Anti-aircraft-gun (known as an 'ack ack'). A
cigarette card.
During the blitz, the site later used for the Italian
Prisoner of War Camp housed an Ack Ack gun battery and most nights when they
fired, it was more scary than the bombing. A great source of shrapnel for
the kids but too dangerous to be out during a raid. Ack Ack was the name
given to anti aircraft gun fire (a hold over from WW1 and the use of Phonetic
Alpha.) The aircraft on the receiving end called it Flak.
A battery of guns,
usually 6-12 was very mobile and could be rushed to various places when
needed. Special guns with a high elevation and handling about a 3 inch shell
were guided by a crude sonic direction and optical range finder and the
shell could be fused to explode at a certain height just before firing.
The casing split into hundreds of pieces called shrapnel, potentially dangerous
to planes and airmen.
Shrapnel was highly prized by us young schoolboys after
a raid but during a raid it could be hazardous to be in the street. Hence
the police, firemen and ARP
wardens wore regulation steel helmets. Shrapnel also caused some damage
to tiles and chimneys on roof tops.
Frank Clarke
Anti-aircraft-gun known as an 'ack ack'. Screen
shot from a history documentary.
To protect us from the German bombs during the blitz of
World War Two, my family, like most
others, had a shelter. Ours was an
Anderson shelter.
As it was illegal to show any light after dark, an
Air Raid Warden was appointed to every street. He wore a metal helmet
marked with the letter W. If he saw a chink of light
he would shout out "Put that light out!". Some houses had some of their back
fences removed so that the warden could patrol through the back gardens
to see if there was any light showing. A warden would also patrol the streets
all night to watch for incendiary bombs being dropped and starting house
fires whilst the householders were hiding in their Anderson shelters.
Everyone had to leave their front and back doors unlocked at night so that if the house was hit by a bomb the rescue people could get in and deal with casualties. It was human nature for some people to take the opportunity to rob their neighbours. So part of the wardens' duties were to act as special constables. This I learnt from men who had been wardens during the blitz. Houses and shops that had been bombed had a large sign stating "Looters will be shot". I'm not sure if anybody was actually shot, but it was fair warning.
There were no street lights. Some people had torches.
Otherwise, if there was mo moon, we felt our way with a stick like a blind
person.
Peter Johnson
Sometimes my father would "take me up" - out of the Anderson shelter - to
see what was going on. The shelter faced eastwards - that is to say from Edmonton
towards Chingford across the Lea Valley and its factory estates.
In front of the shelter doors was a blast wall - a thick brick wall
designed to do as its name suggests. We often used to stand behind it,
watching all of the planes and searchlights in the sky, the 'tracer' bullets
and general hubbub.
I think that the 'tracer' bullets got their name because they somehow glowed
enabling the gunner to see the trajectory and thus trace and refine his aim.
I had plenty of experience of the blitz, cycling to and from Cheam to my school in Ashtead during the Battle of Britain. I must have been 11 or 12 years old.
I also watched it from home.
Little did I appreciate the stress and strain of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots in the sky above me, locked in deadly combat with their enemies. It would only be when there was a momentary burst of gunfire from one of the planes that my schoolboy friends and I would leap from our bikes and run. Then we did appreciate something of the terrible danger these great RAF heroes were in. The occasional vapour trail left by a plane in the clear blue skies above our heads, the flash of sunlight from some part of one of the many planes, twisting and turning in and away from one another. It was like some macabre aerial ballet. Quite beautiful, but totally deadly.
We boys would watch from the road in front of our houses, seated on our bikes, twisting and turning ourselves in the road to keep sight of the planes, almost in sympathy with the mortal combat taking place above our heads. And then a burst of gunfire and flames and a lot of smoke would stream from one of the planes, and it would begin its last dive to oblivion. There was no telling whether it was a German plane, or one of our own, but we would watch where it was headed, and we would start cycling towards where it might crash into the ground.
By the time we reached the crash site, the Home Guard were usually there to keep us all at bay, but if the wreck was unguarded, the description of piranha at a joint of beef comes to mind.
Sadly we were not fussy which country the plane came from, although there was greater value to
shrapnel and other souvenirs from a Nazi plane.
How could we children be so heartless and uncaring?
It is quite shameful. But we did care, most deeply, as many of us had
our fathers, brothers, sister, and even some mothers away in the war -
and fortunately, in my experience, the pilots always managed to parachute from the planes before they crashed.
As 'Winnie' [Winston Churchill] said, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".
Dick Hibberd
I don't remember ever seeing a plane shot down but there was much to see on the ground,
especially when a bomb went through the top of one of the gasometers in the
gasworks along Angel Road about a mile due east of us. As you can imagine, the
flames shot several hundreds of feet up into the air. It was seldom pitch dark
then, what with the searchlights and flashes, etc.
