When Von Perthes first suggested that today’s forum postings be dedicated to the Battle of Britain, I thought it was a great idea, but couldn’t really see what I could contribute to it.
At 34, I’m far too young to have any memories of the battle, and all of my knowledge of that period has come from books, films, documentaries, and snippets of personal accounts. I have nothing original to add.
But over the last week or so, I thought back to something my mother said a couple of years ago which amazed me at the time, something that, until now, I’d never really appreciated, but which I’ve suddenly started to think about in a very different context.
So my contribution to today’s posts is my Mum’s story.
My Mum was born in September 1938, around about the time that Neville Chamberlain was returning from Munich with a piece of paper. My grandfather was a Sergeant in the regular Army, and the family lived in Brockley, in south east London. On the outbreak of war, Granddad was posted to a training Regiment in the Tadcaster area of Yorkshire, and after a couple of months of persuasion his wife and young daughter followed.
Life in rural Yorkshire didn’t particularly suit Gran, and after a quiet winter and spring, and against Granddad’s wishes, she decided that she and her daughter would prefer to return to their native Brockley. I have yet to prise the exact dates out of Mum, but from what I can make out this was around April 1940, still during the Phoney War.
Anyone who knows that particular area of London will know that the residential areas consist largely of terraced houses, whose back gardens back onto the gardens of the terraced houses in the next street. In 1939 and 1940, most of the back gardens contained Anderson shelters, usually at the very foot of the garden, so that they were as far away from the houses as possible. Those families that chose not to have Anderson shelters usually had Morrison shelters instead, a steel indoor shelter which could double as a dining table. It was a warmer alternative than the Anderson, but was far less resilient to a hit.
Sadly, Gran passed away four years ago. I dearly wish that I’d had the presence of mind to ask her to tell me her stories, because they’re now lost forever. But thankfully she managed to give Mum some of the detail behind my Mum’s earliest memory. Most of us have earliest memories of a pet dog, a special day out, a birthday. (Mine is of kicking down my best mates brick castle at playschool because it looked better than mine; envy is a terrible thing.)
But mum’s earliest memory is different. The first thing my mother can remember, is her grandmother throwing herself over my mum while the ground shook and a very loud explosion. I don’t know exactly when it happened, and neither does my mum, except that she was about two years old at the time. This would put the date some time during the Battle of Britain or later on during the Blitz which took place that winter.
While she was still alive, my Gran did fill in some of the gaps for Mum; the family – my mother (then aged two), my Gran, and my Great Grandmother had all gone down to their Anderson shelter when the sirens sounded one night, and settled down as best they could. But this particular night, Brockley was hit. The explosion that Mum heard was part of a stick of bombs which fell on their street that night. They fell mostly across the gardens, but one bomb hit the house whose back garden backed onto Mum’s. That family had a Morrison shelter. They were all killed.
So far, that’s all I know about the incident, and if it wasn’t for my ex’s daughter having a school project about the second world war, I probably wouldn’t even know this much. Robyn was asked to try and find out whether any grandparents had any memories of the war, and so more in hope than anything else, I asked my parents what memories they had. I was very surprised to hear Mum’s story, and I didn’t take it all in at the time, but after thinking about it over the last week, and working out what I would write in this post, I’ve realised something quite sobering.
Next Monday, my Mum will celebrate her 65th birthday, in her quiet little corner of rural Suffolk. Just her, Dad, the cats and the dog, surrounded by birthday cards from her children and grandchildren.
But if that Luftwaffe pilot had been just fifty yards left or right of his course, or if that bomb aimer had released his bombs fifty yards earlier or later, or if the bomber had been slightly higher or lower, my Mum would have been killed. She wouldn’t have led the happy life she’s led, nor would she and my Dad have recently celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. And on Monday, there would be no birthday cards from her family, because we would never have existed.
I’m still not entirely sure what point I’m trying to put across. Or if indeed there is one. But I do know that I can’t ever even begin to repay the debt that I owe The Few.
By: Firebird - 16th September 2003 at 12:40
Great post topic……
Here goes with a few of the stories told to me by my parents and grandparents.
