Authors: Sean Longden
Blitz Kids (12 page)
With the new wartime routine of a troglodyte existence in shelters and cellars came a terrible sense of utter exhaustion. The days and nights seemed to blur into one another. Every man, woman and child living in the bombed areas seemed on the verge of collapsing. In the worst hit areas people increasingly moved in a sluggish manner. Too little sleep, too much fear and uncertainty took a toll on their senses. When they did sleep, people became increasingly difficult to raise. As a result some slept right through air raids, preferring the comfort of their beds to the discomfort of the shelter. One girl recalled watching her sister fast asleep. The older girl had a baby that she clung to at all
times. On this night the child was not there, it was sleeping on the floor. Instead, the exhausted woman was hugging a pillow and sleepily whispering to it to offer comfort.
And so life went on. When the offices of
The Times
newspaper were bombed in September 1940, not a single issue failed to roll off the presses. Street markets operated in their familiar locations, with shoppers avoiding craters and piles of rubble. Shoeshine stalls continued to set up at stations and street-corners to polish the leather of those who happily walked through the rubble to reach work and wanted to maintain their sartorial standards. Vicars held services in shattered and roofless churches. As J. B. Priestley wrote in the introduction to
Britain Under Fire
, published during the war years: âOrdinary life goes on too ⦠children play in side streets and fields; the girls and their boy friends rush off to dances or wait patiently outside motion picture theatres'.
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Whilst much of the population was coming to terms with life in an air raid shelter, there were large numbers of youths who had a role to play in the conduct of war. As a member of the Colonial Office Home Guard, John Cotter found himself on duty during the Blitz: âThat was the closest I came to being bombed. The building looked over on to Downing Street. A bomb landed just outside.' Although he was lucky to be living in the relative safety of Edgware, John Cotter began to understand the impact of the Blitz:
As the Blitz got going it used to be depressing travelling home at night. Once the Underground train got out of the tunnel at Hampstead, you'd see the searchlights and know that the sirens had gone. You could hear bombs and you knew you were in for a miserable night. Everything had changed, rationing had started â I couldn't get my sweets. I was smoking twenty a day and you couldn't get them. Things got a bit tight.
As a teenager in full-time employment, John enjoyed great independence in wartime London:
When I got back from work at night, there was nobody at home. My father was in a funk about the bombing, so he decided to take my mother and my sister by car from Edgware out to St Albans to a field. They
parked in the field overnight. So there was me and brother left in the flat with our aged aunt who was a bit dotty and refused to go with them. She would go out on the balcony, shake her fist and shout, âBugger you, Mr Hitler.' We'd tell her to come in and close the blackout.
The irony was that the boys and their aunt were safe in their Edgware flat. However, the same could not be said for their parents: âOut at St Albans, a bomb dropped in the field and shattered the glass in my father's car.'
One teenage girl, who started work in London in 1940 at age fourteen, recalled how the routine of her life continued:
I worked in London travelling to the Strand every day. You'd go up and overnight there had been a bombing â buildings had just disappeared. But life just carried on as normal, your daily routine was so disrupted. Sometimes travelling was difficult. If there was overnight bombing you'd get damage at the railway or station but I always managed somehow to get to work. Most of the bombing was at night â so there was either a train or there wasn't.
This sense of resolve would soon be named the âBlitz Spirit'. To the people who experienced it was simply a case of carrying on with life as normal.
Now sixteen, Peter Richards was one whose life continued despite the bombing. Looking back, he recalled: âMy own reflections on the Blitz were how bloody stupid I was to take some of the risks I could have avoided.' If at home during raids he took shelter with his brother and father in the cellar; if not he carried on as if ignorant of the dangers. Rather than settle in at home each evening, awaiting the sirens, he continued to live a normal teenage life. He went to the cinema, to the youth club, to the gym or called on friends. He later explained how air raids could be treated with nonchalance: âYou become streetwise. You become wary of things.' If anti-aircraft guns opened fire, it was worth taking shelter to avoid the hail of shrapnel that rained down from the guns. Otherwise, just keep walking. If the drone of enemy bombers could be heard overhead, dive into a doorway and wait for them to pass â all the time hoping not to hear the whistle of falling bombs.
