I was eight when 'The Crisis' was the main news topic... The Munich conference pact of September 1938 had not stopped Hitler. The Third Reich was still expanding. I was making a scrap book in 1939 and the cartoon I remember pasting in was of Hitler standing in front of a shed, in back of which were the bodies of Austria and Czecho-slovakia. His bloodied and gloved hand behind his back was holding a dagger. He is facing John Bull (Britain) and Marianne (France) and the caption was, 'I offered Britain and France my hand in friendship, -said Hitler in his latest speech'.
The summer holidays in 1939 I'd spent in Barford Norfolk with cousin Jean at Auntie Mary and Uncle Mat's cottage. There had been no electricity in 1936 when we were there but now there was. No longer a candle up the steep stairs to bed. Still the loo at the end of the garden though, and a basin on a water barrel outside the kitchen door for washing face and hands. Guess there was a tin bath used in front of the fire. Don't remember. We were only there a few weeks!
Within days of returning to 103 Gonville Road the news grew worse. It was Sunday 3rd. September. Our wireless had been on all morning and about 11:00am Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that he had not received an answer from Herr Hitler demanding that he withdraw from Poland... 'and that therefore this country is at war with Germany'... I think it was Uncle Frank and Auntie Mary that were with us. We had just sat down to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding when the air raid siren went... We trooped down the garden to the Anderson shelter that I guess Dad had dug out and erected while I was away in Barford. It was just an exercise of course, but I remember being more than a bit of a wimp and not wanting to put on my rubber-smelling gas mask.
The next morning there were buses just 200 metres away outside my school. With rucksack on my back and with a lot of my school I boarded and we were off to East Croydon Station, then by train to Brighton. It was only 21 years since the last 'Great War' and the government had been preparing for the worst for a year or so. In Brighton I think Mr and Mrs Gillies had been asked beforehand, but in some cases children were toted from door to door to see who would take in evacuees. So, No: 64 Waldegrave Rd. was home for nearly a year for me and Syd Redding my neighbour at 101 Gonville Rd.. After a few days Mum and 3 year old Martin managed to be taken in by Mr. Gillies' mother next door to us. They stayed there for about three months but it was what was called the 'phony war' and they returned to Thornton Heath before Christmas.
Our school used the local Ditchling Rd. School, alternating with the locals kids mornings, or afternoons. On the free half days our teacher Mr. Wood used to take us to places of interest like the newspaper printing works, or on one occasion we bussed out to Lewes and, pick-a-back, we re-enacted the 1264 Battle of Lewes. Mr. Wood had just married that summer and he told us all about their honeymoon on Guernsey.
The Palace Pier was still open at some early stage and the amusements were popular. I remember making 4d. once at a 'ball into slot' machine. If you won you got your penny back and a free ball...
Our Headmaster Mr Reynolds had stayed back at Gonville Rd. school but his daughter Judith was also billeted in Waldegrave Road. She was nice, and blond. She smiled at me once! ...Little things I remember. The new film Wizard of Oz was on at the cinema in Beaconsfield Road, but -also new, I saw Gunga Din instead at that time. Preston Park was popular. There was a Great War tank rusting under a conker tree there early on, but it was taken away later. One day while we were playing there Syd broke his arm. There was, strangely for 1939-40, an American army presence in a building in the park and they attended to him. I was a bit shocked to see them cut his jersey sleeve to give first aid. The Gillies were a lovely older couple. They had a son Duncan who lived away from home. He had a girl friend and they were given the front room on an occasional Sunday afternoon to do their 'courting'. I got into trouble once, -listening at the door. The Gillies took us out sometimes. Mr Gillies would give us 3d. each that autumn for collecting a sack of leaves near his allotment, -that he composted I guess, but he complained if the sacks weren't pressed down hard! Another time we were at a cricket match. I wasn't paying much attention, and then there was a shout and I felt the wind of the ball in my hair as it landed nearby. -Moments that could change your life!
But the lasting memory was jamming two fingers in the front door. Mrs. Gillies hurried me up the road to the doctor. The two nails had lifted at their roots. The doctor gently took my hand , then with tweezers sharply pulled a nail off, first one then the other... There were Cubs to attend each week. I was made a 'sixer' and got a few badges. One was for stamp collecting. Mr Gillies too had a collection and he coveted my 4½ d. orange and blue Malta... The one he needed to complete his set... So I gave it to him, -and broke my own set! The winter of 1939-40 was a cold one and the steep Waldegrave Road was icy and exciting. Quite unusual for the south coast of England.
