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Another Time, Another World.

Ch 1. Born in April 1935 I was only 5 and a half, by the time the period of bombing had started, in the late summer of 1940. My memory of actual events are rather remote, but I can remember clearly, the atmosphere the war created and how the experience impacted.

Adopted at the height of the Blitz I was never evacuated. Many children were not, and of those that were, considerable numbers returned after a few months. I have vague memories of travel through countryside; and for some unknown reason the South coast, but by the time the bombing had started in earnest I was back in London. In Lewisham and then Croydon to be exact, where, except for a few brief visits to Suffolk and Kent, I spent the entire War.

Previous to the adoption I can remember days and nights, spent in a small cramped space where a dim light bulb revealed dark, bear brick walls, cold and oozing the smell of dampness. Sometimes this strange chaotic environment was filled with soft gentle voices; the close and intimate voices of confined space. These were often drowned out by extraneous sounds, covering like an outer layer; made up of the constant low hum of aircraft and the powerful echo of violent impacts; where walls and floors shook and bunks, stacked close and high, seemed to rise and fall with a terrifying suddenness. At such moments, the gentle voices gave way to agitation — on one or two occasions — to screams.

One day I awoke to find the place flooding. With no one else around as far as I can remember and lying on one of the top bunks, I watched the water slowly rise to within a few inches of my bunk. Screaming and yelling for what seemed a very long time, I noticed the sudden appearance of daylight, reflecting off the surface of the water. Someone had opened the entrance, soon followed by my being carried aloft to safety; and I remember vividly a feeling of tremendous relief, and the sudden bright daylight, contrasting with the hours of dark drabness in the shelter. A high-explosive bomb had apparently fractured a water main close by.

Not old enough to understand what the War was all about, nevertheless it seemed literally to permeate and colour every aspect of life and inspire feelings of awe and fear. It was also a frightening backdrop to confusing personal circumstances. In reality, both blended to create a single entity.
An atmosphere inspired by frenetic activity, sudden alerts and dramatic moments. A word or phrase shouted with urgency left the blood tingling. ‘There’s a war on!’, ‘Get that light out!’, ‘Get down the shelter!.’ Certain scented aromas are now strongly associated with these times; reminders of living on a knife-edge; on nerves; everything cloaked with a hysterical quality of cheerfulness, presumably reflecting the process of coping.

There was also sadness and concern detectable in snatched conversations — ‘Ah - our poor boys!’ - probably in reference to the sinking of a ship or maybe even Dunkirk; more chilling were descriptions of suit-cases ready packed, their owners prepared to flee North in the event of a German invasion.

Words, place names or terms associated with the War, acquired an ominous intensity for me, and one was the term ‘blackout’, which in my imagination gained an instant potency. It was not uncommon, to be caught on the streets at night, running home after an alert, accompanied by the feint whining of hostile aircraft. Suddenly, searchlight beams would silently sweep the sky producing giant angular shapes intersecting and constantly changing. Remembered vividly were the eerie cityscapes completely blacked out, but casting terrifying shadows in bright moonlight. In the silence and stillness, large and jagged shapes etched across wide but deserted streets in which monsters lingered in dark corners. Like Venus fly-catchers, they waited, threatening me with instant death by crushing. Walking in these shadows always felt cold — as if passing in and out of sunlight. With adults, much to their annoyance, to avoid these shadows whenever possible I insisted in crossing the road - just to keep warm while ensuring my survival from being snapped up.
Another such expression was ‘The coast’ - a place of childish excitement in peacetime was for me during the war, haunting and menacing: deserted beaches under barbed wire, forbidden, enigmatic. They were silent places, except for the sound of breaking waves and seabirds, and a gentle wind that rustled the gorse and long grass. Occasionally it carried the boom of distant guns from over the horizon — from across the sea. My mother once told me we were within hearing of the German guns, shelling Dover.

Widespread damage and disruption aroused not only fear, but also a gnawing sense of sadness and wretchedness. Bedrooms with a wall or two still intact, wardrobes balanced precariously; pictures still hanging, a dignity torn apart, now the stuff of many a photographic image, but once the cosy home of some person or family now homeless, or dead. Official buildings seemed reduced to a mortifying humiliation — left open to the skies, visible through spaces were once the roof or windows had been: their imposing interiors now nothing but rubble.

