For the Duration - Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen
IT WAS a DOODLEBUG, SIR!

D-DAY REVITALISED OUR INTEREST in the morning papers’ war-maps. Since the excitement generated by the Allied invasion of Sicily, the 8th Army’s laboured inching up the leg of Italy had deterred all but the most conscientious map collectors. Here we were in June 1944, almost twelve months later, and the Allies were just entering Rome.
No one was really surprised when the Normandy invasion finally took place, but civilian spirits lifted, and there was a huge general sigh of relief. D-Day, the 6th of June: at last, four gloomy years after the miracle of Dunkirk, an avenging army was recrossing the Channel.
Chalked slogans on bombsite walls had long clamoured “2nd Front Now”: and now the scribblers’ wishes were being realised. Only a recluse in England the past month or so would have been unaware of interminable convoys on the move; lorry after lorry laden with equipment, lorry after lorry brimming with troops; all threading their way southwards. No, the invasion itself was no surprise — the uncertainties had been where and when.
While in Normandy the Allied armies were grimly establishing their bridgehead, we in the day-room studied the maps’ probing arrows and swelling shading each morning, becoming familiar with the Cherbourg Peninsular, and aware of the existence of Arromanches, Bayeux and Caen. In shopping queues from Walthamstow to Wandsworth, housewives debated news columnists’ suggestions that the war would be well and truly over by Christmas, and folk in pubs from Wembley to Wapping bet on when Paris would be liberated, and Berlin occupied.
Surely now it was realistic to talk about “after the war”? The “Duration’s” days were numbered; the worst was over on the home front — surely these things were so?

*

The rumours began a bare week after the tonic of D-Day, while officialdom referred sparely to “enemy activity over Southern England”. Ten days later, Herbert Morrison announced (unnecessarily for dwellers in “Southern England”): “When the engine stops and the light at the end of the machine is seen to go out, it may mean that an explosion will soon follow, perhaps in five to fifteen seconds.” Londoners, and those below the missiles’ flight-path — Kent and Sussex, broadly — knew this. Hundreds of flying bombs had hit London already, and many more been brought down in the countryside en route.
During a conventional air raid, it was at least possible to relate to the bomber crews above, tense and even fearful themselves, intent as much on returning to base as they were on destruction out of duty. These totally impersonal machines were another matter — blind, indiscriminate killers.
At first, they were called pilot-less aircraft, P planes, or robots. Then the government settled for flying-bomb, a descriptive, non-emotive term. At school, we favoured buzzbomb, focusing as it did on the missile’s noise, one of its more distinctive features. Then we gladly seized upon doodlebug, coined by a fighter-pilot speaking on the B.B.C. Who could be frightened of a “doodlebug”? The relentless, menacing approach could be laughed off as the ridiculous, meandering progress of some huge, bumbling insect. A comforting theory.
The term V1 was also used. I mistakenly assumed the V to be short for Victory, learning much later that V1 stood for the German “Vergeltungswaffe Eins”, with revenge and not victory being the key word. No wonder it was abbreviated.
“Who could be frightened of a doodlebug?” Well, I certainly could be. It was one thing to be outside and to see them trundle past in the daytime. That was exciting and, provided that they kept going, quite safe. (Throughout Doodlebug Alley and Greater London, people prayed that an approaching flying-bomb would continue its flight. Many prayers were answered, but the missiles had to come to earth somewhere).
It was a different matter at night, under the blankets, hearing a maniacal two-stroke threading its way between the chimney-pots, its racket reverberating through the cellars. A distant hum — in itself innocuous, but to senses heightened in this doodlebug season, sinister — rapidly intensified into a raucous, grating noise. The cellar was filled with ugly sound. Menacing. Aggressive. It saturated the confined space, and the very foundations trembled.
The gritty, rattling engine note had to diminish gradually: that was my wish. It had to fade to its first-heard humming sound. What must not happen was a sudden absence of sound, that dread “deafening silence”, that emptiness between the engine’s clamour and the awaited explosion.
Danger was imminent only when the engine cut out and the plunge to earth began. There were occasional rogue doodlebugs: ones that dived steeply while the motor still ran and flames still flashed from the tail, or circled alarmingly, or engaged in aerobatics. These freaks had probably been damaged in flight by our defences, for Hitler’s V1s behaved predictably, as a rule.
The first week of this latest assault severely tested the day-to-day running of Bancroft’s. One All Clear had scarcely died away, than another Alert would sound, raid following raid so rapidly that, some days, there could just as well have been one long Alert. Sirens sounded, groups moved excitedly to and from shelter, lesson plans came to nothing, and much time was wasted.
After a night of confusion and lost sleep, we simply transferred our bedding from the dormitories to the cellars. The non-stop uncertainty during class time was harder to resolve. After a while, masters used their discretion (their patience was already used up, with the constant traipsing between classroom and shelters), some staying put when the siren wailed, others settling their classes outside the rooms, in corridors. Senior students, in pairs, were rostered for lookout duty high up on the tower. Envied by the rest of us, they were to ring hand-bells from the battlements to warn of a flying-bomb’s approach, and blow whistles if it came too close.

