W.W.II As a Small Boy PART1

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My Part in WWII: as seen through the eyes of a small boy
By Peter Agate

I am only 12 months old at the start of my memories and I finish when I am about 7 years old in 1947.
I was born at Red Hill hospital, Surrey in May 1940, in the name of Seal. I have vague memories of my very early years , but one of the many things I do clearly remember is being in a very large room with lots of beds and cots. I was in a metal cot standing in the centre of the room. There were people going to and fro in white and blue- striped dresses and some with white coats. All of a sudden everything went completely upside down, there were lots of noise and screaming and glass was everywhere. Mum told me in later years that was when a bomb hit the hospital, I was about 12 months old at the time.
Sometime around the the episode above, I was in a big black pram with lots of other prams on a grass area by a big drive- way and there were trees or bushes on my left. I had a covering over the back, sort of whitish, with bells or something on it. I had a white and pink covering over me and I had ‘Golly’ and ‘Teddy’ with me. Suddenly there’s lots of noise, big black noisy birds flying over and they dropped very hot, shiny things all around, two or three of these hot, shiny things landed in my pram, and my bed clothes were smoking. Then there was a great fuss and a lot of shouting all around the prams, and somebody took all my bed clothes away.
Mum told me that one day Adolf Galland, an ace German fighter pilot, and his friends turned up and strafed the hospital, the hot smelly objects were the empty cases from their guns.
I remember being with mum in a large place with sloping wooden seats that folded. It was a cinema and there were a great many people in uniform and I was being carried in and put on a seat that kept folding up on me, so I was put on one of the uniformed persons lap and we were looking at a great big moving picture that talked. There was a lot of noise coming from somewhere, and then a man dressed in a black and white shirt came on the stage whilst the big curtains started to burn. The man asked everyone not to panic, but to leave the place immediately. I was put on the shoulders of one of the men in uniform and it was a big crush to get out side where there was a lot of noise going on. Again mum told me years later that we had gone to the pictures in Crawley and the cinema had been bombed.
I remember going on train journeys, some were short others very long. On one long journey mum was crying. The trains were always packed with people in uniforms of all kinds. I also remember going many times to East Grinstead, and one particular time literally ran into a man who had no face, there were others with no limbs. It was a terrible sight and I screamed each when I saw them.
Mum said that we often stopped at Three Bridges station and it was usually here we came across those unfortunate people coming and going from the burns hospital at East Grinstead.

I remember is going to stay at a small bungalow on a grassy hill-side with trees on the left and a road running past at the bottom of a hilly field. There were many areas around here with lots of uniformed people about and some areas had great big grey Jumbo’s (elephants) flying in the air, but held by ropes. Every so often there were many great big bangs going off. The house belonged to an Aunty Jenny and she had two boys there older than me. One was called Derek the other I think was Teddy. We kept going to a town on a curvy slope, at the bottom of which was a hotel with a big black old-fashioned stage- coach. I remember I kept looking at this and was totally taken in by it. In the house there was a very old man who never seemed to get out of his chair, he was called the ‘Colonel’ and he had a lovely dog, a golden retriever. I remember one day crawling out the back door and playing in the snow and the coal heap, every time I wiped my hands on my nappy or woolly top it just got blacker.
Once again mum told me years later that we were living near Hazelmere, the big grey elephants were the barrage balloons and quite often the guns were firing at the German aircraft. Aunt Jenny’s father, was an ex-Boer War veteran. We were all evacuees in Aunt Jenny’s and her father's bungalow.
After a while my mum and my baby brother Victor went in a black car to a house, where mum was going to look after a man and his house.
The house, a farm cottage, was situated on the top of the fairly steep drive-way that led on to the main farm just slightly further past. The man mum has come to house keep for is Mr Jack Herbert Agate who some years later became my step-father. He works for the owner of the farm as a gardener and chauffeur. The main house and garages are opposite the farm cottage. The cottage had two small rooms down-stairs and two upstairs, with a scullery out at the back. Outside was a funny garden made of stone, some steps, and a strange, small house with beds and a oil lamp, it was called an ’air raid shelter’ and it was down in the ground, strange I thought! The w.c is outside between the house and the farm, with a wall at the back. The cow parlour is just behind the w.c, and the farm gates are just to the right of the w.c, forward of the cottage. There was a front door which opened out towards the owner’s garage which had a glass porch over the whole front. The farm was called Valhurst Farm owned by a Mr Dobson. He had something to do with the Houses of Parliament The farm was on a small lane road running between Fernhurst and Lurgashall, just south of Haselmere. There was a hill further up through the farm past what was called top fields of another farm. Here in these hilly, wet fields was a military camp. Valhurst Farm was on the left coming from Fernhurst. It was a narrow twisty road that we walked every Saturday for mum and Mr Agate to take us shopping at Fernhurst with my baby brother in his pram.
The scene is set, now I am about 4 years old and getting used to what is around me, but it is here that W.W.II is in my life, and the memories have stayed. but I cannot remember the correct order of events, only the memories comes to me.

