"Is it Gas?"

In June 1940 the "phoney war" had come to an end and the German army was flooding into France. At this time I was 14 years of age and my folks, who had thought thtat I was wasting my time at school in the country, decided that it was time for me to return home and start work. My Dad had found a job for me as a telegraph messenger in the Post Office; a secure healthy job for life. I had first passed the entry exam snd my comfortable life as a "country bumpkin" in Ashwell, Rutland was soon shattered. Things began well enough, cycling around the Camden Town/Euston Road delivering telegrams in the Summer was pleasant, although the apprehension on the faces of some recipients as they saw the arrival at their door of a telegraph boy (the harbinger of fateful news of some loved one perhaps) was sobering. Then the blitz started. When the sirens went, the order was to take shelter, if we could. Sometimes lorries laden with unexploded bombs would hurtle along Euston Road for their unhealthy burden to be deposited in Regents Park and detonated by the bomb disposal teams. Then, in September, the night raids began. It was impossible for us to take on board the destruction and suffering that was taking place in the East End. We were just grateful that "gerry" had not yet regularly aimed his bombers in the direction of North West London, where we lived and worked.

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