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The Blitz

I suppose that at seven or eight years old we hadn’t really learnt how to be afraid; curious, fascinated, all of these things certainly, but our blitz was about other things. Things like watching the dog fights from the kitchen door or the Anderson shelter and knowing the difference between an ME109 and a Spit or a Hurricane. It was about collecting pieces of shrapnel the morning after a raid to show off on your way to school and of being very careful not to burn your fingers for some of the bits of metal were still hot. It was an exciting time, where a visit to Gran’s, who lived close to the dockyard wall, could entail walking through streets strewn with smouldering rubble from the previous night’s raids as Mum and I went across city to see that the old lady was still all right.

Even the journey to and from school was not without its moments and the teachers had devised a system whereby the older children would escort the younger ones home who lived in their area and with strict instructions to dive into the nearest doorway if there was an air raid. Part of this journey home for me was a long straight avenue of semi detached houses with their front doors set back into small brick porches. It was not uncommon for us to have to huddle quickly into one of these when the sirens went, although the impatience and curiosity of young children meant that we were unlikely to stay there very long, especially if the bombing was taking place in a different part of the city. On one particular occasion we stayed very firmly put as an ME109 came tearing down the avenue at nought feet and strafing as he went. Suddenly, two Spits came hurtling towards him, so low that we could see the bright flashes of the machineguns in their wings. The enemy plane seemed to rear up almost vertically with smoke pouring from its engine as it veered over the houses towards the park behind. There was a loud explosion and a pall of thick black smoke blew towards the dockyard. Their job done, the two Spits climbed back up into the summer sky and I like to think that we saw them do a victory role; sadly however, childhood memories become hazy and a little too far away for such details.

The park, bounded on two sides by the avenue and a road to the left where my parents and I lived, had on its fourth side part of the big naval dockyard and the main reason for the enemy bombers’ persistent and regular raids. So regular in fact that one could almost set one’s watch to the sound of the siren, especially the one that always went off just as we were about to sit down to Sunday lunch. My father at that time was in the Royal Artillery and stationed at their local barracks. This was also the base for one of the ack-ack units of which there were not a few positioned around the park itself. One of these guns was just outside our back garden gate and, like many people in those days; my Mother would often take a pot of tea out for the lads, a friendly gesture to soldiers who were far away from their own families. This friendliness also extended to the children who played in that particular corner of the park, no doubt inventing some wartime version of Cowboys and Indians, although needless to say it was the big anti-aircraft gun itself which held our interest, especially when the lads would show us how it worked and even let us actually handle the shells. The business of being machine-gunned by enemy planes was probably not all that frequent, although it was certainly not unheard of for civilians to be shot at in the streets. I think that even as children we were all aware of these things and diving for cover could become an instinctive reaction, even if the only cover was to lie flat on your face. This would be especially true of the park which was really just a green open space where the enemy bombers would frequently strafe the gun emplacements as they pulled away from the dockyard area. This, I think, was the reason why we never played on that side of the park and why, as soon as a siren went, we would scuttle back indoors as quickly as we could. Far better to watch the excitement from the safety of your back door than an open field; even so, at any sign of danger, especially if we were caught out in the open, we knew to lie flat on the ground.

The park was probably quite a safe place to play unless there was an air-raid, and in any case many of the big raids took place at night when we youngsters were tucked up safe in bed under the stairs or under the dining room table. It was surprising how these two places often became safe havens when a house was bombed and I certainly have memories of as a seven year old diving under our table with my favourite teddy and blanket if a particularly heavy raid was taking place. On thinking back, perhaps all that bravado disappeared if you were there alone amongst all the banging and crashing, for it certainly wasn’t exciting in that sort of situation. On one occasion we were we were in fact caught out in the open during one of those daylight hit-and-run raids which gave little warning. The first we knew of any danger was when one of the lads from ‘our gun’ yelled at us to get down and stay down The three of us fell flat on our faces as the enemy bomber, all guns blazing, attacked the ack-ack gun. There was far too much noise to hear individual bullets that were being fired in our direction although I am convinced, given the considerable distance between us and the gun, that at one point we were definitely the target. Again, I have no recollection of fear but rather one of fascination as I watched the turf being ‘stitched’ by bullets some three or four feet away from my nose. The stitching was evenly spaced as though someone had taken a spike and lifted a precise row of divots
out of the grass, all at the same angle and all at the same height of about two inches. Perhaps when the surprise had worn off we certainly were afraid but, being lads, we were darned if we would admit it to each other.

Fate was a fickle mistress during the blitz and there were many instances of miraculous escapes or completely irrational disasters. One curious situation was a certain ambivalence by many people towards the Anderson shelter. True, they offered protection from the bombs, falling debris and explosions, but they were also damp, dark, smelly places no matter how hard people tried to fix them up. There was also a somewhat curious philosophy which seemed to be around those days and which suggested that if your number was on it, the bomb that is, then that was ‘it’ no matter what you did. This meant that the shelter was not always used and that sometimes people would just stay in their beds and hope for the best. Fatalistic perhaps, but not an uncommon attitude as people became more familiar with the air-raids. One occasion when one usually did use the shelter in the back garden was when visitors arrived. There seemed to be a sense of responsibility towards them and if the siren sounded every body went off down into the shelter. In fact, if it was known that visitors might be arriving, effort would be made to ensure that the place would at least be habitable.

Gran had a daughter living on the outskirts of the city whom she would visit every couple of weeks or so, coming to the end of one particular visit it was raining and, judging from the fires over the dockyard area and the searchlights and crash of explosions, there was a particularly heavy raid in progress. My aunt suggested that it might be a good idea if Gran stayed the night and that in any case the buses would be unlikely to be running.
Gran, in later years she always reminded me of that stubborn old grandma in the Giles cartoons, said that no way was that Mr. Hitler going to stop her from going back to her home, rain or no rain, or his blasted bombs either. That night my aunt’s Anderson shelter received a direct hit and, apart from a few broken windows, there was little damage to the house. This tale however, doesn’t stop here, for a couple of weeks later Gran is again visiting her daughter and, because of a rather heavy cold, she decides that she will accept the offer to stay. That night her own house was completely flattened.

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