Extract from the memoirs of my late husband, Stanley Carpenter, about his experiences of London during World War 2

Balloon Barrage

On Saturday morning, September 2nd, 1939, I was walking along London Road when I suddenly spied a big, fat, balloon-like object ascending to the sky. It was like a big, fat, silvery-grey cigar. Below it trailed a long, strong steel cable. Then I spotted another. And yet another. It was my first sighting of London’s famous wartime balloon barrage, which was to hang above London for six years and which made it impossible for the Germans to carry out any low-level precision bombing of the capital.

First and last nights of the Blitz

It was Saturday afternoon on 6th September 1940. I was 18, living in Blackfriars Road, Southwark, with my parents. I went out of the front door at about 3 o’clock and started to walk along the road towards St George’s Circus. It was my habit in those days to go to the cinema twice a week, on Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons. It was still the golden age of the cinema. In the bigger cinemas an organist would rise up from a pit in front of the screen, and on the stage there would be a fine talent-spotting display. There were always two full-length films, a cartoon film and a newsreel.

As I walked down the road I blinked in the bright sunshine and wondered if it was such a good idea to enter a dark cinema on such a glorious afternoon. When I reached the Circus (or the “Obelisk” as we called it then, because there was an Egyptian obelisk in the middle of the crossroads) I paused. From the Circus each road led to one of the Central London bridges over the Thames, from London
Bridge to Westminster Bridge. I started to walk down London Road, the true centre of London where a week before I had witnessed the Balloon Barrage rising over London. At the end of London Road I reached the Elephant and Castle, the other big crossroads. From the Elephant the roads radiated to Canterbury, Dover and all the major ports and resorts of southeast and southern England. I crossed the various roads to Newington Butts. When I reached the Butts I continued along Kennington Road because I knew that some little distance up the Kennington Road on the right was a cheap cinema.

I entered the cinema. I do not remember which films were being shown that day but about 4 o’clock there was a terrific noise of AA fire from outside. This was no unusual thing and after a while the customary announcement came on the screen: “Patrons are informed that an Air Raid is in progress outside. There is no cause for alarm and patrons are requested to remain in their seats”. But despite the announcement the gunfire seemed to be much louder and more continuous than usual.

About 5.30 I emerged from the cinema, still blinking in the bright sunshine. I walked back to the Elephant. Everywhere there seemed to be small groups of people talking excitedly. I caught snatches of conversation: “Yes, I don’t know how many there were” “It seemed as if there were hundreds of ‘em” “I heard the East End has taken a terrible bashing”…

I was filled with curiosity, as you are at 18. Quickly I walked up the New Kent Road to the Bricklayers’ Arms. I crossed the Old Kent Road and hastened up Tower Bridge Road. Soon I reached Tower Bridge with the West on my left and the East on my right. I started to walk onto the bridge, looking intently to the right, downriver towards the East. It was just starting to get dark now and I could see a dull red glow covering the entire eastern sky. But worse still, huge flames were leaping up in the distance, like a volcano belching forth. I stood transfixed for a few moments and then suddenly there was a fresh air raid warning. Before the siren had finished wailing I could hear bombs dropping again in what seemed to be the near vicinity. Someone said that there was an air raid shelter in the converted basement of a big office block a little way down on the left hand side of Tower Bridge Road, going back towards the Elephant. I hastened towards it but did not run as that would have looked very undignified and un-British.

When I got down the shelter there were some people still in pyjamas and nightdresses. They were EastEnders who had just been taking a Saturday afternoon nap when suddenly all hell was let loose and they fled as they were. The “All-clear” finally sounded at 5 o’clock the next morning.

That was the first night of the Blitz and shortly afterwards I started to shelter with some friends on the platform of the Northern Line at Waterloo Underground station. The weather was still very hot and we took it in turns to walk along the edge of t he platform spraying insecticide onto the track and into the tunnel, as there was a risk of mosquitoes breeding in any stagnant water. Every night they closed the floodgates at the point which went under the river, otherwise if a bomb had gone through the river and ruptured the Tube we would all have been drowned. Soon they put up emergency toilets behind tarpaulin on the platforms and things got organised.

I spent two years down the Tube with many memories. The acoustics were deceptive. A bomb could drop a hundred yards away and we would hardly hear it. Another bomb could drop two miles distant, above Kennington Station, and the noise would come booming along the tunnel. After a while we got tired of carrying our bundle of blankets to and from the station and we left it at the left-luggage office on the station every morning and collected it again in the evening on our way down the Tube.

