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World War 2.

Notes for Katie.

I was three and a half when war was declared in September 1939. I lived in a small house in Kynaston Avenue, Thornton Heath which is about ten miles from the centre of London. Kynaston Avenue is a long road with houses each side. These houses were built in about 1936 and cost around five hundred pounds, which, at that time was quite a lot of money! My mother, father, twin sister and grandmother all lived there so there wasn’t a lot of room.

At the start of the war nothing much happened but we had to take all sorts of precautions. Everybody was given, and had to carry, a gas mask. They were very ugly rubber things which smelt quite nasty when you put them on which we had to do quite often just for practice. Luckily we never had to use them because of a gas attack. We also had to make special blackout coverings for all the windows so that, at night, there was no light showing outside. The idea of this was to stop enemy aircraft from getting any idea where they (and we!) were. We also had buckets of sand and a thing called a stirrup pump, which was supposed to be used to put out fires if we got bombed. I’m not sure that it actually worked! Then we built an air raid shelter in the back garden. It was made of curved sheets of corrugated iron and had to be quite deep in the earth. The gaps where the sheets of iron were bolted together were stuffed with putty and newspaper! It had bunk beds inside but wasn’t very comfortable. Later on, when the air raids started, usually at night, a siren would start to wail and we would have to get out of our beds in the house and go into the shelter. My grandma wouldn’t come with us and usually hid under the dining room table! We spent many hours inside listening to the drone of bombers and the guns firing at them. Then we could hear the bombs coming down and exploding all over the place. My sister and I weren’t too frightened because our Dad said that if we could hear a bomb coming it wasn’t going to hit us. I’m not sure if he was right but it made us feel better. Now I am older I know that my Mum and Dad must have been really scared.

When the air raid had finished and it was safe to come out of the shelter another siren used to go. It had a different sound and when we heard it we were very happy. Of course, many of the houses around us were destroyed or badly damaged during these raids, which went on for many months. I remember one Sunday afternoon in particular when we had just sat down to tea when the air raid warning siren started. We had to leave the food and go to the shelter. All of a sudden there was an enormous explosion. It was so big that the door of the shelter blew open! When we were able to go back to the house we saw that all the windows were broken and the ceilings were cracked. Grandma was still under the table and was all right but our food was full of bits of glass and we couldn’t eat it. Sometimes I used to stand on top of the shelter and look out for approaching aircraft. My friends and I were all very good at identifying the different planes. We could tell some of them just by the sound they made. The best ones were the Spitfires. They were English fighter planes and used to roar low overhead on their way back to their home airfield after they had been sent up to fight off the enemy bombers. The pilots who flew these planes were just young men, some of them only eighteen years old. They were fighting what was called The Battle of Britain. I can show you a Spitfire and also another plane called a Hurricane. They stand outside Biggin Hill aerodrome.

During the war most things were rationed. We all had ration books with coupons inside. They were for food and clothes. We were only allowed a certain amount of food each week so that when we went to the butcher’s shop for example, the butcher would cut the coupons out of the ration book and sell us the amount of meat which was allowed for our family. There weren’t any supermarkets in those days and we didn’t have a car so we had to walk to the nearest shops and queue up at each one for our meat, groceries, etc. If you ever watch a TV programme called Dad’s Army you will get an idea of what it was like! There were some kinds of food that were impossible to obtain. These were mainly things that couldn’t be grown in this country. I remember going to the birthday party of my friend, Barry Bull. I thing he would have been 5. His mother made us a sort of a trifle, which was supposed to have bananas in it. She couldn’t get bananas so instead she cooked some parsnips until they were soft and then put banana flavouring in them. They weren’t bad and as I had never tasted a real banana I didn’t know any different. I do now!

At the beginning of the war the government decided that it would be too dangerous for all the children who lived in London so they decided that they should be evacuated. This meant that they would have to leave their parents behind and be sent to live with other families in safer parts of the country. Some of them went to small villages and lived on farms in places like Wales where grandma was brought up. Others were even sent abroad to Canada and America. When it came to our turn my sister and I were a bit of a problem because being twins we had to be together and not many people wanted two extra children in their family all at once. Eventually we were taken by a rich lady who had a big house in Reigate, which is not far from where you live Katie, It was a strange place and I can just about remember playing in the attic with some plasticene. Every time I smell that stuff now it takes me back to that big old house. Actually Reigate wasn’t really far enough away from London and we didn’t stay there very long. After that we went to a house in Bognor where there were several other children. The lady in charge of us was called Miss Maltby and we didn’t like her much. Sometimes we used to receive a box of sweets sent to us by Uncle Len and Auntie Kay who used to run a little shop on the corner of our street back in Thornton Heath. They weren’t really uncle and aunt but just friends of our parents. Anyway when the parcel arrived, Miss Maltby used to keep it and give us one sweet each and some to the other children. I am sure she kept some for herself as well! My sister and I didn’t think this was fair but I suppose it was really.

We were in Bognor for five months, which seemed like forever. We went to school there so I must have been five years old. I remember singing hymns in the classroom especially one called, “ For Those in Peril on the Sea”. Do you know that one?
One day my sisters and I decided that we would like to go for a paddle in the sea. We wriggled under lots of barbed wire, which was put there for a very good reason. We didn’t know at the time but of course there were mines planted in the sand in case of invasion. That’s what we were told anyway. When we were caught, we received quite a telling off.

Eventually our parents decided that it was safe for us to go back home. I can tell you that it wasn’t that safe because we still had air raids and eventually a very nasty thing called a V1 or Doodlebug.

