Bombed Out And Rehoused

It would seem that at that time, my father had a charmed life for within the space of one week he missed almost certain death on two occasions. The first was on Friday 23 June 1944, when he was working as a booking clerk at the Railway station at Forest Hill in South London. He had just left work to cycle home and was about half a mile up the road when a V1 severely damaged the station building that he had left a few minutes before.

Then exactly one week later, on Friday 30th June 1944, cycling home early in the afternoon after his early shift, he was about 400 yards from our house when to his horror he saw a doodlebug pass over in the opposite direction they normally came from. This one suddenly dived down and as far as my father could tell had apparently scored a direct hit on our house. Speaking many years afterwards, the only thing my father said he could remember of that arrival home was seeing the bomb drop, picking up his bike, putting it onto his shoulder and running over the rubble through all the dust. Thankfully to his relief he found that the bomb had in fact dropped away from the house and we had all been safe in the shelter. He could also remember a woman hanging out of a flat over a block of shops, which he passed, who was shouting for help.

What had happened was that this particular flying bomb had already gone over, and was slowly descending towards the hill at Crystal Palace when it slowly turned in a circle and came back. This story has a ring of truth to it for my mother had gone indoors after “one had gone over”, to see to the dinner and when she heard “another one coming” she came back out to the shelter. She had just pulled shut the wooden door on the shelter but had not secured it, when the bomb exploded wrenching the door from her hand. What actually saved her life however, as I said earlier, were the sleepers which my father had erected to form a wall round the entrance to our shelter, which stopped the blast from severely injuring or possibly killing her.

When we all struggled out of the shelter, all I could do was keep saying, “where are we going to sleep tonight?”, but of course my mother comforted us and I must have calmed down. The next impression was the awful smell of the dust, which was floating about everywhere. All the dust from the attics and suchlike has a strange odour all of its own and when inhaled like that, it is never forgotten. Then there was the sight of the damaged houses which with all the windows and doors blown out, looked like a lot of skulls with hollow staring eyes.

We were all standing at the bottom of the back garden when my father appeared from the house to find us all unscathed. Suddenly however the woman living next door came out from her house carrying her baby in her arms and with both of them covered in blood. She had one of the Morrison Table shelters I mentioned earlier, and although they were fine for protection against debris falling on the top, the mesh round the sides did not protect you from flying glass from broken windows. The slivers of glass just went straight through the mesh and in her case had cut her pretty badly. I have since learned that in fact the baby died the following day from her injuries.

Within a short time, members of the Civil Defence Corps were on hand and we were taken to a Rest centre which had been set up in a Local Church hall. A short time later arrangements were made to take us to our grandparents house in Thornton Heath which is where we stayed for some weeks before being given a Requisitioned house to live in.

One thing my father did before we left our damaged house was to write in large letters in copying-ink pencil on the wall by the front door that we were all right, and the address where we would be staying. Thus anyone would know where we were and post could be forwarded on. That pencilled address was still there on the wall when the house was repaired and we returned five years later.

The V1 bomb had actually dropped on the other side of the railway from our house where it had completely wrecked a row of shops. For many years afterwards, right up until the early nineteen sixties when the area was redeveloped, the twisted metal shell of the doodlebug lay on the bombed site which it had caused. In all those years I doubt if anyone passing by realised exactly what the rusty metal was, and unfortunately for me, I did not take a photo of it.

After we were bombed out, and during the time we were at our grandparents, we children slept in the shelter with my mother and father, and our grandparents slept indoors. Once during that time, while going shopping we went into a local park where a doodlebug had dropped and exploded and my only real recollection is of all the trees being bare of leaves with their trunks all split and bent over.

During the war any properties which were empty were requisitioned by the Authorities for just such emergencies as that which we found ourselves in. The particular house which my parents were offered was at a place called Coney Hall, about four miles away from our bombed house. We went on the bus to see the house before moving in to it and as we were walking down the road on the way there, a DoodleBug suddenly appeared overhead and its engine stopped. Now when the Doodlebug engine stopped, they were known to do one of two things, they either nose-dived virtually straight down, or they glided onwards for some distance. You always hoped that they would keep gliding, which was not very friendly when you consider that it meant that someone else would “get it”.

We had always been told when bombs were dropping nearby to lay down flat on the ground but with your chest off lifted off the ground to prevent internal damage from concussion. On this occasion, although all the rest of the family obeyed my father’s instructions to GET DOWN I completely forgot all I had been told and remained standing upright with my eyes shut and my hands pressed tightly over my ears. Luckily for us (but not someone else) the bomb carried on. However I was severely reprimanded for staying upright.

