Part 2 - The London Blitz

Sunday September 3, 1939 was a sunny, beautiful early autumn day in London. All the air raid sirens sounded at 11
a.m. as Neville Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister, made his radio announcement that war was declared and we
were "fallen it" in line in front of our "station" in full uniform and with our military type gas masks - but really not
having the least idea of what was going to happen and what we were to do about it - and scaring the local residents witless!

But nothing happened - absolutely nothing and there came almost a year of what was called the "phoney war" - Hitler
was busy establishing himself in Poland and it was not until the spring of 1940 that he began moving his army and
airforce to the west to eventually occupy Europe and started bombing RAF airfields, especially in the south of England
- mainly those protecting London. So we in the AFS we had nothing to do but "train!"

So much so that the Fire Service started reducing its strength - releasing anyone who wanted to go elsewhere and I
was one of those who left (being bored doing nothing and already volunteered for the RAF as soon as they called me).
In the summer of 1940 I took a job (with Trinity House as a junior clerk at their Blackwall Workshops Depot on the Thames)
and joined the "Home Guard" an auxiliary of the Army formed of boys, reservists (those whose "trade" exempted them
from call up for the army, navy or airforce) and older men (beyond the then "call-up" age limit of 40) to "defend" against
invasion, which we still thought would definitely come - the regular British army by then being mostly in France (and
subsequently somewhat disorganized after being overrun and evacuated from Dunkirk).

In the Home Guard ("Dad's Army") we used to "train" at the weekends and (as I lived "nearby") I was assigned to a
unit attached to the London Docks, so eventually I did duty at them all through the original London Blitzes, right there
in the - most heavily bombed - East End of London. So I know first hand of what I write. When the blitzes came we did
rotating "guard" duty one or two nights a week plus some training at the weekends - other than that we were free to
pursue our normal daytime jobs.

Living in the East End, as we did - only two or three miles from the River Thames and the London Docks, I - and my widowed
mother and the three older sisters still living "at home" experienced each and every one of those "real blitz" raids. My other
two sisters and my three brothers were all married and living elsewhere - some nearby, some in other parts of London, one
sister in Coventry. It is a fact at the time of the blitz - and all through the war it was reckoned to be was "safer" to be at
a UK military base far removed from London!

Our original house at Bow was bomb damaged beyond usefulness in the spring of 1941 - the whole front wall blown
out, by a direct hit that a house just the other side of the street suffered - and in which the whole family were killed
We were relocated at another house a mile or two away. We became inured to the constant raids and, as far as possible,
carried on our normal work and spare time pursuits - even going to "the movies" once a week - once was all we could afford
- or going to local "amusement arcades" - pinball machines, where the prizes - if you won one - were eggs - real eggs,
which were otherwise rationed. Yes, there was a "Black Market" as early as that.

Originally every home was given an "Anderson Bomb Shelter" constructed of galvanized corrugated
iron - the men of the family had to dig a hole (about eight feet by five) roughly five feet deep in the "backyard" -
garden - far enough from the house walls to escape damage from them if they fell. The shelter was sunken into that
and bolted together and the earth from the digging piled up over its sides and roof, The family was supposed to leave
the house and take shelter in it when the air raid warning sirens sounded. But six or seven people squatting on boxes
or wood shelves in an area no more than 40 feet square for as long as nine or ten hours - which is what most of the
original "real blitz" raids lasted - was very cold and unhealthy too.

The shelters were not properly ventilated and condensation - from breathing alone - built up on the bare metal walls
so it was damp and unhealthy and most people - my family included - eventually moved back into living in the
semi-basement rooms of their houses, to live, eat and sleep. My mother started us doing so in November 1940 by
declaring "I'm not staying in that damp hole any longer - if "my number" (death) is up it'll happen wherever I am so I
might as well enjoy the comfort of my own home!" When the front wall of our house was blown in she and my three
sisters were sleeping in beds in the front semi-basement room - I was sleeping in a small room at the back of the same
basement - and sleeping the deep sleep of youth, so deep that I did not even hear the bomb that directly hit the
house across the street - I woke to my mother yelling my name and stumbled through to them - falling over the door
of my room, which had been blown off its hinges by the blast, (I didn't hear that happen either!) and found them
sitting up in bed half covered by bricks but - other than bruises - uninjured and the front wall completely gone -
the room (and those above it) wide open to the outdoors, while the entire family in that house directly opposite were all killed.

