Memories of an East-End childhood
I’m 82 now. I was born in 1937, and I was very young then, more or less the war with Germany was nearly finished.
Night-time, we had to turn the lights off in the house, the windows were all blackened, and there had to be some paper across the windows ‘cause when the Germans attacked with their aeroplanes it saved them blowing through. In the night, we had special wardens who come round and you got told off if you had lights on. You had to turn all the lights off so they don't know where they was bombing.
I used to sleep mostly in a dugout in the garden, which was like steel sheets buried in the garden, and on top of it we had loads of earth and the weeds grew over and made it look like it was a garden. I used to sleep in there. I would say about four people could sleep down there. We used to go down there when the hooter, the siren, used to go. That meant the Germans were coming over to bomb England. And there would be one when they finished, when they felt they finished, there would be an all clear sound. It was horrible.
I used to watch the doodle bugs, the V2 rockets. They flew themselves. They just started themselves off from Germany and when they got over to England, their engines cut off, and they would glide and they would fall down and blow everything up. I used to watch them and think are their engines going to cut out over us? They would eventually cut out somewhere. A place in Bexley Heath, they had one land right in the middle of the road. We were lucky in one respect. There was a lot of damage, a lot of damage in London.
Everything was rationed. We used to have ration books to get a lot of things, sweets, you had to take your ration book into a confectioner’s and they used to take coupons off you, but they wasn't as good as sweets that you get now. We used to have a horse and cart come round with milk, you used to have iron tins and they used to tip it in from their big ones, big milk tins. Our greengrocer would come round the house with a horse and cart again. We used to have coal fires in those days and lots of things like that. We didn't have all the luxuries you get now.
When I went to school, I used to have a gas mask in this cardboard box and it went over your shoulder. It was horrible: you could hardly breathe. Everybody, grownups and not just children, had them, I remember that.
It weren't too bad but it were bad enough, wondering when the next bomb was going to land.
Shared by Henry and Laura Chappell, his grandchildren
Comments