The British and French were retreating and the Germans isolated the Brits at Dunkirk ..whence followed the well known evacuation by 4th June. So Brighton was not a safe place and we all returned to Croydon. For the life of me I can't remember going to school at Gonville Road after the summer holidays until I moved to Uppingham in October or November. You see, in Form 3 at Brighton we had Mr. Wood, but Form 4 was always taken by the rather stern grey haired, grey suited Mr. Edwards in the room next to Mr Reynolds office. I must have been in that class, but it was a short while. There was a plan to evacuate me to Australia, but that's another short story, ('Paul's History' doc and 'Paul's family pics' ).
I recall a lot of other stuff about that time. Going to Cubs, -the 47th Croydon Pack at a church near Norbury. Walking home that summer and watching dogfights overhead.
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Of course there were the barrage balloons one saw. They were positioned at intervals on open ground to prevent low level bombing and secured on lorries. I've recently read that some broke away in high winds and with their steel cables dragging caused problems with electric power lines as far away as Sweden. With this knowledge 'Operation Outward' was a cheap hydrogen balloon venture of the British, and thousands of them were let go with trailing steel cables, and were an annoyance in Germany. A whole power station near Leipzig failed once due to the shorting of a 110,000 volt line by one of these balloons.
During a daylight raid, at home one time there was a ping, ping, ping, ping, as four cartridge cases landed in our garden. They were a great addition to my collection of jagged shell pieces, shrapnel. Cousin Fritz from Stuttgart Germany told me that he also collected shrapnel during the war. This was The Battle of Britain, about August - September 1940 and locally it seemed to be focussed over Croydon Aerodrome. But the Germans lost too many aircraft and soon changed their tactics and started coming over at night. That was called the Blitz(krieg)... On the night of the 8th September, I've recently read, and for seventy six consecutive nights, London was bombed -except on the 2nd November because of really bad weather,...
The scene was that every night, about 8:00 pm. Mum would make a thermos of cocoa and we'd troop down to the Anderson shelter, -whether the siren had gone or not, -where Dad had fitted a double mattress on packing cases for the four of us, although about this time Martin went to live with Auntie Mamie and Uncle Alex at Buckhurst Hill where he stayed for at least a couple of years. The mattress just about covered the whole of the floor area. Dad had made a wooden flap for the doorway. The covered vent in it was all our ventilation. Croydon was on an aerial corridor to London and there was a lot of activity in the sky. The twin motor Bristol Beaufighter was developed about this time as a night fighter. Until I was sent away again to Uppingham the only serious incident at home was an incendiary bomb that landed in our garden one night while we were in the shelter just 5 metres away. Quite a spectacular firework display, but luckily it was not of the exploding variety. Later, after I'd gone to Uppingham a bomb exploded about 200 m. away, the other side of the houses over the road. We lost all our windows and many roof tiles. Mum and Dad were in the shelter at the time. The story goes that there was a -very lucky, man who said he was on the lavatory at the time. 'I just pulled the chain and the house fell down!'
Anyway, was it later in October or November, that some of us were bundled onto a train and we headed north to Oakham in Rutlandshire. There we got a drink and a bun at a school. I know we'd eaten on the trip because I've still got the stain on Auntie Chris's stamp album from a tomato sandwich... And then some of us were bussed to Uppingham, which is the only other town in Rutland actually. Syd and I landed with a Mrs. Draper at Newtown Road. She was a widow -of the Great War I think. She was very nice but made us polish our shoes in the outside shed, and it was a very cold winter that year. Uppingham is quite hilly and we had lots of fun tobogganing and making monstrous snowballs as we rolled small snowballs onto new snow. But
melting snow in your gumboots is not fun. The private Uppingham School had a Tiger Moth and was training pilots on a field nearby. But we saw nothing of the boys of that school. In the middle of the small town, Uppingham School seemed more like a sandstone castle with the bigger windows facing inwards.
