What is your name?

William

When were you born?

31st August 1926

Where were you born?

Willesden, London.

The day that war broke out where were you living?

Allerby Road, Greenford.

Have you any special memories of the day that war broke out?

Oh many. One of the main ones was that when the announcement was made on the radio we heard, an air raid alarm sounded and we thought, ‘Oh God!’ we’ve started already. Everybody panicked, shelters weren’t built or anything like that so but it turned out to be a false alarm, they were just testing the equipment. Making sure we knew what it was.

What did people do when you said it was panic, what did people do?

Well, we had quite a few, my father was the local bobby, the local policeman and they all came running to him, Where should they go, how to protect themselves. He was literally running like the proverbial fly …. Directing them where to go, what to do, how to take cover and basically he was saying go inside, keep away from glass and near a solid wall. That was all he could tell them at the time.

You were about thirteen when war broke out.

I was just turned thirteen.

Were you evacuated?

No. My father wouldn’t hear of it. The school that I belonged to they evacuated all their children but when they approached my father with a view to me going he said, no way. He said if we die, we all die together, I was quite happy with that.

What was your abiding memory of that time growing up? Any particular strong memories come to mind?

Various little incidents possibly we had a very heavy bombing raid which went right across the back of our property, the nearest bomb was about a hundred yards away and it turned out to be a delayed action bomb, thank God. Obviously we found out afterwards that it was an attempt to wipe out Northolt airport which was literally in a straight line from where they were aiming about five mile away so they did a lot of damage there unnecessarily. I remember the first fire bombs that fell in the area one man being very badly injured because a stupid woman threw a bucket of water at it while he was trying to put some sand on it.

What effect did that have then?

They explode, the bombs, the firebombs are like a long cylinder of thermite which has got an automatic ignition device in it and they burn with a very, very intense heat, a very intense light, very intense heat. One of the things you could do was just smother them with sand. If it was in a house where it was possible they would punch a hole in the tiles, grab the bomb by its fins and lob it out. If it was outside it couldn’t do any harm then they could put the fire out inside quite easily. But if because of the intense heat generated if you threw water in quantity over it the whole thing would ignite in one go and it would explode and throw burning embers into people which was not very funny. The ideal thing was that you used a very, very fine spray stirrup pump and it had a fine head on it and you just sprayed the very fine water over it which kept the surrounding area damp but allowed the bomb to burn. In other words it would burn itself out and that was it. It didn’t last long but you had to use your head and do it properly.

When, when did you actually leave school? How old were you when you left school?

When I left school altogether…. 1944 because I went to take a degree then, yeah. Yeah I went on, which was a very intense course, it was a four-year course condensed into two years and at the time we were having the Doodlebugs starting to come over and literally speaking it just destroyed your ability to cope because you couldn’t concentrate. You were sitting down trying to take in what was being said and somebody would beep, beep, beep on alarm system and everybody under the desks quick or wherever you would take cover and it was just one of those things. After the first year I packed it because I couldn’t cope with it, the pressures really.

Growing up at that time and going to school was education in other ways disrupted before you went into higher education.

Yes, the secondary school I was in they had a very good reputation for education and of course that closed. We were then, those of us who didn’t get evacuated were transferred to other schools and I went to a local one in Hambourne which was way behind anything that we’d been doing at our own school and then I was transferred to Stanhope Senior School in Greenford and again… They must have taught us something because I was able to carry on and take exams and go on to a higher school which I went to Acton for that. College degrees were being held in Acton Technical College and I then got a place there.

Did things like shelters, 1941 was the blitz, tell me about the bomb shelters?

The shelters you had to wait a hell of a time to get one but we had what they called an Anderson Shelter. There were two main kinds, there was Morrison which was like a steel table and an Anderson shelter that you put up outside. Well my father dug a big pit in the garden which filled with water because it was unfortunately a high level water table there and it filled with water as fast as we dug it. He managed to get hold of some of that waterproof cement that set very rapidly and he built a box inside. He dug it about four feet down and he built a box inside pumped all the water out fast and before it got filled back up again he did all that and that kept back most of the water. One or two places it managed to force a way through what he did then he got some very thick tar and he tarred all the concrete and did a thick lining of that and that seemed to do the trick. Then we built the Anderson shelter inside that.