Then, when the drone had passed, it was safe to continue on one's way. He later recalled: âIt was bloody stupid. I used to go out running in the middle of the bombing. It's not that I didn't worry, but we took a calculated risk. We ran from the youth club in Bloomsbury to Regent's Park or ran round Bedford Square.'
This disdain for the bombing was the product of youth. His parents could not influence his decision to take risks during the bombing:
My parents realized they couldn't do anything about it. They couldn't say, âStay in,' because if you stayed in there was always the danger that you'd get bombed. I just thought I'd be all right. It happens to other people â it wouldn't happen to me. That was the general feeling. But there was a time I can remember coming up from Kentish Town. There was a tremendous raid going on. I could hear the bombs coming very close. I flattened myself on the pavement and thought, âThis is the end.' So there were some scary moments. It wasn't all dancing around as if nothing was happening.
One particular evening stuck in Peter's memory, which he later recalled as: âOne of the hairiest episodes of my life.' He had been visiting a workmate in Edmonton, six miles from his own home. After an evening of chatting and listening to records, Peter got ready to cycle home. As he departed, the sirens began to sound. Rather than remain in Edmonton, he decided to keep going: âIt was a horrible raid, but what could I do? I suppose I could have gone into a shelter somewhere, but I'd have to leave my bike outside. It might have got pinched.' Realizing that nowhere was safe, he raced through the streets listening to the banging of anti-aircraft guns and the whistle and thump of falling bombs. At some points he cycled through clouds of smoke from newly burning buildings. Arriving safely at home he faced his greatest challenge: surviving the wrath of his mother who hated his going out during air raids. His mother's reaction was an indication of the generation gap: âYou believe you are immortal. You don't know any different. You've got the energy to do these things.'
His mate John Cotter took similar risks. One evening he could see activity in the skies and decided to head into central London to take a closer look:
I got on the tube and went up to Tower Bridge station, by which time it was dark. There was nobody around and I went out on to Tower Bridge. There was a lot of bombing in the East End, I could see it. There was a tea factory burning just to the east of the bridge. A warden came along and said, âYou should be in a shelter, son.' I told him I was all right and he called me a âSilly little sod' or something.
John watched as the sky lit up with explosions and burning buildings. He could hear the drone of enemy bombers and the bang of the anti-aircraft guns. It was a horrible, yet fascinating, spectacle:
When I had seen enough I went back to the station, got on the District line then changed to head home to Edgware. The tubes were running normally and underground everything seemed normal â apart from the hundreds of people sheltering.
Looking back at the impetuosity of youth, he recalled: âIt was a thrill. I didn't think of the danger â I didn't think it was going to affect me. My parents didn't seem to worry about what I was doing. They let me get on with it. My sister was still young, they were more worried about her.'
Whilst parents fretted over the fate of younger children, the older ones were more difficult to control. With a sense of defiance, they did their best to continue with life. Some 40 per cent of schoolchildren continued to visit the cinema at least once a week. Of course, the spirit of independence shown by many youngsters brought its own pitfalls. For Peter Richards, the cinema was a good way to take one's mind off the reality of high explosive and incendiary bombs. The only concern was where one should sit. Was it safer to sit in the rear stalls and have the shelter of the balcony above, or was that risking being crushed by a falling balcony? Similarly, was it safer to sit at the front and only risk the falling weight of the ceiling?
Parents fretted over absent children, whilst those youths who were out and about knew the ominous feeling as they approached their own street again, uncertain of what might greet them. In the south London suburb of Mitcham, Peg â a teenage school-leaver â was one of many who decided to ignore the dangers:
I used to go out in the evenings. We'd go up the West End. The sirens would go, and my mother would say: âYou're not going out yet!' But I couldn't care less. I told her, âIf it hits me, it hits me.' Life had to go on. You've got to enjoy your young life. We'd go up to the West End, meet some lads, go and have a coffee somewhere. We were having a lovely time. I always wore high-heeled shoes. I'd be tripping down the road with all this red-hot shrapnel falling around me. I didn't take any notice of it.