Syd and I must have been a bit much for the elderly Mrs. Draper and after about three months I was billeted with Mr. and Mrs. Snodin and their eight year old Alan, while Syd stayed with another elderly couple not far away in the town. Mr. Snodin was the local butcher. I remember Mrs Snodin made a delicious apple batter as well as toad-in-the-hole, -sausages in batter. I had one particular local friend Derek Chapman. His father was a painter. There were some interesting sheds in their garden and Derek showed me how to put a rag round a stick, soak it in turps and light it.. Made a good statement for ten year olds but better done outdoors.. Upstairs in Derek's house a wardrobe had a number of Boer War scarlet tunics and helmets that we dressed up in. Then there were fields nearby and a pond with frog spawn in the spring. Lots of outdoor stuff. There was a play area in the town with swings and slides, and often Kathleen Ainsworth. She was nice..
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| I got a box brownie camera from Mum and Dad. This is Martin, Syd Redding, Alan Snodin, Me and Derek Chapman. |
We were always told by Mrs Draper to go for a long walk on Sundays after church and before going home to mid-day dinner. There was a 'dew pond', a temporary pond in a hollow in a field with grass pasture at the bottom of it, -in a field near Newtown. It was iced over in the winter. And a quarry there too to play in. There were always sticks and leaves to float in the gutter after rain. I don't remember much about church except that the Rector was a C. C. Aldred. I've still got the Bible that he signed and gave me. At one time there was a 10 ton, -22000lb. bomb, vertical, on display next door to the vicarage, promoting war bonds or something. The school we went to was the ancient flint stone church school just down the hill from the church. There were two playgrounds, each about the size of a small classroom and with high walls. Girls and boys were separated at playtime! The school's gone now. Now it's 'Old School Mews'.
What else... Oh yes, I remember one night many bombers going over in the evening. It was while we were still with Mrs. Draper. It was the devastating raid on Coventry. Was it a full moon? I expect so. It used to be called a bomber's moon. But otherwise life in the country town was very peaceful. Mum used to send me a shilling a week. A postal order I guess. Tupence for a stamp to write home, -it went up to 2½d in that time. Tupence for a comic -The Dandy, -no, I'd graduated to 'The Wizard' by then -few pictures, all stories. Tupence for sweets and sixpence for a 'Savings Stamp'. I must have saved a bit in the kitty though because, amongst others, I finally saw 'The Wizard of Oz' and a scary film called 'Gaslight' … The gas light went down when the baddie was in the lady's house.
In July we sat the 'scholarship exam' in Oakham which decided that Syd and I were
academic enough to start high school with Selhurst Grammar School for Boys at Croydon. Some of Selhurst had evacuated to Bideford and so, after the summer holidays back at Thornton Heath, that was where I was headed in September 1941. My first billet was at Torridge Mount on the east side of the Torridge river, with Mr & Mrs Andrews. He was ancient and more or less bed-ridden. Mrs A. too was ancient. I remember arriving. I was shown into their front room, -and left there. 'They don't know what to do with me... they don't know what to do with me...' for several minutes. I remember that vividly. But Mrs Andrews was very kind. He was always in bed. She'd come from a farm and married Mr A. late in life. Very conveniently for him I guess. There was always bacon for breakfast. But I was only there for a few months. I guess it was a bit much for the aged Mrs. A. -with Mr. A. upstairs. I never saw him up and dressed.
I saw Mum and Dad once that year, when they came down, just for a couple of days while I was there with the Andrews. Dad was an inspector of canteens in the NAAFI for most of the war. He was posted first to Dover, then to Stranraer and then to Dingwall. I've still got the wooden suitcase he made to sit on in the trains which were so crowded. -It's leather covered and Martin painted it orange at some time ...But then, Martin was living with the lovely, but child-less, Auntie Mamie and Uncle Alex. Buckhurst Hill was a safer area, hardly in London... Epping Forest started just across the road. Mum lived at home alone and worked in a grocery, Coopers, about fifteen minutes on the tram or bus, in Streatham. Of course usually, in those days two-way communication was three or four days by snail-mail. We didn't have a phone, although there were the red phone boxes all over the place to use , -if you knew someone that did have a phone...
