Tanks Rumble by my Bedroom Window

People’s War

I have a vivid memory of the D-Day build up.

In 1944 I was six years old and lived at 49 Rosslyn Hill, an extension of Hampstead High Street leading into Haverstock Hill, which stretches south into London.

Our home was a Victorian terrace house. My bedroom was at the front of the house facing the road, at that time very quiet because few people had cars in those days. One of London’s last lamplighters used to come by every evening with his long pole to turn on the street gas light outside.

One night, possibly in May 1944, I woke up to a distant rumble that came nearer and nearer. I got out of bed and opened one of the inside shutters, which always had to be closed at night because of the balckout. I waited, looking through the window as the rumble grew louder and louder. I remember wondering whether to go to tell my mother, but decided not to wake her up.

Suddenly a giant machine came into view, eerily lit by the street gaslights. It was HUGE. To my child's eyes it looked as high as a house. I was looking at a tank close up for the very first time in my life. I stood at the window watching a long convoy of vehicles rumble by. I felt so cold (no central heating in those days) that I went into the hall to get my school overcoat.

Tanks, lorries and what I was to learn later were Armoured Personnel Carriers drove slowly by. I must have stood at the window in my bare feet for nearly 2 hours in the dead of night. It seemed a very long time before the last vehicle passed by. I went back to bed and in the morning told my mother what I'd seen. She seemed a little alarmed and told me to tell no-one, not even Mr Bloch.

Hans Bloch was a German Jewish pianist (who later performed on the BBC Home Service) who had been accommodated by my parents in two rooms on the first floor of our house. A representative of the local board of Jewish Deputies had come by some time before to ask my mother whether we had any vacant rooms. I later learnt that German Jews who had fled Germany were, on arrival in Britain, first accommodated in a house on West Heath Road which was later bought by Boy George!. It is now clear to me that my mother didn't want me to talk about what I'd seen because she may have harboured irrational doubts about Hans Bloch's loyalties!

It would be impossible to conjure up the atmosphere of those wartime years. We all knew, certainly Hampstead children did, that German Jews were victims, but there was still doubt about them. On their arrival in Britain, even Lord Moser and his family were immediately interned at a camp at Lincoln Racecourse designated for Enemy Aliens, whatever their personal circumstances.

Hampstead at that time was crowded with German Jews. German was spoken on the streets and in the shops. Hampstead was a place of refuge for German Jewry. My mother had every reason to tell me not to say a word about what I had seen. She would known it was a build-up to invasion because in 1939 when the Second World War began, she'd been a civil servant on the staff which processed and accompanied the secret transfer of the Woolwich Arsenal into security out of London, to a depot in Wrexham, but I'm be sure. It would have been a closely guarded official secret. My mother never divulged the destination.

My memory of that night is as vivid now as if it had happened yesterday. It would be most interesting to know if any German Jews in Hampstead had also stood at their windows on that night watching the hardware of an army pass before their eyes, which was to crush Hitler and his murderous cohorts.

A year later on VE Day I was looking with even wider eyes through those same windows at the Union Jacks and bunting fluttering from every window in Hampstead High Street. My mother joined my little brother David and me at the window and said simply, "darlings, the War's over. We've won".

I later married a German lawyer and worked for the Joint Services Liaison Organization in Germany. My three adult children now work in Germany although they graduated from the University of London. I campaigned for over ten years to win the right of British mothers to pass their nationality on to their children if they had foreign fathers. They are now dual nationals.

Because of my wartime childhood, I fought for the right my children to have the most precious nationality in the world - British. Being a child of the war, and living in Germany for so long after the war brought home to me the sheer quality of the freedom we British have on our island and within us. We have no words in our language to describe the quality of our freedom. It is for this precious liberty of spirit that my parents' generation gave their lives. To misquote Shakespeare, the quality of freedom is not strained....

Moya St. Leger

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