*

“Be quiet, boys! I won’t stand it!” Mr. Bloodworth’s intended bellow came out as a high-pitched, squeaky bleat, to be seized upon and copied in chorus around the room. The teacher’s eyes darted from boy to boy in agitation as the mocking mimicry continued.
“Beano, Beano! Beano Bloodbath!” chanted a group from the anonymity of the back of the classroom, producing rowdy merriment from their classmates, and pained perplexity for the demoralised master.
The scholarly Mr. Bloodworth had recently joined the staff at Bancroft’s as a housemaster and, for several periods a week, he strove to teach us European History. His benign manner had seemed a weakness, and weaknesses in teachers were there to be exploited. Every schoolboy knew that. Thus, each History lesson had become more riotous: more fun for us, more hellish for Beano.
“Sir! Sir! There’s a doodlebug!” Goofy Reed was calling out, his arm stabbing the air to attract attention, his message largely lost in the hubbub.
“Be quiet, I say! You, Reed, be quiet! I won’t have this noise!”
Sitting near Goofy, I could hear his words, but all that Beano knew was that the angular Reed, an established enemy, was yelling out and waving at him.
“I’ve had enough, Reed! I’ve had enough of your cheek!” It was true that the boy, who had an answer for everything, had tested the teacher’s patience before.
Now Mr. Bloodworth launched himself down the aisle, gown aswish and target Goofy. Boys cowered in exaggerated fear as he swept past them, his black gown billowing, intent on teaching this fellow a lesson.
“But, Sir! It was...”
“That’s enough! I won’t stand for it, d’you hear? Be quiet!” And Mr. Bloodworth punctuated his quavering words with frustrated and inexpert thumps about the protesting Reed’s head and shoulders.
An explosion surprised everyone in the room. Well, nearly everyone. Goofy had been right. His ears had picked up the dying notes of a flying-bomb, above the din and confusion of Beano’s class. It had glided down to land on a common not far away, slightly damaging a church.
Reed broke the unaccustomed silence: “You see, Sir? It was a doodlebug, Sir!”

*

Many V1s ended their flights of revenge harmlessly, in forests, fields and open country. Too many, however, were horribly effective. They destroyed city blocks and suburban homes. They killed and maimed Londoners by the thousand. They made it difficult for the civilians to appreciate gains by the troops on the other side of the Channel.
Weeks go by, and we laugh at talk about the latest fuel, “Arselite”, and quips about “Hitler’s virgins — never had a man in them”. Then a flying-bomb dives into the Guards’ Chapel during service one Sunday morning. Who can smile now? A newspaper cartoon depicts every person in the street with a huge ear; capturing Londoners’ enhanced sense of hearing. Delightfully done. Then two trams and two buses crammed with people going home from work are blown to pieces at a junction near The Oval. It doesn’t seem right to chuckle.
For two and a half months, night and day, flying-bombs droned over the lovely villages of Kent and Sussex, programmed for the capital. Doodlebug Alley became the graveyard of many of them, thanks to the defences. As it was, in the main attack from just after D-Day to the end of August, well over two thousand flying-bombs hit London.
The Allies were making good progress on the Continent. They had invaded Southern France. They had entered Paris. And still the doodlebugs came — threatening, disrupting, and chipping away at morale.
Our armies advanced eastwards, eventually overrunning the Fly Coast, as the narrow coastal strip from which the V1s were launched was known. It took several days without an Alert sounding, before it sank in: the skies were free of doodlebugs.
London was tired. The war was dragging. Newspapers reflected the general mood by recording the new tranquillity, rather than celebrating it.

