East Grinstead

My sister and I had been staying with our grandparents in Bexhill in August 1939 and had, with our Aunt, visited a friend of hers who had a notice in her window saying, “Don’t worry! It may never happen.”
I was nine years old a few days after the war began. We lived in Hartfield, a small village on the edge of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.
We lived about two miles from the centre of the Village in the countryside and very soon a searchlight battery was established in a nearby field,(‘our’cowslip field, which never recovered) making us quite vulnerable to stray bombs, especially incendiary bombs. I remember walking over some fields with my father one Sunday morning to inspect the crater left by a land mine. Army lorries were parked along the country lane, but these came and went as and when they were needed elsewhere.
Schooldays in the village school were interrupted by air raid sirens when our class huddled together in the boys cloakroom, presumably because there was less glass about than in the classroom. We learnt how to use our gas masks and carried them about with us everywhere.
Later, in 1942, I moved to East Grinstead County Grammar School where special air raid shelters had been built, and these we used frequently during air raids. After school one day a bomb landed on the Whitehall Cinema in East Grinstead, killing many people, including some of our school pupils. We became used to seeing the ‘Guinea Pigs’ about in the town, badly burned airmen who had come to the hospital in East Grinstead where Sir Archibald McIndoe was doing his wonderful work with plastic surgery.
Food was rationed . Sweets almost disappeared, as did bananas and oranges. But I cannot remember ever being hungry. Living in the country we grew our own vegetables and kept chicken. My mother was a wonderful ‘manager’.
At the beginning of the war evacuees came to the village from London. When the flying bombs and rockets started our school was evacuated to Taunton in Somerset. Not entirely, it was a voluntary thing and I decided it might be fun to go. It was not! We had lessons in the Bishop Fox’s School in Taunton,and during the summer holidays had lunch in a British Restaurant. I was very homesick and after about three months came back.
We were very lucky living in the country because although we experienced air raids, saw the ‘dog fights’ between our planes and the Germans and had rationing, we were on the edge of it all and were fortunate to come through it all unscathed.And possibly the healthier for have less food!

© Gwen May

East Grinstead, Sussex

A quiet small market town, not noted especially for anything of great importance, many interesting buildings, places of worship and a very good hospital.

I had been married for just a month when war was declared and very soon East Grinstead, like many other small towns and villages, became a hive of activity with the arrival of soldiers (Canadians), evacuees and land girls. I remember clearly the arrival of the evacuees from the East End of London, many with brothers and sisters and a few with their mothers. They all carried gas masks slung in boxes around their necks. I remember one mother breastfeeding her small baby and also feeding the two older children in turn. I found this very strange, didn’t think this sort of thing happened. My own mother did not have evacuee children but gave a home to two land girls. Everyone was expected to do their bit towards the war effort and it was done with great willingness.

The hospital became very famous. Most of the airmen and soldiers badly burned in combat came to the hospital under the care of Archibald MacIndoe in his famous burns and plastic surgery unit. When on the road to recovery these servicemen were often seen in the town and made very welcome by local people. A public house was built very close to the hospital and was named the “Guinea Pig” after the name of the club founded by these men.

Ilford, Essex

I left East Grinstead to live in Ilford, east of London and for the first year apart from the inconvenience of blackout and the wailing of sirens nothing serious seemed to happen. The occasional incendiary bomb fell but was soon extinguished by firefighters, local people enlisted to do fire watching duties. My husband worked at the town hall where everyone was expected to do some kind of fire watching duty after office hours. These were worrying, hazardous times but the spirit of friendship and fun existed everywhere. We would walk home in the blackout, after our duties, singing such war songs as “Roll Out The Barrel”.

When my husband received his call up papers for the R.A.F. it meant that I had to remain in Ilford on my own. Women had to work to take the place of the men who had been called up. I worked in a tailor’s shop, this came easy to me as it was my father’s trade. The bombing of London and the East End soon became really heavy and so I moved in with my employer, his housekeeper and her sister. At night we all slept in the cellar, fully clothed in case we had to get out quickly. One night a landmine fell on the centre of Ilford and the next door house was demolished. We were buried in the cellar and had to be dug out. As it was not really necessary for me to be living near London I decided to move on. My husband had been posted to a unit near Leeds in Yorkshire where it seemed a much quieter and safer place to live.

