Some wartime memories

by Ted Stewardson

I remember when the war started and everyone was given a steel shelter, in sections, dumped outside the house. You could have this Anderson shelter or a Morrison shelter, which was a reinforced table. The Anderson shelters were good things, they saved your life. I remember my father came home from work, and we had to put up this shelter in the garden. We had a lovely garden - my father used to look after it. We had to dig a hole about 4 ft in the middle of the grass, and assemble this shelter in the hole - bolt it together. The idea was to get some wooden boards and put them on the floor. My father did this and made some benches and all the earth you dug out, you put over the top - so it had a foot of earth on top. Then the idea was to put a blast wall 6ft in front of the entrance. I think we had sand bags or something. It was quite cosy. During the bombing and the air raids, we just sat there all night. We felt quite safe really. It would withstand anything but a direct hit. If your house got bombed and you were in the shelter - you were O.K.

I remember where I was when the war started. There was a sweet shop at the top of our (Thackery) road - Jones'. I was in there with my mate Fred, having a Tizer and ice (a glass of Tizer and a scoop of ice cream in it). We were listening to the broadcast of Chamberlain saying "we are at war with Germany" and a couple of minutes after that, the siren went and we thought we were all going to get blown to pieces. We came running down the road, and my mother was running up the road looking for us. A policeman on a bike with his gas cape on, was rattling a rattle. If the Germans were going to drop gas, the policemen had rattles like football rattles. People went mad, and they thought it was the end of the world, and rushed back to get into the shelter. After a couple of minutes, the "all-clear" went. Evidently it was a French plane and it was unidentified, and the observer had seen it and thought it was Germans!

During the war I was working at Beckton Gas Works. When there was an air raid on, we had a surface shelter made out of railway sleepers, and we had to dive in there. What a place to be during an air raid! - a gas works - cor dear me! We used to watch the dog fights with the Spitfires and Meshersmitts whizzing about in the sky. I remember one time, we were coming home at 5 0' clock, just getting to the door, when the siren went and we were shut in there. Eventually the siren went and they let us out. After a couple of hours the warning went back on again and I went in United Dairies shelter down the High Street. I had to stay there all night.

One morning we'd had a bad raid and all the docks were alight - terrible. We had been in the shelter all night, my mother father sister and myself (the others had been evacuated). The next door neighbours were there as well 'cos they never had a shelter. You couldn't sleep there. I went back to work the next day to Beckton Gas Works and all the acid plant had been bombed. They wouldn't let us in there. There was acid all over the place. A terrible state. They sent us home. When I got home, after a while, my father came home. His job was at Poplar at a saw mill (sawing cork for ships). His place had been bombed. My sister was at Kraft Cheese factory

at Slough, and she came home - her factory had been bombed. There was the three of us - all had been bombed.

That night in the shelter the bombing was bad. There was a ring of fire all around us. During the night two fire bombs fell on the house. One was over my bed, and the other on my mother and father's bed. Me and my father came out and the water mains had been burst. So we just had one bucket of water and a stirrup pump and we couldn't put the fire out. We got buckets of earth to try and put it out, but couldn't do it so the house just burnt. Everything was in ruins.

In the morning we came out and my father said - we can't stay here - so we packed up , found what we could, and went down the country - to Farringdon in Berkshire, where the rest of the children were, and we'd all be together.

Bertram Stewardson (Ted's father)

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