What I remember most acutely, was the strangely haunting atmosphere of night time air-raids, even when despite the warning, there followed little ‘activity.’ It was unique, since I have experienced nothing like it in peace time. The mysterious ‘enemy’ were up there somewhere, close but unseen, in pitch darkness; ‘breathing down our necks’ as we awaited the apocalypse. You would sometimes hear their slow, throbbing drone in the distance. On quiet nights they had gone elsewhere — perhaps to another city, in the Midlands or the North. Sixty-five years later it is still possible to be reminded of those nights long ago - by the melancholy, high altitude whine of a single, propeller driven aircraft that passes over London regularly, often very late or in the small hours.

After my adoption, with no shelter, because, having been previously vacant for some years the house was missed out during the shelter installations, my anxiety was all the stronger. As young as I was, I was instinctively aware that despite reservations a shelter offered at least an illusion of safety.
During the day, as evening approached, simple things became portents - the angle of sunlight, the onset of twilight, the swish of blinds to secure the ‘blackout’. Even the clocks ticking the hours away, impregnated everything with a feeling of dread — everything was so unpredictable that quite possibly, having survived thus far, the coming night would see your end.
My father argued that ‘public shelters were of little use in providing real protection, and anyhow, you had to fight for space each time.’ By this time — probably early 1941 - the raids had dropped off in frequency, which no doubt encouraged my parents in their risk taking. Another reason given was a fear of being looted, of which, according to general conversation, happened occasionally in bombed or damaged areas.

In these early years, I often heard the sound of the first air raid sirens, in the distance, usually around 9 or 10pm — feint and ghostly, as if reaching out to me from across a great distance of moonlit terrain.

The local sirens soon followed, echoing with an eerie resonance through deserted suburban streets. They were dramatic in their effect, deliberately designed to make the blood run cold, with a plaintive quality that marked a clear warning of acute and imminent danger. Your whole being was placed on immediate and full alert, and with such prompting, I would bury my head under the bedclothes, immediately recognising the gesture as futile. Their sound came to symbolise for me, the war in its entirety; featuring in dreams destroying the peace of picturesque vistas.

The sirens, having sounded, everything at first remained quiet, except for the clatter of a distant tram or, beneath my window, running footsteps: someone, hurrying home to their Anderson shelter or to some public shelter. Downstairs, my mother always kept a small-lighted candle on the table, since there was no electricity and it was considered too dangerous to use the gas lighting during a raid. The waiting sometimes seemed long but it was usually only a matter of some twenty minutes or so before, far away, anti-aircraft guns, like the rumble of distant thunder, could be heard, the windows and stacked crockery rattling gently in unison. In the mean time, seated in a small armchair by the fire, I would stare in a trance like state at its dying embers, occasionally shifting my focus onto the old patterned wall-paper, illuminated only by the light of the candle, discovering monsters and other odd shapes.

A few minutes later, the feint drone of scores of piston-engined aircraft - instantly recognisable as those of the enemy. The sound of large formations of aircraft approaching was always an awesome phenomenon, even when they were our own, but German aircraft, for obvious reasons, sounded particularly sinister. Their collective drone was uniquely whining and undulating, and reflected differences in engine design, speed and height, and the influence of atmospheric pressure. Many, including myself, became adept at recognising the different engine sounds, and so it was not difficult to distinguish German aircraft from British.

‘Are they coming our way Charlie?’, my mother would sometimes ask my father, who was usually — if not away on Home Guard duty - on fire-watch and so would occasionally pop in off the street. Quite why I remember this particular piece of dialogue when I remember virtually no other at the time, I do not know — except it must have had something to do with the ‘meaning’ of what was about to happen. My father would mumble some reply, while I, with knees knocking together, fervently but silently prayed they would not ‘come our way’.' With the enemy directly overhead, you knew you were entirely in the hands of fate.

The guns near-by had ‘opened up’, producing a merciless barrage one after the other. Anti-aircraft guns — much trumpeted as moral boosters if at that stage not particularly effective - always sounded very sharp, producing an echo, as if operating in hilly terrain; like large heavy doors inside some vast empty building, being vigorously and repeatedly slammed.

