SIRENS AND GREY BALLOONS
by
Peter Hurdwell
****
PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS
This book available in print from
www.chargan.com
Sirens and Grey Balloons
Copyright © 2011 Peter Hurdwell
ISBN: 978-1-4658-9174-7
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Peter Hurdwell has asserted his right under the Copyright Act 1976 to be identified as the author of this work.
Photographs and images are the copyright of the author unless otherwise identified. The photographs of “Chingford bomb damage” are sourced from the book “Chingford At War” published by Chingford Borough Council in 1946, whose copyright is acknowledged.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
****
Dedication
To Wendy – my wife and closest friend.
****
Table of Contents
Chapter III Return To Chingford
Chapter V Eleven Plus Examination
Chapter VI William Morris School
****
Although our family home was in Chingford, Essex, both parents were country people having been born and raised in Surrey.
My father was born in Camberley, Surrey in 1908 and christened ‘Reginald Ernest’ and at the time of his birth was the second of two surviving sons.
The eldest son, Thomas, had been born in 1903 but died three years later from tubercular meningitis. Apparently, he used to say grace at meal times but after his death, the family never said grace again. Doubtless they felt that the ritual would have reignited their earlier sadness.
After attending Camberley Public School both my father and his brother Ray went to Farnham Grammar School where my father excelled at sport but his brother Ray, excelled at all things intellectual, with sport not seeming to have been high on his list of priorities. Thus, upon leaving school, Ray won a Boot’s (Chemist) scholarship to Nottingham University where he obtained a degree in pharmacy, whilst Dad applied for a position as a cadet reporter for the local Camberley News. Although he was selected over other applicants for the position, his family could not afford for him to take the job, as the family budget was stretched with Ray at university and the starting salary at the newspaper being insufficient for the family’s needs. Ray eventually ran a pharmacy in Portsmouth which sadly was demolished by German bombing early in the Second World War.
However, my father did find work at the local garage and started to take a particular interest in motor bikes, which, as it turned out, was quite an advantage later on. Thus, at the age of fifteen he purchased a 1910 Rover Motor Cycle. I have actually seen the very same model in recent years and it was a revelation of antiquity, having a 500cc four-stroke single cylinder motor, swept back handle bars, wide leather saddle with massive coil springs but with clutch and gears being notably absent from its design. The rider was required to paddle the contraption to start the engine and apply a compression releasing valve lifter to bring the machine to a halt. Fortunately there were no traffic lights in those days and riders were not obliged to take a driving test or have a Drivers Licence.
His family lived quite close to a hill off Park Street, Camberley and to facilitate the starting of the Rover he used to push it to the top of the hill and free wheel down the other side until the monster struggled into life. Coming home, the Rover lacked the momentum to negotiate the entire hill leaving him no option but to dismount and push it the rest of the way home.
One day he overheard his mother saying to a neighbour “Reggie must love his motorbike. He pushes it all the way to work and all the way home!”
As work was hard to find in the early 1920’s he was employed in various jobs on building sites including being a plasterer for a couple of years. However he later applied for and was accepted as a trainee in the London Metropolitan Police Force completing his training at Peel House, London in 1928.
It was, apparently, a great relief, given the depression and the vagaries of employment in the late 1920’s, that my father’s intake at Peel House had produced young men who had not only graduated into the London Metropolitan Police Force but who had also entered the ranks of those fortunate enough to have attained not just an interesting occupation but also the prospect of a safe and steady income.
Thus, upon graduating, this intake of budding Police Constables found various ways of celebrating their passport into new found employment. Most graduates headed for the nearby London pubs which abounded in the area but Dad, being a non drinker at the time, remained within the precincts of Peel House for the evening whilst the revellers sank the odd pint or two nearby.
However, he and a fellow newly appointed constable made the evening a memorable one by filling a chamber pot with lemonade into which they proceeded to launch a somewhat oversized gherkin into the sea of soft drink. Having left it on the dormitory landing they retired to their beds.
Needless to say, the newly appointed guardians of the law returned to Peel House in various stages of inebriation only to trip over the jerry, spilling its contents over the floor. I was unable to ascertain even in later years whether Dad and his fellow abstemious friend had ever owned up.
After working as a Policeman in Stoke Newington and Enfield, he finally became PC 254 in J Division, stationed at Waltham Abbey although after a couple of years he became a permanent fixture at Chingford Police Station. By then he had been selected to be one of twenty Police Motor Cyclists, in the Metropolitan Police, the first such ‘speed cops’ in Britain.
Although my father was a little short of six feet tall (nevertheless well above the average at the time), he was larger than life in so many ways. He had a jocular sense of humour, not of the bottom slapping uncle variety but somewhat of a more subtle hue in that he could appreciate the humour in a multitude of situations and manage to relate them to others in a picturesque fashion with slight embellishment but little exaggeration. He also had the ability to enjoy a laugh at his own expense which is so seldom the case these days. Many a time we kids would listen, spellbound by his narratives of some humorous episodes which had crossed his path during his duties as a policeman, but more of those later.
One of the most endearing aspects of his personality was that he was a good listener and his heart would go out to anyone who was in distress and one incident which he told me of in our many walks later in life showed his warmth and humanity, not to mention his considerable courage under trying and emotionally stressful situations.