When we finally got to the house, we children thought it was great, for the front of the house looked out across the fields and there were cows in the field opposite, a new thing for me as I had only ever seen them in books before. The best part however was that it had a bathroom with hot water supplied from a boiler behind the fire in the living room, which meant that we could have baths very easily without lugging hot water in buckets, for remember we had always had to bath in the tin bath in the living room before with water carried through from the copper in the scullery.

When we were first looking round the house, I went upstairs to look round and in the bathroom to my amazement on the wall was a well-drawn pencil sketch of a nude woman which to me as a nine-year-old was a fantastic piece of work. However when my mother found me standing admiring it I was soon ushered downstairs.

The house only had two bedrooms which meant that my parents slept in the front bedroom while we three children had to sleep in the back bedroom. However the view from the back bedroom window faced straight out towards the area from which the majority of the Doodlebugs came, so that on a clear day you could see them coming from about 5 miles away along the route nicknamed “Bomb Alley”.

The house had been occupied by some Canadian Soldiers before we went there and the area around had been a training ground for soldiers. On looking back I realise now that those same soldiers were probably at that time in France, for D-Day had taken place a few weeks before.

We had to wait a week or so until the place had been decorated before we moved in. This was my first encounter with the decorating material known as Distemper for when we moved in the walls had been distempered and the house had this strange awful smell. Of course the nude in the bathroom disappeared in the process. Our furniture was moved from our bombed-out house to the new abode by soldiers using an army truck, and apparently one soldier sat on the back during the journey playing my mothers piano.

It must have been slightly dangerous handling the furniture because much of it had small slivers of glass embedded in it and in this instance, the Piano springs to mind for I can recall that my Mother tore the cloth on the glass embedded in the front whilst polishing the piano.

When we were bombed out, we lost a lot of our belongings but we were able to get extra clothes and bedding from Red Cross distribution depots in Beckenham. These clothes and bedding had been supplied by the Canadian Red Cross and one thing which always comes to my mind was that the bedcovers all seemed to have the Paisley pattern on the eiderdowns.

Some days after we had been bombed out, we went back to our damaged house to see if we could rescue any of our belongings such as clothes etc. Amongst some things, which I managed to retrieve, were two Dinky toy cars, which were still on a small ledge under the dining table. However one large model car which had been my favourite was nowhere to be seen and unfortunately it must have been stolen. I also remember that the walls of the kitchen were covered in jam, which my mother had been making when the bomb came down and the inside walls of my Fathers garden shed were covered in paint where paint pots had exploded

The requisitioned house we moved into was situated on the edge of an estate of houses and bungalows which had only been built a few years before the war and was obviously intended for a middle class family for they all had garages. For some reason, probably cost, very little coal was burnt in our house, it was always coke, coal only being used to start the fire off and in the garage of the house we were in was an inspection pit, which my father used as a storage for the coke which was burnt on the fire..

Old wood such as rafters and doorframes from bombed buildings used to be collected by the Council and distributed for people to use as firewood. Once a week a lorry would appear and tip this scarred and blackened offering onto the grass area outside the house and there would the be a mad rush by all the neighbours to get as much as possible.

There were blackout shutters in each room which had been made by the army whilst they were in occupation. These shutters were constructed of some kind of strawboard on wooden frames and were very strong. These shutters clipped into place by turnbuckles, which made them very easy to put up and take down.

I soon struck up acquaintances with other boys of my age who lived just a few doors away, and they soon showed me all the good playgrounds. We had great fun building camps in the hedge which ran between the field opposite and the road where we lived and playing in the woods and enjoying ourselves. To me this was really good, for I had always lived in town and this sort of open air life was a great novelty to me.

Often after a night raid we used to find strips of silver paper, which we were told was for runners to follow like a paper chase. Of course at a later date I found out that it was dropped to outwit the radar, which we knew nothing about at the time.

All this was taking place with the war still going on, and although there was no bombing by planes we still had the Doodlebugs to worry about. However there soon came a new menace which you could not see, the V2 rocket. This just came out of the blue with no warning and no one saw them come down. However having said that nobody ever saw a V2, one day, I DID see one, even if only for a split second. I was walking down the road and happened to look over towards Bromley when I saw a streak of light and next minute saw a great cloud of smoke go up, so I can honestly say that I saw a V2. Then one day we were out playing in the field opposite when we saw lots of planes going over towing gliders. The lines of planes seemed to go on for hours however since D-Day had taken place some weeks earlier, I do not know where they were going.

During the war of course we never went on holiday but I distinctly remember going on a bus from Bromley to Sevenoaks, and during the journey we saw hundreds of barrage balloons above the fields. These had been moved out from the parks nearer to London in an attempt to trap the Doodlebugs and bring them down before they reached the built-up outer suburbs of London.