Community Spirit

As a child I remember the war years in my home town of Willesden,to be precise,451 High Road Wilesden,which is now a super-store complex. Woodfine Cottage was the name
of my house,which belonged to the Beckett's
Coal&Coke Company,together with Elms the only other house in the Coal Yard as we called it then.

In the war years, coal and coke was delivered by horse and cart to all parts of Willesden and surrounding districts, the shire horses were also stabled and cared for
in this yard and a full time farrier was kept busy shoeing and grooming the twenty or so wonderful horses.

The war for me was both sad and frightening living in Willesden, as it was for my brothers and sisters, when our father was called-up for military sevice like the many thousands of his generation,leaving our mother to bear the brunt of the war years alone.

I remember the Anderson shelter in our back garden,always full of water and never used and the street shelters in nearly every road
in Willesden,the black-out curtains and window masking tape to stop glass from cutting you to bits.

Hunger was a constant companion in my youth,with five mouths to feed and food rationing to cope with my mother, like many woman of that period struggled to put food on the table each day.

The food situation was so bad, that the goverment sanctioned the of horse-meat, fit for human consumption, so they said. One of these horse meat shops was in Willesden Green, not far from "Andy's Swap Shop" as I remember.

The Bliz of London did not leave Willesden untoched,many families perished in those dire days of the war, incendiary bombs, land-mines and the infamous "buzz-bomb" all came down on the population of Willesden.

Pound Lane school recieved a direct hit, as did Willesden Technical College and Gibbons Road with Bridge Road school were partly burnt down with incendiary bombs.

The smell of cordite and burning building was the nightmare that greeted you when an air raid was over. The gas maskes that became part of our daily dress, thankfully never used, hung around our necks as we searched for shrapnel to use as play things
or to collect and swap and even boast about.

All over Willesden many of the houses were distroyed by bombs and fire, sadly along with their occupants.But the harder life became, the closer the commumity became and a comradeship developed on a scale never to be repeated, I'm sorry to say.

This was our life, our war of survival in those dark years in Willesden, when uncertainty was our companion and death was your next door neighbour.

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