You were supplied with all the bits were you?

Yes, yes it was just a curved, half, a semi-curved section that formed almost a tunnel with flexed sides and a solid end at one end and a doorway at the other and we built it between us. Then we loaded it over with soil that we had out of the hole and that was put back over the top and built a garden on it. We did quite well there but after, ooh I suppose twelve months of going down to this shelter every night because he’d built bunk beds in there for my mother and I had a little side bed to kip down on. And after twelve months he said, ‘To hell with this it’s too bloody cold and I’m going back in my own bed!’ That’s what we did and we stayed in our own beds for the rest of the war.

Not even when the blitz…

Oh yes we heard the blitz. I mean what he did, he reinforced the hall with planks and a couple of steel girders he’d managed to find somewhere and if the blitz got very bad we would make our way down into the hall. There was a mattress put down on the floor and you slept there. Otherwise we just slept, we used to hear the bombers going over and providing you didn’t hear tat screaming whistle of a bomb coming down that was a nerve wracking sound, it screamed at you and seemed to go on for ever. But providing you didn’t hear that you were pretty safe, they were heading for elsewhere.

You might have been a bit old for this but I know what boys are like about getting memorabilia…..

Oooh yes. Well my father being in the police he was in what they called the mobile squad mostly on motorbikes, he did a bit of car work but mostly on motorbikes. He used to bring me home all sorts of things. Thermite bombs, shrapnel, bullets, bits of aircraft, anything and everything that he could scrounge somewhere. I had a lovely collection and I’m sorry to this day that I haven’t got it still. I don’t really know what became of it but like everything else it got thrown out I suppose.

But that was the kind of thing that boys used to compare…

Ooh yes because after a raid us boys in the district were scavengers going all round looking for ack-ack splinters, anti aircraft splinters and some of them were really big if they’d caught you dropping they’d have literally carved you into little pieces. I had, one or two of the shell splinters I had were at least a foot long and weighed several pounds so it would have done you a bit of no good.

What about things like rationing what effect did that have?

Well largely that would affect my mother but the amount of rationing we got was stupid. There was no fruit, no fruit. Butter, butter I think was about two ounces and about four ounces of margarine. Occasionally I think you got a bit of cooking oil but bacon we never saw, meat I think it was sold by the amount not the weight. You were allowed a shillings worth or something like that which sound ridiculous today but it formed a joint for the weekend. Occasionally, very occasionally there’s be a bit of liver or kidney turn up, a bit of offal. My father once brought home a pig’s head he’d scrounged somewhere. I think some pigs had been killed. He picked this head up and brought it home and that made some marvellous brawn, beautiful, I can taste it now.

They don’t even know what it is. We used to have all sorts of home-made things that women in those days did automatically they were brought up in those days to do the cooking and quite frankly how many kids today have had calves knuckles? They’re lovely but you never see them and faggots. Faggots they sell in the shops today are not faggots, they were beautiful they were a meal in itself they were gorgeous. Well if you got any chops the fat was very carefully carved off and used for frying or preparing other things.

Did you ever feel hungry?

Funnily enough no, never. It’s incredible. We had lots of vegetables my father was a good allotment worker he had a bit of an allotment up the road and we were well supplied with vegetables you filled up on those and bread of course. Bread was fairly easily available and I can’t honestly remember ever…I suppose there were the times when there was the odd hunger pang but generally speaking no, we were never hungry and a dam sight healthier. It was all good food there was no E’s this and A’s that! All good food and we were very active. I got landed a job as an ARP Messenger.

Can you explain ARP?

