Late summer 1978
The Blitz was terrifying, until we got used to it. As I often say, it’s surprising what you can get used to, if you’ve no choice.
First the sirens would start wailing. That would be when the coastal radar stations had picked up the enemy bomber fleet approaching the English coast. They came almost every night from September to January 1941 – five months. After that they started to attack other targets more frequently: Liverpool or Southampton, for example; but they still hit London many, many times.
You knew you were in for it when you heard distant anti-aircraft fire, what we called ‘ack-ack’. Maybe you’d see flashes in the sky as the shells detonated, and the beams of powerful searchlights criss-crossing, looking for the enemy.
Then you’d start to hear a low rumbling. Faint at first, then unmistakeable. The approach of the Nazi bomber fleet. When they got very close, you might hear the whistle of falling bombs and the ‘crump’ as they hit.
Hopefully by that stage though, you’d be safe in a shelter. Fairly safe, anyway.
In the first days of the Blitz, we’d go down to the basement of our building, where shelters had been built at the start of the War.
Then other people’s bad luck taught us that the basement wasn’t deep enough or safe enough. People were crushed or asphyxiated when tall buildings collapsed on top of their basement shelters, you see.
So we all started spending the night in the Underground. The transport authorities tried to prevent it at first, turn people away, but thankfully they soon saw sense.
Our nearest Underground stations, Chancery Lane and Holborn, were very deep, and considered safe from even the biggest Nazi bombs.
They’d let you in from four o’clock in the afternoon, but the trains were still running then, and you had to keep the platforms free for travellers. At ten-thirty at night, the electricity to the tracks was turned off. Then you could bunk down between the rails and try to get some sleep.
I never really liked doing that, sleeping against the electric rail, even though I knew that nobody could accidentally turn the power back on.
Towards the end of 1940, the Government built an official deep-level shelter within the Tube at Chancery Lane. That was a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the tracks.
Your grandfather volunteered as an ARP warden as soon as the Blitz began. They gave him blue overalls and a tin hat. He would go on patrol, night after night, to make sure everyone was observing the blackout. ‘Put out that light!’ he’d yell at any offenders.
His deep, loud voice was useful for that job. He sounded very fierce.
After the raid, he’d help rescue people from bombed buildings, and evacuate the sites of unexploded bombs.
He saw some terrible scenes, I think, but he would never tell me exactly what he’d seen and done. You heard about wardens having to gather up human body parts in bags, trying to work out which legs and arms belonged to each victim.
It was a dirty, horrible, risky job, and I really worried for him.
Soon I had plenty to worry about myself, though.
From the beginning of 1941, I was a Fire Guard. It wasn’t a voluntary job: every adult had to do forty-eight hours of fire-watching duty a month, unless they were working over sixty hours a week, or doing another vital volunteer job. You could be fined a hundred pounds – which was a lot of money in those days – or even be sent to prison, if you shirked your duty.
I was the chairperson of the fire watch for our building. I drew up a roster, and was responsible for making sure that our whole designated area was covered by watchers and that everyone did their bit.
That part was fun: I got to know a lot of people. We had such interesting neighbours, from journalists to shopkeepers. We had a composer, an architect and a theatre manager. There were characters like old Mr Adams, a retired farrier with hands as big as shovels and an inexhaustible supply of swear words.
When a raid was expected, we’d take our buckets of sand and our stirrup pumps up to the roof and wait for the incendiaries to fall. We operated in teams of two or three. We had gas masks and thick gloves and heavy woollen blankets to protect us against sparks and flames.
Oh, yes, it was very dangerous.
We had sandbags and Anderson shelters up there, against shrapnel and flying debris, but that wouldn’t protect you from a direct hit, or even the shockwave of a nearby bomb. The blast could turn your insides to jelly but leave your skin untouched. Putting out the incendiaries was a tricky, hazardous task too, as I think I said.
Still, it had to be done. We knew that our families and neighbours depended on us. We kept our spirits up through camaraderie: singing songs, telling jokes and sharing the latest gossip.
You didn’t let yourself dwell on the danger. You just got on with the job.
The northern end of Southampton Buildings, on the corner of Chancery Lane and Holborn, was struck and badly damaged in October 1940, but our flat was further down Chancery Lane and not affected.
Then in May 1941, our luck ran out.
The night of the tenth was a full moon – a ‘bomber’s moon’ as they called it. It was a massive raid – the biggest so far. By morning, the city was ablaze from Docklands to Westminster.
First came the pathfinders. Fire bombs started falling all around us and my team soon had its hands full.
I remember there were two incendiaries burning away on a ledge, where they were tricky to reach. We had our shovels and brooms and were trying to push the blessed things off, into the street.
We were absorbed in our task and didn’t notice what was going on around us, until high-explosive bombs began to fall nearby.
We instinctively knew they were too close – and getting closer. So we ran.
Down the stairs we scrambled, helter-skelter, to the basement. Percy was already there, waiting for the raid to be over so he could perform his duties.
We’d just got into the shelter when there was the most terrific double bang, and the whole building shook to its foundations. We knew it was a direct hit. There was dust falling all around us, the emergency lights flickered. Someone screamed.
Percy and I looked at each other.
‘Come on, old girl,’ he said. ‘We’d better run for it. She’s not going to survive this.’
So we did, and the few other people with us followed our lead.
As our little gaggle emerged onto the dark street, bombs were still falling over towards Bloomsbury, a few blocks to the northwest. The façade of Stone Buildings in front of us was silhouetted against the red glow of a blaze behind, and the few unbroken panes in the tall Georgian windows reflected glittering flames: that must have been our own building on fire.
There were big chunks of masonry, timbers and swathes of broken glass strewn across the street, and piles of burning debris. There may have been bodies as well, but there was no time to look around.
We decided we might not make it to Holborn or Chancery Lane Tube: there was a serious risk of being crushed by collapsing ruins. Down towards Kings College, the whole street seemed to be ablaze.
So we bolted straight ahead for Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there were trench shelters in the lawns.
We’d just got across the street when the whole façade of our building came down behind us. Practically on our heels.
I didn’t see it, or even hear it. I just felt it. We didn’t stop or look around – we ran for our lives.
Southampton Buildings was hit by three high-explosive bombs that night. Our section was completely destroyed.
So if your Nan had stayed on the roof a moment longer, or we’d stayed in the basement, neither of us would be here today, Pauly.
We learned later that the British Museum had been badly damaged, and the Temple gutted. Over fifteen hundred Londoners died that night, and eleven thousand homes were blown up or burned.
We didn’t know it yet, but this last big raid was the end of the Blitz. There were small attacks from time to time, but nothing like that.
We’d endured it all, only to lose everything in the last few hours.
So much for the antiques, the first editions and the paintings; the dream of a little antique shop in the country. All we had left was the clothes we were wearing.
We were alive, though, and counted ourselves lucky.
Coming up:
This Friday in Tales from the Wood: Pauly’s pocket-money job taxes his patience, and back home he receives some worrying news. (Paid subscriptions.)
Next Tuesday in Lizzy May: Percy and Lizzy May escape wartorn London to the relative peace of south Hertfordshire.
A terrifyingly brilliant chapter, Steve. It doesn't matter how much I read about such terrors, they're still so hard to fathom.