I don’t remember seeing the shelters being built, in the road outside our house in Southcote Avenue, but being born in 1938, I suppose I was too young! I do, however, have a few memorises of them, later.
I remember, for a start, the strong, and not all that pleasant, smell of brickwork, which is only to be understood as it was built of brick! The next strongest smell, however, was that of candles; the only source of lighting inside the shelter. I liked to watch the candles burn slowly down and see the wax slide dow=n the sides, finally, dripping on to the floor. I always thought how, when it got on my sleeve, it was, almost, indistinguishable from "snot" (I was a child, after all).
I seem to remember there being some simple iron-framed bunk beds - just the framework, no mattresses, and intended, I would assume, mainly to give parents somewhere to let their children, pulled from their warm beds in the middle of the night, go back to sleep while the air raid was on. This would have made conditions better for everyone who had to share the shelter with very young tired children and babies. I remember very few occasions when we had to run for the shelter at night, but this is, probably, because I was so tired, I fell asleep on those very bunk beds!
When the alarm siren sounded we had to get out to the shelter as quick as we could, leaving the front door not only unlocked, but ,sometimes open - most of the neighbours did.
One Sunday dinner time, my mother had just put our meal on the plates ready for us to sit down, when the siren sounded and we had to leave our dinner and run for the shelter. I remember that the meal was a Sunday roast, as much as we could have in those days. It was thin slices of meat, beef I think, a few potatoes, and, perhaps, a cabbage or peas, I’m not sure, now. Strangely enough, I don’t remember ever feeling hungry. When the “All Clear” sounded, and we got back indoors, the food was cold.
On several nights we were awakened by the siren and rushed down to the shelter as had become normal. There was the sound of the ack-ack guns and the noise of aircraft, which, I assume, must have been enemy bombers as our planes wouldn't have been flying aith ack-ack around. I don't remember seeing any 'planes caught in the search lights but I did find it very exciting. It just goes to show that I really didn't know what was going on!
I remember one night in particular, after the alarm had sounded, standing in the doorway of the shelter, with my father and a neighbour, who were talking and looking up at the sky. I pushed my way forward to see what they were looking at and there was a “doodle-bug” just managing, or so it seemed to me, to fly that little bit higher than the top of our chimney, as it chugged along. It seemed to be flying quite slowly, when, suddenly, having got a few streets away, but still within sight, the buzzing sound stopped, as the motor cut out, and I heard the neighbour say to my father, “Some poor devil’s had it” and my father replied, "Yes". Though I couldn't have been more than six or seven, I knew what they meant and felt, strangely, safe but I don't remember hearing an explosion so, perhaps, it was further away than I thought.
I'll never understand wars or, at least, the people who fight them; why do millions of men get up and march off to die, or kill others, because someone told them to? If they met the so-called enemy, under different circumstances, they would, probably, discuss gardening, fishing, football, or something quite ordinary. I'm not a pacifist but, one thing I've learned in my life - you can't believe a word politicians and newspapers tell you and, yet, we give these a tremendous amount of trust.
I did wonder, at the time, why this man, Adolf Hitler, who looked, somewht, like Charlie Chaplin, wanted to kill me and why all these people called Germans were trying to help him to do so. This occupied my mind for a short while and, then, I went back to watching (and helping) the candle wax "snot", fall on my sleeves.
When the war was, finally, over the time came for the shelters to be pulled down and I, clearly, remember seeing, to me, having seen nothing like it before, a huge ball swinging, on the end of a thick steel cable, suspended from the arm of a large crane. I watched, open-mouthed, as the wrecking ball just went through the walls what I had always considered to be an oh-so-solid shelter. Within minutes the building was a pile of rubble and the fun was about to start.
While the shelter was being demolished, a group of people from the houses around had gathered at a safe distance to watch and, then, someone, somewhere, must have given a signal because the next minute everyone ran forward to get as many free bricks as possible. Some people carried them in their arms while a few lucky and, I suppose, richer ones had wheelbarrows - not many but a couple. However, the remains of the shelter were covered in human bodies all trying to get as many bricks as they could so the wheelbarrows had a limited advantage. I loved this. I picked up bricks, two at a time, and ran home with them – luckily for us the shelter had been built, almost, outside our front garden so there wasn’t far to run.
With the shelter alnmost nothing more than a smudge on the ground, and having got the bricks home, my father gave me a cold chisel and hammer and we went to work ridding the brick of what remained of the mortar. I loved that too – getting something for nothing has always appealed to me!
But the story of the brick shelter is not yet over! Some months after the demolition, my father used the bricks to build a small, short wall across the end of the drive, at the back of the house. In those days, before the second world war, very few people had cars but new houses were being built with drives and this was one of them. Without a garage at the end of the drive to block the view of the back garden, however, privacy was lost, so, some form of structure was put up, by most peole, to obstruct the view from the road and give some privacy back.
My father's wall didn't block access to the back of the house and the back door, only the view.
One day, coming back from a ride, I sat on the bike and leant against the wall - which, promptly, fell over scattering blocks of bricks everywhere.
My father, ever concerned for my safety, came out, saw me, aged eight, still sitting astride my bike, but, now, lying, on my side, on the ground, surrounded by bricks and mortar, rushed to my side and shouted, "What have you done to my wall!?" and, then, "Look what he's done, Lily!" (Lily was my mother, by the way - just thought I'd better explain that.)
My mother was much more concerned than my father, but didn't rush to my side - she stood in the back doorway, folded her arms and, just, laughed. As they say in the old films, I shall always remember her that way!
Still laughing, she turned to my father and said, "It wasn't his fault, it was your wall! It wasn't built very well, was it?".
She knew how to gain popularity, I think my father and I drew closer together at that moment.
To be fair, and honest, the wall was rubbish but, then, sand and cement were not easy to get and, relatively, expensive, so, my father had tried to economise by saving on the amount of cement he used - but, I think, he'd, probably, gone too far, with the result that the bricks were, actually, held together by dry sand, which is not a well-known building principle.
All I remember is that the wall was never rebuilt and I don't know what happened to the bricks.