We lived in Leeds for over a year during which time I worked for the Ministry of Fuel and Power in the Public Benefits Building. My job was as an assessor which meant that I was one of a team of six dealing with the allocation of petrol coupons. Essential occupations such as doctors, nurses, farmers etc. had special allowances but there was just a nominal amount for any other car users. Many car owners put their cars up on blocks and did not use them. In spite of food rationing and clothing coupons it was surprising what would appear as bribes to obtain more petrol coupons!

When the bombing started to extend further north it seemed the sensible thing to do, as I was pregnant, would be to return to my parents in East Grinstead. There it was relatively peaceful except for air raid sirens and the sound of our planes to and from their sorties (East Grinstead was close to Biggin Hill and Kenley). Life in East Grinstead remained peaceful until an awful July day in 1943.

My favourite film star, Veronica Lake, was in a film at the local cinema. The film, I think, was called “So Proudly We Hail”. My father suggested that in my condition I stay at home. It was a good decision. In mid-afternoon the Whitehall Cinema was hit by a stray German bomber killing and injuring over 80 people, many friends and people I knew well. After bombing the cinema a lone plane returned and machine gunned the main London road. The reason for this tragedy remains a mystery. The bodies of all those killed were laid out in the car park and in the garage next door to my father’s shop. It was so distressing. This was indeed a terrible tragedy for one small town but everyone rallied round and helped and comforted each other. Counseling was not heard of. Nights now in the Anderson shelter in the garden became more frightening and every time the siren went we all felt more afraid. Fortunately things soon quietened down after this terrible unexplained attack.

The Midlands

Finally I moved to a small village called Seisdon, near to Wolverhampton. My husband had been commissioned and posted to an R.A.F. base called Halfpenny Green where he was able to live out of camp. Although not far from Birmingham the time spent in this village was idyllic. It was peaceful and friendly. We rented a house from a local farmer who was also our neighbour. Because of this we were never short of things like eggs, bacon, meat and vegetables. We were very fortunate (2 ozs. of butter doesn’t go very far).

My daughter was born in this village a month after V.E. Day. Soon after my husband was demobbed and we moved back to Essex. War is terrible, as a family we were very fortunate, both of my brothers returned safely from the R.A.F.. Other losses were very hard but we made friendships. Fun was had when possible but memories always remain. Like us however,
“They Grow Not Old”.

Grace Deakin

86 years old

© Grace Deakin

My childhood memories:-
I was about 9 years old, when, in East Grinstead, a Bomb was dropped on the Cinema, and the film that was being shown was “Random Harvest”. A carnage ensued.I sat with Granny, watching the bodies being taken to the mortuary and the little church next to the cemetery.
We used to run under the stairs to shelter from the Doodlebugs. When at School, and the Siren went, we had to go to the Shelters, where we sang songs like “Mares eat Oats”.
One Bomb went into the chicken run and the chickens escaped into the old ladies’ home!
I also remember the V.E.Day parties.

© Patricia Owen

The Fieseler Fi 103/FZG-76 (Vergeltungswaffe-1, V-1), known as the Flying bomb, Buzz bomb or Doodlebug, was the first guided missile used in war and the forerunner of today’s cruise missile.

The name Vergeltungswaffe, meaning “reprisal weapon”, was coined by German propaganda minister Goebbels to signify reprisal against the Allies for the bombing of the Fatherland. FZG is an abbreviation of Flakzielgerät (anti-aircraft gun aiming device), a misleading name.

The V-1 was developed by the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War and was used between June 1944 and March 1945. It was fired at targets in southeastern England and Belgium, chiefly the cities of London and Antwerp. V-1s were launched from “ski-jump” launch sites along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts until the sites were overrun by Allied forces. A small number were air launched from German aircraft over the North Sea. The V-1 was later complemented by the more sophisticated V-2 rocket. The last V-1 struck British soil on March 29, 1945, two days after the final V-2 attack.

Background

The V-1 and V-2 “Vengeance weapons” added a new terror to an already terrible war—robot missiles. Once launched, these weapons flew without human intervention to strike distant targets. The V-1 was a small pilotless aircraft with minimal guidance and a large warhead. The V-2 ballistic missile was also unmanned but of a far greater technological sophistication. Both weapons could hit a city-sized target but accuracy greater than this was rare. The V-weapons failed to turn the tide of war but did force the Allies to devote large amounts of time and resources against them.

