High Explosive Bomb at High Road

Keith Ranger — Wartime Memories Part One

Q: Can you tell me about your childhood during the war?
A: When war broke out I was 3 years old — I can’t remember much about the declaration.

Q: What were your first memories — can you remember gas masks?
A: I remember gas masks — I don’t think I had a Mickey Mouse one — my wife had a Mickey Mouse one, unfortunately she hasn’t kept it — but I know I had a gas mask and would have to go to school with gas mask over my shoulder and as we walked to school we used to pick up pieces of shrapnel, they were pieces of bombs or bullets. they used to be lying all over the road and we used to prize these if you found a nice bright silvery one they were quite treasured at school.

Q: Where were you living?
A: I lived in London. I lived near Finsbury Park, I lived on the other side of Finsbury Park to the Arsenal ground — that’s on one side and I lived on the other side of the park. I didn’t support Arsenal actually I support Tottenham Hotspur because my father was a season ticket holder at Tottenham, he actually went to White Hart Lane school so my father supported Tottenham so I supported Tottenham - whereas most of my friends supported Arsenal naturally being so close to the Arsenal ground.

It might be interesting for young people to know that the Arsenal actually shared a ground with Tottenham during the war — the Arsenal ground was commissioned by the Army — so Arsenal didn’t have a ground in those days, they used to share the ground with Tottenham and used to go along to Tottenham every Saturday because there was always a game — one week it would be Tottenham and next week it would be Arsenal at the Tottenham ground. When you went to see the games you didn’t know quite who would be playing — sometimes it was someone called ‘A.N.Other’ because they weren’t quite sure who was going to be playing, and often you would get people like Corporal so and so and one of my favourites was Sgt. Ditchburn — Ted Ditchburn who used to play in goal at Tottenham, he was a Sgt. On the programme it cost a penny I think it used to be Sgt. Ditchburn playing goal for Tottenham.

Q: Did your dad work?
A: My father worked in Smithfield Market and therefore was a reserved occupation but he had to go into London, most nights he’d come home from work got a little sleep then go back into London into the City into Smithfield and do some fire watching which was looking out for enemy aircraft, he also had to fight the blaze and repair the damage which was incurred on London during the blitz, he was in fact quite lucky towards the end of the war there were things called V2 rockets, these came after the V1 rockets, I’ll explain more about those in a moment.

The V2 you didn’t know when they were going to come they were very quick and they were the forerunner really of space travel, a lot of these people that worked on the V2 rockets were taken by the British and Americans after the war and worked on space programmes, but these rockets came across and just plunged into a town without any thought as to who they were going to hit, they weren’t targeted in any particular place.
One fell on the market itself and smashed it to smithereens, many people were killed and badly injured in that raid but my father was very fortunate in that respect because although he was in the market at the time the blast went around him because he was behind a very big pillar which held up the market and from the market there used to be a little underground railway where they used to transport the mail and the blast when it hit also travelled underneath the ground which is why it caused so many casualties and so much damage, so my father was very lucky that night. I did have picture of the market after it got hit and my eldest son actually gave it away — he gave it to someone who was doing a history of Smithfield Market and my son thought it would be very interesting to him and I haven’t seen it since, I’m not sure where that photograph is now. But it’s a rather famous photograph of the whole market in fire and collapsed buildings. It might be interesting because my wife’s father he also was in that sort of thing at one time, he did fire watching also in London until he went into the Army and went over to India but they lived in the East End, my wife’s family all come from the East End, they got very badly bombed and their house was a few that was still standing and when my father-in-law had to go to work or to go fire watching or whatever he often had to tread across all the people that were asleep in the hallway of the house to get to the front door.

I lived in London, near Finsbury Park and also near Haringey Arena. You have probably heard of Haringey which is not receiving good press at the moment, but when I lived there there used to be an Arena and a Stadium unfortunately neither are there anymore but they used to have the big boxing competitions in the Arena, even the world championships were fought in the Arena and the Stadium was next to it and they used to have speedway and greyhound racing and so on. But during the War the Arena was taken over by American troops so there were lots of Yanks around and we used to scrounge chewing gum from them, “Have you got any gum chum?” and invariably they used to give us the chewing gum and they used to give us rides in the tanks around the area.

Also the other side of Finsbury Park near Highbury Stadium was the main line out of Kings Cross so these were two areas very strategically placed for the Germans to attack so we used to have quite a lot of bombing and attacks on us and when it got quite bad, Mum decided we should be evacuated but we were evacuated to Chalfont St Giles, unfortunately Mum didn’t like it very much as it was very lonely and we were on a farm and coming from an area of London she was very lonely and there was just her and I and the people that owned the farm and after three weeks only we decided to go back to London and take our chances really. We lasted longer than my wife. She was evacuated to Peterborough and lasted ten days and they couldn’t stand it either, so they went back to London.

