"Blitz - 1940.
One sound that still sends shivers down my spine is the wail of a siren, the air-raid siren of Britain during the war. It is odd, this reaction, because I can't recall being really frightened at the time, though I'm sure that the fear of others, especially my parents, must have conveyed itself to me.
The air raid warnings seemed mostly to come late in the day, or at night. This may be false memory, based on my recollection of being woken from deep early sleep, bundled into an eiderdown, and carried to the Anderson shelter. The shelter was an arch-section structure, about eight feet long, six feet wide, and six feet high at the top of the arch. It was made of corrugated steel sheets, pre-shaped and bolted together, and was designed to be set into the ground about three feet, and covered with a foot or more of soil. A barrier was placed in front of the entry, in our case two old hot water cisterns filled with earth, with a crude roof over the top, also corrugated.
There were early warning signs when raids were likely. Radio interference began, and there were power drop-outs. I don't know the explanation of these effects, but they were real enough, and even at the age of six and seven years, I began to understand the connection. Then came the siren, and we were ready to trek down to the shelter, at the bottom of the garden. Dad would often wait, for many warnings were false alarms, to be followed soon by the single long note of the all clear. If the warning were genuine, then, distantly at first, came the sound of the German bombers. They had their own sound, as though their engines were unsynchronised, making a deep throb (I understand this now as a beat note, from the twin engines running at slightly different pitches, generating a note of pitch of the difference between the two). At this, we went below. Inside the shelter, there were three bunks, one on each side, and one at the rear. The bunks were only about 18-20 inches wide, not comfortable to sleep on for an adult. There may have been five bunks ultimately, when the Blitz was at its worst and neighbours shared our shelter. At this distance in time, such memories as I have of air raids run in together . There were warnings and actual raids before the Blitz began, but it is the nights of the Blitz that merge into one collection of memories. The Blitz began on September 7th. By that time, Dad had run a power lead down to the shelter, and we had electric lighting. There were emergency hurricane lamps, and bottles of water at hand for emergency drinking supplies. There were buckets of sand just outside the shelter, to help in putting out incendiary bomb fires. There was also a stirrup-pump, and a bucket of water.
Before the bombs began to fall, there was always AA gunfire, from units in local parks, and later from mobile units in the streets. There were searchlights streaking the sky, trying to pinpoint the enemy planes. The shrapnel from the AA shells was as dangerous as any debris from bombs, and a good reason in itself to stay in the shelter. At the height of a raid, it could be heard rattling down on the hard surfaces of roof and path. Bombs could be heard only when fairly close. Too young to understand the sequence of it, I now know that each whistling fall was awaited with held breath, and a sigh of relief when the explosion could be heard. For if it could be heard, we were still alive and safe. They often came close, the bombs. I remember especially one long loud scream of falling, followed by a loud explosion, then a tremendous 'whoof', and a shaking of the ground. This was a nearby gasholder, off Burgess road, being hit and exploding.
There were various kinds of bombs, named by us at the time. Incendiaries were small silver cylinders, looking innocuous, dropped in bundles which scattered over a small area and caused havoc and panic. There were land mines, dropped by parachute and exploding before they hit the ground, causing tremendous damage to surrounding buildings. There were delayed action bombs, timed to explode long after the bombers had departed. And plain unexploded bombs, that buried themselves in their craters and scared everyone around. One landed outside our house. There was no easy way to figure whether the bomb in such a crater was a dud, or a time-bomb. The bomb disposal squad had the task of finding out and if possible removing the bomb. Ours was a dud. The impact shook the house, cracked some of the brickwork and window surrounds at the front of the house, but left us uninjured, safe in our shelter.
For the most part, Mum ensured that I was kept safe inside the shelter during raids, but just once Dad let me poke my head outside during a daylight raid, to watch the theatricals in the sky. I'm glad he did, for the image remains with me still. A hazy grey-blue sky was streaked with smoke from burning buildings on the ground. Aircraft filled one quarter of the sky, to the south of us, towards the docks of East London. They were far enough away not to be of immediate danger to us. The German bombers still kept some semblance of formation, but were being harried by our fighters, diving and climbing in and around them. A loose barrage balloon was burning, drifting low under the level of the aircraft. There were parachutes drifting down, with airmen below. Theirs or ours, who knows? It was a scene to make a great painting, a warning.
Dad also took me for a walk after one especially severe night of bombing, to see the damage done to East Ham station bridge. The Woolworths store had been destroyed, and several people killed. Smoke still rose from the debris, and rescue workers were still searching the rubble for possible survivors. This was another image to haunt my dreams, and sometimes my waking hours."'
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