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Living in North London at the outset of the Second World War I was involved in a number of memorable incidents: —
On the way to deliver a message at a house in Crouch End the Air Raid warning sounded. I reached my destination just as heavy gunfire developed. In answer to my knocking at the front door the occupant said “You had better come inside”
As I stepped into the hallway a three-inch jagged piece of shrapnel struck the door just where I had been standing seconds before. That piece of metal became a souvenir for many years.
In the street where I lived, bordering Alexandra Palace, an incendiary raid began. From my window I saw that the shed in a nearby garden was fiercely blazing and that a solitary Air Raid Warden was trying to put out the flames with a stirrup pump. I decided to go to help. As I did so, some incendiaries fell on the other side of the road. “See what you can do with those” suggested the Warden. I could find no sand so I fetched a bucket of water from my house and empted on the incendiaries. They instantly fragmented causing other Fires in the garden. Fortunately I was able to use earth to prevent flames reaching the house itself; where Peter Sellers lived with his mother.
One September Saturday afternoon at the Hornsey Open Air Swimming Pool I was taking part in a Charity Swimming Gala. There was a Daylight Air-raid of terrific proportions. We were unable to get the hundreds of spectators to take shelter as they watched spellbound at the dog-fights going on over another part of the city with planes crashing in flames and parachutes drifting with a background of black smoke. As we could not get the crowd to disperse we organised an impromptu collection For the Red Cross using the tin helmet of a uniformed soldier who happened to be on leave and was among the crowd. It was after a subsequent more terrible raid that I wrote the poem “London October 3rd 1940” published in a book of poems in 1941 and later the subject of a broadcast alongside poems by Eric Gill and Edith Sitwell.
One other memory which remains vividly, from the London blitz was the day when in passing a pile of debris which was all that remained of a house I saw the owner among the rubble. Suddenly she stood up and turned to me with beaming face. In her hand was a pudding basin. In triumph she told me. “Around this basin I will rebuild my home!”
In College, just outside Nottingham, I was on fire duty the night Nottingham was blitzed and from my roof top vantage point saw the formation of enemy planes pass overhead; I saw every bomb which dropped and the flames that gradually spread across the breadth of the city. I could only watch in horror realising the predicaments of the residents, so many of them known to me.
As a Theological student, classified as being in a ‘reserved occupation’ I was required to give up one night each week to look after a night hostel which provided accommodation For troops passing through’ This involved hours of non—stop ‘washing—up’ at the sink with the same crockery to be cleaned in endless succession. It did not take long before one could recognise by the chipped edges and cracks that the same item had been in my hands countless times in the same evening. This session was then followed by a sleepless night controlling the applicants desperate for sleeping accommodation. It was not easy to tell weary men that there were no more beds available!
In 1943, my college course completed, I began Church work among the Docker’s Families of Greenwich. This included nightly Youth Club sessions dealing with some of the most awkward young characters of the district. Then we encountered the worst of the Flying—bomb raids, several times conducting services while raids were in progress. On one occasion some twenty small children filed calmly from the Church into the adjoining sandbagged soup kitchen. I had just got them squatted under the steel tables when a bomb blast burst open the doors, blew in the windows and sent scattering glass in all directions. There were no casualties. With The raid over the kids ran excitedly home to their mum’s to tell of their experience.
Once standing with my mother in the centre of the lawn a flying- bomb suddenly appeared over the roof—tops a few hundred yards away. The engine stopped, which indicated that it was about to dive. It seemed to be aiming straight at us. There seemed no escape. Suddenly, one wing tilted, it curved away and crashed into the river bank at the end of the road!
Because of blackout restrictions the Congregation was divided as to whether the evening service should be brought forward to the afternoon. When put to the vote at the Church Meeting the voting was 50 -50. To satisfy all, I therefore decided to go though with both times so that nobody was disappointed. In the evening session there was one lady who had a habit of arriving late and making a rather conspicuous entrance which disturbed the other worshippers. One night the air-raid siren sounded after the Service had begun. For a while all seemed quiet outside. Suddenly there was the sound of aircraft and exploding bombs. The church door blew open and the lady was blown into the church by the blast. Thereafter she was always on time, One afternoon during a Women’s Meeting a flying—bomb fell in a nearby street while we were in the middle of singing a hymn. The singing stopped as part of the ceiling fell on us. For a few seconds there was silence, then, defiantly, the pianist jammed her fingers hard on the piano keys, the gasping assembly immediately responded by raising their voices and finished singing the interrupted hymn with a volume I had never heard from them before. I closed the meeting and those brave women hurried off to their homes to see whatever their future was going to be.
That is the spirit I remember from those War years.

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