There was one strange young chap sleeping near me who always slept with his eyes wide open, showing the whites of his eyes. It looked uncanny at first, but his mother said he had always been like that.

We always knew if there was a heavy raid upstairs. The Military Police used to come down, pretending they were looking for deserters.

One night there was a terrific crash. All the lights went out, dust settled upon us, children screamed, torches came on. The next morning, as we came out of the rear entrance to Waterloo Station, where the taxi rank is now, we saw a crater about 20 feet wide and 12 feet deep. We must have been directly underneath it! We filed past it, silently blessing the workmen who had placed t he reinforced concrete round the tunnel, which alone had saved us.

Then suddenly things changed. The Nazis had had two years of easy victories during which, against little resistance, they had overrun Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete. Then, ignoring the lessons of history and the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte, in the early hours of Sunday 22 June 1941, they invaded the gigantic Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a country which bestraddled two continents, from the eastern frontiers of Poland, thousands of miles to the distant frontiers of China and Korea. They were the insane victims of their own crazy theories of racial superiority. For the first time they met real resistance, fierce resistance from an enemy who not only held them back but counter-attacked and regained lost ground. The Nazi High Command realised the danger. They had not got any planes to waste on diversions like bombing London. They needed every plane they had to save their skins on the Eastern Front.

Churchill spoke after the 9 o’clock news. Britain was no longer alone; we had now got a mighty ally. When he finished speaking they played “God Save the King” and what was then the national anthem of the USSR, the Communist “Internationale”.

Two men in London stood at their garden gate, looking up at the gathering dusk. “Do you think there will be a raid tonight?” said the younger man. “No, not tonight” said the older man. “They’ve now got enough on their plate!”

Sleeping at Waterloo Station during the Blitz

When I slept on the platform at Waterloo Underground Station during the Blitz, people’s different reactions often fascinated me.

There was an elderly man who had been through the trench warfare of World War One and he always insisted on going up for a breath of fresh air. One night, when the raids were very heavy, I said to him, “Fred, be careful. The raids are very heavy tonight.” But he was fatalistic. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Never mind. If it’s got your name on it, you’ve had it. If not, you’re all right.”

Another person was a young chap whom I liked. His name was Charlie. Once he said, “Goodnight, Stan, see you tomorrow.” But for young Charlie, tragically, there was no tomorrow.

Volcano over London

Whenever I stand on Westminster Bridge I remember those momentous days in early September, 1939. The news had just come through of the German invasion of Poland. I had just walked up the steps of Hungerford Bridge to see the Embankment Gardens. They were illuminated by fairy lights. Everything seemed peaceful and tranquil.

I descended the steps and walked to the tram stop in the middle of the road, where I waited for a tram to emerge from the Kingsway Tunnel and take me over to Blackfriars Road where I lived.

It was a long wait, but eventually the tram drew up. When I got on I was amazed. The conductor was standing there, but both he and the ticket box he was holding were bathed in an eerie blue light. I remarked upon this and he merely replied, “Don’t you know? It’s the new blackout regulations. We mustn’t show a light.”

Within a few months the Blitz on London had begun.

I remember those terrible days in 1940. I was standing at the Elephant and Castle, listening to the groups of people who had fled from East London. They said that during the afternoon hundreds of German planes had come over in broad daylight and started bombing. Our AA fire seemed quite ineffectual. I was very curious and, with the foolhardiness of a 17-year-old, I started walking along the New Kent Road and then at the Bricklayers’ Arms I turned right into Tower Bridge Road. When I reached Tower Bridge a siren announced that a new raid had started. I looked eastwards down the river and suddenly in the distance I saw a huge volcano towering over London. What had happened was that the Germans had dropped a big incendiary bomb (of the type that bursts into flames immediately upon impact) and it had hit the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery at Silvertown.

Travelling to Work 1939-1940

When the war started, the firm for whom I was working moved to Orpington. The Director of the firm lived there and, on behalf of the firm, he bought a large, detached house adjacent to his own. This became the firm’s “evacuation address for the duration”.