But back to Devon, what I recall mostly is being there at Bideford Grammar School. It was a modern single story place. There was a tuck shop, -3 half-chocolated biscuits for a penny, ...and I did a creditable 12ft. 9ins. long jump I recall. Don't know why but I didn't get into any team sports, if there were any... I started wood work there. I made a wooden teapot stand. But importantly I remember our first science lesson. 'Jazz' -J. A. Stevenson, had a burette full of soap solution, and with sea water, rain water or tap water we had to drip carefully, the soap solution into a measured amount of the different waters and see what was needed to make a lather. A good introduction to precisely measuring. But, an embarrassing moment too when I read out my written composition to 'Charlie' Vallins, ...'I caught some green crabs and one red one which was edible..' to much laughter, most of the rest of the class seemed to know they only go red when cooked! Then there was Scouts, and a penn'orth of chips afterwards. And taking the bus at the weekends to play in the rock pools at Westward Ho.
So, I was moved again. I went to stay with Mr. & Mrs. Stirrup. Early middle aged and without children they were my favourite foster parents but in a few months they told me they had bought a pub at Instow, just down the river from Bideford. So, I was
shipped off again, only a little way down the road to the Clarks who were Londoners, and with their two year old Pamela were keeping away from the bombing. I stayed there for the rest of the school year till July 1942 when all the evacuated Selhurst boys returned to Croydon for the summer holidays and resumed school for the rest of the war with those that had stayed at The Crescent.
Yes, apparently the bombing had eased. In 1942 the Americans, after Pearl Harbour, were beefing up to help in North Africa. Hitler was closing in on Stalingrad. He wasn't learning that with long lines of supply, it was like Napoleon at the gates of Moscow. The Japs were still advancing from island to island in the Pacific and threatening Australia and there were a lot of naval battles there.
But, back to Croydon. There were nearly two years of, I suppose more or less normal life at 103 Gonville Road before the buzz bombs started. I can understand most folk these days not being able, without referring to a diary, to recall events in their 'normal' life, because those two years hold little of note. Mum, late for work, would hurry up the road each morning to Thornton Heath Pond to get the bus to Coopers. I would trudge to the Pond to get the tram to Thornton Heath station then walk to Selhurst. I dropped out of Latin after one year. General science gave way to physics, chemistry and biology. English was two subjects, grammar and literature. There was French and of course maths and geography, with art on Friday afternoons to wind down the week. And from a half hour of homework a night at age eleven it worked up by stages to three hours a night. The wireless had 'Music While You Work' and 'Forces Favourites' and between radio programs there was, on a drum, 'da, da, da, dum..' 'V' in Morse code, 'V' for Victory. And Beethoven's 5th -the 'V symphony' it was called, was popular.
By 1944 we had acquired a couple of extra pianos in our front room -apart from Auntie Emmie's! One was a full size grand. I guess Dad's idea was to sell them for a profit! They finished up as firewood would you believe, when we later had to present the house for sale. ...Anyway, back to 1944. After D-day when the Allies were advancing through France the first of the Germans 'V' weapons started coming over. They were the V1 flying bombs, -buzz bombs or doodlebugs, -pilotless planes of 16 ft. wing span and powered with a pulse-jet. They were launched from the Pas de Calais area and from Holland, at London. More than 100 a day at their peak. The grand piano came in handy. We started sleeping under it, Mum, Martin and me. Mum would read us stories, getting louder as one of the buzz bombs came closer. But it was OK while you could hear the jet motor. It was when it cut out that you held your breath because it was then programmed to dive. This life style was just too much for us and it was only a couple of weeks or so before Mum, in touch with her sister Joan decided to ask Auntie Mary in Barford Norfolk for accommodation. And so we left London again. I remember walking over broken glass in Mare Street Hackney to Auntie Joan's in London Lane Hackney where we all slept one night on a downstairs floor. There was Joan, and cousins Jean and Jill, Mum, Martin and me. But it was a
quiet night there.
Next day it was off to Liverpool St. Station and we all left for Norwich and Barford. Auntie Mary and Uncle Mat had moved from their cottage and were renting a big house, for 2/6 a week, -2 shillings and sixpence! We all were there for only a week or two when Mum heard of a cottage for rent down Style Loke not a half mile away. The three of us moved there and that was home from June to December. Our other cousins Maureen and James visited with Auntie Eva that summer and Jeanne Edwards a friend of Mum from Coopers and her Bert too. The cottage was by the small River Tiffey and I made a raft with some drums and planks that we kids all had fun on. Grandma Steeds too lived with us in the cottage but poor Grandma was bedridden with the later stages of Parkinson's. She moved back to Buckhurst Hill before Christmas 1944 and very soon died.
