The Blitz revisited.

.The Blitz Revisited.

   Watching Clair Dawson Entertains on a cold winter’s night, my mind wandered back to my early childhood experiences during the early  war years of 1940/41. During this time, the village in which I lived was subjected to almost nightly raids due to its location as Southern Command Headquarters, defending Britain from the German air onslaught. Clair Dawson’s musical however, revolved around the love life of a young Liverpool girl. All the popular war time songs were given an outing, which of course was reasonable, but somehow I was unable to relate to the musical entertainment, my mind kept drifting back to those broken nights as the wail of the sirens awoke our family from their sleep. Looking skyward at the piecing shafts of search lights lighting up the night sky, listening for the soft drone of approaching aircraft engines, always sent shivers down our spines. Then, there was that desperate race to the shelter before the drones became a louder reality as the raid began.

 

   As a young child, I was obliged to use a saucepan as my air raid helmet, an idea of mother’s as we didn't not possess children’s sizes. These helmets were stored in a cupboard under the stairs, along with World War One gas masks reissued at the out break of hostilities. Our house was a good hundred metres from the air raid bunker located in the small wood located at the bottom of the garden. We would run past the fruit trees in the orchard, and the National Guard hiding inside their sand bag fort, where they manoeuvred their anti-air craft gun into position. I cannot  recall anyone ever firing this gun, but that is not surprising as we would all be well and truly hidden inside our shelter. Our bunker was an underground structure built of concrete, and covered with a foot or so of grassed topsoil. Towards the latter part of the war the family decided not to use the bunker, and it became an excellent children’s’ cubby house, that is until our gardener decided to grow mushroom there. Why my parents built their shelter so far from the house was never explained to me, but I supposed the reason was that they felt the further away the better. There were two exists, one at each end as a safe guard against a cave in during a bombing raid.

 

   Mother had decorated our Bunker in her usual theatrical way, large wooden Indian tea boxes turned into tables with bright red table cloths thrown over them, some with war maps of the current political position in Europe printed on them. As a small boy, I loved the Hurricane lamps suspended from wall brackets that provided a party atmosphere, and a sense of some secret place. The bunker was well provided with a supply of water and food to last several days. My father didn’t always accompany us on these nightly excursions as he was the medical officer for the nearby RAF base. The walls were hung with hessian drops to give a cosy feeling, some of which had painted designs on them, others hangings had fun cartoon characters of Hitler and Mussolini, and other war time personalities. The drawing were based on the cut out cardboard marinates you could buy at the post office to help the war effort.

 

   On most nights we arrived before the first series of bombs started to fall, there would be a flash of light as the earth started to vibrate and move from the shock. Often after these air raids our house would be turned into a temporary field hospital, as my father administered what medical treatment possible. If one of the injured happened to be a young   German pilot, Mother would have to act as interpreter. On one occasion  a young airman landed on the wrought iron spiked fence around the church opposite, impaling himself in the process. On these occasions the house would be overrun with soldiers, mainly French Canadians who were stationed near the village. After basic medical treatment the hapless prisoner would be carted off back to base, there was little sympathy shown to prisoners as he would be thrown into the back of a lorry and carted back to base for interrogation. Meanwhile the local fire brigade would be out quenching any fires. The mornings after were the worst when the local residents counted the loss of their fellows, and to inspected bomb damaged buildings.

 

Towards the end of the war, a new peril appeared in the form of the doodle bomb, these rockets inflicted untold damage on the civilian population. The Allies were very lucky that the Germans had not developed their rocket earlier, in a way the western allies were fortunate to gain the experience of Jewish scientists who fled Germany for America. Whenever you heard one of these rockets approaching people would sit in stony silence as they listened to the soft, soft, sound of these approaching messengers of death, waiting from the engine to fall silent, holding their breath, waiting for the explosion. People became quite expert in working out the likely distance and time required before these devices arrived.

One evening as I listen to the engine of a rockets stop suddenly, it seemed to be just outside my window, frozen in terror I watched the bedroom window fly across the room, the air filled with dust and broken glass. Then flash of light and noise blinded me as I was thrown to the floor. The house next door was engulfed in flames, as the occupants died an unkindly death. This was my memory of the Blitz, a time of tremendous stress and deprivation.