Air Raid Precaution. They were an organisation whose job it was to disseminate information to the public and to go round making sure that blinds were drawn and no lights to be shown and you were going down the road, ‘put that light out!’ As I say people who’d just popped into a room quickly, you know that was disastrous it used to tell ‘Gerry’ just where we were. And as I say you were a messenger or I got attached to the local ARP group and any incident that they thought mentioning I had to run down and take a message down to the local headquarters on my bike it wasn’t a thrilling job but somebody had to do it being the son of the local copper they said ‘oh he’ll do.’

But presumably at least it gave you a role.

I won’t say that it gave me any authority or anything like that but at least you felt you were doing a bit.

You’d kind of do so many evenings a week on this then would you?

Oh seven.

Really?

It was all the time. If I was there you did it.

After school, do homework….

Oh yes, after school, very often you would play a while till the dark come round because it was nearly always dark when this started and it may only be a couple of hours or you may go down and, ‘oh it’s nothing tonight.’ That’s it you’d just go home. As I say you did it when it was required and you played when it wasn’t.

Were you expected to go and work on the allotment?

Oh yes, yes. When he went up on the allotment I went with him and I’d do a bit of digging. He taught me how to dig properly, he taught me how to earth up potatoes, earth up leeks, string beans and all that sort of…. They were jobs that come automatically to you. He showed you how and that was it. You just got on with it. Many a time my job was to wheel the wheelbarrow down from the allotment loaded with vegetables a lot of which was given away because he sued to grow stuff that was ready usually on mass and you got far more than you could use there was only three of us and as I say .…

When you say give away was there any bartering? Have a chicken for ten pounds of spuds, not that kind of thing?

No, not to my knowledge. If he did I’m not aware of it. I never saw him do that but he’d go down the road and say, ‘oh give her a knock and giver some potatoes.’ Where he’d got a surplus, he could only handle so much at a time. Rather than let it waste he would give it away. Mind I won’t say that we weren’t given things. We had chickens I remember those and rabbits.

What you kept them?

He did. We had a chicken coup at the end because I always had to go and get the chicken food. You had to have a permit and you were allowed so much food for so many birds and one day he’d turn up and he’d brought a couple of rabbits home and we set to and we built cages. I think we had about fifty rabbits altogether.

So you were eating them were you?

Oh yes. I wasn’t allowed to name them, I wasn’t allowed to play with them and we couldn’t turn and say, ‘oh this is poor old Jeffrey!’ You didn’t do anything like that, he would let you name them, not even the hens and I developed an allergy to them or to the fur, the rabbit fur which I’ve still got to this day. But it was good fun.

Some people have said to me, who were your age during the war, what to people at a longer distance might seem strange it was like, they look back on it as one of the great times of their life.

Well it was one of the more, how can I describe it? One of the more organised times in your life. You knew what you had to do and you just got on with it. Boys, grown ups they were all the same, they all had their jobs and I think they were happier for it because it’s when people are free to do as they please as they are today that weird ideas seem to creep in. It’s tragic, I mean to say, I knew every person in the road and ours was a long road. There was about a hundred houses in the section we lived, I knew every person who lived there, who was away who had children, who was expecting a baby, we knew the lot. Today they don’t even know their neighbours, which is a tragedy because neighbours can be a wonderful help.

Entertainment?

There were lots of Youth Clubs around and good Youth Clubs at that run by usually Church people and they organised dances, different occasions, events. A darts match something like that a day out in the country. You’d never go far but it was day away from home which was good and that was marvellous for us kids and as we grew up so we took a responsible look towards helping to teach the other youngsters coming on. We got on well with that. Local, dances there were always local dances going on especially at weekends usually as far as I was concerned they were nearly an hours walk away. But we did it. There were buses available but we didn’t have money for bus fare and we did it, we managed. We used to go dancing and very often I’d take a girl home after the dance, possibly three, four miles and then walk home from there and think nothing of it. Today what do they do, ‘Dad, can we borrow the car?’ Yeah.