So when we went back to London we went back to our own house and because the raids were so bad we got, I don’t know if we had to buy them in those days or we were given them by the Government, but we had a shelter called a Morrison shelter and this was like a cage, a reinforced cage which stayed in the bedroom really and I used to sleep most of the time in this cage thing but if it got really bad, if the bombing got bad, my Mum and Dad used to get in it as well, which left my Nan, who lived with us, upstairs. If it got really bad, we had to take other action, and the action we took was to go to next door, because next door had a shelter called an Anderson shelter and this shelter was actually built in the garden. It was a very small garden that we had and it was back to back houses so the gardens were very small but they had the Anderson built in the garden and they were very kind to us and we used to have to get into this Anderson shelter so there were quite a few of us in there. So to get there we had to climb over the garden wall because we had a brick wall that separated the garden houses as you did in those days, there was a 4ft brick wall. We had to climb over this wall and not only was there a wall but because we didn’t have much food in those days even though my Dad worked in Smithfield we were rationed, so what my father did was to build some chicken runs all round the garden, and as I say, it wasn’t a very big garden, so we built these chicken runs around the garden and we also had some rabbit hutches, we used to keep rabbits on the top, so we had to climb over the wall and the chicken run and rabbit hutches to get to next doors garden to get into their shelter and my Grandmother as well so there was not only next doors family, the mother and father and their son, who was in fact my bestman when I got married. There were those three and there was all of us that got into this Anderson shelter until the all clear went and then we clambered back over the wall again into our own house.

Q: So, how often did this occur, that you had to go next door?
A: Probably two or three times a week we had to climb over the wall. It depended on the seriousness of the raid really, as you know the siren went and you would know that the bombers would start dropping, so you got prepared for that so you instinctively new if it was going to be a bad one or it was going to be just a few sort of recognisance aircraft may be dropping a few flares or something, as I say we used to go in there and pull the door shut and take our chances really. But not only did we have chickens and rabbits and we also thought we should have a duck and that would be nice for a Sunday lunch or something so we bought this duck, I can’t remember where we got it from now, I think Porterbella market we got it from. So we got this bath and sunk it in the ground at the end of the garden and put Donald the Duck in the thing, so he lasted as we just couldn’t kill him as we just didn’t have the heart to kill him, we used to kill the rabbits and the chickens and eat them but we just didn’t have the heart to kill Donald and he died of old age quite a long while after the war had finished.

Q: Presumably the chickens gave you eggs as well?
A: Oh, the chickens gave us eggs as well and things that I can remember was Mum making up the food for them and all the stuff used to go in the big pot and she used to buy some stuff to mix with it and this feed the chickens and the rabbits and also Donald of course, he was quite plump when he passed away.

