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Childhood Memories of World War II — Part 1

When war was declared, I was aged 8 years and 10 months. I have a fairly good memory but my memory is weakest when I try to remember the chronological order of events.

I lived at 5 The Grove, Edgware, Middlesex. At school, during the summer term of 1939, I remember being fitted out with a gas mask. [I possess an Advanced Certificate dated June 1939 from the British Red Cross Society certifying that my father had passed a qualifying examination in Anti-Gas Training.]

From 1936 to 1939 my family used to spend their annual summer holiday fortnight in Belgium, staying at a hotel in Blankenburgh for part of that break. [My family were friends of the proprietors and up until my brother died in 1997, he was still in correspondence with their son and daughter.] The other part of the holiday was spent touring, sometimes into France, Holland or Luxembourg. We visited the battlefields of Flanders where two of my mother’s brothers were killed in WWI. In 1938, we went first to the large exhibition held in Liege and then on to Luxembourg. Somewhere near Vianden, the road followed the river, the far bank being Germany. At one point, there was a bridge and across it, one could clearly see the German border guards. My brother took photographs and the Germans appeared to walk across the bridge towards us! I was terrified! I was only seven years old but must have known about the European crises of 1938. Shortly afterwards, the car we were in was overtaken by a column of tanks (friendly). I was certainly in a very frightened state. Whilst in Belgium, late August 1939, the Belgian police came around to the hotels and advised all the English tourists to leave as soon as possible and so we arrived back home a day early, just a week before the war broke out. It surprises me that my family ever contemplated journeying to Belgium when war was imminent.

I have vague memories of just before the start of WW II of seeing bus loads of children from the East End of London passing the end of our road along what was then known as the Watford Bypass, (now the Edgware Way A41). They were being evacuated. (I thought my memory was playing tricks but I have found out since that this did happen.)

I remember Mr. Chamberlain’s broadcast on the Sunday morning, 3rd September, declaring war on Germany. Just after the radio announcement, the sirens sounded but I believe it was a false alarm.

My brother spent the rest of the day sticking gummed brown paper on to the inside of all our windows. It was cut from a roll and passed through a bowl of water. The strips were laid in a crisscross and horizontal pattern. This was to protect us from flying glass in case of bombing. To the best of my knowledge, these strips of sticky paper stayed on the windows until the end of the war. Apparently, these windows were never cleaned for nearly six years!

Black out frames consisting of four laths of wood nailed together with tarred paper pinned to the frame were made by my parents. At dusk, these frames were placed in the windows that did not have heavy, thick curtains. To make sure that no chink of light was seen from outside, my mother made long sausage like sand-bags to lay on the window sill up against the curtains. I cannot remember what precautions we took to prevent light showing when the front door was opened. Invariably, there was an A.R.P. Warden around who would shout out if he saw any chinks of light. I remember special lamp shades that were designed for the purpose of preventing light being seen from outside. Another feature was the neon pygmy lamp which we used in the smallest room of the house so that the window could be kept open.

Vehicle headlights were fitted with a bakelite mask which had slits in. I don’t know about the side or rear lights but driving must have been very hazardous for both the driver and the pedestrian. Private motoring was allowed only during the first few months of the war, petrol being rationed. As my parents did not own a car, I don’t know when private motoring was stopped.

Initially there was no school until the air-raid shelters were built. When some were completed we attended half-day school alternating with another class until all the shelters were built. We carried our gas masks in cardboard boxes to school and everywhere that we went.

Very early in the war, we were issued with Identity Cards. Adults always had to carry them. My number was BKGD 11 4 meaning that I was the fourth person in the family unit and we were the eleventh family in the road to be registered.