It was generally accepted that the safest place to shelter in a multi storey house - was - "under the stairs at the lowest level
of the house" - virtually all the older (and most were well over 50 years old at that time) London houses at that time were
brick walled (sometimes the main interior walls were brick too) on a wooden framework- it was amazing to see
otherwise shattered houses where the staircase/stairway - and usually the wall against which it was built -
remained fairly intact - but certainly the stairs helping to support the wall and vice versa - so offering the best protection.

Contemporary history has it that the first German attack on London actually occurred by accident. On the night of
August 24, 1940, Luftwaffe bombers aiming for military targets on the outskirts of London drifted off course and
instead dropped their bombs on the center of London destroying several homes and killing civilians. Amid the public
outrage (Hermann Goering the then chief of the German Luftwaffe had said that only military targets in London would
be bombed) that followed, the new Prime Minister - Winston Churchill, believing it was a deliberate attack, ordered
Berlin to be bombed the next evening. He was a great man and leader, but I don't think he was right in his thinking that
it was deliberate - nor in his immediate re-action. But this tragic "accident" led off the air wars for the next four years.

That next night about 40 British bombers managed to reach Berlin with small bomb loads (and less than 20 made it all the way back -
it was beyond the normal range of the RAF bombers of that time) and inflicted minimal property damage.
However, the Germans were utterly stunned by the British air-attack on Hitler's capital city. It was the first time
bombs had ever fallen on Berlin. Making matters worse, they had been repeatedly assured by Hermann Göering that it
could never happen. A second British bombing raid on the night of August 28/29 resulted in Germans being killed on
the ground. Two nights later, a third attack occurred.

This enraged Adolf Hitler. In a speech delivered on September 4, Hitler threatened, "...When the British Air Force
drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150,000, - 230,000 - 300,000
or 400,000 kilograms. When they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their
cities to the ground. We will stop the handiwork of those night air pirates, so help us God!"

He tried but didn't succeed. Curiously enough - the very reverse of his promise happened. Eventually it was
mostly German cities that were literally razed and the German civilian casualties by the end of the war outnumbered the
British casualties by a ratio of roughly 10 to i.

On 30th August 1940, The German Radio News Bureau announced to London "The attacks of our Luftwaffe on British
aerodromes are only a prelude. The decisive blow is about to fall."

This decision to wage a massive bombing campaign against London and other English cities would prove to be one of
the most fateful of the war. Up to that point, except for that odd raid mentioned above, the Luftwaffe had targeted
Royal Air Force airfields and support installations and had nearly destroyed the entire British air defense system.
Switching to an all-out attack on British cities gave RAF Fighter Command a desperately needed break and the
opportunity to repair damaged airfields, train new pilots, repair aircraft and get a stock of new ones.
The original defence of the RAF airfields - the "Battle of Britain" - mainly fell to the Hawker Hurricane fighters,
which far outnumbered the number of the famous and more successful Supermarine Spitfires at that time.
"It was," Churchill later wrote, "therefore with a sense of relief that Fighter Command felt the German attack turn on to London..."

At 4.56 pm on the late summer afternoon of Saturday 7th September, (I and a couple of friends were at the local
Odeon Cinema in Hackney - just a couple of miles north of "Poplar" - seeing my surnamesake - Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz")
London's air-raid sirens announced the arrival of 375 German bombers and supporting fighters - in broad and generally sunny daylight.
Look at a map and you will see that London is only - at most - 60 odd miles from the east and south east coasts of Britain and it
is only another 40 miles or so to the coast of France from there - that part of France that Germany totally occupied at that time
- they had bomber and fighter airfields only a 100 miles from London - at most only an hour's flight for a
(heavily laden) bomber aircraft. Look again at the map above on this page and you will see that, coming from the east
(France) the closest (after the slim eastern suburbs)- and mostly heavily industrialized part of London and all the London
Docks were the first part of London they would reach - the "East End" as it was called. And the East End - throughout all the
raids - took the heaviest brunt of all the bombs, V1s and V2s - comparatively few bombs, other than the
incendiary raid of December 29, 1940 fell west of the central "City of London" and then rarely. One of my brothers and his
wife who lived at Catford in South West London never had a bomb fall within several miles of their home! Yes,
Buckingham Palace - in the "West End" of London had a bomb - twice in fact - and once the Houses of Parliament
were bombed but rarely the west end - beyond "The City" - was bombed, of just one raid, the bombing, V1s and V2s
generally followed the same pattern - to the East End. Why not? That was the nearest and easiest target.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were rarely hit - in fact the whole of Britain north of Birmingham, which is
only 100 miles north of London, suffered only rarely. I do not belittle the suffering that those other cities had - but nowhere else
suffered for so long and so continuously as London.

