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This story was submitted to the People's War site at Banstead History Centre on behalf of Mr Geoffrey Robinson. It has been added to the site with the author's permission, and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I went to school in Sutton, by train from Banstead station, coming home for lunch each day. After a time first class travel was abolished and the first class compartments became available to all passengers. Naturally these were sought out wherever possible. Banstead station was the hub of local activity even outside the rush hours especially once shift work and "fire watching" was introduced. Nearly everyone went to work by train and with reduced services the carriages between Banstead and Sutton were packed in the rush hours.

With the shock fall of France in May 1940 things began to change considerably. Waiting at Sutton station we began to see special steam trains full of soldiers travelling at speed through the station or sometimes Army lorries on local roads all laden with assorted servicemen. These were not the Canadian soldiers camped in Nork Park but others coming back after being evacuated from Dunkirk with the loss of all their weapons and equipment.

The fear of a German invasion and "blitzkrieg" similar to that which had overwhelmed in a few weeks the British Expeditionary Force and the huge French army formerly considered to be the strongest in the world, was a tremendous shock and prompted hectic activity locally.

Every household was issued with an official booklet telling people what to do if the invader came, telling them in effect to do nothing. Another item I remember having received was a questionaire asking about foreign languages spoken and deciding that third year French and German was not adequate for whatever purposes the Government had in mind.

Anti-invasion defences were hurriedly erected. The Epsom Downs to Sutton railway line was the main defence line locally and machine gun posts, brick-built but covered in plywood and skilfully painted in green camouflage, appeared at stategic points along the line and elsewhere, such as the Drift Bridge road junction. More substantial thick concrete pill-boxes, similarly camouflaged, also appeared at various points,such as the Downs overlooking London and near Drift Bridge (where one still exists today) together with massive concrete cubes or "dragons teeth" pyramids designed to stop the progress of tanks.

In certain places the roads were prepared with anti-tank defences consisting of holes in the road into which could be slotted, if need be, lengths of bent railway line. Such places included the bridge taking the Brighton Road over the railway cutting, the High Street opposite the Church Institute and a point half-way along Winkworth Road near a house whose interior had been converted into a small fortress. Deep anti-tank ditches 18 feet wide and 9 feet deep with 2 feet high ramparts each side were dug along the Brighton Road and near the crossroads with other defences in the Drive and across country.

As landings by parachute troops and from gliders had been a feature of the invasion of the Low Countries, a small army of soldiers and civilian workers set to work clearing the Downs of undergrowth in which invaders could take cover. Tall metal poles with hawsers stretched between them were put up across the Brighton Road over the Downs and huge concrete drainpipes, old cars or anything that could serve as an obstacle to gliders were deposited on the cleared golf course and Downs. When hay was cut the stacks were put in the centre of fields, not the edges. The names of railway stations and all signposts showing place names were removed to confuse any invader.

A radio appeal was made to able bodied men not immediately liable for call-up to become Local Defence Volunteers to help defend the locality. The Great War had ended only 22 years earlier so there were many middle aged men around with service experience and eager to defend their country. The call met with a good response, although guns and ammunition were very limited and the uniform consisted at first of an armband. How effective they would have been against German shock troops is doubtful, but they were enthusiastic and nobody laughed at them at the time. The LDVs, soon to be renamed the Home Guard, took part in local exercises and later took over a chalk cutting by the station formerly used as a siding and converted it to a rifle range.

As the first formations of German aircraft tried to cripple our air defences and defeat the RAF fighters in the Battle of Britain, the fighting could clearly be seen. Banstead was not built up and full of trees and hedges as it is now and dogfights between British and German planes were clearly visible from vantage points. The evidence was left in the form of twisting vapour trails in the sky, the occasional sound of gunfire and the sight of a falling plane, spinning round and round, too far away to see whether it was British or German.

The British fighter and its pilot were the heroes of the hour. An appeal for aluminium to be converted into aircraft resulted in the giving of dozens of saucepans which were piled high in the front garden of a house in Nork Way. At the same time Spitfire Funds were started in a drive to collect money to pay for these planes, their cost being put at 拢5,000 each. Everyone was encouraged to invest in National Savings to help the war effort and not to waste money on non-essentials.

Overhead the sky often seemed to be full of aeroplanes, all military of course. These were usually single seater fighters, often flying in formation, or else two-seater training biplanes. From interest and self interest I became proficient in recognising the different types of plane, British and German. Later in the summer of 1940 came the massed formations of bombers usually accompanied by fighters, on their way to bomb London.

One Saturday afternoon early in September 1940 as we were having tea, we heard the sound of many aeroplanes. We went outside to look and there, high up, was a massive formation of twin-engined aircraft glinting in the clear blue sky and accompanied by smaller aeroplanes twisting and turning on the edges. The air raid warning had not sounded but we knew what these were. We stood there gazing at the sky as the impressive armada flew steadily overhead and waited for the bombs to fall but they did not, evidently being saved for London. It was later revealed that there were about 350 bombers and over 600 fighters in the formation.

