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Title : Luck , Chance, or Fate.?

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When war broke out on 3rd Sept 1939 I was on holiday at Dymchurch in Kent.
We had taken over a house together with aunts, uncles and cousins, a real house party. On the fateful day all were huddled around the ā€˜ wirelessā€™ listening to the sad news that we were at war with Germany. But what was a war.? What would it mean to me? It didnā€™t take long to find out.

First off all, the Dads went back to London, and the rest of us were stuck where we where .It was a case of ā€˜Is your journey really necessaryā€™? and ours obviously wasnā€™t.
But we were still on holiday, but not for long. All of us kids had to go to school.
This was not the way I wanted to start school, without any ā€˜matesā€™, but off we all went. Next I was horrified when I was told that I was expected to go back again in the afternoon. Surely I had heard it all in the morning.!!!

Come Christmas we were still there with no prospect of getting back to London.
I well remember that year choosing a train set for my present. Should I have the set with the coaches, or the one with the trucks and a tunnel.? There was no contest. It had to be the set with the trucks.. How else would I be able to get my troops to the front line.!!

Life continued in its apparently normal way, with family trips to the beaches, before they were mined, but not to build sand castles as had been the case before the war but to go beach combing to see what had been washed up that was usable or edible. The only problem was that when we found a case of sardines we had them for a month.

It was some months into the new year before we managed to get back to London and try to readjust to a ā€™normalā€™ life again. But we were a family again and it was great to have Dad there when I got home from another new school.

Before long it seemed that the phoney war was over; my bedroom walls were covered with maps of the war front, Dunkerque was behind us, and the ā€˜Battle of Britainā€™ was being fought in the skies over our heads. Every boy at school was an expert in aircraft recognition, and what the latest ā€˜scoreā€™ was, which was the best aircraft (invariably the Spitfire) and any boy with a brother in the Royal Air Force was a hero.

What seemed difficult to appreciate was that no sooner had we been told that we had won the Battle of Britain than the ā€˜Blitzā€™ started and we were being bombed each night. It became another ā€˜normalā€™ way of life to go to the shelter every night, settle
down into oneā€™s allotted space and hope that you could get some sleep. We played games, read books and did our best to carry on. This routine continued throughout the winter.

We lived on the top floor of a block of flats on an estate in New Park Road, Streatham in Crossman House. Above the top floor was a drying room that covered the entire building that was great for playing football on a wet day. It also gave a great view across London. I well remember one night in particular when there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing going on and everybody asking questions. .My Dad took me from the shelter up on to the top floor which was crowded with onlookers. Viewing the scene towards London there was a vast smoky red haze. Although I did not realise just what I was looking at at the time, this took place just after Christmas and was in fact ā€˜the night that London burnedā€™, 29th December 1940.It was not until many years later that I realised what I had witnessed when I saw that iconic picture of Saint Paulā€™s Cathedral in the centre of smoke and flames.

The Blitz and nightly trips to the shelter continued throughout early 1941. We would go off to our other ā€˜homeā€™ for a few hours or all night until the all clear sounded. We used to take our ā€˜grab bagsā€™ with us. Mine would have something to read, a pack of cards, a torch and some clean underwear. My mother came from the old school that believed that you should have clean underwear in case you got run over by a bus.!!
Mumā€™s bag had all the ration books, her insurance policy, and her best jewellery etc., and when the siren went so did we.

It is somewhat strange then that on the night of Saturday 8th March 1941 we were still in our flat after the siren had gone. We were still there some time later when the bomb fell.! The noise was terrible, the sound of breaking glass, dust and dirt everywhere, and all of us on the floor coughing and gasping for air, but alive. Having first called out for Mum and Dad my next thought was to ā€˜save my watchā€™. I had been given a pocket watch by my Aunt Jenny for my birthday which glowed in the dark. It was my pride and joy, and it had to be saved.

The ā€˜ bagsā€™ were grabbed and Dad led us out of the flat by torchlight. The first voice we heard said ā€œPut that light outā€. We didnā€™t know if that was for us but it was all we had to find our way down the stairs. When part way down the stairs a voice said ā€œStay where you are, the stairs have goneā€. There were two staircases in the flats, one at each end of the building and we hoped that they were talking about the one at the other end of the block .Dad said that he thought that we had walked far enough to be near the bottom by now anyway and so thankfully it proved to be.

When we reached the ground it was like a mad house, people running every which way. People shouting instructions, crying, calling out for others, sheer chaos, but we were all safe and I had my watch. Dad led us to a doorway in another block and told us to stay there while he sorted things out. While my mother was not happy about my dad going off we were not on our own as there were other people huddled in the doorway. While we were waiting another lad and I went to the back of the passageway to see whatever was going on. What we found was a large object on a parachute which was obviously hanging from the chimney stack on the roof. We did not like the look of it at all but were not sure what it was. As Dad had come back by now I told him what we had found. It did not take him long to decide that this was not a good place to stay. Who he had seen I donā€™t know, but the next thing I remember was going for a ride to the aid station on a fire engine with a number of other survivors. My only real complaint was that the fireman would not let me ring the bell.

The aid station was in the school at Abbeyville Road Clapham. The chaos inside was nearly as bad as at New Park Road. This was the first time we had seen what we looked like. Not a pretty sight. Dirty, dishevelled ,torn clothes, small cuts, but I still had the watch. Using a present day analogy it was like the first day of the sales at Harrods. Racks of clothes everywhere with the mums, in varying states of undress, scrambling over them trying to find anything even close to being near the right size.

It must have been the next day that we were billeted out to a lady just across the road from the school at 108 Cavendish Avenue, the new address I had to learn in case I got lost and went back to the old home. We were not with her for very long and I am only sorry that I can not remember her mane. On the 20th March just two weeks later we moved into our new home at 55 Mountearl Gardens Somehow or other Dad managed to salvage most of our belongings but we did lose a lot of things that night, including Old Bill my catfish who we had had for a number of years.

We lived at No 55 for the rest of the war, until I left home to get married, apart from my time in The Royal Air Force. There are many other tales to tell before the war ended from unexploded bombs to parties with all branches of the forces with the girls next door to the VE Day celebrations, but the events of this night need to be concluded first.

It wasnā€™t until after the war was over that I learned the full story of that night. When the bomb fell the shelter we were supposed to be in took a direct hit. 12 people were killed out right and many were injured .All those killed had lived in Currie House the block next to ours. .Mum never talked about it but would never go into that type of .shelter again. Our next door neighbours the Jennerā€™s were not listed among the dead but I do not recall Mum talking about her friend Mrs Jenner after that night, and with a Christian name like Tryphena one was not likely to forget her. I often wonder what happened to the Jennerā€™s and all the others I knew in those days.

After the war the block was rebuilt and the site of the shelter filled in, and today one would never know of what happened that night. It is for that reason and to the memory of those that died ,some of whom I would have known on those nights in the Blitz when we played draughts or shared comics, that I have written this narrative.`

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