Essay 2 of 7 - The Blitz

Reminiscences from the period of WW2.
A collection of seven essays.

Author - Brian E. Dowden - born 8th. October 1933.

Introduction

Both during and after the war I lived on an estate built by the (then) London County Council in Carshalton, Surrey. I was thus some 10 to 15 miles away from the London areas that suffered worst in the blitz, but yet close enough to be affected by the war on a day-to-day basis. Noted below are my recollections of the period.

Essay 2 of 7 - The Blitz.

During the blitz we felt that without doubt the shelter was a potential life saver. The characteristic noise of the unsynchronised engines of the German bombers overhead was frightening, the crump-crump of bombs exploding in the near distance meant that another group of people ‘had bought it’- and even as children we felt that next time it could be our turn. But then we drew some comfort from the crashing sound from Mitcham Common of anti-aircraft guns firing into the night sky, despite the fact that they kept us all awake. During the morning after a night-time raid, boys like me toured the local streets looking for the remains of the previous night’s conflict. In this activity I acquired a collection of shell fragments, incendary bomb fins and several pieces of the metal skin from German aircraft. I do not know why, but pieces of German aircraft skin always had a characteristic sour odour.

It was during the night-time blitz of 1940-41 that I developed the asthma from which I have never recovered. Whether the problem was stress-related or caused by a rapid growth in the population of bed/carpet bugs in the warm damp shelter environment I cannot tell. Suffice to state that during my nights in the shelter I spent much of the time coughing, choking and struggling for breath at a time when no form of alleviation was available. Fortunately I always recovered from my breathing problems in the morning - even when still in the shelter. On more than one occasion, after I had suffered a particularly bad night, I was taken by Mum to St. Helier Hospital for a check-up. But by this time my breathing was normal, and after an examination I remember doctors telling Mum, “Mrs. Dowden, I can find nothing wrong with your son.” But something was wrong, and to me those were chilling words.

That our neighbours shared our shelter during the blitz led to a naughty incident one day. After the over-night air raids my parents went into the house in order to cut sandwiches etc. prior to my father going to work. It was also normal practice for Mum to take my sister Brenda with her into the house at that time. Similarly our neighbours went into their home, and this left their elder daughter, Miriam, and myself alone in the shelter. To me, Miriam was a grown-up girl, that is at eight years of age she was one year older than me; she also knew that her mother was expecting another baby and exactly how this came about. We had a long ‘grown-up’discussion on the subject and decided that we should have our own baby. However it is not only the mind of a seven years-old boy that is pliant, and our attempt ended in utter failure. Clearly I had recovered from my over-night asthma attack that morning.

Of course one may smile at the above tale of misplaced childhood innocence, but the period of the blitz was in practice potentially serious for us. One night there was a shout from someone to the effect that a batch of incendiary bombs had landed in about six to eight of the back gardens of the row of houses in which we lived. My father and other men left their shelters in order to smother the devices, and, once done, the men returned to their places of safety. But in some four houses or so up the road from where I lived, there was one man who was not prepared to expose himself to greater danger that night. From his shelter he repeatedly called to the men outside, “Mind my chickens. See that they’re alright.” (or words to that effect). I recall the essence of my father’s subsequent comments on both the man and his chickens, but fortunately I do not recall the exact words he used. However during this night there occurred an incident for which the odds must be millions to one against. Next morning my mother could not light a fire under the ‘copper’ (for hot water) in our kitchen, and it was evident that the chimney was blocked. On opening the door to the brickwork part of the chimney my father removed the burned-out remains of an incendiary bomb. About six months later the chimney problem was repeated, and with the use of a chimney-sweep brush my father brought down the remains of a second incendiary bomb. The two bombs in question had not only fallen some 10 metres to one side of the devices that had landed in the gardens, but they also had the decency to fall into the small hole at the exit to a chimney rather than land on a relatively large area of roof tiles. Had they landed on the tiles and hence crashed through our roof, in all probability we would have lost our home.

One Saturday night the sound of an explosion was louder than usual; a high explosive bomb had fallen onto a back garden in Wigmore Road, and only about 200 metres from my home. Several houses were destroyed, and at least one person was killed. Because our house was at a T-junction at the end of Wigmore Road we caught some of the blast, lost a few windows and had our front door blown open. Of course in the following morning both I and all other children in the area went to investigate the damage. As part of the devastation an end-of-terrace house had the side and front walls blown out, and thus the corners of the roof and first floor were precariously bent to about 1 metre below their normal level. It followed of course that all surviving furniture was exposed, and this was of much interest to the youth of the area. Apart from the immediate vicinity of the bomb crater it was too soon for any restrictions on movement to be made, and us kids quite cheerfully invaded the front garden of the above property. Suddenly, from behind me, a plaintive voice from a boy of about my own age called out to an older boy intruder, “Come out of my kitchen, my Mum and Dad haven’t given you permission to go in there.” Clearly not only the Luftwaffe caused distress during that fateful weekend. Not surprisingly the bomb fractured a gas main, the stench of gas was very strong in the bombed area, and the gas supply to the immediate area was disconnected. That day, for the one and only occasion during the war, all cooking at home was done using the oven above the fireplace in our ‘front room’. And this was done despite the lingering smell of gas!

Strangely perhaps there was little interruption to schooling during this period. The raids occurred over-night, and our schools were open as usual on the following morning. Indeed in certain respects I feel that our education then was superior to that of today. For example I believe that a working understanding of the basic processes of arithmetic is a necessary part of one’s education. Against this background I remember being detained after school at 7 years of age (I recall the class code and hence can determine my age) because I was having difficulty in completing long division examples such as 1476/12 - and how many of today’s children of similar age can solve this problem without the use of an electronic aid?

In June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union and night-time air-raids diminished in intensity. Then, in November 1941, Germany declared war on the U.S.A. Once the U.S.A. was ‘on-side’, I distinctly recall the feeling that although we would face severe trials in the near future, Germany would now surely lose the war.

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