During the depression in 1936, whilst on police duty, Chingford Police Station received a ‘phone call advising that at a nearby park a man with a knife had been seen chasing a woman’ and accordingly my father had been instructed by the station sergeant to attend the incident.
When he arrived at the park he managed to apprehend the man and when the situation had simmered down he endeavoured to find out what had transpired. He found that the couple were actually man and wife and happened to live in a house backing onto the park, thus allowing him to accompany the couple to their home nearby to ascertain the facts of the situation.
It appeared that the husband had been thrown out of work and, although having applied for a number of jobs over a substantial period of time, had been unable to obtain employment. Adding to his woes was the fact that he had loaned his car to somebody but the borrower had failed to return it or pay for its hire.
In a fit of depression he had decided to end it all and put his head in the gas oven (there were no safety devices in those days), intending to commit suicide. At that moment his wife returned home, the husband panicked and in his rage picked up a kitchen knife and chased her out of the house and into the nearby park.
What was my father to do? He questioned the couple about their personal lives and asked them how long they had been married and it transpired that they had been together for many years and that their relationship had been a happy one, in fact, his wife said that “they had never had a wry word in all that time”.
Dad explained that the penalty for attempted suicide was up to seven years gaol (in those days) and that attempted murder attracted a similar term of incarceration. He told them that if he carried out his duty as a policeman to the letter, the husband would be facing the possibility of a long custodial sentence if convicted in a court of law.
He then told them that he could return to the police station and register the incident as only a domestic argument with, hopefully, no further enquiries. He pointed out that if this course were taken and another such incident occurred between the couple, he would lose his job with the Police Force. This would affect not only himself but the livelihood of his wife and two year old son at home.
Much relieved, the couple promised that such a circumstance would not occur again and the ‘domestic argument’ duly appeared in the Police Station’s ‘Incident Book’.
Six months later, whilst on duty in the area, Dad walked into a cafe and saw the man in the corner having a cup of tea. The man looked somewhat embarrassed but upon enquiry told my father that shortly after the chase in the park episode, he had found employment and that both he and his wife were managing quite well. He mentioned the incident on one of our many walks through Epping Forest during one of my visits from Australia where I had migrated some years before
My mother was born in 1910 in a flat rented by the family overlooking a barber’s shop in Lightwater in Surrey and was christened ‘Mercy’, a name which she always disliked, so much so that in later years she insisted on being called ‘Mary’ by her friends. Although Lightwater was only about 15 kilometres from Dad’s home in Camberley, they had somewhat differing childhoods. My dad’s father was in his 40’s when military conscription was introduced into Britain during World War I and, as a consequence was not called up to serve in the military. Thus, the family was not separated from their father and he continued his normal occupation as an insurance agent and was never called upon to become cannon fodder during the long years of the conflict.
However, my mother’s father, who at the outbreak of war was operating a thriving retail grocery shop, being of military age, was called up in November, 1916 and served for the remainder of the war in the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment where he remained Private Percy George Gorton, Regimental No G/39184. He, like hundreds of thousands of young men was called upon to fight battles planned by imbecilic British generals who often spent much of their time in chateaux away from the action seldom venturing out to take a firsthand look at the results of their rampant stupidity.
Having completed his basic training he was sent to an infantry base in Etaples in France after which he finally ended up with the 10th Battalion Queens Royal West Surrey Regiment.
In July, 1917 he took part in the large Allied offensive known as the Third Battles of Ypres, more commonly referred to as Passchendaele.
As the First World War drew to a close the 10th Battalion was sent to France where he was subject to a German mustard gas attack in the area of the Somme. After recovering from the ordeal his battalion was involved in heavy fighting from March to September, 1918, the March battle in which he was engaged taking place in the Thiepval area at a village called Bucquoy.
At the conclusion of the battle a shell exploded in his trench which resulted in the death of his companions. He was eventually found wandering in No Mans’ Land, very shaken up.
In 2010 I visited the scenes of the battles in which the 10th Battalion fought. It was a very special experience for me to tread the soil on which the battles had been fought and to wander across No Mans’ Land as he had done in 1918. Little could he have imagined at the time that nearly a hundred years later his yet unborn grandson would visit that very spot?
Although he survived the war he died of Parkinson’s disease at the early age of 61, doubtless having some connection with the gas attack. I say ‘early’ with some conviction as his father lived to be ninety-four and his siblings shared similar longevity.
Life in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe during the First World War was extremely difficult for all families but particularly for those whose traditional breadwinners were away fighting the war for ‘the King’s shilling’. Mum, her sister and their mother were certainly no exception and with malnourishment and winter cold, their resistance to illness must have been very low. Thus, just as hostilities on the Western Front had ground inexorably to their close, so the force of nature dealt another blow to the struggling masses with the advent of the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic. Unfortunately all three fell victim to the flu although, unlike twenty-two million others, they recovered. I recall seeing a photograph of all three of them just after their recovery and they looked more like skeletons than human beings.
After leaving school at the age of fifteen, Mum, like so many other country girls, went into service, taking up a position as children’s nanny in the household of the British Army officer, Sir Rob Lockhart who in later years was to become a general in the Indian Army during World War II eventually becoming Commander in Chief of the Indian Army after that War.
