From Lewisham to Gold Beach

FROM LEWISHAM TO GOLD BEACH

New Year 1939; we sang happy days are here again, believing we were seeing the last of the economic depression. The people of Lewisham and Deptford were not to know that there loomed a darkness that would rival any pestilence or catastrophy in its history. In the autumn of that year, German aircraft bombed the Shetlands and on the 27th of March 1945 Germany despatched a rocket which exploded in Orpington Kent. Although no casualties resulted on either occasion, between these dates 100,000 tons of missiles killed over 60,000 civilians and injured 87,000 in the UK. The first to die in Lewisham was a 15 month old baby on the 17 march 1940. The last to die were 8 people when a V-2 rocket exploded. In between, 1700 people were killed or fatally injured in Lewisham and Deptford. 261 lives were lost in 21 days of September in 1940. Properties that escaped direct hits were nontheless badly damaged. It was all too common to find when you emerged from the air shelter that you did not have a street door or windows or even that you no longer had a home. The morning air after a nights raid was pungent with the stench of burnt dampness. The dejected and tired look of Firemen, Rescue workers and Wardens searching for survivors among the ruins, and the cheerful Salvation Army and Womens V service with their cups of tea was now becoming part of everyday life. Those of us that were too young or too old for military service were doing voluntary service. Apart from our own jobs,we were members of the Home Guard, an organisation set up to combat the threat of invasion. Our duties were to learn how to use weapons like rifles, hand grenades, and anti incendiary bomb devices. We would get on parade after work and drill and receive professional instruction from regular army personnel. All this put us younger chaps into an apprenticeship for when we came of age for regular service. As the threat of invasion lessened so the blitz abated, but the irregular sneak raids would catch us off guard with awful consequences. On one such occasion, Sangley Road School in Lewisham was bombed killing thirty four children. During what was known as a lull, things would return to normality to a certain extent. Although our towns were still blacked out, dance halls, cinemas, and Saturday football returned. Great names like Stanley Mathews, Walter Hamond, Freddie Mills and Len Harvey entertained us at local venues. The Home Guard would parade through the streets with a drum and fyffe band collecting for Wings For Victory or Battleship Week. The band would look splendid in their army uniforms. Those that would play the fyffe would blow out their brains while the rest of us who could not play would run our fingers along the reeds to the air of Colonel Bogey. When D-Day came I was of age to land with the 2nd Battalion the Devons, on Gold Beach. I lasted until the 11 July 1944 when I was wounded and flown back to Blighty. One last word, the stretcher-bearer that attended to me said as I was hoisted onto a jeep 'You'll be alright. I'll see you see you down Deptford in The Harp of Erin for a pint'. I never did see that man again, but for some years after the war I nearly became an alcoholic waiting for him!

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