Extracts from "My Life In Travel" and Wartime remembrances
1. The War Years
In 1936, we moved to a brand new end terrace house near Pinner, in Sir John Betjeman's "Metroland". Just 12 miles from London, we could travel to town and country, by steam, or on the new electric Metropolitan and Piccadilly trains. I really feel sorry for later generations unable to experience steam trains on a regular basis. None of the jerky start you get now, just an almost imperceptible movement as you rolled along-side the platform, gradually picking up speed, leaving the station behind at a good rate.
Holidays meant a trip back to the North, and from the moment war clouds gathered, in 1939, I was off on a regular shuttle between Pinner and Consett. North when bombing was at its worst, and south again, whenever there appeared to be a long lull in the raids.
The Air Raid Shelters were a great venue for us kids to play in. The Parks at Pinner and Cannons Lane - 12 miles from London - were honeycombed with tunnels filled with wooden bunks. All sorts of adventures were acted out hiding and hunting in their depths.
At Pinner the emergency exits were covered by a steel hatch, which we could lift to peer out. At that moment our fantasy changed the game to submarines. Our street though was lined with brick built shelters which were relatively uninteresting. Nobody really used them after a while. They became rather smelly and filthy from disuse. Instead Dad cut up some floor boards, and put a mattress down under the house, which had a concrete slab about 3 feet below. Even then we usually only bothered to go down to the Dining Room when the Sirens sounded, and we had another mattress in a corner between the wall and the fireplace - they said that was the safest place to be. So the Shelters were left entirely for our use.
The table was set up where Durley Avenue widens. The Williamsons lived on the south side and a VC from WW1, Mr. Spackman lived opposite. That looks like Mr.Henry in the garden of No.70 in the right hand picture.
Opposite 70's
Heavens knows where he got it, but one friend was able to get hold of Carbide. This was carefully measured into an old Milk Bottle, filled with water, capped, and then we ran like hell. Another boy's father worked on London Underground, and he was able to bring along the odd detonator or two. These required a candle to set them off. Just how nobody got injured is a miracle. But as I said, "the blissful ignorance of youth". Having retired to the garden side of hedge and fence, little heads peered over the tops to watch for anxious adults flying out of their front doors to see what had happened.
We always wanted to be up early after a raid. First out on the streets always got the best pieces of shrapnel. I kept my treasures in an old biscuit tin. It went everywhere with me, and when things got bad, and I was packed off back to the North of England, my shrapnel was first into the Case. It was the first big loss of my life, when Auntie Bella threw it out with the rubbish. Looking back I realise now that an adult could have no idea how precious those rusty jagged lumps of shells were to a youngster. By the time I got back to Pinner, we weren't getting so many aerial visitors, and shrapnel was becoming a rarity. When they did come, they dropped long strips of black paper, sometimes silver on one side. The street was covered in them, and they hung from the telephone wires for ages. We examined them, but they were very disappointing as far as we were concerned.
Dad was an electrician, unable to join up because of his 'curvature of the spine', (bit of a humped back), and he had to work at Acton Bolt, a nuts and bolts factory in the West
London Factory Belt. Now this was a favourite spot for our nightly visitors, and incendiarys showered down more often than the interminable London drizzle. So he had to take his turn on the factory roof - fire watching! We were lucky we didn't lose him, (probably the Lord decided two of his brothers in the first lot was enough), since they flattened most of the surrounding factories. One night they hit a neighbouring butter company, and the greasy stuff was deposited all over Dad's Factory Roof. He said you had to see the funny side, he was slithering all over the place, and nearly went over the edge.
Then they started putting up Posters warning people about anti-personnel bombs that the Germans were using. There was a picture of one, a 'butterfly bomb'. It had round wings on it that would fly open, and explode if picked up. We actually went out looking for them. Thank Heavens we didn't find one.
Mum had to take turns at an Air Raid Warden's Post in Cannons Lane - Post 37. I dont think much ever happened, and it was more of a Club. In fact that's what it became after the War - everyone in the Area joined the Three-Seven Residents Club, and organised outings were arranged to theatres, Southend, Eastbourne etc. But it did mean we had another helmet to use in our Games. Bit of a funny shape though, with long sides. Quite different from Dad's black fire watching helmet, which was just the same as the troops had.