By now the bombs had started falling - loud, tremendously powerful, rasping whistles; descending in pitch - as if tearing their way down, and ending with enormous explosions accompanied with a vigorous pulse felt through my chair and the floor. Some fell with a piercing scream, which I later learnt were designed, allegedly, to maximise the terror. The candle would flicker and often went out suddenly with the vibration of blast, which my mother would re-light, fumbling nervously with matches. During the worst moments she took me onto her lap, holding me tight and bending over to protect me. On one occasion, the house quaked violently, bringing down large pieces of ceiling and wall plaster, amidst clouds of dust, which got into my mouth and nose. My father brought news that a bomb had just missed us, exploding at the entrance to a nearby railway station.

Although there were targets of strategic interest close by — an industrial estate to the West and to the East, a large complex railway junction, the bombs seemed to be released randomly, just about anywhere. Occasionally, when my father had opened the door, I could catch a glimpse of the houses across the road, painted in a dull orange-red light, interspersed with the blue and white flashes of the guns, while large sparks — like fire-works - fell like rain, and cascaded along the ground.

During a raid - especially when most heavy, or of long duration, all sense of time was lost and the night seemed endless. Even when not in the immediate vicinity, the constant whine of enemy bombers; the rumble of bombs and guns, ten or more miles away, could still be heard; quite often for most of the night. Night after night of such stress - the fears and anxieties, the anticipation and loss of sleep - left you feeling permanently ill and physically drained.

The wail of the All-Clear was often not heard until as late as 8am. I was sometimes left on an old Victorian sofa in the kitchen, a blanket thrown over me, since my bedroom had been too badly messed-up or damaged for me to return there immediately. While I was left to get some sleep my mother would try to clear up any debris, broken glass and dust etc, around the house. During the war loosing sleep, every night, was no excuse for not going to work next morning and as my father had to report by 6am, he had left by this time. The end of the war saw nearly every ceiling in the house replaced: but sometimes workmen arrived, it seemed almost immediately, to replace windows or repair the roof if damaged by shrapnel or blast. On a few occasions, after a week or so, they would arrive to replace ceilings that had been brought down, which they did very quickly with plasterboard and battens.

A few years later, after a lull on the domestic front and only the wartime restrictions and shortages to cope with, we were to witness the sight and sound of Allied, twin and four engine bombers. Often flying in large formation on their way to exact ‘area bombing’ on the enemy, the noise they created, especially flying at low altitude, made it difficult to hear others speak.

Out in the garden during the long summer evenings, with the clocks forward two hours, we would count them. My mother, still drying her hands from washing the supper things, would join my father, who, broke off his gardening to look up to the sky, leaning on his fork or hoe. Ten, twenty, forty, one hundred - formation after formation passing over for sometimes ten or twenty minutes - mostly Blenheims and Lancasters. They brought some of the neighbours out to cheer and gesticulate:
‘Bomb the bastards! - They did it to us so let them have it back!: Serve the buggers right!; a dose of their own medicine.’
Others were more reflective however — ‘They are not all bad - not all Nazis — ‘there must be some good Germans — ‘I feel sorry for the women and children.’ Sometimes, in the early hours, you could hear the distant drone of bombers returning - those lucky enough — at a much higher altitude, acting as a mysterious backdrop to a ‘dawn chorus’ of blackbirds.

Although we were obviously unaware at the time, these armadas were part of the preparation for D-Day. Large military convoys’ were a common enough sight during the war, wherever you were, but ‘troop-trains’ were now increasing in number and packed to capacity. They passed along the railway at the foot of our garden fairly regularly; the backs of khaki uniforms pressed against the carriage windows, some hung from open windows, sometimes waving. Military convoys proceeded not only by rail, but also through the local high street. Scores of army lorries filled with troops and accompanied by what seemed huge pieces of artillery and tanks - often driven under their own steam and making a most terrifying clatter, while vibrating the ground under your feet. Police held up ordinary traffic in order to allow them to pass without hindrance. With sudden excitement my father was heard talking to a neighbour and saying ‘something big was a-foot.’ In the air passed a constant traffic of Dakota Transports, squadrons of spitfires and hurricanes, as well as bombers.

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