She had dark hair and a Jewish appearance, and her family teased her about what would happen to her if the Germans came. This became her greatest concern: the fear of what might happen rather than the fear of what was happening.
Relief and horror were shared by thousands. For Terry Charles the realization of the true meaning of the bombing came after a night out at the cinema near his new home in West Kensington:
Life went on. When the sirens went off you had a choice: stay or go. Some went and some stayed. It was a lottery â you could get hit by a bomb in the street or you could get hit in the cinema. One night, when I came home I found the end of my road completely blocked off. There were fire engines and ambulances there. The road was cordoned off and they wouldn't let me go down. I could see that the first three houses on either side were still standing but the rest of the road had gone. The last standing house was the one we lived in.
Desperate to find his family, Terry asked to be let through but was told the building was not safe, it might collapse at any moment. âI had no idea where my mother was. Was she alive or dead? Nobody wanted to speak to a kid to tell me what had happened.' Such was the blur of activity that Terry could not remember how he actually located his family: as he later realized, he had probably blotted out the memory since it was so traumatic. Eventually he found they had been taken to the Hammersmith hospital and were safe. When he finally got to speak with his mother she explained what had happened. The blast from the nearby bomb had come down the chimney and had thrown the fire into her lap, badly burning her. They had then scrambled under the
Morrison shelter that acted as their table: âWhilst they were there, the ceilings and all the upper floors of the flats above just collapsed on to the table. It saved their lives.' Despite the damage to the house, it was patched up and, after a period in temporary accommodation, the family moved back in.
The horrors inflicted upon London reached its symbolic climax on the night of Sunday, 29 December 1940. That night more than 20,000 bombs were dropped on London, including 127 tons of high explosive and countless incendiaries, most of which rained down on the City of London. The capital's historic heart â the Square Mile â was under attack. ARP wardens and firemen struggled to cope as the destruction mounted. The fire was concentrated in a semicircle from north-east to south-west of St Paul's Cathedral. As whole blocks were set ablaze, Christopher Wren's fabled dome was soon silhouetted against a viciously beautiful red sky. The white stones themselves reflected the flames, making the building stand out amidst the swirling plumes of thick black smoke that rose into the sky.
From his top-floor window in Ealing, Roy Bartlett, and the rest of the people from his shelter, watched the fires as they burned. They could see sudden bursts of flames as buildings collapsed into the fires that had engulfed them. Just as they had watched in terror on the first night of the Blitz, they watched as the heart of London was destroyed by flames. Even eight miles outside London, Sylvia Bowman was called out from the shelter by her father who pointed up at bright red skies above London and said, âThis is something you will never forget.' He was right:
I saw the night sky, burning red and black, the colours changing with the wind and the explosions. It was like a fire wall, I looked to the left and the right and the whole scene was the same. The silhouettes of the chimney pots made it seem like a vision. We could smell the sooty air. I was afraid.
Another witness to the bombing was Peter Richards. As usual, he had gone out to the cinema in central London. He listened to the wail of sirens from his seat but decided not to take shelter: âWe decided that the spectacle of song and dance that we were enjoying was preferable
to the sights outside.' They finally emerged from the cinema to see the whole sky lit up. It was as if the sun was rising early over the East End and the City. Despite the horror of a city in flames, Peter had to admit: âIt looked fantastic.'
For other youngsters, the flames were more than something to be watched. Throughout the Blitz there were teenagers working in official capacities â in particular the messenger boys working for the police and fire service. In the streets around St Paul's Cathedral,
seventeen-year-old
Richard Holsgrove was among the teams of firemen fighting back the flames. He had joined the Auxiliary Fire Service as a messenger, aged sixteen, and had then been promoted to junior fireman at age seventeen. He first fought fires at Tilbury Docks, later recalling: âPeople used to say you must have been scared, but it was exciting to me. I wasn't scared at that age.'
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He had grown used to seeing the corpses of those hit by blast.