Later we walked up to the high point on the Downs overlooking London. The smoke from the burning docks could clearly be seen and, after dark, the flames. We stood on top of the air raid shelters near the station and stared at the scene, feeling uncomfortable at watching the distress of others without being able to do anything about it. The bombers returned the following night to keep the fires burning.

The planes that crashed locally were mainly British. In September 1940 a Hurricane fighter returning to Kenley aerodrome crashed in Nork killing the pilot, a 26 year old Canadian. I happened to see this as I was unwell and in bed at the time. Startled by the engine noise I looked out of the window and saw the plane fly past almost level to crash in the garden of No 5 Tudor Close. There followed black smoke from the explosion and the crackle of exploding ammunition. I hurriedly got up and went to the site but it was cordoned off at the bottom of the cul de sac and sightseers were discouraged.

In October another RAF fighter crashed near Cuddington Way, killing the Czech sergeant pilot, who was credited with the largest number of confirmed "kills" of any RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain. The cause of the crash is unknown. I was told about it by a friend who had visited the site and seen bloodstains in the cockpit. I went to look myself later but by then the wreckage had been removed.

While home from school one lunch time in September 1940 there was the roar of an aeroplane engine accompanied by a sudden burst of machine gun fire overhead. Startled, we went out into the back garden and saw a British fighter flying due south and then a ball of orange-yellow flame falling slowly to the ground at Tadworth. In the garden soon afterwards I found a used machine gun cartridge case of shining brass, sticking upright in the grass and still hot. Perhaps it was the bullet from this that had brought down the enemy plane. As a boy of 13 I exulted in its destruction and apparent fiery end of its crew. My next door but one neighbour found a similar cartridge case in his garden.

The bombing changed to night-time in the autumn of 1940. In the absence of a garden shelter we usually slept on mattresses on the floor in the hall when the warning sirens went, as they did most nights. Fortunately I am a sound sleeper, although the droning of aircraft engines could often be heard with anti-aircraft fire and the sound of falling bombs from time to time. Sometimes the gunfire was particularly loud, indicating, so I was told, a mobile gun in Nork Park, perhaps connected with the Canadian troops there.

One afternoon in September 1940 we heard the sound of a falling bomb and found it had hit No 16 Hillside, demolishing one of a pair of semi-detached houses. Fortunately no one was hurt. A few weeks later during a daytime raid we heard what seemed to be another bomb falling. However this turned out to have been an anti-aircraft shell, incorrectly fused, which fell and exploded on the front of No 13 Green Curve, the occupant needing treatment for shock.

One night during a raid there was a "whoosh" outside the back door and when daylight came we went to see what had caused it. We found a circular hole in the grass several inches wide and some six inches deep only a few feet from the house. It wasn't a very big hole but in case it was a small unexploded bomb I put my ear to the ground. I heard nothing but reported it to the local warden just in case. Someone came along to investigate. He dug it up and showed it to be the nose cap of an anti-aircraft shell, which I still have, quite harmless but made of lead and heavy enough to have penetrated the roof and hurt anyone in its path. The sound of shell splinters pinging in the roadway could also be heard from time to time.

Human nature being what it is I went to see the results of bombing wherever I could. Like other boys I collected pieces of bomb and shell splinter. One morning I found in the garden a long length of iron, which totally baffled me until I happened to visit the back garden of a house in Warren Road and found that a bomb had hit a tennis court there and the metal supports for the netting had been blown away, one into my garden, half a mile away. However my house suffered only broken glass damage at this stage in the war.

A more striking example of the effect of bomb blast was in July 1941 when a stick of high explosive bombs fell across Warren Road and Fir Tree Road, causing damage to houses and the church in Warren Road. One of the bombs made a direct hit on the railway line in the cutting at Banstead station close to the signal box at the end of the platform. One 20 foot length of rail was blown out of the cutting and went through the roof of No 24 Warren Road, the other end protruding into the bedroom. At the same time wooden railway sleepers were to be seen embedded in the roofs of several houses in Higher Drive.

The same incident caused extensive damage to several houses in Fir Tree Road, resulting in the demolition or shattering beyond repair of four houses, Nos 64,66, 68 and 70. Having been told about it by a friend I found that there was indeed blood on the wall of one of the houses and wondered about the fate of the person concerned.

Other high explosive or incendiary bombs fell in other places locally but without doing very much damage, although one night in November 1940 a bomb hit the concrete roadway in Eastgate opposite a newsagent's shop, wrecking it and the other shops there. Another newsagent in Nork, called the Surrey Library, generously allowed his competitor to use his premises as a base to deliver his morning papers until his own shop was repaired. The marks made by the bomb splinters in the walls there can still be seen today.

Geoffrey Robinson
December 2005

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