CHAPTER 1
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I put out my arms
instinctively to steady myself as I was rolling around. It was dark and I
didn't know where I was, the ground was all soft and there was a lot of noise.
I woke up in Hospital thinking I had had a bad dream. I was in hospital for
quite some time recovering from burns to the legs, I was nearly four years old.
It wasn't until I was eleven that I found out that my mother and sister had
been killed by the incendiary bomb that had destroyed our home. In fact it was
an upstairs flat in Kingsbury near to the underground station, I found out
later. Over the years since then I have had small flashes of memory of that
night. We went to bed in the bathroom, my sister and myself on the floor next
to the bath, I don't remember who slept in the bath, but I assume it was my
mother. My Dad being out all night on home-guard duty. This is what one did
during the blitz, you slept in the safest place in the house, some slept under
tables some in the cellars. This is probably what saved my life that night,
being under the overhang of the bath. My mother and sister were killed on the
25th of September 1940. Aged 31 and 7 respectively.
I passed my scholarship
when I was 11 years old at Salesbury Junior School near Blackburn, I had to
return to the school a completed questionnaire concerning which Grammar school
I wished to attend and all the other attendant questions regarding parentage
etc., it was while sneaking a peek at the completed form that I found the word
'Deceased' against 'Mother'. This was the first I had heard of this and
immediately queried the answer. It was then that I was told that my Mother and
Sister had been killed in the war, and that Daisy was my step-mother, my father
having married again 9 months later.
My Mother's name was Maud
Beatrice and my Sisters name was Barbara Ann aged 7yrs.
I don't remember much of
those early years. I have been told since that I spent some time being looked
after by some of Daisy's sisters. One thing I do remember was walking home from
the Edgware General Hospital to number 10 Moorcroft Mansions, The Highlands,
Burnt Oak.
The following recollections
are not necessarily in chronological order. I visited the Edgware general a
couple of times, the first time I had got out of bed in the dark and banged my
forehead on the top of the bedpost. This resulted in a large lump on my
forehead that would not go away. It had to be removed at the hospital. I also
remember having my left thumbnail removed, which subsequently grew back.
My new Mother's family name
was Platt, the eldest of 10 children, 8 girls and 2 boys. The girls were
predominantly named after flowers:- Daisy, Violet, Lily, Iris, Ivy, Rose, the
exceptions being Marjory and Charlotte, then Tommy and John. Uncle John was
just a few months younger than me, and we used to play together when I was
living with the Platts. I remember we had our first puffs of a cigarette behind
some bushes, I was very very sick.
The Platt's lived at 67 The
Meads in Mill Hill and I spent various periods of time there, probably during
the times when my mother was confined with my 2 half-brothers Tony and Neil.
Elizabeth was born later in 1948. I can only remember one day at the school at
the end of 'The Meads', it was the end of term results, and it was I who was
top of the class 'as usual' so the teacher said, I must have spent some time
there. The school at the other end of 'The Highlands', which I also attended,
had a big grassy area in front where we used to kick a ball around, I once did
this in some new shoes for which I was severely chastised. I always seemed to
be in trouble. Whilst living at The Meads, each morning, I was sent round to
the Air Raid Post to find out if there was an air raid on, we had learned to
sleep through the sirens at night, the ARP station was just at the end of the
row of local shops. One morning I had been to the ARP post and also had an
errand to buy some cigarettes (10 Players Weights) at the newsagents there. Returning
home with the cigarettes and the change from a one pound note, money in one
hand and picking up stones and throwing them on to the allotments with the
other. Arriving home the 10 shilling note was missing, thrown over the fence
somewhere I guess or just dropped, but as much as we looked, it was never
found, it’s possible that I wasn’t given it at the shop. One birthday, whilst
living at Moorcroft Mansions, I went with my mother to the local butcher round
the corner on the Edgware Road, he gave me half a crown when I told him that it
was my birthday, which it was. On returning home I got a clip round the ear and
the half-crown confiscated. Another time I found some coins along a grass verge
behind the shops that front on to the Edgware road at Burnt Oak where the
barrow boy used to stand and within view of our flat windows, I was accused of
throwing the coins from the window so that I could go and 'find' them, but
where could I have obtained them from, they were also confiscated.
Every night during the early
years of the war the sky was lit up with search lights and the tracer shells
from the Anti-Aircraft guns, I remember hiding under the bedclothes one night
to block out the light and the noise, I got myself trapped, I panicked and it
was a few minutes before I eventually punched myself out, I had been lying on
the ends of the blankets folded around me, a very frightening experience, much
more frightening than watching the doodle bugs fly over. One day, one of them
had it's engine stop overhead I stood pointing at the sky, suddenly I was
picked up bodily and rushed into the underground shelter, an Anderson type in
the back garden of the house in the Meads. We heard the bang and later found
where the doodle bug had struck, the house that was destroyed was detached and
in it's own grounds, about a quarter of a mile from The Meads, there were a
couple of apple trees in the grounds and this was where I first tasted the
English Russet apple. I am aware that at sometime during the war that I was
evacuated, to where and for how long I don't know, It could just have been with
one of Daisy’s Sisters. I remember walking up and down Mill Hill high street
crying once or twice when I was about 6 or 7 years old, this was a ruse to
acquire money, begging. It wasn't usually very successful but one nice lady
asked me what the matter was and was I lost? My answer was no, but that I had
lost a 2 shilling piece, and I dare not go home or I would be smacked very
hard. She took me to her home which was up some outside stairs to a flat where
she gave me some seed cake to eat, I didn't like it then and have never liked
it since. She also gave me some empty bottles that I was to take to a shop to
get the deposit back which might help to ease the pain. I suspect she saw
through my act.