My parents first met at a church function in Camberley, when Mum was fifteen and Dad eighteen. They soon became quite involved with each other but Mum’s father wasn’t at all pleased at her having a regular boyfriend. However, when Dad was invited to tea at the Gorton household in 1925, her father took an immediate liking to him and he also met with the approval of the whole family.
However, when my mother took up the position in the Lockhart household in Gloucester, their courting was confined mainly to meetings in London with each of them travelling by train to London from their respective places of abode and commuting back to their homes later in the day.
My mother was very happy working for the Lockhart family and always said that they were very kind and considerate to her at all times and, in fact, when Sir Rob received word of his posting to India, he asked Mum if she would be prepared to go with them. However, she felt that Dad was the one for her and they decided to marry as soon as they received the consent of Mum’s parents.
Eventually, on 20 June, 1931 they were married but not before Dad had applied for and received permission from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. The couple were married in Camberley Baptist Church with the wedding reception, (dry of course) being held in the Anglican Church Hall, Lightwater. Ironically, they spent their honeymoon at Margate in a small rented cottage called ‘Katoomba’, the irony being that thirty-four years later their three sons were destined to drive overland through Europe and Asia ending up in Australia where they settled, all within eighty miles of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.
My father’s first posting in the London Metropolitan Police Force was at Stoke Newington Police Station, situated a few kilometres to the north of central London, which, at that time was regarded as a typically working class area of the great metropolis.
Early in his career at this police station he encountered a circumstance which presented the opportunity for him to use his innovative skills as a young ‘copper’ on the beat. Late one night, after patrons had been ushered out of the many local pubs at closing time, he chanced upon a woman renowned by the locals including the police, for her regular over indulgence in liquor, in fact, on this occasion she was in such an advanced state of intoxication that she had stumbled on the pavement where she remained in a drunken coma.
What was this newly appointed policeman to do, bearing in mind that there were no radio controlled vehicles or mobile phones during those days. He needed to get her to the safety of the police station but how was he to do it?
He had a brainwave. In those days, if a member of the police force needed to transport a deceased person to the nearest police station, there was available a coffin-like box mounted on a low slung trolley built for the purpose. Thus, Dad went back to the station, pulled the manual hearse to where the woman lay prostrate, placed her in the box and started on the return journey to the police station where it was intended that she remain until her release in the morning. However, shortly into the journey, the motion of the make-do hearse must have awoken her from her drunken stupor and she started screaming, much to the surprise of passersby, not to mention my father as well.
On another occasion whilst on duty, he came across his long lost Aunt Annie whom he hadn’t seen or heard of for several years. Annie was his mother’s sister and her disappearance from the family home in Camberley had been a quite tragic affair.
Annie Sadler was one of a number of children in the household ruled by their didactic father William, in an autocratic manner typical for those times. He was also a leading light in the local Baptist Church. Unfortunately for his son and daughters, the Sabbath was supposed to be a sacrosanct day with activities restricted to attendance at church and bible reading. However, by all accounts, his children were a somewhat high spirited brood whose attitudes and desires were inevitably at odds with his precepts, particularly on the Sabbath when their behaviour was constantly watched over by their sanctimonious father.
Annie was certainly no exception and, whilst compliant with her father’s authority at home, she certainly enjoyed the freedom of life outside the family and sometimes returned home at a later hour than required by her father.
Thus, when she returned home late one evening he reprimanded her severely and made an example of her by banishing her to a home for fallen women. One imagines that her father also had one eye on what others in the congregation would have been thinking of his erstwhile daughter and was as much influenced by the judgment of his peers as those of his spiritual Master. Doubtless what Annie didn’t know about life during her cosseted days at home, she would certainly have found out shortly after residing with the other ‘fallen’ women.
However, this may be a rather stern assessment of my paternal great grandfather as he was popular at his local place of worship and was, by all accounts, an interesting raconteur, possessing a very sharp wit, a gift which he harnessed to great effect at the local Dunmow Flitch trials in Camberley.
The Dunmow Flitch Trials entailed contestants proving as eloquently as possible, that they and their wives had not had a harsh word during the previous year and a day. The trial also involved rigid cross examination by their peers who made up the jury. The winner of the trial ended up with a flitch of bacon from Dunmow in Essex, which apparently was where the most succulent pigs were bred.
By all accounts the old boy, armed with his lightning wit and casuistic gymnastics, allowed him to tie up his interrogators to such a degree that he won the flitch of bacon on many occasions. However, I imagine that he really did have an unfair advantage over the other contestants as his wife was as deaf as a post and would never have been privy to any of his comments at home, whether complimentary or otherwise.
WALTHAM ABBEY.
When my parents were first married, my father was posted to Waltham Abbey Police Station, having spent the earlier part of his career at Stoke Newington and Enfield Stations prior to that time.
Waltham Abbey was a beautiful country market town nestling amidst the Essex countryside and surrounded by lush farmland but still within reasonable travelling distance of Central London.
The Abbey itself dates back to the eleventh century and was established before the Norman Conquest in fact King Harold was reputed to have been buried within its precincts although, as yet, firm evidence to this effect has not been verified.
