My Wartime Recollections

I was almost six when the war started. On Sunday 3rd September 1939, I was playing with my toy cars in the back garden by the open window as it was warm and i heard the accumulator wireless an equipment similar to radio. The man said that " As we had not heard anything from Heir Hitler by one-o-clock that day, we were at war with Germany. We waited for the war to begin but nothing happened until few months later.

During this period of no war, there were occasional siren warnings that made us panic and grabbed everything that we could lay hands on. Mum made us take the gas masks and put them on. Mum & dad got theirs on all right but I started screaming when Mum put mine on as there was an ant running around inside the eye piece. So she had to take it off and start again. It got dark and we went to bed wearing the gas masks. We were awakened by lots of banging about. Dad thought it was bombs dropping, he took a chance to peep out only to see dustmen emptying the bin by the back door. Dad asked the dustmen whether the raid was over which the dustmen laugh, they were only testing the sirens lasting for a few moments.

The next time we heard a siren we stayed indoors and took no notice, until we heard a bomb close, then we went to the shelter, my dad had built.

Later on the council issued us with a Morrison Shelter (named after Mr.Herbert Morrison, war defence minister).

It was a large steel table with a cadge of wire mesh around the sides that we could sleep under and they said would stop any rubble falling on us if the house was bombed.

We slept in that for most of the continuing four years of the wars. They didnt tell us about being covered in cockroaches, mice and spiders every night. In fact it wasnt until the next year that things started to happen.

In the summer of 1940 we went on a holiday to my Aunt's place in Bournemouth. Aunt Win managed somehow to get a banana for me. It was a rarity those days and was a big treat at that time. I didnt like the thing. I had never tasted one before and so when I said didnt like it at all, they all went on at me "Dont you know there's a war on and things like this are hard to get? Go on eat it and dont upset your aunt and uncle after all the trouble they have been through to get it for you. Ungrateful boy etc etc". So I had to force myself to eat it and was sick. I have never even liked the smell of bananas since.

After our holidays we returned home on a train and when the train stopped at Southampton station, I was puzzled because normally when we stopped at Southampton in the coach it seemed a big town, now its not there. The complete town had been flattened by the German bombs, half of the station was missing and one could see right down to the docks and the sea beyond. (I am not sure whether it happened in 1941 or 1942 summer?)

During another holiday to Bournemouth, we saw an aircraft going down and cheered without knowing whether it belonged to Britain or Germany.

I kept hearing this plopping sound near me and looked down to see many cannon shells falling in the garden. So I ran round picking them up, not realising that if one had fallen from that night and hit me it would have killed me. I never saw any danger and it all seemed good fun. I even took them to the school to show how close I had been to the Battle of Britain.

I had never seen anything like this but there was just as bad to come at home. During the blitz standing at the landing window I could see a red glow in the sky every evening. Dad said that was London burning from the bombs we said "Poor London". We were safe in the country.

For the rest of the war we had to keep dodging between our classrooms and the shelters. The teachers were doing a tremendous job working in those tough conditions and putting up with excited school children. They had to stand in water up to their ankles and try to read to us by the one dim flickering hurricane lamp as well as the tension of listening for german planes and bombs whistling down.

This was to go on for almost four years although it got easier as the time went on until one day we were playing on the common with two other lads this silent thing came over the hedge very low with big black crosses on the wings and a swastika on the tail. It was a doodle bug (the V1 Flying Bomb). We panicked as the engine had stopped. Once the engine stops you have only 10 seconds before it explodes. We ran and hid under a neighbours table and we heard the bang. It had blown up all of the green houses of a nursery near Woking. Luckily no one was hurt.

I remember, in one autumn of the war, saw some Italian PoWs working in fields nearby. There were around 25 of them harvesting the potatoes. We made friends with the enemies!! My mum made tea and I woke up the guard who served tea to them. After a few days they had become so friendly that one of Italian prisoners gave me a ring and a bracelet, the ring had a photgraph of his wife and the bracelet had 3 photos of his children. After six weeks they all went back but the memories still remain in me.

One fine day during a break at school, I went out and spoke to a road sweeper and he told me the war was over. Stupid like I asked Who won? I rushed back to my classroom and shouted to my teacher and classmates that the war was over. My teacher asked us to be quiet and she went to the headmaster to find out the truth. She came back with her face full of smiles and told us to go home there would be no school for the rest of the day.

We all ran out shouting and cheering home!

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