War came one day to our local pub

One Saturday in November 1944 my friend Joan, aged twelve like me, was spending the morning at my home. This was in Newbury Park on the north-east edge of London where it meets the Essex fields. We decided to take Mickey for a walk in the lane leading back from my street into countryside. Mick had come to us in 1940 in the inside pocket of Dad's jacket. He and his sibling pups and their mother had been bombed out of their house in Rotherhithe shortly before. Their owner who worked with Dad at a wharf on the Thames was trying to find homes for all of them and Dad knew I dearly wanted a dog. So he brought Mickey, a small black mongrel aged six weeks, home to join our family.

On this day Joan and I stopped to play on the broad forecourt of the pub in the country not far behind my home. There was an old tree which we could partly climb and we were doing this when an old man who lived and worked at the pub came out and told us in forthright terms to get down out of there and go on home. Which we all three did, feeling somewhat abashed.

Some five to ten minutes later we were settled in our living-room. Joan sat in the corner to the side of the French window which opened onto the garden with a book on her lap. Mickey had retired to sleep on his blanket spread out in the Morrison indoor shelter. I sat on the settee against the wall facing the French window with my legs drawn up beneath me, also with a book. We had barely begun to read when something made me look up. I had heard nothing but the net curtain fixed at the French window was twisting strangely and the glass of the window was falling into the room. Beyond it what looked like a bank of yellow fog was rolling up the garden towards us. I sat still for some time, trying to understand what was happening. Then I heard my mother, standing in the room doorway to my left, shouting my name. I turned my head towards her and saw the look of terror leave her face. I looked at Joan who was carefully picking great shards of glass off her book and lap. I saw Mickey stepping delicately out of the Morrison shelter and between the glass fragments on the floor, wearing a disgusted expression on his face.

A V2 rocket had fallen on the forecourt of the pub where we had been playing. It had killed five people among whom were the much-respected landlord of the pub and an R.A.F. officer who had been there arranging an evening entertainment for the personnel of the nearby aerodrome.

My mother had been working at the sink next to the back door opening on to the garden. The force of the blast had blown open the back door, the interior kitchen door and the front door and carried Mum out of the kitchen along the length of the passage and out on to the front path. In transit Mum had passed the Yale lock of the front door which was discovered later outside the back door.

Mum came into the living-room to make sure we were not injured and we began to collect ourselves. None of us was hurt. Joan had been protected by the wall her chair was set against and by the heavy curtain at the side of the window. Mick had been protected by the indoor shelter. Mum had feared the blast had got me when she saw me sitting still and silent but I was all right and my curled-up position on the settee had saved my legs from laceration by the glass lying on the floor in front of and under the settee. We were gathering ourselves together when we heard screams coming from the road outside. We went to the front door. A younger playmate of mine who lived nearly opposite was standing screaming before the open rear door of an ambulance. Her mother who had a job at the pub was inside, about to be taken to hospital. Her father had been lost at sea earlier in the war.

We began to take stock of the damage. Windows were gone, some ceilings had come down, there were cracks in the wall plaster and many roof tiles were missing. A neighbour who had been at the parade of shops just over a quarter of a mile away heard a rumour before she returned that our entire street had been razed to the ground. She hurried home to find that the houses were still standing and were repairable. The repair squads were very quickly on the scene, first putting tarpaulins over the roofs to prevent further damage to the interiors of the houses. By early afternoon they were re-tiling, which gave my mother another close brush with injury. She was standing outside our front door talking to our next-door neighbour when the tiler on the roof above slipped slightly and let fall a bundle of tiles bound together. It fell into the privet hedge between them, missing both of them by inches. Other repair workers had set about removing all the lavatory pans on our side of the street as they were cracked and leaking. They lay displayed in a long row in the road beside the pavement. All except one. Our next-door neighbour but one still possessed by some fluke an undamaged usable lavatory. This she kindly made available to anyone in need over the next day or so whenever buckets were an insufficient substitute for the more usual facility. Replacement sanitary ware was as much a priority as roofs so we were not inconvenienced for long.

It seems to me now that life quickly returned to normal. Joan and I went to school the following Monday. My playmate's mother was soon back from hospital, her injuries healing. My parents returned our home to its customary state of cleanliness and tidiness, though the ceilings and walls were not re-plastered till later. Then a team of pleasant hard-working Irishmen came and worked steadily down the street till everything was done.

My father went round to the pub and thanked the old man for having sent Joan, Mickey and me home when he did. Happily he had survived the incident.

The pub was not completely destroyed. In the weeks that followed it was restored to a one-storey functioning pub and remained so till some time after the war. At some point its upper storey finally reappeared and it continued to serve its local cusomers and increasingly those from further afield.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.