When you look back at that time was there any food that you really, really looked forward to eating and stuff that even though there wasn’t much around you just couldn’t stand eating?

Well… I was brought up to eat everything not to take dislikes or fancy fads as my father would call it, you ate what was put in front of you and that was it. One of the foods we used to love was a dish Mum used to do with… what was it called…. It was herring done in vinegar…

Rollmop?

No, no, no these were done, you’d have a great big tray and she’d gut them and fillet them. Take the heads of and gut them and fillet them and clean all the scales off then they were just rolled up, like a Rollmop. Just rolled up and put on a tray and she’d maybe do thirty at a time funnily enough they were available, fish. I don’t know where they came from but they were available and it was done in a water and vinegar mix and salt a pinch of salt and she put them in the oven for I suppose about an hour. And when they came out we’d scoff the whole thirty, no trouble at all they were beautiful. What the devil did they call that. But that was a dish.

VE Day?

VE Day was a bit of an anti climax in a lot of respects. We were virtually living normal lives by that time but of course all the younger children were clamouring for a party, some of the adults too and on, I can’t remember, I don’t know if it was on VE Day itself or the day afterwards. All the available tables were brought out into the street and joined together and covered with sheets or something. There were all sorts of things to cover tables with and all the women would get together and although stuff was rationed it was amazing what these, where all the food came from. There must have been, oooh fifty or sixty young children and then us older kids there’d be, those that were still around, twenty or thirty. A lot of them as they got older went into the forces. I got, I wanted to go in the forces but I unfortunately, the job I had, I’d started working at made me an essential worker. I came under the essential works order. You were not allowed to volunteer. I stuck that until I think the week after VE Day was announced, I got me call up papers. The works order had been cancelled do I got me call up papers. I wanted to go in the navy and was sent for the usual medical and interview and all that finished up in the RAF. It was a good time I suppose in many respects. You had a lot of mates and we saw a lot of life, made me very independent which is a good thing.

Like when you go to university nowadays, you go away to a different town that’s when you became independent?

Yes, yes. Well with this essential works order one of the conditions was that we had day release and it included Saturday mornings you had to go to school. I went to the local technical college and started there. It’s a long while ago.

Thank you for that. Any other particular memories from that time?

I can remember my father telling me that he was chased down the road by a bomber dropping bombs and he was on his motor bike and they were dropping about a hundred yards behind him all the way down the road. He thought his lot had come that time. He was involved in a bad accident, he was forced off the road by an idiot on a motorbike and, I think it was a motorbike. He was on a police motorbike at the time and as his bike mounted the kerb his foot was bounced off the pedal, dropped down and came on the kerb. So of course he had a very badly injured ankle which led him ultimately to be what they call cast which is medically retired. So… that was during the war and he and Mum took over an empty shop a couple of hundred yards down the road from us and turned it into a café and fish was plentiful, fish and chips was ideal you could never cook enough. He got hold of some meat and things like that and every time I came home on leave it was to do chipping and you know a dustbin. I used to do a dustbin full every day and then they used to be tipped into a, well we had a household bath for storage and washing them. And they were all tipped into the household bath and then you had a hose running and you washed all these… all ready for the night. Then you, during the day my father would be taking great big scoopfulls of hot fat and just boiling them, out they would come on the side to drain. Next lot in and he was doing that all day, during the night he had got virtually a bath full of half cooked chips and when people came in at night and ‘boy’ did they come in, they used to come in in droves. Used to come in at night because food was still very rationed and to go out and get a square, meal was a big something. He would just take a scoopful of chips, half cooked, into some very hot fat about three minutes, done. Beautiful crisp fluffy chips, I’ve never tasted chips like it since. Till I make them myself. And of course fish cooking all the time in the batter. They did well at that and then after a couple of years at that a local nurseryman had an acre of ground under glass locally where they used to go quite often and help decided he wanted to pack up and retire. My father bought it off him and became a nurseryman and he was that until he died.

Right thank you so much for that.