World War 2 memories | Vital Football

World War 2 memories

N

Nick Real Deal

Vital Football Legend
As I was born in 1960 I have no memories. Also my senior relatives were not going to scare a young boy by telling him the truth.
So I have asked my Father who is 84 but lives in Spain , to tell me of his memories as a young boy of the war. I don't know if he will or wants to.
Some of you may have had things told to you about life as a child or even young adult by family members. I would be interested in reading them.
 
NRD, my grandpa flew B-17s over North Africa, Italy and finally Germany during the war. Amazingly he was never shot down but his aircraft was shot to shit plenty of times. They did crash land once in North Africa and had to use the B-17 like a bunker and use the top turret and side turrets to hold off enemies until help arrived.

He is the reason I am in the Air Force and the reason I fly. Kind of cool we both flew bombers of a different era. (B-1B for me) One thing is for sure, and I say this without any hesitation....That was the best generation, not even close in my opinion.

I hope your father opens up to you NRD...but even if he doesn't...they are all heroes in my opinion.
 
My mother told me a story of life during the blitz....she was living in Walthamstow, East London....my Dad was out in Ceylon as it was at the time and my brother had been evacuated...I was not around until just after the war.

During the blitz, the bombers would hammer the Docks and their flight paths would often take them out over our house after they dropped their bombs but if they had any left they let them loose on our part of London...everyone had the Anderson bomb shelters at the end of their gardens and when the sitens went they were supposed to run down to the shelters, but this particular night my mother’s brother and his wife Grace had come round to play some cards.

By the time the sirens went they could already hear planes overhead so Grace, who was very large lady told her husband and mum to get under the table...my mum said the table wouldn’t provide much protection from a bomb but Grace replied “Well at least it will only blow my arse off”...

While they waited under the table mum said they heard something scrape across their roof but there was no explosion...it turned out to have been an incendiary bomb that the Germans used to drop on small parachutes to follow up the explosive destruction, but this one drifted into the allotments at the end of our garden.

Impossible to imagine the stress levels of the civilian population in those dark days.

A few years ago there was a map published of all the recorded bomb sites in London from the blitz and sure enough that one was on it.

a few years ag
 
My mum and dad never were both war babies and both were evacuated.

One of my grandads was a desert rat and spent most of that time away from home. He'd never talk about it though, mostly because his best mate was shot serving next to him. He then came home to see his wife, my gran, contract tuberculosis within a few years. She was sent to the sanatorium but fortunately lived to tell the story thanks to the medical breakthroughs happening in the late forties.

On the other side, my other grandad couldn't go to war due to injuries and was signed up as an Air Raid Warden in Enfield. He would be managing the air raid sirens, enforcing the blackouts and dealing with the aftermath of the Blitz. He was also the pub pianist, and even though he died the year I was born, is the reason I chose to play the piano. He also played the same pubs with his good friend and another pianist, Daisy Hodges. Her son Chas was one our our club legends. Gertcha !!!

That generation were all heroes to me.
 
When I was 4/5 so thats around 1957 ish I remember in my granparents house in Clapton in East London, the bomb shelter was still in the back garden...scary looking tin contraption...always in my mind at times like this.... just can't imagine the fear of being in there whist the Nazis bombed London. Sitting waiting and hoping your name was not on that whining bomb that could be heard then silence then all hell breaking loose. Hoow frightening and traumatic must that have been. Pust it all in perspective
 
Harry-Kari said:
My mother told me a story of life during the blitz....she was living in Walthamstow, East London....my Dad was out in Ceylon as it was at the time and my brother had been evacuated...I was not around until just after the war.

During the blitz, the bombers would hammer the Docks and their flight paths would often take them out over our house after they dropped their bombs but if they had any left they let them loose on our part of London...everyone had the Anderson bomb shelters at the end of their gardens and when the sitens went they were supposed to run down to the shelters, but this particular night my mother’s brother and his wife Grace had come round to play some cards.

By the time the sirens went they could already hear planes overhead so Grace, who was very large lady told her husband and mum to get under the table...my mum said the table wouldn’t provide much protection from a bomb but Grace replied “Well at least it will only blow my arse off”...

While they waited under the table mum said they heard something scrape across their roof but there was no explosion...it turned out to have been an incendiary bomb that the Germans used to drop on small parachutes to follow up the explosive destruction, but this one drifted into the allotments at the end of our garden.

Impossible to imagine the stress levels of the civilian population in those dark days.

