considered commonplace. Much more prized were mysterious fragments of copper and wire or strips of silver metal which imagination said came from deadly secret weapons. I knew to be careful of the "butterfly bombs", and other devices made to look like innocent lemonade bottles but designed to blow up when picked up by inquisitive hands, but I never came across one - much to my disappointment.

But what a nightmare for my parent's generation, short of food and only too aware of deadly danger. My father's building business collapsed with the call-up of all his workmen and never recovered in the post-war austerity. He managed in the war with a few remaining older men repairing houses shaken by explosions. I helped him type out the invoices, I presume to claim from a government fund, always using the same words: "make good to cracks in ceiling and frieze, wash off and whiten". No emulsion paint in those days. Then in 1940, children living in coastal areas around England were evacuated because of the fear of invasion. I remember the excitement of hearing on the wireless in our darkened front room that Shoebury was included. I raced out to tell my mother and to my astonishment she burst into tears. Just imagine now on top of the stress of war, having your children taken away to a stranger's home. Evacuation was arranged by school and, lucky again, I went with Richmond Avenue juniors to the delightful town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire. We were all packed into a train, and I was amazed that our train went all the way from Shoebury to Ashbourne without stopping or needing to change. We lined up on Ashbourne station (now no more) waiting to see who would take us. I know other evacuees were not so well looked after, but my brother and I went to a kindly family who had boys of their own who became our great friends. I remember well the day they took us by train for a picnic and walk through the whole length of beautiful Dovedale. Air raids here were infrequent and distant and there was no shrapnel to collect. So we made our own excitement by imagining that innocent strangers were German spies and following them to see what they were up to.

The school was assigned a Church building. Four classes had to sit in the hall - one in each corner. How did the teachers manage? Then I moved up a class into an upstairs room where we all sat round a large table. This was nicer, but the room was next door to the office of the headmaster who could ask you at any time what were six nines or seven eights - and woe betide you if you did not know. But my only encounter with him was the weekly purchase of a sixpenny savings stamp for the war effort, stuck into a book which when full was exchanged for a savings certificate. Along with many others, I passed the exam for Southend High School. But this school was evacuated to Mansfield, a town with evil-smelling breweries and a cattle market and nearby coalmines. It was a real culture shock after beautiful rural Ashbourne. Our teachers were either women or men beyond call-up age and I wonder again how they managed, as we had to share classrooms and all facilities with the local secondary school, though we did not mix. My brother and I were allocated to the home of a lady who had no children of her own and whose husband was away on war work. Since she had a spare bedroom she had no choice but to look after us - which she did to the best of her ability. But she was so house-proud, and having two big 11 and 12-year-old boys wreaking havoc with her precious furniture must have been an ordeal. I never did go into her front parlour, though she allowed me to look in it on one occasion.

When the threat of invasion receded, around 1943, the school thankfully returned to Southend and my brothers and I went home to Shoebury. The High School had suffered bomb damage at one end of the hall and I spent a term at nearby Wentworth school before it was fully back to normal. "Normal" of course still included trooping out to the school shelters whenever the siren sounded, awful school dinners, and carrying my gasmask in a round tin at all times. But schoolbooks could be left in my own desk and they would not be touched. I feel sorry for today's schoolchildren who have to lug all their books to and fro in great backpacks.

We had a large garden in Shoebury and, like everyone else, we grew vegetables and fruit; my uncle next door kept chickens and bees so we had eggs and honey. Curiously, an extra sugar ration was allowed to beekeepers to get the bees through winter, though the honey they produced was only for our own consumption - or exchanged for other goodies in short supply. I do not remember going short of anything, which shows how well my mother managed, but it must have been a dreadful worry for her with four growing children to feed. My father always complained about the quality of the meat, joints were made up of so many bits and pieces tied together that he said it must have cost the butcher "a fortune in string". Sweets of course were in short supply, but you don't miss what isn't there and when some chocolate did come my way it was a treat to be enjoyed like no other. My father was allowed a little petrol for his work and would have enough sometimes to drive up to Ashbourne or Mansfield. Having saved his sweet ration, he would arrive with a tin full - or so it seemed - of chocolate bars. What heaven to see Dad again and chocolate! Driving back with him in the old Hillman Minx with dim shrouded headlights was a real adventure. No motorways or street lights, but also no signposts. They were all taken down in the war to confound the Germans should they arrive! And asking the way would only encounter suspicion.

Perhaps the thing I missed most in the war was the sea. Having almost grown up on Shoebury beach where we had our own beach hut, it was sad to see the front completely inaccessible behind huge concrete blocks, barbed wire and a festoon of scaffold poles, both behind the huts and out on the mud. I would get to know which of the huts now concealed heavy guns. It was possible to reach the sea at nearby Barling village where the track still goes down past the church to the sea wall, but there you could only swim after wading waist deep through the black mud. It was all right getting in as the swim washed the mud off, but getting out again was not much fun. Much better was to cycle around collecting shrapnel and looking out for more spies, which I was sure were everywhere.

And when it was over, we burnt the blackout screens in a great bonfire, we had a children's street party, and life became a little less exciting.

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