Watching the First Doodlebug Land

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Sue Manning-Jones on behalf of Ron Dowsett with his permission. Mr Dowsett fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was 12 when war broke out, one of 15 children. My poor mother had 15 children in 21 years! We lived in Stepney in the East End of London and we had very little. There was no such thing as breakfast — there might be a cup of stewed tea if one of the older children had put a pot on before going off to work. On Sundays my eldest brother used to bare-knuckle fight in the street known as “fighting on the cobbles” — the money he collected in the hat he took home to my mother.

I won a scholarship when I was eleven and went to the Grammar school. Unfortunately when the war started my schooling ended after the first year, which was a pity as I was looking forward to the second year and a chance of learning French and technical drawing.

As the youngest of such a large family I was left very much to my own devices and got up to all sorts of things. I earned small amounts of money doing whatever I could — we used to collect wood from the bomb sites and chop it up to sell as firewood. I also used to run errands for the American GIs.

Like most small boys, I saw the war as a great adventure and had no fear. One day we saw what we thought was a German plane on fire having been shot down by one of ours. It was a great sight all in flames, we boys thought it was great and cheered “bring it down!”. It landed on the main railway line at Grove Road, Mile End, and we found out later that it wasn’t a German plane after all, it was in fact the first doodlebug, the first of many.

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