A Hot / Cold Wet Night

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of Ernest Crisp with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Having just come from Dorset where I was evacuated just a year ago, it was now September 1940 and I would be 15 years of age in a couple of weeks, on the 1st of October. That past year had been very quiet regarding the War, the “phoney War” I believe it was known as, at least in Burgoyne Road, Stockwell where our family home was in South London.

I’d only been home a few weeks and guess what — the War really started. The Blitz and the Battle of Britain in the skies above. I was now a working man. However, that’s another story. My story concerns one night during early bombing raids. Dates, etc. I can’t recall, but this particular night the sirens had gone and we — that is mum, dad and myself — were all tucked up in our Anderson shelter in our small back yard. I was asleep on the top bunk, my mum was shaking and shouting, “Ernie, quick, get out there and help your dad. We’ve been bombed!”

In a confused state, I climbed out of the shelter into a very bright blinding light. It took me a while to gather my senses. Dad’s old lean-to shed was ablaze, hence the bright light. Dad was chucking a bucket of water against the back door, which was also beginning to burn. “Get the buckets and keep filling them” he shouts. I gave one full one to him. He had the stirrup pump. The other bucket I chucked over the shed, then into the kitchen tap for a refill, one for dad, the other for the shed. Then dad eventually, having saved the back door, joined me chucking water over his beloved shed. Evidently two incendiary bombs had come down, one on the back door, the other on the shed.
When the worst was over, dad put his hand on my shoulder and we were congratulating ourselves on a job well done. It was a cold night and we were shivering now that the fires had been put out. They were just smouldering a bit when WHOOSH! We were soaked and freezing. I never knew my dad used such bad language! Our next door neighbour, Mrs Rose Patching, had decided to help and chucked a bucketful of water over the garden wall and soaked the pair of us. I’d never heard my dad use language like that before.

Going indoors afterwards, more drama was awaiting. Evidently another incendiary had gone through the roof and into the loft above mum and dad’s main bedroom.Luckily our neighbour from the dairy opposite had spotted this. Mr Hughes, our milkman, had bought a milk churn full of water and with the help of other neighbours had knocked a hole through the ceiling (no trap doors were fitted), and with scrapers and tools that were supplied with the issued stirrup pump had managed to reach the burning bomb debris, scraped the lot into another bucket and damped down the loft with another stirrup pump.

Ah, those were the days, when Britain was truly great!

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