As for Gas Masks, they were too common. We had to carry them to school, and if we went out anywhere. So they were something to get rid of rather than play with. Besides they were awful to wear. The rubber was so tight around your face, and the big round filter was heavy and pulling down all the time. "Got your Gasmask", Mum would call out, rather than "Bye", when it was time for school. We really only used them when on an odd occasion,, our School put us into a Shelter on an exercise. They pretended that they were releasing Tear Gas. No-one was game to pull the rubber side open with their finger and find out though. They were issued in a brown cardboard box, which soon fell to pieces. Then you went shopping for something more permament. They got me a round chocolate coloured cylindrical tin, which was hanging on a loop of string, and was a heavy nuisance, pulling on my neck for the duration.
One day, a friend said, it'll be "D-Day" soon. "Woss D-Day", I remember asking. "Dunno", was the reply, "But its gonna be big".
The country-side wasn't far from Pinner then, and it had its fair share of attractions. Mostly the road signs which we just had to swing round to point in some other direction. "Confuse the enemy if they invade", was the excuse we had ready, if we were caught. We also had our eyes on the big logs that lay on the roadside verges. These had a big wheel on one end, and were pivoted on a stone at the other - ready to pull round across the roads if the invasion did come. But they were too heavy and we never did manage to move any of them.
As I look back, it wasn't all that much safer in the North at Auntie Bella's. Consett was a big Steel town, perched on the northern edge of the Pennines. The Huge Works jutted out over the edge of a Cliff, and would have been very easy to pick out by enemy bombers. They couldn't stop the great clouds of sulphuric yellow smoke, nor the steam of thick cloudy steam pouring out of the tall water coolers. At night showers of red hot slag poured down the sides of the mountain high tips. Newcastle was only 14 miles away, with more heavy industry to attract the Heinkels. The nearest they got to us though, was one or two bombs on the Cemetery in Black Hill - about a fifteen minute walk down the Hill.
One day in Consett, we saw an unattended Bren Gun Carrier. That was great fun, until a soldier saw us, and chased us away. Well, after all, they had taken away the old first world war tank that used to be in the Park, to melt down to make new guns. What did they expect us to play with then?
"Come down to Blyth for a break", said Uncle Frank, who was not really related but a good friend of Dad's. Being a Master Mariner, the powers that be, in their inifinite wisdom, sent him off to join the Royal Air Force. The R.A.F., fortunately had a bit more sense, and put him in the Air Sea Rescue. At Blyth, he was the Station Commander, and arranged for me to go down to the Base, to have a look at oneof the boats . If that was a day to remember, the night capped it. They came over in the early hours, shooting down
the Barrage Balloons (Naval Ones with the funny thin fins), and the whole sky was lit up from the falling flaming deflating carcasses.
A lady across the street had a narrow escape. She opened her front door, and a bullet struck the doorstep. That weekend in Blyth afforded me a further bit of one upmanship. They actually had a 'Morrison' shelter. These were big steel tables, kept in the kitchen, and when you went to bed, you were supposed to fasten a steel mesh net to the sides. Everyone else I knew had only slept in the street shelters or an 'Anderson'.
Come 1944, I was back in Pinner, and the sirens started to go more frequently again. The doodlebugs were getting everyone a bit edgy, so Uncle Jim suggested that we spend one particular weekend out with them at Little Chalfont. It was about 11 o'clock that Sunday morning when Chalfont got its first one. Dad was convinced then that they were following us. Uncle Jim had said if anything happens get under the Grand Piano. We all made for it, then looked around. Where was Uncle? His worst fears of the War had been realised. The flying bomb had arrived while he was on the netty. It sounded as if it was overhead when the engine cut out, and someone said that's alright when you hear it stop. Then the appalling crashing explosion as it went off - even though nearly half a mile away.
