1939-45: World War Two on the Edmonton home front

My First Recollection of The War

I was born in April 1937 in the Salvation Army Mothers' Home in Hackney, North London. I do not know the reason for this - it was not because we were particularly hard up, but I think my parents were quite keen supporters of the Salvation Army. My father (like many others) had been out of work for most of 1926 and off and on afterwards, but by the time I was born he was in a steady job. Indeed, in 1939, the year war was declared, my parents had been planning their first overseas holiday, on a weekly wage of £5 - how things have changed!

My father used to take me out for walks on Sunday mornings, and it was on one of these walks, in September 1939, that I first heard an air raid siren. We had been to Tatem's Park, in Edmonton, situated on the north west corner of the junction of what is now the A10 and the A406, and were walking home along Hedge Lane, approaching the 'Cambridge' roundabout - now repositioned and very much enlarged. For some years, during the 1970's, the houses alongside the Cambridge Pub, which gave the roundabout its name, were bought up and remained empty in preparation for the alterations. Anyway, just as we were passing underneath the (presumably newly installed) siren, it went off. An intermittent wail meant that planes were coming and to take cover, and a continuous wail sounded the 'all clear'. I think it was actually on September 3rd, the day when war was declared, and I think it must have been a test, or perhaps it was to signal the declaration. Anyway, we hurried home.

Nothing much happened on the Edmonton home front during the rest of 1939, as far as I recall. I remember a discussion about evacuation, and the decision that we would all stay together at home. At that time I was an only child. The house, a terraced house in Cheddington Road on the Huxley Estate in Edmonton, North London, was small, but snug and comfortable, and we had a happy life. If my parents were worried about the war they didn't show it. The only thing of particular note was that my father repositioned the door into my bedroom so that it was immediately next to theirs instead of being along the landing. At some stage an Anderson shelter was installed in the back garden, but more of that later.

The Battle of Britain

Towards the end of 1939 my father became very ill. Perhaps that was the reason that he was not called up. Anyway, the story goes that he was concerned about me and took me to the doctor. The doctor said, "The boy's all right, but what about you?". Apparently my father had developed an over-active thyroid and was living in the fast lane, burning himself up. In those days the remedy was to remove part of the gland so as to reduce the amount of iodine generated and thus slow the patient's metabolism down. The operation involved making a large incision into the base of the neck where the gland is situated. Apparently during this the surgeon nicked my father's jugular vein and there were serious complications. Consequently he spent much of 1940 in and out of hospital and I was shipped out on a daily basis to my grandmother who lived a few streets away. 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!

The Blitz

Our Anderson shelter was installed in the back garden, beyond the garden shed, about three feet of it being underground and the top half being above ground level, covered by the spoil of the excavation. It was made of 'Dolphin Brand' corrugated iron (showing many blue stippled trade marks of dolphins) and with the joints sealed with black bitumen. The floor was of concrete with a sump to collect leakage and condensation (not that there was much). Along one side were two bunk beds and along the other was a single bunk with storage underneath. My father had run an electricity supply from the shed and we had a flat electric fire which would also boil a kettle, a mains driven night light for night-time use and a bright bulb for daytime. There was a sealed biscuit tin of emergency supplies (which fortunately were never needed) and some earthenware bottles of water. The shelter entrance was via a pair of two inch thick wooden doors and a set of wooden steps down. The doors had ventilation holes in them.

By 1943 I had a baby brother and we had a cat as a pet. Ludicrous as it may seem now, an evening ritual developed. When the first siren sounded, which it did most nights, usually between seven and nine o'clock, we would all make our way to the shelter. My mother would carry baby Richard, my father would carry Jimmy the cat, and I would go with them in my dressing gown and slippers on foot. We would settle down in the shelter for the night, smelling the bitumen and listening to the sounds around us. Sometimes my father would 'take me up' 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 hub-bub. 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 don't remember 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.

Other events during 1942-43 which I recall or which have been prompted by family photos are:

• House numbers on pavements. During 1942 the house numbers were painted on the pavements in front. Presumably this was so that if a row of houses was obliterated they could still be identified. The 'St. John's Ambulance cross' against the number could have been to signify 'first aiders'.
• The requisition of garden railings. All of the front gardens in the street were kept very neat and tidy, with wrought iron railings set atop low brick walls along the front, bounding the pavement, usually in front of a privet hedge. In 1943 they were all removed, because the steel was needed for the war effort. They were never replaced.

