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Not quite 14 years old when the Blitz started in 1940, Denis Gardner was living at 19 Brayards Road, Peckham, South East London.
The Blitz started in earnest on the 7th of September, I think it was a Saturday and I had to get to the Nunhead railway station to pick up the papers, which were thrown on to the platform from the train as it passed through the station.
During an air raid earlier, a stick of bombs had hit this area and houses were blown down. Dust was everywhere. Gas mains in the streets were on fire. Fire engines were everywhere and hoses across the streets.
Air raid wardens tried to rescue those in the bombed-out houses, ambulances had sirens at full blast, police and air raid wardens kept people away from certain areas which were liable to collapse or had an unexploded bomb under them, and dust filled the air.
The scenes of destruction, fires and mayhem were both frightening and exciting. That night they came back and bombed the East End of London, the dock area.
From Peckham we could see the huge red glow in the sky as the dockland areas with all their stockpiles of sugar, wines, rum, timber and other perishable goods burnt.
Peckham is only a few seconds flying time from the East End of London, so any pilot who was a split second off his target or was picked up by the searchlights (and lots were), just dropped their bombs to lighten the aircraft, in order to escape.
Thus thousands of homes in the surrounding suburbs were hit.
The fires in dockland burnt for days. From this day on London was bombed for 74 consecutive nights, (and sometimes during the day as well,) except for a couple of nights when the weather was too bad for air raids.
This meant going down our shelter each night and staying there, except for trips to the toilet during the quiet periods. We also had a couple who lived next door who used to come into our shelter, so there were six of us trying to sleep in this small area, and then next morning go to work, if it was still there.
One night the houses behind the house next door to us in Blackpool Street were hit. Luckily it was only a small bomb, a 250 pounder, and it demolished the top halves of both houses. When this happens the dust from the explosion is so thick it can cause death to anyone trapped.
After the explosion we always went through the drill of calling out all our neighbours’ names to see if they were all without injury. Luckily they had all survived in their Anderson shelters.
Not everyone had an Anderson shelter, some had a shelter that used the kitchen table, and made it into a sort of cage. Not very good if the house was hit, because dust then became the killer.
After any raid, everyone had their favourite story to tell. Ours was of that night. After the bomb struck we waited a while, then came out of the shelter to look around. Mum & Dad were outside and then there was another explosion.
Dad swung out his arm saying get back in the shelter and he hit Mum on the nose, which bled profusely. To stop the bleeding he gave her the towel from the outside toilet, the towel used to clean the toilet seat. I think that tale was told many times.
We lost the windows at the back of the house. An air raid is horrific, not just from the bombs but also from the anti-aircraft guns that make a terrible noise, and the shrapnel that rains down afterwards.
And lots of our own shells came down and exploded on contact with the ground Our worst fright came from the huge guns that were mounted on mobile railway platforms. The noise when these fired was terrifying: it was worse than hearing the screaming of a falling bomb.
It was said if you heard the screaming of the bomb then that one was not meant for you. These guns were supposed to help our morale, as there was not much opposition to the raiders in the early days. The railway line from Rye Lane to Nunhead ran only a few hundred yards away.
It was during one of these night raids that I got my first official cigarette. Dad and I were standing in the doorway of number 19, looking out to the street, guns were firing, search lights were probing the sky and it was nearly as bright as day time.
He rolled himself a cigarette and also one for me. I forget the exact words he said but the cigarette was to give me some form of courage from what we were witnessing. The street had just been hit by some fire-bombs.
They had all been extinguished by the people who lived in the houses. We had been lucky as they had missed our house but we all still had to be watchful. From the doorway we could see along the street, and the first sign of a glow in a window was the warning that a fire was starting.
Everyone was looking out for their neighbours. The friendship and camaraderie that exuded during the Blitz was wonderful to behold. Everyone was friendly and ready to help. Adversity brings out the best in people.
While this was happening at night we were also having some air raids during the day. This was the period when Goering had told Hitler that his Luftwaffe would bring England to her knees and she would ask for an armistice.
Though the bombing of London caused widespread damage, the bombing did not cause enough damage to commerce and industry or to the morale of the people to bring Britain nearer to surrender.
One man in England at this time thought the English were finished and that was J.F. Kennedy's father, Joseph, who was then the United States Ambassador to the Court of St.James. It was good that President Roosevelt did not agree with him, though it was still another year before America was to be drawn into the war.
As most of the thinking in America was that England was done for, their great worry was that the Royal Navy would fall into German hands. The newspapers were telling us that the R.A.F. today shot down 144 planes for the loss of only a few of our own planes, whereas in later years we found out that the correct total had been 71 and 16 of ours lost for that particular day.
Residents of London adapted a new style of life that included sleeping every night in a damp air raid shelter underground. The cold and damp brought on a 10% increase in tuberculosis, sometimes more dangerous than the raids.
The German invasion of England was first planned for the 21st of September, but after this it was put back, and then eventually abandoned.
It was during this time that the L.D.V. (Local Defence Force) started, later renamed the Home Guard (Dads Army). They were armed with some First World War rifles, pikes and broom handles.
One of their duties in Peckham was to guard the canal, the Grand Surrey Canal. All signposts were taken down so the German troops wouldn't know where they were when they invaded.
For myself and all of my mates it was a great time of adventure. Because of the air raids lots of children, who had come back to London during the phoney war, were now being evacuated again.
Some of the kids who had rich parents were being sent to Canada. One boat that had 90 evacuees on board was the City of Benares. On the 17th September it was sunk by a German submarine during a raging gale in the Atlantic Ocean. Only a few of the children survived.
This was all happening during the months of September, October and November, 1940. At the end of September I left the paper shop at Nunhead and started another job with a paper shop nearer home.
The woman who owned this shop was a either a widow or her husband was in the forces for I never saw him. She did not have an Anderson shelter in the back garden but the hallway of the house had been reinforced to make a shelter.
She had said if a raid started during the time I was delivering papers I was to make my way back to the shop and take shelter in the hallway of her house. On the morning of the 15th October the siren sounded so I finished the deliveries in the street I was in, and then I started to make my way back to the shop.
On the way I could see German aircraft in the sky and I could see bombs leaving the planes. It was fascinating. There were other people around all staring at the sky. I carried on cycling into Caulfield Road, for the shop was at the bottom of this street where it met Lugard Road.
The next thing I remember was being put in an ambulance and being taken to St.Giles Hospital. A bomb had hit a house as I was cycling past. I had cuts on the forehead and back of the head. Also my wrist was cut and my arm was in a sling.
They told me afterwards that my great concern was whether my bike was O.K. I was an outpatient at St Giles until the19th November. (I still have the certificate from the hospital).
It was most tragic at the hospital that morning, as a food factory in Camberwell had been hit and lots of young girls, the workers, had lost their lives or were severely hurt.
I did not go back to delivering papers any more. I was now the local hero, head bandaged and arm in a sling. A woman came up to me one day and said that she had pulled a kerbstone off my head.
The raids were still happening but we were getting used to them and life still had to go on. (No counselling like they give to any victim nowadays, it was called internal fortitude then.)
During all this time Mum would still have to go shopping and queue at each shop to get the meagre rations, and some times after queuing she would be told they had sold out. I think in those far off days each housewife flirted with the butcher to try and get a rabbit or some poultry that wasn't rationed.
Denis Gardner, Brisbane, Australia, 2002
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