By 1945, school and the interminable homework was a bigger concern. It really interfered with my radio programmes. If you didn't know the latest catch phrases the next morning, from "Itma" or one of our other favourites, you were right of it, and frequent calls like "Have YOU done your homework yet?", would invariably make you miss one.
It was however, a quiet pleasant evening with the radio off, when we got our first bomb damage - a cracked pane in the French Windows. There was just no warning whatsoever. The glass cracked as the blast wave hit us. Our thick and really heavy velvet curtains billowed up and went nearly to the ceiling, even though the windows were all shut, then slowly ruffled down into place again, as the weird sound of a receding whooshing noise followed the explosion. I'll never know what the Germans had against our Cemeteries. This time it was the one at North Harrow, nearly a mile away. Even
then the Rocket only got the Entrance Gates, and badly damaged some neighbouring flats.
Everyone avidly followed the news, particularly when the Allied Advance was on. We read the Papers so thoroughly, and re-read them until we knew every paragraph. At the Cinema, the Newsreels sometimes outdid the main features in popularity, so much so that some were turned into documentary films which got top billing themselves. (The Desert War comes to mind as one example). When it was finally all over, I really and truly thought that that was the end of the News. I just couldn't visualise that there would be anything else momentous enough for the radio to broadcast or the Cinemas to show as News.
We never missed a Saturday night at the Pictures. It was better to go during the week when the queues weren't so bad, but it was something we were used to. There were usually three line or four lines outside, the one and sixpenny queue through to the four and sixpenny. You never knew how long you would have to wait, as the films were always shown continuously, and some people would sit through to watch through to the end, if they had gone in, in the middle. There was a better chance in the cheaper seats,there being more of them. The longest I ever had to wait was about two and a half hours. The Euro-pean War was over, but we still had plenty of Prisoners who were allowed out at that time. The nearby Camp at South Harrow had changed from holding Germans to Italians.
This particular night there were quite a few of them in the queue, and they had patiently waited with the rest of us for nearly two hours, when the Manager came out, and said to them - "Sorry, No Prisoners tonight." People were pretty angry about his attitude, but he wouldn't relent. I wont forget the disappointment on their faces as they drifted off.
Uncle Dick was taken prisoner in the Desert by the Germans who handed him over to the Italians. It was a very anxious time for Auntie Mary, and I could sense the tension
in the family at Consett, when his letters stopped for about three months. Eventually when they started coming through again, they were from Germany instead of Italy. He, with a lot of others had gone 'walkabout'. They were almost on the Swiss Border when a German Patrol picked them up.
I was a month short of twelve when VE day came. Some neighbours took me up to town with them. There was such a crush of people outside the Palace. Not tall enough to see over adults' shoulders, they tried to lift me up, but was too heavy for them to hold me for long. Besides we almost had our breath squashed out of us with the weight of all the people crammed all around us. So I only got a far off glimpse of the King, when he appeared at long last on the balcony. Then we eased our way out and through the Gates into Green Park, and made off through back streets to Whitehall. Here we were back in the thick of it again, pushed this way and that as the enormous throng swayed first one way, then the other. Once we had seen Winny, we squeezed our way to the edge and made our way home.
I was staying with 'Uncle' Frank's family in Barry, South Wales, when VJ day arrived. It was a lovely sunny day, and we decided to cycle from Barry to Llandaff to visit some of their relations. We were somewhere past Wenvoe, when I got a puncture. There was a field on the other side of the road, and a grove of trees on the left hand side. I hadn't even got the wheel off, when a dozen or so Italian Prisoners came running through the trees, and bounded over the low fence. In no time at all they had mended the puncture for me. We just got to Landaff in time to hear the announcement over the Radio, that it was all over.
Writing all this has stirred up a few other memories. Like having to put up the black-out every night. Dad had made wooden frames filled with a thick black paper, which we
had to fit in place before any light could be switched on. Can't remember having to do this in Consett, but then we had gas mantles downstairs there, and went to bed with a candle. Perhaps the thick curtains were enough to stop the weaker green light? Anyway, we all had our own torches, an absolute necessity after dark.
If you lived in Pinner during the Forties or Fifties, why not exchange memories with Malcolm?
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