About the contributor

I was born on the 26th of October 1929, at 63 Manning Rd, Dagenham, Essex. My mother had three other children and a fifth was to come along just before the ww2 started. We were all very backward scholars because of the way my father kept moving us from one part of Dagenham to another, plus a shortish time in Oldchurch Road , Romford, to keep us one step ahead of his creditors. I went to eight schools in nine years, most in Dagenham. The first was Spurling Rd , next, the old village school,then Grafton Road, next the one I forget in Romford. Then there were Hunters Hall and Eastbrook and the two schools as an evacuee.

I was sent to Norfolk first, on the first of September 1939, two days before the start of hostilities, with five other kids from Eastbrook, but they returned to Dagenham, one by one until I was left alone so I got my dear old Mum to fetch me home. The 1st evacuation lasted just nine months, the date was June the something 1940, the time when the war really begun with the Battle of Britain.

It was a big adventure to me, going round the streets searching for shapnel and other bits and pieces, but as time went on the raids got heavier and nearer and several bombs and an ariel Torpedo dropped in the next street to ours as we lived now at 26, Victoria rd Dagenham and It was a cul-de-sac as Briggs bodies had their sports ground there which is now where Dagenham and Redbridge play there Home matches.

We were now going to bed in the Anderson to save having to get up in the cold and carry our clothes down the shelter, and one night we heard this very loud bang and then a lot of small popping sounds. My Mum said it was the corks of the beer bottles popping out from the heat of the fires. The next morning my sister Bet and I went scouting around to find what it was, and we soon found out what the noise was. We had a small Christmas Cracker factory the other side of the Sports field in Pondfield Road and it had been flattened by a bomb and paper Hats, Whistles and all sorts of goodies laying around, a lot of which went up our Jumpers a were taken home for a closer inspection, in other words, we nicked them.

The following day we were sitting on top of the shelter, blowing whistles wearing an assortment of paper hats, and watching the dogfights overhead, when we heard the screaming of a falling bomb. My mother shouted to us and we all made a rush for the entrance of the shelter and tumbled in. I was the smallest so ended up at the botton, in such a heap that I never heard the explosion. A bomb had just missed the Sterling battery factory and burst in the road smashing a water main. A column of water was shooting up about 50 feet in the air. We ran home and spent the rest of that lovely summers day, filling sandbags to stop the water getting in the Shelter.

Now the miracle.
My Mother said that she had had enough and she packed a bag with some clothes and Personal things like Ration Books and Identity cards and we got on the Number 103 bus to the Civic Centre, and we walked to Winifred Rd where we had friends as this place was one of our addreses where we had lived a couple of years ealier.. Our friends put us to bed in their lovely Concrete Shelter with bunk beds, and we slept like the Dead for the first time in weeks.

The next morning, my Mum said she was going to the council people In Valence Avenue to see if they would send her and me, and Bet and our little baby sister Viv away to the country. In the meantime we were to go back to our house and get the rest of our clothes, or as much as we could carry. As we approached our back garden we saw a big pile of soil piled up where our shelter was, and the biggest hole you ever saw. Our shelter was out of the ground and on its' side and it was obvious my mother had prayed for us and we had survived. Three days later we were on a train to Gloucestershire where we still live. We thought we would be brought back to Dagenham,, but they just forgot all about us and left us to get by. Still its' nice to hear some of the old farm boys speaking with an East End Accent!!

My brother Ted was called up in 1939 and survived the war but died young at 58 with acute asthma. My other brother was called up a few months later and spent most of the war in India, and at 83 is still, well, Victor. My darling Sister Bet worked all through the rest of the war in a munitions factory but has now passed away at 76. My dearest, Wonderful Mother who saved all our lives died in 1963, and our little Vivienne is now 65 and has her two children to comfort her. Me,.well I am 76 next birthday and I have the excitement of waking up each day and feeling everything to see what has stopped working in the night or fell off!!!!!
If anyone remembers any names I have mentioned I would love to hear from them

Bob Mountain(Still Mooning Over the Dagenham Girl Pipers.