A landmine dropped opposite our house. Fortunately
it had got caught in a tree which meant that the damage was less than it
would otherwise have been. At daylight we went to look over our poor house, and the thing I remember most clearly
concerned a bowl of tinned peaches which had been left out on the kitchen table.
It had been showered with plaster from the ceiling. This was quite a tragedy at the time
because of rationing and the
shortages. I doubt if we were able to buy any more until after the war.
Geoff Copus
Towards the end of 1939 I was shipped out on a daily basis to my grandmother
who lived a few streets away. (This was because my father had become very ill.)
Thus I vividly remember passing days in September 1940 in her back garden,
in glorious weather, and watching the aeroplanes weaving, turning and fighting
each other in the sustained air campaign known as the Battle of Britain. I seem
to remember that our planes were silver and the enemy's were black, but that
may have been childhood fantasy. Anyway, ours won - thank God!
Where my family lived in Orpington, Kent, we were on the flight path
from Germany to London. Biggin Hill Aerodrome was also nearby. So we
were very much affected by air raids. I remember watching with fascination the dogfights between fighter planes in the skies above us,
and at night I slept under the stairs - said to be strongest part of a
house, with my parents also squeezing in.
One day while I was cycling to school a German
fighter plane appeared suddenly out of the clouds and loosed off a few
rounds of machine-gun fire in my direction. It was all over in a few seconds and fortunately without my being hit.
Geoff Copus
In 1943 during one of my grandfather's sorties for hatching eggs, a lone German fighter plane came in very low and strafed* a main road between Erith and Crayford - then a semi-rural area with corn fields on both sides of the road. I can still vividly remember seeing the young pilot's profile. He seemed not much older than I was - just like one of the boys we used to refer to at school as being 'one of the big boys'. I've occasionally wondered whether he survived the war.
Granddad and I threw ourselves into a ditch and the fertile eggs in his raincoat pocket were, needless to say, smashed to a messy pulp!
We then cowered for what seemed an eternity under the counter of the local corner shop
until Granddad deemed it safe to run for safer cover. Just as well we did,
as the plane turned and strafed the same road again. Granddad threatened me, '"Say one word about
this boy, and it will be the last time I'll take you with me"! I said nothing - not for many years afterwards!
Michael Sullivan
I was born in 1937, so I was still quite young during the worst of the air raids. Even so, I remember, one night my father holding me up to the windows during the
blackout, and everywhere around was a red glow where the bombs had fallen. We were lucky in Hazel Close, where we lived, though, because there was an anti-aircraft battery nearby, so the German aircraft tried to avoid the area.
Tom Wallace
___
*'Strafed' was a new word for me, being a couple of
years younger. According to the Online Dictionary 'to strafe' means 'to attack with machine guns or cannon
fire from a low-flying plane'.
|
BOMBED OUT IN A GERMAN AIR-RAID 1944
On Tulse Hill1 there was a mansion,
Victorian period, brick and stanchion2.
We shared it with others, having the ground floor,
'Till March 21st, when it became no more.
Woke in the night to the siren's scream,
Ending whatever was my childlike dream.
"Get dressed, Son! You have to hurry.
Do as I say, no need to worry!"
Out in the courtyard the scene was shock,
With fire tenders3 all around the block.
On the upper floors, Dad helps where he can.
A blast wounds a neighbour, poor man.
Moving incendiaries is a difficult job.
They explode and burn if you cannot lob
Them out of the window where they'll do less harm.
All about us is haste and alarm.
A nurse attends, tries to find me a bed
For the night. "Can you walk, Son?" she said.
"Of course I can walk, I'm four!"
Then she takes me to a welcoming door.
A fitful sleep returns at will.
In the morning the family go back to Tulse Hill.
The house is a wreck, its roof is gone.
It soon becomes clear that we'll have to move on.
Upper floors of the building are quite unstable.
The breakfast cloth is shrapnelled4 to the table.
Above my sister's cot, lodged in the ceiling
Is an unexploded bomb; leaves a funny feeling.
Goodbye now to London shattered in dark.
Goodbye to the gnomes of Brockwell park.
Back to the countryside we retreat.
Repelled by the German bombing fleet.
___
1. Tulse Hill is part of south London
2. A stanchion is an upright bar or post, often providing support for some other object.
3. A fire tender is a specialized vehicle capable of bringing water for fighting fires.
4. Shrapnel is a collective name for the sharp metallic fragments thrown out by an exploding bomb or shell.
Mike Swift
This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as
Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.
|