On trips back to UK from Australia I loved driving to Waltham Abbey and often gazed in wonder at an old oak tree in the abbey churchyard which had been mentioned in the Domesday Book. It had survived for almost a thousand years and its demise was only quite recent.
Not far from Waltham Abbey runs the River Lea. In my father’s later years we used to drive to Waltham Abbey, have a drink at the English Country Gentleman pub overlooking the river and, suitably sustained, would walk along the banks of the river, often discussing Izaak Walton’s book ‘The Compleat Angler’. Whilst we did not commence the trip at Hoddesdon as Walton’s three characters had done, we nevertheless passed meadows and fishing holes along the way south towards Tottenham Hale, as did the Angler, Falconer and Hunter on their way to their final destination three hundred years before.
With the pages of the book in mind we tried to imagine the spectre of a peaceful pastoral scene; a fresh dew-soaked morning, long, lush, succulent grass upon which a lone carthorse stood munching his breakfast in contented verdant solitude. How could the poor creature have possibly imagined that on the other side of the hedgerow an angler was taking an extravagant interest in his wellbeing? Nothing strange about that one would have thought except that one of the angler’s requirements was a long hair from his tail for use as a fishing line. Dad and I compared vivid mental pictures of the angler creeping up behind the poor unsuspecting creature without a care in the world, only to have a long hair yanked from its tail. It presented even more of a challenge had the angler required a second hair for fishing in deeper water.
One would only hope that the angler could restrain himself from stealing a hair from a horse whose owner was delivering milk in a nearby lane. Our minds ran riot as we pictured the horse rocketing along the country lane at high speed with the angler in hot pursuit trying to avoid the churns of milk as they rolled off the dray.
However, back to 1931 and my parents’ move to Waltham Abbey.
Only a hundred or so metres from the Abbey is situated Monkswood Avenue and it was here at number twenty that my parents took up residence in a small two storey, red brick house built probably at the beginning of the twentieth century.
My parents thoroughly enjoyed their early married life and Mum, in particular felt a wonderful sense of freedom. Being a housewife was very satisfying for her, particularly as she had given up work and could concentrate on being a home maker. This sense of freedom derived mainly from the new found experience of coming and going as she pleased, where previously, when living at home with parents, restraints were placed on the amount of time girls were allowed out of the ‘family home, in fact she, like most of the girls of that era had to be home by 9.30 sharp or otherwise incur the opprobrium of their parents.
When my father was on late turn’ duty, they often used to meet at a pre-arranged point on his beat and keep each other company as he continued his rounds on foot.
Whilst they had little money to spare they did manage quite well, even stretching the budget to visit the cinema when a good film was being screened. Alas, in the 1930’s the financial storm clouds were gathering due to the great depression, culminating in wage cuts for most workers including those in public sector. Thus, London Metropolitan Police wages were severely reduced and my father’s wages were cut by ten shillings per week, quite a sum in those days.
Unfortunately, there remained no alternative but to speak to the landlord and request that he reduce the rent by five shillings a week. He eventually agreed and their tenure at Monkswood Avenue was able to be maintained and it was at this address that in 1934 my elder brother, Gerald (Jerry) was born.
It was whilst my father was stationed at Waltham Abbey that the Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Lord Trenchard, became the newly appointed Metropolitan Police Commissioner. One of his first innovations was to found a new Police College at Hendon which sought to produce an ‘officer class’ into the force.
Having heard of the new college and as a young married man wishing to enhance his career prospects, my father applied for and was duly granted an interview for a place at the college.
He and another young constable from the station were subsequently summoned to Scotland Yard for an interview before a panel of senior police officers. It soon became apparent during the interview that these top brass officers were not at all interested in whether candidates were well versed in policing, police procedures or even the law which they had been charged to uphold and enforce.
He was asked where he had met his wife, at which school he was educated, what newspapers he normally read and was even questioned about ‘the classics’. Other questions were thrown in which were not even remotely connected to the police force.
It appeared that the newly created officer class were required to have emanated from good British stock and to have been the result of ‘good breeding’. Needless to say his application was not successful.
CHINGFORD
Shortly after my brother’s birth, my father heard of a vacancy at the Chingford Police Station and my parents became very interested in a posting to that area as new and fairly affordable housing developments were under way in that part of London. Thus, my father applied for and was accepted as a police motor cyclist at Chingford Police Station.
Chingford, situated only twenty kilometres North of London, but still in the county of Essex, had been just a small village in mediaeval times and, as it was surrounded by magnificent forest land, kings and queens of England used to hunt deer in the surrounding Epping Forest, the most famous of them being Henry VIII and Good Queen Bess. Legend has it that Henry VIII was hunting at nearby High Beech when he and his party heard the cannon at the Tower of London signifying the beheading of Anne Boleyn, a deed which eventually led to his being able to marry Jane Seymour, something he had been contemplating for some time.
The Royal Hunting Lodge at North Chingford, which is now a museum, was used by Queen Elizabeth I who is reputed to have ridden her horse up the stairway to her room. However it is doubtful if the horse ever emulated the antics attributed, wrongly one would hope, to Catherine the Great’s stallion, although most historians have dismissed that legend as pure fantasy, even though Catherine was noted for her unusual sexual proclivities.