A few years ago there was a map published of all the recorded bomb sites in London from the blitz and sure enough that one was on it.

a few years ag
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Harry , can you remember where your Mum lived in Walthamstow, ?
We lived just off Forest Road , opposite the fire station . I remember playing on the bomb sites and then later playing in the empty temporary houses that had been built on them . The Prefabs . The nearest bombsite was only a hundred yards or so from our house . Nobody moved far from home back then , my Nan and grandad , mum and dad , aunts and uncles all lived in the same road ,.
When I was growing up , I used to play with the gas masks that were still hanging up in the cupboard under the stairs in my Nan’s house .
I can also remember going with my grandad to his allotment most days .It was amazing learning how things grew out of the ground . I think that’s where I get my love of gardening from even now . His allotment was at the back the Walthamstow Avenue football ground in Green Pond Road .
 
Walthamstow wanderer said:
Harry , can you remember where your Mum lived in Walthamstow, ?
We lived just off Forest Road , opposite the fire station . I remember playing on the bomb sites and then later playing in the empty temporary houses that had been built on them . The Prefabs . The nearest bombsite was only a hundred yards or so from our house . Nobody moved far from home back then , my Nan and grandad , mum and dad , aunts and uncles all lived in the same road ,.
When I was growing up , I used to play with the gas masks that were still hanging up in the cupboard under the stairs in my Nan’s house .
I can also remember going with my grandad to his allotment most days .It was amazing learning how things grew out of the ground . I think that’s where I get my love of gardening from even now . His allotment was at the back the Walthamstow Avenue football ground in Green Pond Road .
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Walt, we lived in Belle Vue Road.....if you headed up Forest Road towards. Waterworks Corner then after you crossed Wood Street take the next on the left immediately after the railway bridge which is Hale End Road and Berle Vue is the first on the right....I used to live at number 8 I think at the bottom of the road in what by today’s standards was a tiny terraced house but it seemed big enough to me as a kid....had 3 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living dining room and the dreaded ‘Front Room’ for special events only. The garden ran down to the allotments and on the other side of the allotments was an estate of pre-fabs that had been built to house some of the people who had lost their houses to bombing....not that I was aware of this as a kid.

Belle Vue ran up to what was the old North Circular Road which then was a 2 lane road which us kids could cross quite safely to get into the sports and adventure playground that was Epping Forest...we had improvised cricket and football pitches year round....a ‘covered’ cricket pitch under the big trees and the summer one up at Napier’s Corner....plus a number of bomb craters for various activities mostly around Guy Fawkes...

As you said, in those days families didn’t move far from each other and I remember visiting my Aunt who lived in Chestnut Avenue...it was a strange road in that walking past her house and going round the bend there was a big gap before the rest of the houses in the road...it was the result of bombing and must have taken out about 15-20 houses....the gap later became a playground for the local school.

My dad moved us out to South Hanningfield in Essex when I was 9 to help his brother in a business venture but that fell through and we lived a gypsy existence for a few years returning to Walthamstow for my last two years at senior school and then down to Southend....I’ve moved around so many times.


looking back my parents rarely talked about the darker aspects of the war mainly only stories that made them laugh....as I grew older I realise now what a selfish idiot I was during my teenage years but we never had the true scale of the sacrifices they made to create a life for my generation.
 
I remember playing in the pill box shelters around Essex. One at Fambridge on the river Crouch. I remember seeing them in the fields around the Chlemsford area. I guess some are still there. They were fortifications designed for soldiers to defend an invasion with machine guns. It is thought they could not withstand a direct bomb hit.
 
Harry-Kari said:
Walt, we lived in Belle Vue Road.....if you headed up Forest Road towards. Waterworks Corner then after you crossed Wood Street take the next on the left immediately after the railway bridge which is Hale End Road and Berle Vue is the first on the right....I used to live at number 8 I think at the bottom of the road in what by today’s standards was a tiny terraced house but it seemed big enough to me as a kid....had 3 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living dining room and the dreaded ‘Front Room’ for special events only. The garden ran down to the allotments and on the other side of the allotments was an estate of pre-fabs that had been built to house some of the people who had lost their houses to bombing....not that I was aware of this as a kid.

Belle Vue ran up to what was the old North Circular Road which then was a 2 lane road which us kids could cross quite safely to get into the sports and adventure playground that was Epping Forest...we had improvised cricket and football pitches year round....a ‘covered’ cricket pitch under the big trees and the summer one up at Napier’s Corner....plus a number of bomb craters for various activities mostly around Guy Fawkes...

As you said, in those days families didn’t move far from each other and I remember visiting my Aunt who lived in Chestnut Avenue...it was a strange road in that walking past her house and going round the bend there was a big gap before the rest of the houses in the road...it was the result of bombing and must have taken out about 15-20 houses....the gap later became a playground for the local school.