For months I travelled on the suburban line from Waterloo Junction or London Bridge to Orpington. The railway line ran parallel to the river, south of it, and extended a long way eastwards. As I passed opposite East London I always saw the still smouldering ruins and smoke of the previous night’s raid and it was only as I got further out to Hither Green, Chislehurst and Petts Wood that the scene improved.

Londoners’ Indomitable Spirit during the Blitz

When I think of London I think first of all of the great River Thames. At school I used to love the song “Ole Father Thames”. I also think of Londoners’ indomitable spirit during the Blitz. This was exemplified in a way by the following two episodes.

The first was on a Sunday morning and I was visiting my aunt in Barnsbury Street, Islington. The air raid wardens were trying to persuade her to go into the air raid shelter, as a daylight raid was in progress. The planes came low and Auntie lifted her fist, shaking it at them and crying out “You rotters! You rotters!”

The second episode was on the morning after a huge fire raid in December 1941. A vast stretch of Central London was burnt out. The “Evening Standard” had a cartoon the next day showing two managers strap-hanging on the Tube. The first one was saying “I say, old boy, bit of a picnic last night, wasn’t it?”

Autumn

For years I have considered Autumn to be the most beautiful season, surpassing even Spring.

Before I had my stroke I used to visit the London parks every September and October. Although I know that the colouration of leaves is due to a prosaic reason, chemical change, yet I am still amazed at the endless variety of colours: green, yellow, pink, russet brown, red, copper…I used to go to the parks almost as a pilgrimage. I still remember my sense of exhilaration as I trampled through the thick carpet of leaves, ankle deep.

But there has also always been a bitter-sweet nostalgia about Autumn. I particularly remember the autumn of 1943. During the summer I had received one or two personal blows. It seemed the war was going to last forever, and that year the evening mists seemed to start earlier than usual. There was also a nostalgic song endlessly repeated over the radio, “Whispering Grass”.

It is said that the darkest hour is before the dawn, and this is true. Within a year the Second Front had been a success and the German armies were in full retreat on all fronts. It seemed that after six years of privations we could at last see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Baggy Old Trousers

Whenever I see baggy old trousers I am reminded of “Old Bill”.

During the mid-war years 1941-1942, when I was 19-20, I worked in a small engineering firm in Goswell Terrace. It was sandwiched in the maze of side-streets between Goswell Road and Exmouth Market. Old Bill was a labourer who worked there. They had all kinds of machines — lathes, drilling machines, and milling machines. I was employed as a trainee fitter. Whilst the machines were in operation a continuous stream of metal shavings called “shaft” kept falling to the floor of the workshop, often saturated in soluble oil, which was a kind of cooking oil which poured onto the metal during heat to prevent it from overheating.

Old Bill had a big broom with stiff bristles and he had a permanent job sweeping away the shaft and trying to dispose of it. You could see him any time of the day leaning on his broom and chatting to people. Old Bill was in his late fifties and had spent a lot of time in the Navy and Army when he was young. He claimed that he had been round the world several times.

The foreman in charge was a man called Jim, a tall man in brown overalls. He had bushy eyebrows and a permanently lugubrious expression.

We hardly saw the owner. He popped in now and again and strolled around for a while with his hands behind his back. As long as he could see wheels moving and hear the machinery roaring, he seemed perfectly happy. He always left by 4 o’clock. The rumour was that he got lots of orders from the Ministry of Defence on a cost plus 10% basis.

The firm was covered by the Essential Works Order which meant in effect that even if I found a more congenial job I couldn’t leave without permission from King’s Cross Labour Exchange. However, the positive side of being an Essential Worker was that every six months my call-up was delayed.

Apart from sweeping, Old Bill also had the job of helping drivers load and unload trucks when they arrived. But in this Old Bill was noticeably backward. He had found himself a retreat behind a big machine and he sat there, cloth cap, clay pipe, baggy trousers and big dog-like boots, reading the “Sporting Life”. Every now and again you would hear Jim’s voice roaring “Bill! Where are you, Bill?
A truck’s just arrived! Bill, give the driver a hand!” But Old Bill could never be found. I could swear Old Bill could actually smell trucks coming, even when they were as far away as the Angel or Moorgate. And by the time they arrived Old Bill was never to be found.

I do not know what happened to Old Bill after the war. I think he must have been completely bewildered by the new world of television and videos, mass car ownership and computers. But I like to think he found a niche somewhere and that even now he is in his baggy old trousers with someone roaring “Bill, Bill, where are you, Bill?”

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