Location: Rotherhithe, Surrey, England, United Kingdom and Kent

Surnames/tags: Webster-16245, Clark-57977, Webster-16242 Memories_ of_ the_ Blitz _1940-41
A first hand account[1] of the blitz in Rotherhithe and Kent during the Second World War by Alfred Reginald Webster. Written in 2009.
Memories of the Blitz One Saturday in August 1940, a fine summer’s day, clear blue skies. The air raid warning siren had sounded, but for the previous week we had been getting one or two daily, and had began to take them as part of our normal daytime routine. But this time the drone of aeroplane engines filled the air, small groups of planes began to accumulate into a larger group, circling overhead. There were so many that some people cheered them on thinking they were our planes, as there was no anti-aircraft gunfire. Myself and two mates went up to the top landing of the buildings where we lived to get a better view. Suddenly, the whistle of falling bombs, filled the air. We descended the ten flights of stairs at a fast pace and I’m sure we reached the ground floor before the first thumps of the exploding bombs. They sounded all around us, but as we found out later, were more than 400/500 yards away. The planes all headed for home, leaving the air full of whistles, fire engine and ambulance bells. We kids were badly shaken but still ventured out to look at the damage done by the fallen bombs. The docks across the river seemed hard hit, billowing black smoke came from several different sites, and continued to, for the next couple of days
Most of the children from our neighbourhood had already been evacuated to country areas out side of London. So the small number of ground floor flats that had been re-enforced and sand bagged to give protection from bomb blast offered just enough space for a badly shaken group of tenants that evening at 6.30pm when the air-raid siren sounded for the second time that day. I lost one school mate that night, he lived in the Redriff estate, much later in life I learned that I also lost three relations from my Dads side of the family in that raid. The air raids became a nightly occurrence for the next three months, with only one or two quiet nights, when the weather was too stormy for flying big formations of bomber planes. Some nights the period between the engine drones of the bombers passing over was very short, giving the impression of a long line of planes queuing to make a bomb run. Other nights they all came together, dropped their bombs and scurried off home, leaving the ARP personnel to clean up their mess. On some of the bigger night raids the enemy planes would drop large parachute flares, turning night into day. To start they were mainly white coloured which could also show up the raiding planes, later they used colours: reds, greens and yellow. One night I was standing outside the shelter watching such a colourful display, I called to my mother to come out and see the colourful display, which she did. Some machine guns were firing, trying to shoot the flares out, a burst of spent bullets hit the wall above our heads and fell to the ground. I was given a lecture on what goes up must come down and confined to the shelter for the rest of the evening, being blamed for that incident. Casualty lists were never published at that time; one read the bulletin board outside the local town hall or made inquiries about missing relations at the police station. All males from 16 to 65 years old were liable for some kind of duty, being only 15 I had a little trouble getting on the list. Eventually, I was allowed to join the fire watchers roster, provided I was on the same shift as my Dad, but as the London Dock had almost come to stand still, he was away most of the time working at the Liverpool wharfs. After the first few days of constant air raids, most people returned to the daily routine of work, hurry home, a quick meal then off to the shelter and bed down for the night.
Come September, my mother decided to go hop picking, hoping it might be a bit quieter out in the Kentish countryside. The nights were, but not the days. At times there were 200 to 250 planes in the air, the AA guns firing at them in the direction of the Thames estuary, the black gun smoke seemed to follow behind them and very rarely did any seem to fall out of formation. Although on a couple of days in mid September, I counted 12 or 15 planes come down from early morning till late afternoon mainly on fire, The one on one air fights were a common daily occurrence. On one day I saw a crew eject from a burning four engine bomber with no parachutes breaking open. One day I still remember well, two of us were sitting a top of a faggot stack, watching a group of spitfires breaking up a formation of bombers. A German plane billowing black smoke was making a shallow dive towards the ground with a spitfire sitting on his tail firing short busts as it chased the plane down lower. To see the stubble just in front of us suddenly go up in flames, from a burst of incendiary machine gun fire, brought home the fact this was a serious war, not just a spectacle sport. I never told my mother about that incident. Lots of bombs fell in to the Thames River where no apparent damage could be seen. A string of four coal barges were swamped and sunk by a straddle of bombs close by. At low tide we could go down and fill our sacks with free coal which was left behind when the barges were righted and salvaged. On another occasion we found a line of incendiary bombs sticking out of the mud, all intact, I took three home for closer inspection, which I hid in my bed room, can’t remember what became of all my souvenirs from that time, (probably my mother found them and deposited them into the collection buckets).
One evening, a very quiet one, just the occasional boom in the distance, I was sitting on the building stairs talking to the girl who lived in the flat above us. She had to go to the pub and buy a jug of beer for her dad, (a regular job), I decided to accompany her, it was also very dark, no moon. On the return trip home we could see a little red rear light by the kerbside further along the road, It was very quiet and dark, suddenly, “boom, bang “ a blinding flash, and a mobile 3.7 AA gun had fired one round. There were a couple of sharp commands, a truck engine started up and away they drove, I was holding the jug of beer and how none was spilt I never knew. We believe the gun was just a moral booster, letting us know we could answer back to jerry (I’m sure we both jumped about three feet high at that bang).
Just before Christmas 1940 the raids on London eased off a little, the provincial towns and cities taking the blunt of it, until May the 10th 1941 when we had what was later called the Little Blitz: an hour of small bombs, followed by an attack with bread baskets (so called) of incendiary and oil bombs. London burnt well at that time, but it signalled the end of the nightly raids and the start of the occasional rocket attack, which had a lot of people wondering what they were or where they came from.
In June or July 1941 I tried to enlist in the army, but I never did my homework, when asked my age, I said 18 years old and when asked year of birth I took a guess and said 1923 - “Ah you’re not 17 1/2 till next April” and carried on to say, “I will enlist you in the Home guard until next April when you can volunteer again, or wait to be called up as an 18 years old in October”. Nine months in Dad’s Army kept me out of trouble until I enlisted.
Alfred R Webster. 9/8/09
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