By January 1940, rationing was introduced on some foods but as the war progressed, more and more items were encompassed including clothing. The meat ration was governed by the value of the cut of meat i.e., one shilling and fourpence worth of meat per week. Rabbit was not rationed and so people bought that from the butchers. During the war, eggs became very scarce, at one stage I do remember, we were rationed to one in eight weeks! In place of eggs, dried egg was imported from America which was rationed using a ‘points’ system. We were allocated so many points per week (or month) and various foods including condensed milk, canned foods, probably flour and soap had different points values which enabled the housewife to decide what she wanted to buy. The number of points allocated for each period, the value of the weekly meat ration and I believe the egg quota were announced during news bulletins on the radio.

Of course there was a black market! Many people kept chickens in their back gardens and so there was a trade in black market eggs. My father, a school teacher, used to buy some from a colleague’s neighbour on his way home from school. Had a policeman stopped him and found them in his case, he would probably have lost his job. One of my uncles, whose business was ‘Dining and Tea Rooms’ at 54 Eden Street, Kingston upon Thames, would give my mother some fats whenever we went to visit him. But this was not serious black market, for most people had a source of getting some forbidden fruit!

Residential streets were limited to one operative delivering milk and to another delivering coal with the exception of the Co-op who because of their divi were allowed to trade in all roads. Some unscrupulous families who had been moved into our road from the East End of London and had parents with a different surname living with them, took advantage of this and managed to arrange double deliveries of milk and coal from both merchants.

All sorts of strange recipes were tried, creating unusual jams and cakes. At one stage during the later stages of the war, there was a run on buying liquid paraffin as a fat substitute. I remember this as I bought some from a chemist on one occasion. However, this dodge did not last long!

British Restaurants were built where one could go to have dinner. One was built in Edgware which we did use very occasionally. The building was a prefabricated unit sited on some rough ground in Hale Lane which we would pass on the way to the shops and station. I admit that I have only a very hazy recollection of this place.

Early in the war, two soldiers were billeted on us. At first they did not have any uniforms and they went off daily in civvies for their training. How long this went on, I don't remember but I think it was until an army camp was built in Edgwarebury Park.

On 15th March 1940, my mother’s birthday, my brother was called up. He was aged twenty-three years. My father was very upset for he remembered the carnage of World War 1 when two of my mother’s brothers were killed and no doubt, many of his friends. [My father and his two brothers were in the Regular Army, he being a WO 1 in the Army Educational Corps, 1911 - 1933. He was stationed in England throughout WW I.]

Early in the war, the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) were formed. Later they became the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard and known today as ‘Dads’ Army’! My father joined them and helped to dig out a guard post on some waste ground by the Watford Bypass about a half mile from home. No doubt he was involved with some training in the early days but did not join the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard when that was created from the LDV.

After Dunkirk in May and June 1940, there was a day of National Prayer when everybody went to Church because the invasion of Britain was expected. The Battle of Britain air-raids began in August 1940. Initially, my parents and I used to sleep under the oak dining room table but later my mother and I slept behind the sofa in the sitting room and my father slept under the baby grand piano until a friend told him that it was a very unwise thing to do. It was during this period that there were rumours that the Germans had landed on the South Coast but it may have been that German bodies had been washed up on our shores. One night, a stick of three bombs fell, two time-bombs and an oil bomb. The oil bomb came down four doors away but did not do anything significant. One of the time-bombs fell in Golders Close about 150 yards away from us. In fact neither time-bomb exploded and the bomb disposal unit could not get this one out as it had sunk very low into the clay. So they steamed out most of the explosive and then detonated it six weeks later, certainly not warning the residents in The Grove. I was playing in the road at the time and saw a great column of debris shoot up into the sky. There was another occasion when it was thought that a bomb had either dropped into our garden or one nearby for the wardens searched our garden during the night. Nothing was ever found but today, whenever I dig deep in my own garden, I always have a dread that I might uncover an unexploded bomb! After all, unexploded bombs are still being found today.
During 1940, the Borough of Hendon launched the Hendon Four Fighter Fund with the aim of raising £20,000. The schools helped to promote this fund by selling Fighter Fund Poster Stamps of denominations from 1d to £1 to stick on a Card of Honour and when the card was filled with 24 stamps one received a Stamp of Honour. The value of the stamps on my card came to 3/7d (almost 18p)!

