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London 1940 and 1944
Crowborough and Tonbridge 1944-5
England and Elsewhere 1940 1945
ENGLAND 1940
As works manager of a German Government Four Year Plan factory, in charge of 350 German workmen, one had to be member of the Party. This was a pure formality for getting round the regulations and my membership fee was DM12 per month, which duly went on my expenses. I was given a little circular enamel badge with a black swastika on it, with the initials and words running round it "NSDAP Opfer Ring." As long as I was in the factory I always pinned it to my lapel, but outside I often moved it to the back of the lapel, not wishing to flaunt it, but to have it with me in case of necessity. It happened to he there on the back of the lapel of the blue sports coat I usually wore in the factory, when the code telegram came from my firm on the 27th August, "Must have evaporator report immediately." This was the prearranged signal for me to evaporate.
I have only confused memories of that drive by night through the Maginot line, no room for my car on the Boulogne boat next day, the race to Calais and the bribe of 1,000 francs I gave somebody to get me on board for Dover. I remember, however, distinctly that stern policeman's face who stopped me as I drove unshaven and tired through Canterbury. he asked me why my road fund license was dated 1936. I confessed to having no insurance cover and no driving license. I showed him my passport stamped Kaiserslauten the evening before and the kind man let me go.
At weekends during the phoney war I used to dig for victory in the garden of my mother's country cottage in the Ashdown Forest, wearing my old blue factory sports coat which was now unsuitable for anything else, and on this particular Saturday afternoon the local vicar called on my mother. I was bending over planting some seed when he and my mother came along the path and he got a clear view of my party badge safely pinned to the back of my lapel and which I had completely forgotten. "I thought the vicar left rather brusquely - he usually stays for tea." commented my mother. Half-an-hour later an inspector and a constable drove up our lane and asked for my coat, preparatory to inviting me to the local Police station. I got another coat and had the sense to grab my passport and it took about an hour and a half to sort that one out. If I had been that man of God, I suppose I should have done the same thing, but whenever we met in the High Street, we always glared at each other.
image: Bombed "Egyptian Hall" of the Liverpool Museum
LONDON 1940 AND 1944 - Bomb Stories
Although so many people suffered so terribly from the bombing in the last war, it is amazing how many comic instances were connected with them, which fortunately all mine were.
Driving through Sutton during the doodle-bug attacks, I heard the sirens and pulled into the kerb outside an antique shop to stand in the doorway for some shelter. I never got there because that V.1. fell about 100 yards away and blew in the shop window and me with it. I was untouched, as was the blue and white Crown Derby tea service on which I stumbled. The owner was so upset that he would have sold me the contents of the shop for ten pounds, but I settled for the tea service complete with teapot, sugar basin and milk jug for the same sum and only disposed of it a short while ago.
A few days later driving along a deserted road over Crowborough Beacon, my car engine started making a funny noise. It got rapidly worse, until I was certain that the big ends were coming through the crank case. I switched off but the noise went on. A doddle-bug was just above me, perhaps a hundred feet. It was still spitting out flames, went over the rise, cut out and crashed on the moor with a column of smoke, doing no damage. I apologised to my car.
Back in the winter of 1940 I spent a night in a suburban house near Epsom. As we finished an early evening meal, my host and hostess with their baby and I retired to their Anderson shelter which was at the other end of their little suburban garden. We had been there about three hours when the mother thought the baby needed another blanket, so I volunteered to get it. Putting on my tin hat, I had negotiated the first half of the garden, when I heard it coming. I dived down and burrowed as deep as I could into the thorniest rose bush I have ever met. It was very close indeed. As I did not reappear with a blanket in reasonable time, the husband came to find my remains. I do not think I should ever have got out of that rose bush if he had not cut some of those branches away. The bomb had fallen in the garden of the house opposite occupied by a station of the National Fire Service. They were going to call for an ambulance when they saw my face which was one mass of blood from the thorns. There was no damage from that bomb, except a few windows and the chickens that the firemen kept in a coop. The blast had lifted them up into the next garden and they had not got one single feather on them between them.
During the Battle of Britain one weekend staying at my mother's cottage, we had been invited to have drinks with some friends of my mother, which necessitated decent and not gardening clothes. Now new suits not only cost money in those days but also 52 coupons and that was the yearly ration. I had got myself a new smart shepherd's plaid suit and decided to wear it. My brother-in-law and I were ready far too early and decided to walk across the meadow to our local, the Half Moon, for a pint first. There was a big raid on with white vapour trails high in the sky above us. The meadow was beautiful in the sunshine with its copse of tall trees in the middle of it and about fifty Jersey cows browsing as they went. Suddenly without a sound, engines shut off, a Junkers 88 came around the corner of the copse below the level of the tops of the trees, trailing black smoke behind it, obviously out of control and heading straight for us. I shouted to my brother-in-law to get down and threw myself flat, covering my head with my arms. We both heard the swish plainly as it passed over our heads at I know not what height. About two seconds passed and there was a heavy thud as it nose-dived to earth fifty yards behind us. We both got up and watched it burn out because there was nothing we could do. Then Bertie burst out laughing, doubled up with mirth and I remember wondering how such an event could have such an effect. Then he pointed to my middle - I had gone down right on top of a completely fresh cow pat.
I spent the rest of the war in correspondence with the Ministry of Food, claiming 52 coupons for the destruction of my suit by an act of war. They claimed it was an act of God. That was one of the ones I lost.
