Some South Woodford scribbles from DD, our resident diarist and observer of all things local. Illustrated by Evelyn Rowland
What a privilege it was for me to visit and hear the memories of some of South Woodford’s wartime children. Their average age now is 90, but one was 100, and apologised when he wasn’t quite sure of a date. “I’m getting on a bit,” he explained. No more introduction from me; listen to their voices. Perhaps with an occasional smile, perhaps an occasional tear.
Janet
I was nine when the bomb landed in our back garden in Forest Approach on 3 July 1944. We were playing at home, my younger brother and I, and heard an approaching doodlebug. We knew we were safe while we could still hear its engine. (A strange ingredient in our childhood education.) This time, the sound suddenly cut out. We headed straight for our Morrison shelter in the front room. The ‘best room’, where the piano was. Mum, Peter and me, in this strong, solid sort of cage with a mattress inside and a protective grid all round. A terrific bang. Flying glass and brickwork. A huge hole in the wall. We dusted ourselves down. Minutes later, a man in military uniform appeared in our hallway. The large pram Mum used for shopping was kept there. “Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby?” he yelled. There was no baby, of course. That’s what stayed in my memory over the years really, more than the horror of our close escape with death. Mum gathered up all sorts of important documents and possessions, piled them into the pram, and we pushed it up the hill and over the High Road to Empress Avenue, to the grandparents’ house. There were three aunts there too, so it was a bit crowded, but they managed to ‘book’ a place for us to sleep in a brick shelter in the forest up near the Napier Arms.
Harold
I was eight when the war broke out. My walk to school took me across fields. My mother gave me strict instructions: “If bombers come over, lie flat, facedown, on the ground.” I did lie down. But upward-facing, of course. I wanted to see the bombers!
John
I was 15 in 1939, at Ilford County High School. Everyone expected something to happen. We were evacuated to Ipswich and then to South Wales. But nothing did happen and in June 1940, I was back home. The Battle of Britain began. I stood gazing up, thrilled. I knew this was for me; I must fly! I volunteered for air crew at 18 and was accepted for pilot training. By 1942, Britain was recruiting thousands of pilots. I was soon off to one of the five British flying schools in America. In Oklahoma. No email then; letters took ages. There was plenty of food; none of the hardships back home. I completed my 200 hours to get my wings on my 20th birthday in 1944. We were a very mixed bunch. If you were ‘public school or university material’, you passed out as a pilot officer. Boys like me from ‘ordinary’ schools became sergeants. I was eventually demobbed as a Warrant Officer, having flown Dakotas and (briefly) Lancasters. You made strong bonds of friendship in those times. One friend from Manchester later became my best man. My full training was completed literally a few days before the end of the war, so I never heard a shot fired in anger.
Jane
For years, I kept a treasured souvenir of the war in my wardrobe. In Mayfair Gardens, after a raid, we kids took our empty gas mask boxes and collected up all the shrapnel lying amongst the shrubs. We used to swap our finds with each other to secure a good variety of pieces. I was very proud: I had an actual nose cone. I was a bit sad after we moved house to find that neither my shrapnel box nor my teddy bear had come with us.
Gerry
Dad died at the beginning of the war so we had to move in with Grandma and Mum’s sister. Mum was out all hours to do secretarial work from 7am till 5pm. Then she’d grab something to eat and be back out again till about 8pm. The rent had to be paid. Auntie was a health visitor and also in Air Raid Protection. She made a great fuss of me, crawling around the garden with me horse riding on her back. When the sirens went off, we hid under the dresser in the basement. After bombs had dropped nearby, she would say to me: “Shall we go and see which streets have disappeared?” I remember the crowds and the damp smell in the street shelters, but I was too young really to understand or feel afraid.
David
At school, we children were all required to show that we could put on our gas masks. I was five. I refused point-blank to put it on, even when encouraged by my older cousin. It was ugly and frightening. I ended up being chased around the playground by the teachers and even the headmaster. When my mother was informed of this serious problem, she adopted the psychological approach by placing the gas mask next to my teddy bear. Soon, Teddy was wearing it, and evidently quite happy. It wasn’t long before I tried it out myself. Mum told me I could wear it as a special treat for a few minutes each day, but only if I had been good. She’d done the trick.
Chris
I can remember the death of George V in 1936. By the age of seven, I was at a boarding school in Berkhamsted but living with my grandfather and an aunt in Dublin, so I was travelling (alone!) regularly across the Irish sea for my education. I sort of brought myself up really. My parents were in the colonial service, living in British Malaya. I was 11 when war broke out and most of our younger teachers were called up and things started to fall apart, with retired ex-staff called in to help. There were no interschool sporting rivalries. I missed out on that. The school food went from bad to worse! I didn’t see my father for seven years. For three of these, he was interned by the Japanese. Mother had escaped via Singapore and, amazingly, Cape Town. Dad eventually returned home. He weighed seven stone. “Who’s this man ordering my mother about?” I thought.
Rowena
I was only three when war broke out. I don’t remember ever being told the war was over. I thought this was the normal status quo, sleeping under the stairs sometimes, going to school and hurrying into an air raid shelter. Stories read to us by torchlight. I used to pray for an air raid on Thursday mornings because that was when we had to sit cross-legged on the floor for hymn practice. We lived in Finchley then. There was only one bomb dropped near me. The house where two elderly sisters lived was destroyed. Mum told me one of the sisters had lost her voice. I saw her one day walking in the ruins; I supposed she must be looking for it.
Dick
I was six at the beginning and 12 at the end. Father was 39 and called up as an RAF reservist. He was travelling to France the day war was declared, carrying vital equipment for intercepting enemy transmissions as a member of the Wireless Intelligence Service. At my age, it was all hugely interesting; it was tanks and aeroplanes, guns and rockets. I remember sitting reading a book, our old dog beside me. His ears pricked up, even before I heard anything. He’d learnt the meaning of the drone of approaching flying bombs. Mum quickly joined us in the air raid shelter along with our neighbours who’d crawled through a hole in the fence to share it with us. One bomb passing overhead landed in Empress Avenue. I had been crouching down, but when I looked up, I saw sheets of glass flying in. I was never afraid. Rather, I became quite fatalistic. Dad managed to bring himself and his equipment safely out of Brest 10 days after Dunkirk. He admitted in his diary that he’d taken a dip in the Loire en route. Because of the Blitz, Mum and I joined him for two years, now stationed in Islay in the South Hebrides. My reading improved rapidly in the Scottish school and I was into Biggles and other boys’ adventure stories. I remember the lovely sunsets over the mountains, the strong winds and wide landscapes. Other wonderful experiences followed when Dad was posted to a village called Bishampton, in Worcester, and I was helping out on a farm. So far from London, I was regarded almost as an alien, an extraterrestrial even, especially with my temporary Scottish accent. I was so lucky: a suburbanite experiencing wide-ranging country life and returning to dear, familiar Forest Approach, unscathed, when the war was over.
To contact DD with your thoughts or feedback, email dd@swvg.co.uk