One of my early experiences was at night time going up to the top of the garden with mum and Mr Agate and seeing all the search-lights chris-crossing in the sky and some times they caught a plane in the centre and there was a lot of banging going on until the plane disappeared. At the same time way over in the distance we kept watching bright reddish lights in the sky; somebody said it was Coventry getting bombed again. I am reminded of this when I look up towards Tain and the RAF. bombing range and can see the reddish glow in the sky from the bomb explosions followed by a far distant thump. Tain is about 20 miles north-east from where I now live in Alness, Ross-shire.
It was an almost a daily occurrence while out playing, seeing and hearing the aircraft flying over and on really clear days I saw aircraft chasing each other with white streams coming from their wing tips. I remember some of them that were being chased going up then curving down suddenly to the ground, crashing some way off.
As time went by, even though I was small, I could tell the difference between German planes and RAF. ones as the sounds were quite different.
There was the sound of another aircraft that was totally different, and we were warned about them Mr Agate. They would fly over from the bottom of the drive-way up towards the hill at the back, not always on the same route but widely spread to the left and right of the drive-way at a distance that we could not see them but just about hear them with a continuous brrrrrring sound, then suddenly it would stop, then in the distance we could hear a loud bang. None of them came down near us, as far as I can remember, these were the doodle-bugs (V1s). Sometimes we would see them being chased by an ordinary fighter plane which was firing its guns at it. They were obviously flying from the south going towards Guildford or London. I think one did go down near the other side of Lurgashall.
One time I was sitting in the w.c. when there was a great noise coming from outside getting louder and louder. I jumped off the seat and ran outside, the noise was deafening. When I looked up there was a great big black plane with crosses on its wing, it was coming from the back of the house knocking the chimney off. With bricks and soot falling around me, I stood there screaming as the plane went over the garages. Apparently it went down between the farm and Lurgashall village in some woods, it was obviously a German aircraftwith two big engines. I saw the wheels and the great big single tailplane. Years later I discovered that it was a Heinkel III that had been shot at and crashed, I believe all the crew died.
Apart from the daily small aircraft flying over, sometimes with contrails, there were a great many times when, usually in the evening, there were a great number of them flying in formation from the top of the farm and going out over the bottom of the drive-way and the air shook with them. Somebody there at the time, possibly Mr Agate, told us that they were Stirlings, Halifaxs and Lancasters going over to the enemy.
With this memory it also reminded me of the time when there were really a great number of different large aircraft flying over, some of them were pulling others behind them, I thought the smaller ones being towed had broken down. It was the D-day Landing aircraft towing the glider planes with the paratroopers. I recall somebody saying that some of the planes up there were Dakotas.
One day, whilst in the back garden, I was with Mr Agate, when we heard this funny noise, it was obviously an aircraft, but it sounded funny. Then it flew around the whole farm area in an anti-clockwise circle, and getting a lot lower as we stood there watching it. Suddenly it caught some of the trees up at the back of the farm towards Berry Farm, it rolled over, went into a tighter circle and came down in the top fields coming in the direction of our garden. We ran when we saw it coming down and got to the top field via our garden just in time to see it hit and slide along the ground and then burst into flames. Mr Berry (who?) and Mr Agate ran over and went straight in and pulled the pilot out. I had to stand up by the top gate and watch, it was terrible and I dreamed of this for many years, even as an adult. It was an RAF. Tempest or Typhoon. An ambulance and a policeman came to take the pilot away. The policeman stayed for many days afterwards. I was not allowed anywhere near it at first. There were some pieces hanging in the trees all the time we lived there till about 1946. After a while I was allowed to go near the plane before they took it away on two very long blue-grey RAF. lorries. I had many parts of this plane till about 1960 but Mr Agate threw them away whilst I was in Singapore with the RAF.. I went back many years later but could not see anything left. Mr Berry sadly died of the wounds he received rescuing the pilot.
One day I was helping Freddie the cow-man on the farm to milk the cows. After we had finished he filled up mum's metal jug for the family milk, and so quite happily I trotted with it to the house about 50 yards away. I got as far as the gate when there was an awful screaming noise and Freddie was shouting at me to lay down. He came up behind me and pushed me to the ground, the milk went everywhere as he laid on top of me and the noise got even worse. There were lots more screaming noises and the ground around us was being thrown in the air in small, fast movements. Then when it was all over I got up, Freddie was crying and shaking and mum came out of the house shocked and upset. I thought she was upset because I had spilt all the milk. That was not the problem; the problem was the aeroplane that had just flown over was shooting at the solders at the other end of the farm and had started his firing run somewhere level with the big house, we got caught in the middle by a German plane.
Mr Agate had an army uniform and a gun but I don’t think he had any ammunition. I used to play with the gun, a heavy rifle, I remember the wooden handle. Later he was given another type of gun and I presumed it was for me to play with, this one was a heavy all metal-framed type, a sten gun maybe. Mr Agate spent most nights going off to the Home Guard. In the evenings I remember being allowed under the living-room table to play with my toys and listen to the ‘Archers’ and ‘Dick Barton Special Agent’ on the radio. I also got used to hearing the news regularly and hearing a strange voice saying “Germany calling, Germany calling”. Some times when I hear extracts of the news of that time it sounds very familiar. It was 'Lord Haw-Haw', a traitor who defected to Germany and whose real name was William Joyce. He was executed after the war. I later found out that my mum worked as his housekeeper for a while before the war.
Not long after my birthday there was a great mass of solders with strange accents in the area, mainly along the small road at the bottom of the drive. The solders put some tents up on the lawns near the road. One day my brother and I were down there and there were lots of lorries, jeeps, tanks, and tanks that looked like boats (these were DUKWs — amphibious vehicles). The roads were completely full of them and it lasted for many days. One particular day we were sitting in the bushes when a lorry full of soldiers stopped just round the corner when a tank came up and tried to get past. The road being narrow the driver went up the bank toppled over and fell on top of the lorry. There was a lot of screaming and shouting. All the traffic had stopped and we went down to be nosy and have a chat. Well, we got taken back to our mum with lots of candy from the Americans and told that we were not to go down there again as something awful had happened. We got about three different lots of Candy from three different men to keep us away. We watched them lift the tank off the lorry by a big crane.
I remember being somewhere on the Portsmouth front; there was a fun fair and all of a sudden there was an air raid, and we were being sick everywhere.

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