Charles II was also a great hunter and used to spend days in Epping Forest hunting deer and was said to have spent some time in a lodge in Chingford, less than a kilometre from Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge. Apparently, on one occasion after an exhausting days hunting with his courtiers, he was relaxing after drinking a mead or three when a loin of beef was served. The king, in recognition of the appearance of the mouth watering loin, bestowed upon it a knighthood, pronouncing it Sir Loin’, a name by which we now recognise as a particular cut of beef. It was probably not the only loins in which the king displayed more than a passing interest, particularly when Nell Gwynne was around.
It took my parents some time to scrape up the deposit for a newly built home but in the interim they were renting a small, old style house in Willow Street, North Chingford. The convenience of the location to the Police Station was somewhat outweighed by the age of the home and its dampness which created more urgency for my parents to find a new home to buy. Thus, in the following year having hunted around every affordable building site in the area, they finally set their hearts on a ‘chalet bungalow’ at Chingford Hatch.
Fortunately Mum’s mother gave the young couple five pounds, quite a sum by my parents standards, which enabled them to put a deposit on their house at number 7 Blackthorne Drive.
By all accounts, the mortgage of six hundred and twenty pounds seemed like an enormous commitment but, for the first time, they could genuinely look upon the house as their very own domain, together with the Woolwich Equitable Building Society which would hold an interest for the next twenty-five years until the mortgage was finally paid off.
They moved into the empty house in the December, 1935. At the time they possessed no floor coverings, the only furniture being a bed, table and chairs, Jerry’s cot and some armchairs Dad had made himself. Mum used to recall how cold it was that Christmas for although they had lit a fire in the dining room, the house was like a butcher’s cool room as the brickwork and mortar were damp and still in the process of drying out.
The greatest attribute of their new home was undoubtedly its location for, at the time, the housing estate was situated in a semi rural area with fields and woodland where cattle grazed a few hundred metres away. When I was a small boy, I recall that cattle which had been grazing in nearby fields and woodlands, having grown tired of the same old fare these locations offered, used to wander along Blackthorne Drive, blundering into people’s gardens consuming flowers, plants and any greenery they could find, like a plague of sumo locusts leaving behind them gardens stripped of their greenery but enough cow dung to guarantee a new crop for their delectation in the coming spring.
The semi detached house itself was interesting to say the least and bore credence to the obvious fact that it must have been designed by a consultant whose experience in architecture had been limited to the design of sub standard barns and public conveniences.
There were only two rooms upstairs, both bedrooms, the rest of the living area being below on the ground floor. There was no bathroom or toilet upstairs which posed the inconvenience of being compelled to make the journey down the steep stairway should the urgency of a pee overtake anyone during the night. Chamber pots were somewhat out of vogue at the time.
The house, like most others of that era, had both a front and a back door, the only difference being that with this house neither door faced either the back or front of the building. They were both at the side of the home facing north, inviting the sub zero north wind to pay his unwelcome visits at all times on wintry days and nights.
The toilet was also quite interestingly located, being sited adjacent to the front door where, inevitably, anybody knocking at the front door could well be greeted by a thunderous fart from within by Dad or, if my mother was on the throne, a somewhat more refined twinkle. At all events it did have the effect of advertising to all and sundry that someone was definitely at home when they called.
My very first memory was, as a child, in May, 1939, being taken by my mother, accompanied by my elder brother, Jerry, in a steam train to visit my father in Whipps Cross Hospital, which was situated between the electoral boundaries of Walthamstow and Woodford. Strangely, the local member for Walthamstow was Clement Atlee and the member for Woodford was Winston Churchill. Both areas were but a few miles from Central London but in those days a social universe apart from each other.
Dad’s ward was situated on the ground floor of the hospital complex with Dad residing in the third bed on the left as we proceeded into the ward. He was dressed in white pyjamas which boasted a wide blue stripe with parallel stripes of less forceful hue. At the end of his bed was a hospital trolley on which I now presume must have been instruments and medicines although at that age I was obviously no judge.
In later years, a certain sad irony struck me in that the first memory I have of my parents together was at this hospital. Many years later we farewelled my father in 1991 and my mother in 2005 in the very same hospital.
Although we lived in Chingford, on the border of London and Essex, I was actually born in Hackney at the Salvation Army Mothers’ Hospital which, of course, automatically made me a Cockney by birth, having been born within the sound of Bow Bells (the bells Of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside). However, due to Bow Bells having been destroyed during the London Blitz in 1941 and not being rebuilt until 1961, I was, at least for a while, in rather select company, the supply of Cockneys having dried up in the absence of the bells for a period of twenty years.
Another stroke of good fortune lay in the fact that I was born in a hospital with attendant professional care, (my other two siblings being born at home, as was quite usual in those days). My good luck lay in the fact that during the birth I managed to become entangled with the umbilical cord although fortunately professional medical help was on hand. I was also born in a caul, a membrane or bag supposed to bring good luck and to be an infallible preservative against drowning. The ‘old salts’ superstitions must have well been infallible as, here I am at the age of 72 years, writing this account, having lived in Sydney, Australia for over forty years, and very close to the sea. My mother, on being asked if she wanted this icon preserved for good luck was not at all interested and the item was discarded.