My dad moved us out to South Hanningfield in Essex when I was 9 to help his brother in a business venture but that fell through and we lived a gypsy existence for a few years returning to Walthamstow for my last two years at senior school and then down to Southend....I’ve moved around so many times.


looking back my parents rarely talked about the darker aspects of the war mainly only stories that made them laugh....as I grew older I realise now what a selfish idiot I was during my teenage years but we never had the true scale of the sacrifices they made to create a life for my generation.
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I know all that area H . We lived at No 8 . ... Borwick Avenue. The fireman were our local doctors whenever we cut or grazed ourselves out playing . I knew them all by name and used to sit in their canteen watching them play cards . They never let me go down that pole though ! I understand exactly what you are saying about what sacrifices they made , and never ever expected a thank you for it . My mums brothers were in Egypt and Africa in the army , and almost everywhere in the navy .
 
Nick Real Deal said:
I remember playing in the pill box shelters around Essex. One at Fambridge on the river Crouch. I remember seeing them in the fields around the Chlemsford area. I guess some are still there. They were fortifications designed for soldiers to defend an invasion with machine guns. It is thought they could not withstand a direct bomb hit.
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When we moved to South Hanningfield there were a number of pill boxes in that area one of which we used to use to have a sneaky cigarette or two...never inhaled though!....thinking about their locations I’m not sure what they were supposed to defend though.
 
Harry-Kari said:
When we moved to South Hanningfield there were a number of pill boxes in that area one of which we used to use to have a sneaky cigarette or two...never inhaled though!....thinking about their locations I’m not sure what they were supposed to defend though.
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I think some of the pill boxes were anti aircraft positions , designed as such with special gun openings.
 
Greavswasthegreatest said:
When I was 4/5 so thats around 1957 ish I remember in my granparents house in Clapton in East London, the bomb shelter was still in the back garden...scary looking tin contraption...always in my mind at times like this.... just can't imagine the fear of being in there whist the Nazis bombed London. Sitting waiting and hoping your name was not on that whining bomb that could be heard then silence then all hell breaking loose. Hoow frightening and traumatic must that have been. Pust it all in perspective
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Not that I know , but I’ve been told that if you could hear the “whistle “ as a bomb dropped , it was not one that had your name on it . Ones that were directly overhead didn’t make a noise that you could hear. Some freak of acoustics that was of little comfort !
 
We had a holiday on the South of France coast , Cap Ferrat . Absolutely superb beaches that stretched for miles but littered with very big “ pill boxes “ every hundred or so yards . Obviously built to defend the coast from invasion. Huge things they are
 
Walthamstow wanderer said:
Not that I know , but I’ve been told that if you could hear the “whistle “ as a bomb dropped , it was not one that had your name on it . Ones that were directly overhead didn’t make a noise that you could hear. Some freak of acoustics that was of little comfort !
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Its the silence part that indicated real fear...you could hear whistles of nearby ones as I understand it but as you say the silent ones were the danger..the point I was making probably badly that whistling meant bombs were very near ...
 
We had a bomb shelter at the end of the garden for a while...looking back I have to wonder if they were just psychological aids given that they were largely a shallow trench in the earth with a semi-circular tin roof which wouldn’t offer much protection from a bomb....I guess they would protect from flying debris though.....still, I guess we are luckier today...we can have proper shelters....

 
Greavswasthegreatest said:
Its the silence part that indicated real fear...you could hear whistles of nearby ones as I understand it but as you say the silent ones were the danger..the point I was making probably badly that whistling meant bombs were very near ...
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Sorry mate , I didn’t mean it to come across that I was contradicting your post . No way did I mean that . I was just making a comment on what I had been told when I was growing up .It was meant to go alongside your post , not contradict it . Sorry if it came over like that Greavsie
everything you said was spot on and must have been horrific to go through ............almost daily .
 
When I was an apprentice , back in time that is long forgotten , I was working for a firm in Bethnal Green , London . The underground stations in London were used as bomb shelters for hundreds when the sirens went off .
During one raid , a bomb went straight down the steps and into Bethnal Green Underground Station . Caused absolute carnage.
 
Walthamstow wanderer said:
Sorry mate , I didn’t mean it to come across that I was contradicting your post . No way did I mean that . I was just making a comment on what I had been told when I was growing up .It was meant to go alongside your post , not contradict it . Sorry if it came over like that Greavsie
everything you said was spot on and must have been horrific to go through ............almost daily .
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No issue mate I did not take it as criticism ..you are more right than me probably ...neither of us lived through it thankfully. Let not Fall out over it!
 
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