Amateur Dramatics from the ARP Post.

My father was George Nicholls, known to all in later life as "Nick". He was born in 1911 in Portsmouth, so was 28 years old at the outbreak of the war. From 1934 he was an Officer of Customs and Excise in London, working mostly from an office on Fulham Broadway (or Walham Green as it then was). He lived in digs at 20 Lyndhurst Avenue, Mitcham owned by Bill and Dora Carter.

At the outbreak of the war he tried to join the RAF, but his was declared a reserved occupation, and he was sent back after 2 days. Instead, he joined the Air Raid Precautions service and became an ARP warden. One of his duty posts (perhaps the main one) was the D2 Wardens post somewhere in Mitcham.

My father came from a theatrical family, his father having been a member of concert parties in Portsmouth between the Wars. During the War he organised and directed theatrical productions by members of his warden's post in local halls in the Mitcham area. I have details of two productions. On 10th January 1942 at the Eltandia Hall, Middle Way, Stanford Way, SW16 the D2 Warden's Post presented "The Barton Mystery" by Walter Hackett in aid of Mrs Churchill's Red Cross Fund for Russia. Under his theatrical name of the time of Nick Ellis, my father directed the play and played a character called Beverley. His landlady, Dora Carter, was Marjorie Standish, and his landlord, William E Carter, was Sir Edward Marshall. The progamme which I have contains a charming advertisement aimed at "Lady members of the Civil Defence Services" and encourages them to patronise Adele Ladies Hairdressing in Norbury.

The second production was in 1943 when the D2 Warden's Post presented "The Blue Goose" by Peter Blackmore, again at the Eltandia Hall. On 17 June the performance was in aid of Mitcham Wings for Victory Week, and the play was performed again on 28 July 1943. I do not have any further details save that again my father directed the play under the name Nick Ellis.

My father never spoke much about his experiences as an ARP Warden, but he continued to perform the duties until the end of the War. His 1945 diary records a Post Dinner on Friday 28 September 1945, but he gives no details.

He only suffered one wound as a result of enemy action during the war. In late 1944 or 1945 Mitcham was directly under the flight path of the V1 flying bombs. In common with many, my father learned that there was no danger until the engine stopped. The house where he lodged had a steel table shelter (Anderson shelter?) in the rear downstairs room. It was the height of a standard table with heavy felt curtains around it.

One morning my father was asleep in bed, and was woken by his landlady, Dora, with a cry from downstairs that "it has stopped". He leapt from his bed and dashed down the stairs and into the back room. As he dived under the steel table, the V1 bomb exploded somewhere behind the house. The French windows were blown in, and a sliver of window glass about 12 inches long flew across the room and stuck quivering in the bookcase. On the way it sliced through the seat of my father's pyjama trousers, and scored a line across his bottom! He claimed that he bore the scar until the day he died, although he never agreed to show it to me. His diary records a meeting about war damage at Rowan Road School on 15 May 1945, only one week after VE Day.

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