ww2 Evacuation from West Norwood, St. Clouds Road, 1939

2nd Chapter of my story.

Air Raids

Then the air raids started. Mum kept me at home for a while, thoroughly sick of sending me away. Being a brave woman, and needing the money, she travelled up to the City every day to work through all the bombing. At home, she pushed our heavy wooden dining table up against the wall, laid cushions on the floor, and any time the Siren went and we could hear bombers approaching (and there was never much notice) we would shoot under this table, not forgetting our cat Whiskers, who used to sit and shake, and was always the first one to get under cover, while we all just held our breath and silently prayed, until the All Clear sounded.
Because mum and dad were busy working, there was no-one at home to see what I was up to. So I had made my own plan of action. The time for attendance at school was 9 a.m - but this was also the time the siren went. So, if I held back for l0 minutes, I could run to school furiously hard, and still be in time if no siren went; and sure enough, the siren would often go at around 8.50, I would grin, say "oh good", grab my Sherlock Holmes book, and shoot down the shelter and make myself comfortable reading my book and sipping Tizer. This was my favourite way of spending a morning. As a child, I felt no sense of responsibility for anything,I had complete trust in my dad. My dad knew all about war, as he had been an Officer in the first world war in the trenches on the Somme, had been gassed and blown up by an enemy shell and taken off the field of battle as dead, wrapped in a shroud, and - and spent three months recovering in Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland, a convalescent home for Officers.. So my dad knew what war was, and immediately offered his services as a Home Guard and Air Raid Precautions Warden. This involved Incendiary Bomb duty, duty, which involved "standing by" with buckets of water and sand, and a StirrupPump on rooftops all night long, to put out firebombs, which were very common. He would come home after a raid, pale of face and shattered (sometimes he was sick) unable to describe the sights he had seen during sessions of "heavy-rescue", a term used to describe digging out people from the rubble of demolished homes. But his cheery special whistle of "I've got sixpence" and smiling face, would immediately reassure us, as he bobbed in and out of the shelter during a night raid, to see how we were getting on. My grandma had come to live with us by now, and she got so fed up with the shelter, the cold, the smell, and the discomfort that one day she simply marched out of the shelter, growling "they can kill me if they like, I'm not sleeping down there any more". The shelter was damp, and smelt of raw concrete and earth, with bunks and a little table, and sometimes a spider or two. One morning when I had ducked school and done my rabbit run down there - at about 9.30 a.m., - a bomb hit a house very close, and the blast flattened me violently back onto the bunk - even though we were below ground level. This shock, - and effrontery - (which I considered a cheek by Hitler) made me REALLY hate Hitler on a personal level, as my lovely Tizer had been snatched clean out of my hand, and lay with the last dregs dripping miserably out on the floor. "**** you Adolf, I wish I could get my hands on you"I raved, in shock amd dismay, as I knew I would not be able to buy any more Tizer, as my pocket money had run out!.... continued on another page..."the blitz and Hertfordshire".

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