But my greatest good fortune in my life was to have been born into a loving family with my parents being the soul of kindness and understanding with barrels of humour and laughter thrown in for good measure. As children these qualities were often taken for granted as being the norm and it was only later when observing the lives of others, the realisation dawned on us as to how lucky we were. This lesson was yet to be learned.
The next memory I am able to recall was only three months after our visit to see my father in hospital where he was recovering from an appendix operation. This recollection was to occur on one of the most significant days of the twentieth century. The 3rd of September, 1939.
Although I do not remember the journey down to Camberley where we stayed with my paternal grandparents, I do remember the hustle and bustle interrupting what should have been a quiet Sunday when our weekend visit was cut short, and we made a hasty retreat back to Chingford. As is now common knowledge, Britain had declared war on Germany following that country’s invasion of Poland and my father assumed that he would be required back at Chingford Police Station as soon as possible.
Mind you, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, local police forces in most areas had been rehearsing duties which would be required following possible enemy air raids. Sadly, some of these drills hadn’t quite gone exactly to plan.
Dad told me of one such drill being undertaken in his area, the scenario being that several people had been injured by a bomb dropped by an enemy bomber. On that occasion the police had called for volunteers to act as victims of the air raid and some poor unsuspecting soul had decided to become a person injured by the bombing.
Whilst the volunteer was lying prostrate on the ground, one of the burly policemen, kitted out with various wartime accoutrements including steel helmet and gas mask, looked down at the injured man, whereupon his steel helmet fell from his head breaking the volunteer’s nose. Panic ensued as these guardians of the law commandeered a van which acted as a makeshift ambulance. They placed the injured volunteer on a hastily made up stretcher and shoved him feet first into the van. Unfortunately the van wasn’t quite long enough, as the police found out to their dismay when they slammed the door of the vehicle, causing further injury by way of concussion to the hapless volunteer
On that fateful Sunday we returned home to Chingford by train via Waterloo Station and arrived in Blackthorne Drive just as darkness was falling and the first task for the family was to check the ‘blackout curtains’ which had already been installed. Tape had also been stuck in strips onto the windows so that in event of a bomb blast shattering the window, shards of glass could not travel in all directions. The only remaining task was to remove the light bulbs in all the rooms where there were no blackout curtains. Globes from the sitting room, bathroom, toilet, hallway and bedrooms were removed and we were given torches to guide us around the darker parts of the house.
I recall that just after dark I accompanied my father out into the back garden to test the blackouts to ensure that there were no chinks of light escaping into the blackness outside, thus denying enemy planes the opportunity of seeing civilization in the town below and the opportunity to drop their bombs.
On that day the lights went out in the United Kingdom and Europe and were to remain dormant until May, 1945 when victory over Hitler’s Germany had been finally achieved. By then over a hundred civilians in our suburb would have been killed in the bombing with many more suffering serious injury and only ten per cent of homes escaping damage from enemy bombing.
Fortunately for our family our house suffered little damage losing a couple of doors and having windows blown out plus broken tiles and ceiling damage. This was in spite of seventeen bombs exploding within a radius of 500 metres from our house. These bombs consisted of 13 high explosive bombs, one parachute mine, an oil bomb and doodlebug (V 1 flying bomb), plus various small incendiary bombs.
When the family moved to Chingford, the town was still set within the precincts of semi rural surroundings with a relatively small population but by the time the war had commenced, Chingford had grown considerably, mainly due to the migration of young couples buying the newly built houses which had become available, in fact in 1939 the population had grown to about 30,000 residents.
Whilst there was still evidence of the depression around, there were many factories and business enterprises in the vicinity providing welcome employment. However, at the outbreak of hostilities, many factories were turned over to making products for the war effort. In addition the nearby Enfield Small Arms factory naturally increased production of war materiel, a nearby company making bakelite products switched production to wartime communications equipment and a local furniture manufacturer turned its attention to the construction of the wooden wings for the renowned Mosquito fighter bomber. Added to the list of nearby wartime manufactures was an ammunition factory in the Waltham Abbey area some fifteen kilometres away.
Thus it was that our area provided reasonably rich pickings for the attention of enemy bombers although they may have been wary of the North Weald RAF base about twenty kilometres east of Chingford.
Whilst we were not as vulnerable to the saturation bombing experienced by residents in Central London and its environs, Chingford was nevertheless, quite an attractive enemy target as we were to find out as the war ground on.
Life in the initial stages of the war did not appear to have changed very much and certainly there was no German bombing in our area for several months which was just as well as we had no air raid shelters in which to take refuge. However, rationing was introduced early in 1940 and was reasonably severe at first becoming more stringent later, impacting on Jerry and myself on a personal level when the sweet ration was cut down to 2 ounces per week, but more of that later.
RATIONING
A cross section of the rationing per person per week when first introduced is as follows.
Butter 2 ounces (50 grammes)
Cooking fat 4 ounces (100 grammes)
Sugar 9 ounces (225 grammes)
Bacon or Ham 4 ounces (100 grammes)
Eggs 1 egg per week or 1 pack of dried eggs per month.