My Mum’s father was from that ‘fortunate’ age group that was too young to be involved in the Great War and too old to be involved in WW2. However, he was a member of the Home Guard and as a skilled toolmaker did his bit when the factory he worked in was turned over to munitions production. The one story I remember him telling me involved a V1. One Sunday lunchtime, late in the war he was walking to one of his local pubs for a pint, this involved walking across some open ground nearby, and halfway across he heard the unmistakeable sound of a V1, by the time he had turned around and looked to the south-east and spotted it coming towards him, the motor cut and it started heading down towards him. Fortunately it was in a curved descent and flew right over him before impacting into the canteen of the Glaxo factory about ¼ mile away.
My Dad’s family were bombed out during the war, a land mine landing on their house in Brentford, fortunately all 11 of them were out at the time, but they lost everything, and the following year his Dad became one of the few Home Guard casualties when the ammunition for the AA battery he was guarding exploded accidentally, killing him. My Dad was serving as a boy runner in the same HG unit at the time, just prior to volunteering for the regular army.
From and aviation view though, my Mum has some nice stories, as they were living quite close to RAF Northolt. She was born in 1932 and has a vivid memory, aged about 5 or 6, of being on the swing in her garden when, this very noisy and very low aeroplane come roaring over faster than anything they had seen or heard before, and she ran into the house screaming…..
The timescale fits in with the first Hurricane’s entering service with 111 at Northolt, so I’ve often wondered whether this could have been the first Hurri to arrive at Northolt, or later, ‘Downwind’ Gillan arriving back at Northolt on his record breaking run from Turnhouse.
She also remembers a German bomber strafing the back gardens of their road on a low level raid, either on the munitions factory at the bottom of their garden or on its way to Northolt a few miles away. And yet bizarrely, later on at the bottom of their road a POW camp was built to house German and Italian POW from North Africa, and every day they were marched past her house on their way to building the Underground station at Greenford. In fact my Mum had to walk to school along a footpath through the middle of the POW camp, and several of her school friends got chatted up by the Italian POW’s, some of whom stayed here after the war and married her school friends.
By: dhfan - 16th September 2003 at 02:24
My parents are, or in Dad’s case were, the same sort of age as Kev’s Dad. Both families lived in Watford, where I was born in 1952.
Considering how close Watford is to London, it seems to have got off relatively lightly. Like Steve, the house at the bottom of my Dad’s garden was destroyed, I think by a bomb although it sounds a bit odd if it was just one. Half a mile or so down the road was the worst incident in Watford during the war. A V1 came down in Sandringham Road and apparently careered along the road before exploding. The street was virtually destroyed and a lot of people were killed. A mile the other way Leavesden was turning out Halifaxes and Mosquitos.
There were 3 bomb craters in a park a few minutes walk from the house that I remember seeing well into the 60s.
Both Mum and Dad said one of their clearest memories was the sky going dark with aircraft for the Airborne attack on Arnhem.
By: yak139 - 15th September 2003 at 21:30
Yakrider
Hopefully this thread will spur others to note things down. It’s sometimes frightening how fast time flies!
I agree, I wish I had recorded my Dad’s stories from the war, and now it is too late. I have his medals, photographs and medals, and proud of them.
He never wanted to talk about his experiences during the war, maybe because he felt that because he wasn’t aircrew his contribution was negligible, although the ratio of groundcrew to aircrew must have been something like 20:1.
The ground crews do have good stories, and their contribution was extremely important, what good is aircrew without a plane?
Get those pens and recorders out, and record history while you can, I wish I had.
By: YakRider - 15th September 2003 at 18:24
<< It’s just a shame that our relatives don’t always tell us what they went through. >>
I agree with that. As I said in my post, my father was in the RAF, he volunteered at the beginning of the war. Because he was married with a child they put him in the RAF Police.
He never wanted to talk about his experiences during the war, maybe because he felt that because he wasn’t aircrew his contribution was negligible, although the ratio of groundcrew to aircrew must have been something like 20:1.
He served on southern fighter bases during the Battle of Britain. I can remember him mentioning 92 Squadron. Then onto Coastal Command at Squires Gate, where a friend of his was killed walking into a Beaufighter prop.
From there to the Bahamas, where Coastal had their anti-sub patrols. He flew back over the Atlantic in the bomb bay of a Liberator.