Quite early during the Battle for Britain, one of our fighters crashed in front of a bungalow about a half mile away from our house. I understood that the pilot had bailed out as he was out of fuel.

One could always identify the sound of German bombers, a deep monotonous hum with a drop in pitch every second or so. Our aircraft sounded different.

The bombing lasted until about Christmas 1940 when there was a lull and then started up again some months later but by then, we had gone back to sleeping in our beds. During one of these early bombing periods, (I cannot remember precisely when it was but it might have been just before any real bombing commenced) my father’s younger brother and his family came to stay with us. They lived in South Norwood, Surrey an area which was under the flight path of German aircraft on the way to bomb London. They did not stay for very long, my father was not too keen to give them hospitality, (I do not know why) and they eventually went to stay with another of their relations in Wendover, Buckinghamshire and later they moved to Llandudno, North Wales.

At some stage fairly early in the war, an Irish workman was building air-raid shelters for people living in our road. He built one in our back garden partly above and partly below ground. I think he charged £30 for labour and materials. It must have cost my father a lot more trying to keep it dry for that was the problem. The walls were always running with water. An electric light was installed and there was an electric fire. Bunk beds were bought. I think that we used it once, perhaps twice but did not stay in it all night.

During the bombing raids, we used to look out of the bedroom window and see a red glow from the fires in the direction of London and my father would state ‘that it was the turn of the Docks tonight’. We would often see a German ’plane picked out in the searchlights and see the exploding shells around it. In daylight, looking over London, hundreds of barrage balloons would be seen. One evening, there being no air-raid alert, my father was marking school books and I might have been doing homework when suddenly we heard an aircraft followed by what sounded like an express train. Both of us instinctively ducked under the table and there followed a very loud explosion and shortly afterwards, the air-raid sirens started. Over a hundred people were killed and many roads devastated in West Hendon, near the Welsh Harp. It had been rumoured that it was an experimental device dropped by accident by one of our own aircraft but I never did find out what really happened. At another incident, a land mine came down on the railway embankment just outside Edgware tube station. A school friend lived very close by and when I passed his house in the train, I could see that all the windows of his house had gone. The shop windows in the High Street were also blown in by the blast from this mine.

After a disastrous fire storm in London at the end of 1940, compulsory fire-watching was introduced. This meant that my father, when it was his turn on the rota had to go back to his school in the evening and stay the night with another teacher to be prepared to put out any fires caused by incendiary bombs. I assume that they were only on duty if the air-raid alerts were sounded. Then he would come back home at day break, have breakfast and get back to school for 9 am. On one occasion there was thick fog, a ‘pea-souper’ and after leaving Brent Station on the Northern Line (now named Brent Cross) he had to walk along the Hendon Way (now the A41) to the school and completely lost himself. He found that he was in the middle of the road and did not know which way to turn. I think that he must have panicked. As far as I know, the school was never bombed and I don’t think that this onerous fire-watching duty went on for too long for him.

Giant water tanks were installed on waste ground, on bomb sites or by the side of the road for the purpose of putting out fires.

Later on there must have been another bombing phase, because I remember hearing a mobile quick firing anti-aircraft gun that used to travel along the Watford Bypass. One heard it send off a salvo and the next time the sound could be much louder. The house shook. When an air-raid was in progress, one never ventured outside for apart from any bombs there could be tons of shrapnel raining down upon us.

If a house was left unoccupied, the curtains would invariably be left up, for if the local authorities noticed that a house was empty, they would requisition it and move another family in. The house across the road was thus requisitioned and a family who had been bombed out in Ramsgate or Margate eventually moved in.
Continued in part 2
Peter D Cleaver

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