And, in London - that afternoon of September 7, 1940, we were used to such air raid warnings - we had been getting them for
six or seven weeks because of the Luftwaffe attacks on the airfields surrounding London but - until then - the actual
raids had mostly been on those RAF airfields and similar military targets, not on the city itself - and the "The Wizard Of Oz" movie
went on - only toward the end of it did we actually hear bombs - and feel the ground shake - bombs nearby - and then we
scurried home and smelled for the first time that unmistakable pungent smell which is the aftermath of high
explosive. The Luftwaffe came directly up the Thames to London from the sea and set the
London docks ablaze. As darkness fell, the fires burnt fiercely all over East London, and illuminated the efforts of a
London Fire Brigade which was to have almost no rest for over nine months. This was the dawn of the Blitz, and the
only mass daylight raid (the rest of the mass attacks were all night raids), until the advent of the V1s and V2s a few
years later - they came at any time day or night, being unpiloted but, on any given day or night - were far fewer in
numbers than the Luftwaffe bombers - the dawn of a campaign of terror which was characterized by the basically undaunted
spirit of the civilian population. I saw as much - if not more - calm courage and bravery in London than I later did on
the actual "firing lines!" Particularly in the women - they were as brave as any man I knew, saw or heard of. Witness
one incident a few months later when a burning (magnesium) incendiary bomb actually fell close to the back
door of our house - such incendiaries were dropped in "clusters" and were about 2 feet long and only about 6 inches in diameter
and weighed no more than 4 or 5 pounds. We heard the crash of it in the lower, paved portion of our backyard. We heard it "fizzing."
My mother partially opened the back door to see and yelled "it'll set the house on fire" and my sister Gladys who was with her at
the back door opened it wide, stepped out and grabbed the bomb by the fins, which were farthest from the burning part, and
threw it well away up the garden - actually it landed and burned harmlessly in the entrance to our - untenanted -
Anderson shelter - in my minds eye I can still see her face illuminated by the brilliant magnesium flame as she picked it
up - not afraid - just determined. I later saw aircrews get Distinguished Service Crosses or Medals for - what appeared to me - far
less dangerous feats. And many, many other "civilian" Londoners were just as heroic - all through those months. Where is their
memorial - where was the medal they earned? The "Battle of Britain" (gallant as it was) did not save London - its people did.

Every man I then knew who was in London through the blitzes and who later saw active service in the firing lines of
the Army, Navy or Air Force all agreed with me - that such "firing lines" were generally far less frightening than the
London Blitzes. The Americans who did not come into the war until after the "real" blitz knew mostly only the V1s and
V2S - which never came in more than fragments of the numbers of the blitz bombs - and then they only knew them when
they went to London on leave - I heard them say "jeez - I'm not going there on leave again - those damn things scare
you shitless" - and much the same was true of the Canadian Bomber Wing with which I served in the last years of the
war - whole aircrews would return from London leave and say "we'd much rather be on a Ruhr Valley raid than on
leave in London - its safer." Percentagewise it wasn't but it was less frightening. Being on the receiving end always is -
I now live in Canada where every man is comparatively free to hunt the abundant game - but I frequently postulate that -
if the ducks, geese, deer, elk and moose had guns and could shoot back - we would rapidly see the end of the hunting fraternity.

Although the daylight raiders were gone from London by 6 pm that evening of Sept.7, 1940 the fires were still burning
when the second mass wave of night raiders arrived as darkness fell to inflict more damage at 8.10pm.

That second raid lasted over eight hours - until 4.30am and, by dawn, London had nineteen major conflagrations,
huge spreading areas of flame. Nineteen fires that would normally have called for thirty fire engine pumps or more,
forty ten-pump fires and nearly a thousand lesser fires, any one of which would have made the front pages in peace
time. There weren't enough fire engines to cope with them. Thousands of homes in the inner East End suburbs along the
Thames were destroyed or damaged in one night and 430 men, women and children (some parents refused evacuation
for their children - others had unfortunately brought them back home after the months of the "phoney war") were killed
and another 1,600 seriously injured.

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