There you have it. That’s about as much as I know about six years service. There must be a lot of other people in the same position.
My uncle was much more forthcoming about working at Supermarine. One of the things I meant to do was get him to write things down about what he remembered, or maybe to tape his reminiscences. I never got round to it, and it’s too late now as he died just over a year ago.
You mentioned a school project which got you asking questions. I think that this oral history is vitally important to preserve. Our parents, aunts and uncles are a dwindling resource of information, especially about aspects of the war which aren’t covered in the standard aircrew memoires.
Hopefully this thread will spur others to note things down. It’s sometimes frightening how fast time flies!
YR
Another pic – this time of a data sheet issued by Supermarine about sheet metal working. Just the sort of thing that gets thrown away when a dead relatives belongings are being cleared out…
By: Arabella-Cox - 15th September 2003 at 18:01
Thanks Kev. I should have known I could count on you to see the meaning. 🙂 Haydn’s seen the Anderson shelter in Hangar Three at Duxford, and I’ve told him that his gran used to have to sleep in one during the war. He understands that she had to spend her nights in there because the Germans were trying to bomb her house. I have briefly mentioned the near miss, but he can’t quite work out why anyone would want to drop bombs on Nanny Pat.
At first glance it seems quite enlightening to see that both yourself and YakRider also have elder relatives who lived through that terrible time, but then I realise it’s the case for every single person of a certain age; they ALL went through it to a greater or lesser degree. It’s just a shame that our relatives don’t always tell us what they went through. Maybe they’re trying to protect us, or maybe, as in my Mum’s case, up until the age of six (Haydn’s age now), all she’d ever known was war. I don’t think we’ll ever truly understand how that must have been. 🙁
By: YakRider - 15th September 2003 at 17:30
An interesting post. My family lived in a village called Braishfield, near Southampton. My mother was living with her parents, as my father was in the RAF and she was nursing my elder brother who was born just before the war. My mother’s sister and her husband also lived there, my uncle working as an inspector at Supermarine.
Both my uncle and aunt had lucky escapes. When the Supermarine factories were bombed there was a mix-up over the air raid alarm and a number of the workforce were killed before they could reach the shelters. My uncle was on the opposite shift at the time and drove in to work that day to find the factories in ruins and many of his friends and colleagues dead.
They then dispersed the factories to various laundries and garages around the area. The drawing office and development section were sent to Hursley Park, where my uncle later ended up – working on prototype development. The facilities on the airfield at Eastleigh remained undamaged. During the Battle of Britain and into 1941, his job was to visit RAF fighter bases checking on the modification state of the Spitfires. Very often this work was interrupted by air raids, and of course many of the aircraft did not survive long enough to require updating!.
My aunt also had a close escape when she and a number of other people were machine gunned by a Heinkel as she cycled home from work. She had to hide in a ditch to avoid the bullets.
They also remembered seeing a Ju88 shot down by a Spitfire which flew low over their house. The Ju88 crashed just outside the village, the crew being killed. They went along with a lot of other people to view the wreckage.
The picture shows the seventh production Spitfire K9793 at Eastleigh in 1938 before joining 19 Squadron at Duxford. Destroyed 11/9/40 in combat with Ju88 while serving with 92 Squadron from Biggin Hill (pilot Sgt S Duszynski ? listed as missing).
Lest we forget.
YR
By: kev35 - 15th September 2003 at 17:29
Steve,
what a great reminiscence. Definitely something for you to tell Haydn about as he grows older. You say you’re not sure what the point is? Well to me, it’s the simple fact that we often look at people today and see an old man or an old woman. We see the veterans at airshows and events and we realise their service sets them apart in some way. Now we know the same of your Mom. At the age of two she was far more involved in war than you or I would ever hope to be. I think sometimes we take that for granted.
An example, my Dad aged 14 was a messenger with the Civil Defence. On the night Coventry was ‘Coventrated’ he sat with a much older colleague atop Barr Beacon and watched the City burn. He was scared by the sight but was ready to go with his colleague to take supplies into the devastated city. He’s 76 now and at times I think he’s a silly old ‘bu**er’, but he’s my Dad and seen sights I’ve never dreamed of.
Regards,
kev35
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September 15, 2003 at 1:12 pm