*

We were just getting used to sleeping in the dormitory again, when I was jolted awake one night by an explosion — followed almost at once by another. We made the customary trek to the cellars, just in case, even though no one had heard a siren. There were many more such double-bangers during the next six months. It was early September and, after a respite from V1s of perhaps a week, Londoners now had V2s to contend with.
The unheralded explosion always startled. No sirens, no gunfire, no aeroplanes: nothing warned of the approach of these rockets, these warheads which hurtled to earth out of the stratosphere. Nothing could be done to counter them. If one were coming, it would come. And if you heard the ear-splitting explosion hard on the heels of the supersonic bang — well, you were outside the blast area, and safe. It was the one you did not hear that you had to worry about; and then, of course, it was too late to worry. You had probably bought it. Your number must have been on the missile. Thus reasoned the fatalists.
I never thought to ask my friend, Peter Lee, if he had heard the rocket that wrecked his home and brought so much pain and distress to his family. The Lees lived down the road from us in Kitto Road, at number fifty-three. There were five children, and the family (excepting Norman, recently enlisted), was at breakfast in the kitchen at the front of the house.
The rocket slammed into the park directly opposite. As the Lees sat at table, slivers of glass speared across the room at head height, slicing casually into flesh. Joyce, about twenty, was blinded in one eye, and she and Peter in particular were disfigured on one side of their faces — the side exposed to the splintered glass of the kitchen window.
South of London, at East Grinstead, was a hospital which specialised in plastic surgery. The unit was said to have been set up to treat the dreadful burns suffered by fighter pilots and, over the following months, Peter and Joyce got to know this hospital well. They made good recoveries at the patient hands of painstaking surgeons.
About midday on a Saturday in November 1944, Lorna was returning home, by tram. At New Cross, trams and buses were banked up, and passengers — accustomed to delays but grumbling automatically — were alighting to join the congestion on the pavements. It was a few stops only from our home stop, so my sister began the familiar walk along the main road, accepting the slow pace, and prepared for some jostling among so many people all wanting to get home.
“Typical, innit? Get ’ome late every Sat’day afternoon, don’t we? I wonder wot’s wrong, Ernie.”
“Bloody rocket, prob’ly, Ted. Another bloody flyin’ gas-main, ‘f you ask me. ‘Flyin’ Gas-Mains!’ ’ow do you like that name for ’em? I laughed when I ’eard it.”
Ted snorted appreciatively. “That’s a good one, Ern.” After a pause, he said, “But not funny for the poor blighters wot cop it...”
Ernie was right. There had been a V2 half an hour earlier, and soon they were picking their way through scattered rubble, concentrating on their footing, conversation shelved.
The rocket that cost Joyce Lee her eye had landed in parkland, in the soft earth of grass and shrubbery. The chaotic aftermath that Lorna met off the tram showed what a V2 could achieve in a busy, built-up district. Housewives had been bustling around Woolworths, carrying their shopping bags and shepherding their youngsters through the “threepenny and sixpenny” store, hurrying to finish the weekend shopping.
Like the proverbial bolt from the blue, one of Hitler’s revenge weapons plummeted onto this prime target, this crowded shop. One hundred and sixty-eight people died, and hundreds more were injured, giving New Cross the sad distinction of receiving the rocket that caused the heaviest toll of all V2s.

*

When the V2 campaign started, Britain had been at war for five years, and I had been a boarder at Bancroft’s for three of them. The school was where most of my life was lived and, even during the holidays, it hung in the background, the setting I would soon be returning to.
I did not like its restrictions, its pettiness, its monotony, yet I felt secure in its routine. I knew what to expect, and what was expected of me, and I let time pass. By now, I was sure that I would never excel, either in the classroom or on the sports-field. I did not stop trying in either area, altogether, but the keenness of my first year or so at Bancroft’s was blunted.
I almost never thought of pre-war. The war might just as well have been on forever. I should have been thinking ahead to what I might do when I left school; I was, after all, fourteen years old, approaching fifteen. I should have thought of the future — my future — but it was easier to concentrate on the present.
If the notion of “when I leave school” was hazy, so, too, was that of “when the war is over”. In Bampton, Mary and Meryl had talked of “after the war” almost from its outbreak. Now, five years on, despite massive Allied presence across the Channel, no one suggested an early peace. I looked forward to the war’s end, as did everyone, without any clear idea of what to expect from peace.
For Londoners generally, however, this last winter of the war was a grim time. Their physical surroundings were dreary and dilapidated. Bomb-sites may have made excellent playgrounds, but they were also eyesores: ugly wastes gathering litter and overgrown with weeds, reminders of violent times and suffering.
Years of neglect, and shortages of materials for repairing bomb damage, or for basic maintenance, gave a depressing shoddiness to suburban streets. Shop-fronts were boarded up — some had been since the Blitz — and fading signs, hastily daubed long ago, pronounced “Business as Usual”, or “Closed for the Duration”. Above ground shelters, crudely built brick structures now pockmarked by shrapnel and disfigured by graffiti, sat obtrusively along the centres of many little streets.
Every park had its clutter of defence paraphernalia; here a gun emplacement, there a searchlight, or barrage balloon. And scruffy huts for the crews, and storage sheds. The once open heaths and commons, London’s breathing spaces, were criss-crossed with trenches and barbed wire, and choked with military dumps and depots, and the ubiquitous Nissen hut.
Food shortages meant endless queues. Fuel shortages meant inadequately heated homes. Bitter weather — dank pea-soupers and severe frosts — meant icy roads and burst pipes. Throughout this winter, as well, the air campaign against London continued. There were still sporadic conventional air raids. Flying-bombs came in from the east, now being launched from aircraft. And many, many rockets fell during December and January.
Morale was low. Londoners were tired and dispirited. Perhaps the best thing to do was to dream of better times; and sing along with the wireless. There was the bouncy My Dreams are getting Better all the Time, and the wistful Long Ago and Far Away — “I dreamed a dream one day”. Life was bleak at home, and no end to the fighting in Europe was in sight. Why not croon with Bing, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”?

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