• Fire watching. My father worked at the head office of the Abbey Road Building Society, (later to become Abbey National) at the top end of Baker Street, London. The building had a tower, rather like a bell tower, about five storeys up, and this was the look-out position for the fire watchers, of which my father was one. He sometimes took me with him, which involved an all night stint looking out over the local area of London, and presumably alerting the authorities as necessary. Imagine watching the London Blitz from that vantage point!
• Incendiary bombs. Closer to home, I remember one Sunday morning going with my father along Fore Street, Edmonton. A stick of incendiary bombs had evidently been released and had fallen on the houses and the flats above the shops along the east side of Fore Street (a main road running northwards out of London). They had penetrated the roofs and had landed in the houses. I remember seeing a burning mattress which had been heaved out of an upstairs window and had landed on the pavement - a rude awakening!
• I know that a land mine fell on or near the North Middlesex Hospital, and this may have been the one that flattened the Clarke house in Pymms Villas, but I was really too young to remember. I remember the surviving Clarkes living in Gloucester Road which must have been where they were rehoused.

   

  

D-Day and Later On

My school, Silver Street Juniors, was in Silver Street, Edmonton, which in those days was the A 406, The North Circular Road. It was the main road around north London and the main route from the northern Home Counties to the London docks and Dover. On some days during 1944 there would be convoys of army lorries passing the school when we went in during the morning and they continuing all day. At lunchtime we would spill out onto the pavement, cheering, clapping and shouting (to the trucks with white stars on them), "Got any Gum, Chum?". Sometimes stick packs of American chewing gum would be thrown to us - rare plunder, especially for the older boys!

Another prize was collecting shrapnel - splinters of shell fragments from the anti aircraft shells. One passed through our roof at home while we were on holiday in 1943 and then through the landing ceiling, and to a small boy it looked huge. It was probably about 8 inches long. Also there was 'window' - black paper or cotton tape about half an inch wide with two metal strips, one along each edge. I don't know the origin of the name. It was scattered by bombers to confuse the ground radar and caused the radar screen to look like snow rather than giving a clear blip. It probably also gave a false indication of the aircraft height as it fell. It was a much prized find and very valuable in exchange and bartering!

There was also the seamier side of life, which I was not supposed to know about, but couldn't help noticing or overhearing. One of our neighbours had a sister who came to live with her for a time. There were American soldiers stationed nearby, and the sister stayed out late, spoke with a drawl, had lots of cigarettes, and an endless supply of stockings. It was the talk of the neighbourhood!

There must have been a prisoner of war camp nearby too, although I never saw it. But the story goes that a family in the next road to us found this chap wandering aimlessly on Christmas Morning and invited him in to share in their Christmas dinner. So there were some better facets as well.

The Bomb Dump

It was probably in 1945 that I went with my parents to see the 'bomb dump'. This was somewhere in Epping Forest, near Chingford, and was a large fenced-off compound where all of the locally collected unexploded bombs had been brought after being defused. Having wrought so much havoc, they were a source of awe, but I remember being rather disappointed. They seemed so ordinary and flimsy - not at all what I had expected!

Afterwards - peace

Fortunately my family had no members taken as prisoners, nor suffered any immediate casualties. The Clarke family of my cousin Pat suffered some losses in the Edmonton blitz and my cousin Peter's father contracted T.B. in Italy. But to me at the time these were fairly remote consequences. My immediate family came through unscathed although we learned later that my father had been on the Nazi 'hit list' because of his political affiliations. Fortunately that never came to pass.

I can look back with affection to an uninterrupted childhood, spent in a caring home, with us all together, and to the excitement of helping my father in his activities during the 1945 post-war general election which led to the sweeping political and social changes, some of which we still enjoy today.

During the 1945 election the chant of us children in Edmonton was, "Vote Vote Vote for Mr. Durbin, He's the man who'll give you bread and jam" - a powerful social commentary! Evan Durbin was the Oxford lecturer who my father introduced to the local labour party as their prospective candidate and who won a landslide victory in 1945.

Most of all, though, I recall the feeling of hope for the working classes - that the Government cared for them - that they mattered - that there would be job creation - that schools would no longer need to operate a 'boot fund' to prevent children having to go to school barefoot. I remember that even during my time at Silver Street School this fund operated and was sometimes needed. Years later in about 1967, the reality was brought home more forcefully to me when I visited Belfast on business and saw children running round barefoot there in the middle of winter.

This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's.