You know that even though there was a war going on my father used to make sure that we had a holiday at the seaside in the summer. We would go by train to places like Paignton in Devon and Rhyl in North Wales. We would stay in boarding houses where we had to leave our buckets and spades outside the front door and get all the sand out our shoes before we were allowed inside! There weren’t any of the funfair places open because all of the iron and other metal they were made of was being used to make aeroplanes and guns. That meant that if the sun didn’t shine there wasn’t a lot to do but we enjoyed ourselves anyway. I mentioned earlier that food and clothing was rationed. Because of this and because the shops didn’t have too much in them, all the mothers tried to make things for themselves or use stuff which these days would have been thrown away. I remember there used to be a saying called, “ Make do and Mend”. My mother took things a bit too far one year when she knitted swimming costumes for us all. Can you imagine wearing a knitted swimsuit? They were terrible! Itchy and holey and guess what happened the minute you got them wet? You are right! They sagged and drooped in all the wrong places!

I remember seeing lots of soldiers and airmen from other countries who had come to help us fight the war. Thinking about it now these soldiers were getting ready for the D-Day landings, which you will read about in your history books. The American soldiers always had chewing gum and were very friendly. I always thought that their uniforms were smarter than the English ones!

During one of our holidays we received a message from one of our neighbours back home telling us about the doodlebug which I mentioned earlier. They told us to stay away as long as possible because this was a very nasty sort of bomb. We were very lucky because some people we had met during our holiday invited us to go and stay with them in a place called Burton-on Trent in the Midlands. They lived next door to a farm and my sister and I really enjoyed ourselves there for a few weeks playing in the fields amongst the cows and horses. Of course our father couldn’t stay with us because he had to get back to London to his job. He worked for the Southern Railway and because of all the bombing it was very important to keep the trains running. After a while he decided that we should come home and that’s when we got to know more about the Doodlebugs! They were a sort of a small aircraft with a built- in bomb. They didn’t have a pilot and were launched from Europe and aimed mainly at London and the South East. We used to hear them coming because they made a strange noise, different from any other aeroplane we had heard before. Actually the noise was the good part. It was when it stopped that the trouble began. That meant that the thing had run out of fuel and was going to nosedive to earth and blow up. We had lots of them hitting all around South London and especially around where we lived and they did a great deal of damage. Later on towards the end of the war there was another bomb which caused a lot of damage in and around London. It was called a V2 and was actually a proper rocket with explosives in its nose. We couldn’t hear this one coming at all which was a bit scary.

During that time because of rationing everybody used to try to grow their own vegetables either in their garden or on a small piece of land called an allotment. It was called. “Dig For Victory”. My father had an allotment on the railway embankment just outside Thornton Heath railway station and I used to go with him quite often to dig up potatoes and pick sprouts and beans. Would you believe that I had a homemade barrow and I used to search the streets for horse droppings, which we could use for manure to make the plants grow! All my friends did the same and it was quite a competition to find the stuff! In those days because there were very few cars and other motor vehicles there were plenty of horses on the streets. The milkman, the coalman and the baker to mention a few, used them.

To get to the allotment we used to walk about a mile and a half to the station with our barrow and forks and spades. We then walked off the end of the platform along the railway line under a bit of a tunnel until we came to our plot of land up on the railway embankment. One afternoon while we were working away I heard the distinct sound of a doodlebug coming in our direction. We stood up and looked into the sky and there it was coming straight for us. My dad said, “Come on son, let’s run for it! Let’s get to the tunnel!” We left the barrow and ran as fast as we could. All of a sudden the doodlebug’s engine cut out. I looked up and could see the thing beginning to turn and come in our direction again. We got to the tunnel and a few seconds later the ground shook with the biggest bang I had ever heard. We were both fine though and were soon able to come back out of the tunnel and get our precious barrow back. Fortunately no one was hurt on that occasion, just a big hole in the ground but I can’t help feeling sometimes that it was our lucky day.

Later on towards the end of the war we had another air raid shelter installed in our front room. It was made of iron and was like an enormous table with beds inside. It was, I suppose, better than having to go outside and grandma liked it! I remember standing up inside it and banging my head very badly. It was quite good for playing table tennis on though!

During those days we didn’t have television to keep us entertained. We had a radio (or wireless set as it was called). Every evening we would sit around it and listen to our favourite programmes. One was called Children’s Hour and was introduced by a very kind sounding man called Uncle Mac. It was all very gentle and cheerful which was what was needed I think. There were lots of music programmes and quite often these days, if I hear a certain piece of music or song, it will remind me of evenings by the fireside in the 1940’s.

We would quite often go to the local cinema with our parents. They were very keen on dancing and used to love seeing musicals with stars like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Otherwise there would be adventure films with lots of sword fighting up and down stairs in castles. There would always be a news film that told us how things were going in the war. I think that they always tried to make us believe that everything was going to turn out fine. And eventually for most of us it did.

As a matter of interest, many years later when Grandma and I had got married and moved into our first house I was painting the woodwork outside your Daddy’s bedroom, (he was a baby at the time!), and I found that a lot of the wood was blackened. I mentioned it to my next-door neighbour who said. “ Oh yes, that’s where the incendiary bomb set fire to the house during the war.”

Looking back I would have to say that for a little boy it was, in some ways, a very exciting time but now that I am a lot older, one that I would not want to have to go through again. And I certainly don’t want you too either!

Just one more thought. Sometimes you may see or meet an old gentleman, much older than me. He will always be smartly dressed, maybe in a blazer and tie. He will probably have a big moustache and silver hair, and he will look up at the sky when a plane flies low overhead. He just might be one of those brave young men of eighteen or so who fought in The Battle of Britain.

Papa

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