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Mum and her cousin Ivy were good mates and although Mum was tied to Grandma during the day they'd pop off sometimes to the Kings Head pub at the other end of the village. She'd settle Grandma down for the night, then as she walked down the Loke she'd indicate to me by touching her head where she was off to! There were a lot of Americans around from the many bomber airfields in Norfolk and no doubt there was an attraction there, ..for both of them! Nice blokes of course, in the main, and the fancy free Ivy had her 'Punch' Marvel. No, he didn't claim to be Captain M! I don't suppose many of them gave their right names! He said he was a 'mid-upper' gunner in
a B17 Flying Fortress. We heard later that he was a cook! Or was it a 'belly' gunner that he told her! I say they were mostly nice, the story went round that one evacuated Londoner, married with kids, had been pack-raped one evening... Nothing was done about it that I know of. ...Different times!
The V1 buzz bomb threat to London seemed to have abated after Christmas 1944, and although V2 rockets had taken over, they came down at supersonic speed so you were dead before you knew it. So we returned to 103 Gonville. Dad too came home then. Perhaps he'd managed to return from Scotland for his mother's funeral, but he wasn't in Norfolk with us. The Allies were moving east into Germany. The 'black-out' had given way to a 'dim-out' as there was no more threat of manned bombing. It was great to see light coming through people's curtains. Generally life became easier
although the re-taken lands had to be fed and only in early 1945 was bread rationed in Britain for a year or so. After VE Day (Victory in Europe on the 8th May) some goods were still in short supply for years. It seems we were determined to get Germany on it's feet economically to prevent the financial 'raping' of the country by Britain, France and the USA that had allowed Hitler to take over after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
It was Whitsun just a week or so after VE Day, and Dad took us to Scotland for a holiday and to meet the people he'd stayed with in Dingwall. Our first experience of sleeping coaches on a train. I remember when we stopped at Crewe, hearing, while dozing, the early morning clank of milk churns on the platform. While in Dingwall we had a long climb on the slopes of Ben Wyvis and generally that very summery Whitsun was a lovely bit of family togetherness for the four of us after so many years.
Later in the 1945 summer holidays Martin and I were sent to Dover for a week or so to stay with the lady that Dad had boarded with earlier in the war. Mum and Dad no doubt had a lot of personal catching up to do after years apart. It was my first time alone with my brother. I was still fourteen, Martin was just nine, we just wandered around mostly. I was feeling my feet, being alone and responsible for someone else... We walked around and through Dover Castle a lot and the cliff top where Louis Blériot had landed from France in 1909, and I remember we went to Shakespeare Cliff near where an 1881 attempt had been made to bore a Channel Tunnel, but otherwise nothing adventurous of note...
In the summer of 1946 we had a super week's holiday on a 36 ft. motor cruiser on the Norfolk Broads. Our cousins Jean and Jill came too. The 'Sparkling Foam' is still dear to the hearts of the two of us remaining... The boat also towed a tender with a mast to be erected and a sail, so I had my first experience of controlling a sail boat. We cruised from Wroxham, down the Thurne and under Potter Heigham bridge, -just, we had about two inches to spare on either side of the cabin top. Then down to Yarmouth and on to Lowestoft, -where Dad slipped and badly bruised his knee and I
became helmsman, then back to Wroxham in the week. Nightly we'd tie up by a pub, but Mum made us all our lovely dinners aboard.
That July I'd just completed School Cert, later called GCSE. I got a 'pass' in English Grammar, English Literature, Maths, Chemistry, and Art. In Geography and Biology I got a better grade, a 'credit'... I failed, -yes in the old days kids were allowed to fail, ...in French and Physics... But I got my first real bike for my efforts. The first day on it I cycled from Thornton Heath to Windsor and back. It was getting dark when the Castle loomed in front of me. I turned and pedalled home without stopping, 70 miles -112 km. …..These days it would take me a week to get over that... Later I cycled at times across London for weekends at Auntie Joan's -and Jean and Jill after they had moved to Southgate.