My name is Eileen Blancenay aged 14 years, I lived with my mother and sister Joyce in an old fashioned, gas-lit three roomed flat at 106 Bury Road, Wood Green, London N.22. We had been given this flat in February 1941 after being bombed out of our house in September 1940 in which father was killed.
I left school at Easter and worked as an office junior for a firm in Holborn Hall, Gray's Inn Road, London WC1 treavelling to the City every day by tube from Turnpike Lane.
The first time I heard a "Doodlebug" was one night during early June. I was in bed when I heard what I thought was an aeroplane. It woke me up but the siren hadn't gone. It seemed very loud and then the engine stopped and a short time after there was an explosion and I just thought the plance ahd been dameged and just come down. I heard nothing else and went back to sleep.
This then st the pattern. I still went up to London every day. We were on the top floor of our building and when we hear a "Doodlebug" coming we all used to go out in the corridor, we never had time to go down to the basement. When I used to come out of the tube station at night on my way home, you could be sure that the siren would go on the corner opposite andthen it was a toss-up whether I stayed in the station or went home. I sued to run the gauntlett along the High Road, Wood Green passed the shops, downa samll road and then down my road which was at the back of the High Roadshops and our flat was the last one at the end of the road. Opposite our flat, under some trees, was a brick-built surface shelter. One night the siren was just going as I came out toe the tube but I decided to chance the run. I ran along the High Road just as the siren was dying away and I could hear the "Doodlebug" coming, m y heart was thumping, nobody else was around. I turned into my road, the 'thing' was overhead but I couldn't look up at it. The silence was terrible all I could hear were my footsteps and as it exploded I went straight into the shelter wall instead of the doorway but at lease I was in one piece.
The shelter was our home for about three months. It was full every night. My married sisster Ivy and her three children came to stay with us as her husband was in the Army. The "Doodlebug" never stopped me going to the pictures, which I did about threee nights a week with my friedn Pam. We'd rather have died watching our favourite film stars than stay at home. They used to put up a notice in the cinema to say the the siren had gone but nobody ever left.
Pam, my friend, lived in Westbeech Road the next road to where I lived. When we left each other on the corner after the pictures we used to say see you later in the shelter. First of all when I got home I would change into my shelter clothes, these were old clothes kept especially for this purpose because we couldn't undress into night clothes, except for the small children, because of all the people who slept in the shlter and anyway it kept us warmer also we had differenct clothes to wear during the day. We used to put our hair in curlers and then put on a "snood" (it was a crocheted hair net made with wool) which al the girls wore, especially in the factories.
The shelter had three tiered wooden bunks and Pam and I had the op ones next to each other. We brought our blankets and pillows and we really enjoyed it and we talked and laughted until we were told to go to sleep by everybody else. The light was kept on all night but we got used to sleeping like that but the bunks were hard and often we longed for our own beds. One night when we'd been sleeping like this for some time, much to my mother's horror, I decided to stay home and sleep in my own bed and although it was a bad night, I let through it but I ached so much the next morning I could harley get out of bed, so back to the shelter.
There was a "ddoodlebug" dropped in Hornsey which wasn't far away and Pam and I were jokingly saying it would be our turn next. A few nights later early in the evening, a beautiful sunny evening, I was standing outside our flat with Ivy my sister just looking down the road and I remarked to her that the road looked so nice with not a window broken and all the houses intact.
That night we were al asleep in the shelter, the siren had gone and it must have gone 12am when all of a sudden this "doodlebug" was coming and it was so loud and very near and when it seemed overheadthe engine cut-out and that long silence whcih always made me hold by breath. The explosion was very near, the shelfter shook and a pebble fell of f the ceiling. Nobody moved for quite a few minutes, we all seemed frighttened to go outside. One of the women in the shelter accused Pam and I of making it happen buecause of our joiking a few days before but I suppose she was shocked and it couldn't possibly have been true. Anyway I said to my Mum give me the key and I'll go over to see if the flat was alreight. She had a jot to find the key but eventually I went outside. The whole street was covered in broken glass and grey slats off the roofs. I got to the flat and went throught the gateway which was covered in glass and found the font door was laying in the passage so I din't need the key. I wondered where our cat Tibby was. He usually slept on my bed but the wardrobe was lying across the bed and Tibby was nowhere to be seen. The only windows not broken were in my bedroom at the back of the flat as they had been open a bit. I left the flat and walked down the road and by then two great big lights had been erected on the roof of Marks and Spencers to shin on the appalling mess of the houses opposite. The Manager's of Marks and Spencers and Woolworths were soon down as they had there back doors blown off and were frightened their goods would have disappeared. People were too busy for that. It was the most eerie sight you could imagine, the centres of tow roads had been lasted. The "ddodlebug" had fallen in the back gardens between Bury Road and Westbeech Road and blasted ouwards on both sides of each road. The two spot lights lit up a scene of terrible devistation. There was a little boy of three killed. Hed had fair curly hair and I used to watch him ride his three-wheeled bike around the block. Other people were killeed and injured and two girls I knew had black eyes and bruises and also their mother was injured as their house was next to the demolished ones adn eventually had to be taken down because it was beyond repair. They were taken to a rest centre.
When the morning came at last we were so busy clearing up that we forgot about my sister's children who we'd left in the shelter and it wasn't until they came toddling out that we remebered them. My old grandad, agaed 89 years, lived in Westbeech Road and his house was very badly damaged and they had to take him to a rest centre but he protested so much because he didn't want to leave his house and within a week he died. We don't know whether it was shock or fear of not being allowed to go home again because of his age.
I was coming home from work three days later when I found my road cordoned off again and a policeman on duty there. He asked me where I was going and I said I lived there and he told me to hurry pass the demolished house as they had just found another two bodies in the wreckage and were just going to get them out. Nobody knew they were there. It was a widow and her son og about twelve, I'd seen them about and I always felt sorry for them as they seemed alone just the two of them and thats how they were found clasped in each others arms. They han't lived in our road long so nobody knew them.
At the end of the first day all the damaged houses in the two roads had temporary repairs. Our house has a tarpaulin on the roof and we had black carboard material in the bottom half of the window and sort of white muslin at the top but is didn't give us much light unless we opened our windows.
The cat came back after a couple of days, he must have been hiding somewhere, he wan't injured nor were his paws cut by glass.
One of the last "doodlebugs" to fall in Wood Green was on a Saturday afternoon in the Autumn. I fell in Farrant Aveneu, where my Aunt Flo and Uncle Andrew lived. Theire daughter Joan managed to dive in the table shelter which saved her from serious injury as they lived a few doors along from the devastated houses. My Aunt was in the little corner sub-Post Office in Salisbury Road when the "doodlebug" was coming and the postmaster invited her the other side of the counter so they could shelter underneath it. Good job he did as the windows got blasted. We gave shelter to Aunt and Unclea and Joan in our flat for a few months while there house was extensively repaired.

A V." rocket fell in Gladstone Avenue in the Autumn of 1944 a few streets away and I think if we'd had a lot more of these things, I think our morale would have broken. We got used to the "doodlebugs" which at least you could hear and take appropriate action but the rockets were silent and this made them more terrifying. The rockets seemed to cause more devistation and windows were broken over a wider area.
Fortunately, the victory in Europe came before too many of these things were launched.