havens throughout the English countryside, I should be evacuated from the countryside and packed off into the Blitz.
London had moved from peace to war with little fuss or drama, at a pace so gradual yet so remorseless that what was unreal on one day passed unremarked on the next. To a child it was very exciting: air raid wardens, black-out curtains, streets without railings, whistles and sirens in the night; and especially the aftermath of bombing, when spent cartridges and steel splinters from anti-aircraft shells could be collected and, best of all from my point of view, unexploded incendiary bombs hoarded for future use.
None of the names and places meant much to me, but my grandmother remembered the autumn of ’38: Hitler’s threat of war on 1 October if Czechoslovakia failed to return the Sudetenland, Chamberlain’s flights to Berchtesgaden and Bad Godesburg, the high anxiety of the weekend of 24 and 25 September, the dawn of Monday 26 September when the first sandbags appeared outside office buildings and posters printed in big black type advised of respirator distribution points (three sizes were available – large, medium and small; you were measured by voluntary workers who told you to take good care because each gas mask cost the Government two shillings and sixpence).
Everywhere, she recalled, Londoners had a new phrase: ‘Just in case’, taking comfort in the fact that what was being done was more of a precaution than a necessity. When the KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs were removed from Hyde Park that Monday, and civilian labourers arrived in shirtsleeves, braces and cloth caps to dig deep trenches, it was ‘just in case’. When keepers and hostesses were photographed at Regent’s Park Children’s Zoo shovelling sand into maize sacks the newspaper headlines said the same thing: JUST IN CASE. Even when a dozen stations on the London Underground simultaneously closed, everyone said it was ‘just in case’; a spokesman testified to the sudden discovery of an urgent need for unspecified ‘structural alterations’.
But then Chamberlain made a final visit to Hitler and returned from Munich on Friday 30 September with a copy of the pact which guaranteed that Britain and Germany would never again go to war. ‘I believe it is peace in our time,’ he said. ‘Go home and sleep quietly in your beds.’
And now here we were, in an air raid shelter in a back garden in Greenwich, my grandfather complaining in a voice heavy with irony about how good it was to be at home, sleeping quietly in our beds.
The darkness jarred again as something thudded near by. Bright light suddenly flooded the shelter and our shadows stood out in flickering relief. Grandmother pulled me to her, shouting: ‘It’s an incendiary!’
Grandfather glared at her. ‘I know, I know!’ Pugnaciously: ‘Stop yer yelling, will yer?’
‘Aren’t you going to do something?’
‘What, now?’ He looked at her as if she’d gone mad.
I stared from the one to the other, mesmerized by the sudden slanging match. The ground trembled again; sound came drumming as distant bombs fell. I was too old to be frightened but too young to appreciate what might happen next.
Grandmother stubbornly refused to yield. ‘You’ve got to put it out, right this minute!’
‘If you think I’m goin’ out there in this,’ he said, rather as one might point to the folly of setting forth in a rainstorm without an umbrella, ‘if you think –’
‘Oh I see, I see! Let’s all just sit here and wait for the next one to drop! You know very well they use incendiaries as markers. They can see our house clear as day now.’
A momentary pause, then: ‘Bloody Huns!’ and he clamped his bowler hat to his head and lunged outside.
We watched him from the shelter entrance, shovelling earth on to the blazing incendiary. The first shovelful made the thing erupt in a spectacular shower of sparks; like a figure from a surreal fantasy, he hopped this way and that, frantically brushing at his shirt and trousers, all the while keeping one hand clamped to his hat.
Old Bill’s bowler: the hat was inseparable from its owner. He wore it at breakfast and he wore it at suppertime and no one, not even the bloody Hun, was going to part him from it. In the neighbourhood he was regarded as a fierce old rogue, a description not entirely inappropriate. He was a self-employed plumber and used to bring home sections of lead piping which, for reasons never disclosed, he found it necessary to hide. By contrast, Grandmother was smaller, almost frail, yet each of them knew who ran the household, for her stubbornness usually defeated his bluster. If that failed, then downright guile was used.
‘They need help to clear up,’ she said, when one particular night raid had finally ended and volunteers were being sought in a door to door appeal.
‘They can manage without me,’ Old Bill said, shuffling deeper into his fireside chair. ‘Some of us ’ave already ’ad an ’ard day.’
Grandmother smiled sadly. ‘What a shame. They’ll be wanting all the able-bodied men they can find, down at Lovibonds.’
‘Lovibonds?’
‘Mmmm. The brewery. It’s had a direct hit.’
Old Bill briefly considered, then hauled himself out of the chair. ‘I’ll just get my coat,’ he said.
As the war years slowly passed, and the Luftwaffe ceased to threaten London’s skies, Greenwich became more and more a place for holidays, a time for staying at Grandfather’s side as he laboured in his workshop or, even better, for walking together along the riverside, watching the sailing barges beating up and down the Thames.
These holidays provided a welcome break from the rigours of school life at Bishop Wordsworth’s, and the interminable hours of homework. Scholastically, I was lazy; although I would eventually end up with an Oxford Schools Certificate, consistent underachievement disappointed both my teachers and my parents.
However, where explosives were concerned it was a different story. By now I was skilled in the manufacture of weapons from various spares left lying around the camp. The most common were 9mm Sten gun barrels, which when fixed into a standard 1-inch signal pistol barrel could be used as a single shot weapon. Unfortunately they only lasted for a few admittedly hair-raising rounds, after which the material holding the Sten gun barrel in position finally failed and blew the barrel out of the gun. I lost count of the number of such weapons I managed to fabricate; I’m told that one such gun, allegedly made by me, is today on display at a Wiltshire police college.
The war was bringing finer treasure, too, notably a crate of Maschinen Pistole 43s, a German assault rifle. A brand new weapon, its arrival for evaluation at Netheravon generated a flurry of interest that was not lost on the children of the camp.
Several instructors, including my father, had an MP 43, but no one worried about leaving the weapons lying round – what little ammunition existed for them was safely locked away in the stores and could only be drawn by authorized users. I decided to make some of my own.
It took time as well as practice but eventually I modified a couple of dozen conventional German rifle cartridges to suit the new weapon. Hopeful though not certain that the ammunition would work, I purloined Father’s MP 43 and then led two senior members of our gang out of the camp and across the Salisbury-Netheravon road to the firing ranges.
About 400 yards in we found a set of old trenches. We crouched down while I took aim and fired at a trench wall twenty feet away. Unfortunately, though the rifle worked perfectly, the rifleman did not: a child’s strength was no match for the weapon’s ferocious kickback. The barrel lifted and the rounds went over the top.
My companions were decidedly unimpressed. ‘Just look at him,’ said one. ‘Can’t even hit a bloody wall.’ He reached for the rifle. ‘Give it here.’
But then someone landed in the trench. ‘What the hell are you lot doing?’ White-faced, shaking, the Orderly Officer pushed us aside and scooped up the ammunition. We were so dumbfounded by his arrival that it took a few seconds for his words to register: the bullets had not only sprayed over the trench wall, they’d also gone over the road, passed through the trees in the Top Wood