(1 pack =12 eggs)
Tea 2 ounces
Milk 3 pints
Cheese 2 ounces (50 grammes)
Jam 18 ounces (450 grammes) every two months
Also rationed were clothes, shoes and sweets, the latter being of a top priority to a young kid of three years of age.
I recall going up to London with my father to the Metropolitan Police clinic where he was to have some dental work done. It was a great day out for me as I had Dad all to myself but also I had my first experience of London and the River Thames. I rode in a tram along the embankment for the first time and when we got off, I looked across the mighty river for the first time and to my amazement witnessed the sight of a steam tug boat whose funnel was too high to go under a low bridge, but as I set my imagination for a collision between its tall funnel and the bridge, the tug lowered its funnel and disappeared from view through the gap.
However, as rationing had only just started, I was given a penny by my father and told that some of the chocolate vending machines still had chocolate in them. I had visions of penny bars of Nestles chocolate buried in their bowels ready to disgorge their confections for my delectation. After a few vain attempts at extracting the treasure, one machine managed to cough up a much sought after slim bar of chocolate which delighted me no end.
My mother was issued with a ration book for each member of the family by The Ministry of Food, each book bearing the name of the individual family member complete with their address and ration book number.
Purchase of these rationed items was strictly controlled although a household could exchange their jam ration for extra sugar with which to make their own jam. My mother used to avail herself of this facility and we used to spend afternoons picking blackberries during the summer months and with the apples from my grandmother’s garden, she used to make many jars of jam for our family.
Similarly we gave up our meagre egg ration in exchange for ‘balancer meal’ which, when mixed up with household scraps, was used to feed the chickens in our back garden. The chicken manure wasn’t wasted either as it was used by my father on his allotment, a small piece of ground about a mile from our home which could be hired from the local council for a peppercorn rent. The vegetables produced went a long way in supplementing our rather bland diets. Even the allotment was bombed but fortunately Dad’ vegetables were spared and we were thus not treated to chunks of shrapnel encrusted in our potatoes.
At about the same time that rationing was introduced, I recall a person from some Government Department knocking on the door and fitting us up with gas masks. There was always a fear that Hitler would use gas on civilians but, fortunately for all the combating countries, the fear of retaliatory gas attacks remained a sane deterrent and none was ever used. It was quite good fun trying on these masks and I was delighted with mine because it was a red ‘Mickey Mouse’ model. Having donned the mask, I could blow hard and the little red nozzle made a funny noise not unlike a high pitched fart. The only trouble was that if I tried to blow and emulate a fart, the Perspex goggle used to fog up. Jerry’s mask was of much more sedate affair than mine being black and a bit larger, as was the one issued to Mum. However, Dad, due to his occupation and exposure to more dangerous situations, had a huge respirator with a flexible hose going down to a filter cylinder. It was most impressive and made him look like the cross between a deep sea diver and an elephant. When my younger brother Rob came along, my mother was issued with a most peculiar contraption designed for babies. It looked like a padded cylinder in which the baby was placed, the top being battened down leaving the person in charge to induct air by way of a tube attached to a manual pump. It looked for all the world like a snub nosed miniature sub marine. Heaven knows what deep psychological scars would have been visited upon the poor unfortunate child had it been subjected to a session in one of these chambers.
AIR RAIDS.
Up to this time the war seemed to have been somewhat of a non event but in 1940 this all changed and I was, for the first time in my life, to experience real fear and that was the first bombing raid in our area. My father was on night duty and had left the house at about 10 pm. leaving Mum, Jerry and myself at home.
Shortly afterwards, the air raid sirens started to wail which was not in itself a new experience but, apparently, there had been a BBC newsflash to warn people in the London area of an impending raid, although the intended target was not known. However, my mother gathered us up shoved us into the cupboard under the stairs where we cleared a space by jettisoning a couple of my father’s boots and a few items of outer garments. It was rather cramped as the cupboard housed the coin-in-the slot gas meter as well. In the absence of an air raid shelter it had been noted that when houses collapsed after being bombed, the stairs usually managed to stay intact, making this area the safest place in which to shelter.
This night was particularly memorable as we started to hear the drone of German bombers in the distance at first but then coming nearer and nearer to the place where we were hiding. We then heard them overhead and we could hear the anti aircraft guns pounding away at our unseen assailants and the thunder of bombs as they exploded nearby. In the midst of all this I recall the clatter of what was probably a machine gun, and a couple of minutes later a large thud giving rise to the hope that one our fighters had downed a German plane. I also remember being worried about my father being out in all this in pursuit of his police patrol duties.
Air raid sirens were to become a common sound in our early childhood and even to this day, when watching a war time film or hearing the wailing of an air raid siren, my scalp still contracts and my hair stands on end.
Obviously it took some time for civilians to become accustomed to living their everyday lives in the shadow of hostilities which were starting to invade their very homes. As the bombing increased, my parents, along with thousands of other families in the London area, decided that we should seek the relative sanctuary of a country town or village, away from the bombing. This was to become known as ‘evacuation’.
