Home & School on the Front Line:Childhood memories in Kent

Home and School on the Front Line

by

Fred Bayley

When people ask me where I was during World War II I have to reply, “At Gravesend County Grammar School for Boys”, for I entered there in September 1939 and left to go to King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Durham, in 1945. At University I was one of a very small minority of recent schoolboys for priority of places was given to ex-servicemen returning from the war, a good deal older than me and who contributed to my education in many ways.

My recollections of the war years were mostly from Greenhithe, Kent where I was born and lived. It is a village on the south bank of the Thames, four miles up-river towards London from Gravesend where the school was. For the nine months of the war we were evacuated to Beccles in Suffolk but as this was judged to be as dangerous as Gravesend we returned, incredibly, just as the war left its opening quiet, ’phoney’, period with such little action as there was mainly on the continent. In the summer of 1940 the ‘real’ war started with the fall of France followed by the Battle of Britain, fought in the air mainly over Kent and Sussex. Although there is much to tell of the next five years this account will be restricted to this battle and a related period four years later.

The Battle of Britain was fought as the Germans sought domination of the air over the English Channel and Southeast England. They knew that without control of the air they could not transport across the Channel the huge armada of ships and men they had amassed around Calais and Boulogne. The Battle began in late July 1940 and was fought initially over areas near the coast, like Seaford where we now live. Those of us living forty or fifty miles further north then saw little of what was going on. The day when the Battle of Britain changed from that remoteness to strike nearer home is forever marked so clearly that in my mind’s eye I can see the events as if they were yesterday.

The date was September 7th, 1940 and was a Saturday. Every Saturday there was a game of bowls in the village not far from our house on a green from which there was a superb view southwards into the heart of Kent. My father was off work (due to join his tug at Gravesend that evening) and playing in the local bowls team where I joined him as a spectator. The game began at 2.30 and proceeded perfectly normally until about four o’clock when someone pointed south and shouted, “Hey, look at that!”. All eyes turned in the one direction and saw a sky full of aircraft, like a cloud of midges. Here and there in the cloud were puffs of black smoke, exploding anti-aircraft shells telling us that these were enemy aeroplanes. There was almost no noise for the armada of aircraft although coming straight towards us must still have been thirty miles away. Even so everyone ran for their lives, leaving the bowls on the green and, for all I know they are still there, a memorial to the day the Germans changed the war and attacked London for the first time.

Soon the silence ended with the noise of aero-engines, machine guns, anti- aircraft fire and the scream of falling bombs. Some of these fell on the oil storage depot at Purfleet, across the River Thames from Greenhithe. So when we summoned up the courage in a lull to put our heads out of the Anderson air raid shelter, with which every house was equipped from the start of the war, we were greeted with a huge column of black smoke rising hundreds of metres into the air. The air attack continued into the evening and through the night and indeed the night raids continued non-stop until near Christmas and we slept every night in the Anderson shelter. The daylight attacks slowly petered out especially after another decisive aerial battle a week after the events I am recalling, on Sunday, 15th September.

I do not remember being frightened in the Battle of Britain, perhaps because I was young — only 12 — and the events were exciting. I was, however, often very frightened in the second of the war events recalled here. In 1944 the British, now joined by the Americans, invaded France across the Channel on what was called “D-Day”, June 6th. I was able from my home and school on the banks of the Thames to observe much of the preparation for the invasion, the huge assembly of ships of all sizes and shapes, including the floating contraptions that became an artificial harbour on the French coast. As you will know, our invasion, unlike the German plan of four years earlier was a great success, or perhaps we wouldn’t be here now. In retaliation, the German leader, Hitler, ordered the use of his ‘secret weapons’ with which he had long been threatening us. One of these was the V-2 rocket, the precursors of the devices (and built by many of the same men) that put satellites into orbit around the earth today. The V-2 rockets were never frightening weapons because they arrived before their own noise so that when you heard the explosion as the weapon landed followed by the rushing sound of its travel (like a fast train) you knew it had missed and you were safe.

The other main ‘secret weapon’ was the V-1 flying bomb or ‘doodle bug’. These were petrifying. They were like little aeroplanes, about half the size of the light aircraft you see every day around local aerodromes like Elstree and Shoreham. They flew straight, fast and quite low, their ingeniously simple engines (called ‘pulse jets’) making an intense noise like the worst kind of motor-bike. They were launched from the French coast and directed straight across Sussex and Kent towards London. Many were brought down on the way, by balloons, anti-aircraft fire or the fastest fighters, including the very first jet aircraft. But many got through to London and its environs where we were, to crash randomly and explode as their fuel supply ran out. At this point the loud engine noise, signifying comparative safety while the V-1 continued on its way, became a terrifying, deathly silence signifying that the explosive-filled device was going to crash near you. I am not ashamed of my continuing fear, shared by many during the several weeks of these attacks and you will understand our relief when the forces that had invaded France on D-Day over-ran the V-1 launch sites, and our fears were over as, almost, was the war.

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