EVACUATION
Thousands of children from all over London found themselves deposited on railway stations with small satchels, suitcases and, of course their gas masks. They were waved off by their mothers to areas in rural England which many of them had never heard of, to be cared for by strangers they had never seen of even spoken to. Many of these children were looked after by kindly country folk and can recall fond memories of their lives in the peace and tranquillity of a British country village. However, many experienced little joy in their new environments as it really was a matter of the luck of the draw. One thing most of these children had in common was that they were away from their parents and this great chunk taken out of their lives made for difficulties in readjusting to life with their parents when they were finally reunited in 1945. Many of the children had fathers whom they could not remember; fathers who had left home to fight for years in far off theatres of war, only to return home and be looked upon by their children as intruders or strangers.
We were much more fortunate as our father was in a ‘reserved occupation’ which meant that he could not be called up for military service. My mother, having two young children, could not spend time away at work, as most unattached women did, and therefore our family life was not initially disrupted to any great degree.
As the bombing in our area intensified, more and more houses were being lost or damaged, it was decided that Jerry, Mum and I should be evacuated to a safer haven away from London. As my parents had been brought up in Surrey, we headed for the Camberley area where we would be able to keep in contact with all four grandparents and my father would be able to travel by train to see us when the opportunity arose. Thus it was that Dad found a small cottage just off the A30 London Road between Bagshot and Camberley called Lamb Foist.
We didn’t stay there very long and I am unsure as to why we left this house but I have a vague recollection that it was a little remote and to leave the house to access the main road necessitated going though someone’s private land which apparently caused some problems. I did get the impression that evacuees weren’t very welcome there.
However, the next home we moved to was at Yately, still near to the A30 Main Road and only about five kilometres from my paternal grandparents’ home. If our previous temporary abode was primitive then this small cottage could be described as prehistoric although in reality probably dating back to only the mid nineteenth century.
YATELY
To describe the cottage as being primitive would have been, even in the mid twentieth century, flattering in the extreme. However, it did have the advantage of being bounded by very pleasant surroundings. Although there was only a tiny village nearby which housed but a few shops, we were, nevertheless, not far from the larger town of Hartley Wintney. One side of the house faced a small strip of forest, mainly of fir trees which exuded a very sweet aroma whilst the front bedroom of the cottage confronted a large stretch of sandy soiled common land which was occasionally used by army tanks practising their war time manoeuvres. We used to watch them roaring up sand hills and over ditches with their steel tracks crushing everything before them and sounding like mechanical prehistoric monsters rejoicing in their new found freedom as they trammelled the surrounding vegetation.
The one shop in Yately which commanded Jerry’s and my attention was a confectioners shop run by a very gentle and kindly person called Miss Stevens who showed great patience as we chose our weekly halfpenny stick of toffee. I’m sad to say that she appeared to be an exception, for unfortunately it wasn’t long before we came to realise that we were not at all welcome in the neighbourhood. Jerry, who had been enrolled in the local junior school, became the victim of the local kid’s invective. It was commonplace for us to be walking near home whilst being followed by the local boys shouting “Go back to London you ‘orrible vacuees”. Even at that tender age I felt confronted and uncomfortable and my mother had to endure school children such as Harry Pithers yelling the same insults but ending up with calling her “Ole mother turd’ole”, not that I knew what a ‘turd ‘ole was at that tender age.
The one redeeming feature for my mother could have been the nearby pub ‘The Cricketers’ but she was not able to appreciate its fellowship or libations it sold as she was, like most of our family at the time, a teetotaller.
The tiny cottage was settled adjacent to ‘the big house’ where doubtless the gentry of pre war times would have lived, although during the war it was unoccupied and used as a furniture warehouse. Presumably our temporary home had once housed members of the lower classes whose work involved service with the big knobs next door. Although the big house had all the trimmings of opulence, our little cottage was devoid of most creature comforts including even electricity, being illuminated instead by gas which sadly did not extend to the stove which was a wood fired Kitchener. On this ancient stove Mum had to cook, boil water and keep warm in winter.
In years past the only source of water must have been supplied by the well situated in the garden of the big house next door. On the first day at the cottage our mother took us to the site of the well. It had a deep narrow shaft whose access was secured by a wooden lid on top at ground level. We were instructed that under no circumstances were we to go anywhere near the well. Realising the gravity of her instruction we promised faithfully never to go near it.
The cottage had two bedrooms, one of which was used by Mum and the other shared by Jerry and myself. The local old style Baptist Church was next door and the graveyard came right up to our wall in fact if we opened the sash window of our bedroom we could touch the headstone of the grave of one Eliza Newman. Over sixty years later I visited the home but although I found the cottage I was unable to access the churchyard as it was by then fenced in and the gate was locked. I was very disappointed at not being able renew my acquaintance with Eliza.
Our abode did not boast a bathroom and we washed ourselves in the kitchen sink and on bath nights my mother heated up buckets of water on the stove but only after my father had managed to clean the soot from the blocked chimney using the wispy branch of a nearby fir tree. As regards a toilet, the only remnant left was a commode style lavatory seat in a nearby outhouse under which resided a half empty bucket, adding a nasty smell enough to dissuade use by even the most desperate of diarrhoea sufferers. Fortunately during our stay I do not remember either Jerry or myself having an attack of the squitters. Every evening, Mum used to take us to the big house by the light of a torch and in the darkness Jerry and I would do our ‘number two’s. The vast, dark empty house seemed very scary at the time as though haunted by the ghosts of the aristocracy of yesteryear.