Although the Kettering “Bug” Aerial Torpedo, a small propeller-driven flying bomb developed towards the end of World War One, was a pilotless military aircraft that could have functioned as a primitive cruise missile, the V-1 is often thought of as the first cruise missile comparable to modern missiles in terms of design, guidance systems, and propulsion.

Description

The V-1 was designed by Robert Lusser of the Fieseler company and Fritz Gosslau from the Argus engine works as the Fi 103. It was powered by an Argus pulse jet engine providing 2.9 kN (660 lbf) of thrust for a top speed of 630 km/h (390 mph) and a range of around 250 km (150 miles), which was later increased to 400 km (250 miles). It was 7.9 meters (25.5 feet) long and 5.3 meters (17 feet 6 inches) in span and weighed 2180 kilograms (4,800 pounds). It flew at an altitude of 100 to 1000 meters (300 to 3,000 feet). It carried an 850-kilogram (1,870-pound) warhead and held 150 gallons of fuel. The missile was a relatively simple device with a fuselage constructed mainly of sheet metal and plywood, and could be assembled in around 50 man-hours.

Pulsejets are the simplest jet engines, little more than a one-way air intake valve, combustion chamber and fuel system. The V-1 was often called the buzz bomb because of the characteristic buzzing sound of its engine. This also led to the “doodlebug” name, after an Austrian insect. The sound comes from the ignition pulses. Fuel is squirted into the combustion chamber as air is forced in from the front through shutters that form the one-way valve. When the right fuel-air mixture is obtained, the engine fires, closing the shutters and blasting the expanding gases out the tailpipe. As pressure drops in the chamber, the shutters are forced open and the process repeats itself, approximately 100 times per second. As the V-1 entered its terminal dive the engine would cut and people along the bomb’s flight path would listen intently for the silence that heralded the V-1’s impact. As the pulsejet requires a high volume of incoming air, the V-1 was launched from a ramp through the use of a solid fuel booster.

Guidance system

The guidance system was crude in construction but sophisticated in conception (and had a few flaws in execution). Once clear of the launching pad, an autopilot was engaged. It regulated height and speed together, using a weighted pendulum system to get fore and aft feedback linking these and the device’s attitude to control its pitch (damped by a gyromagnetic compass, which it also stabilized). There was a more sophisticated interaction between yaw, roll and other sensors: a gyromagnetic compass (set by swinging in a hangar before launch) gave feedback to control each of pitch and roll, but it was angled away from the horizontal so that controlling these degrees of freedom interacted (the gyroscope stayed trued up by feedback from the magnetic field, and from the fore and aft pendulum mentioned before). This interaction meant that rudder control was sufficient without any separate banking mechanism.

There was a small propeller on the nose, connected to a long screw thread going back inside the missile. On this thread was a washer, and at the back end of the thread were two electrical contacts. As the missile flew, the airflow turned the propeller and hence the threaded shaft; the washer would be wound along the shaft as it turned. When it reached the electrical contacts it would make a circuit, which energised a solenoid attached to a small guillotine. This guillotine would cut through the elevator control cable which would in turn put the sprung-elevator into the fully-down position, putting the V-1 into a sudden dive. This was intended to be a power dive, but the abrupt negative-G (or perhaps simply the angle of the descent) caused the fuel flow to cease which stopped the engine. As there was a belly fuse as well as a nose fuse, there was still usually an explosion, although not always with the device buried deep enough to increase the effect of the blast. Sometimes the sudden dive system would fail and the missile would coast in on a flat trajectory; this led to a rumour that there were two versions, which was not so.

At the launch site the engineers would preset the starting position of the washer on the shaft according to the known distance to the target and an estimate of the headwind – rough-and-ready, but accurate.

Operation and effectiveness

The first test flight of the wonder weapon V-1 was in late 1941 or early 1942 at Peenemünde. Early guidance and stabilisation problems were finally resolved by a daring test flight by Hanna Reitsch, in a V-1 modified for manned operation. The data she brought back after fighting the unwieldy V-1 down to a successful landing enabled the engineers to devise the stabilisation system described above. The idea of a piloted V-1 as a suicide weapon sprang from this mission: see Selbstopfer.

The first offensive launch was from June 12 to June 13, 1944. The launch sites could theoretically launch 15 bombs per day, although this was never consistently managed, the record being one site launching 18 in one day. The Allies had previously organized a heavy series of air attacks (Operation Crossbow) on the launch sites (beginning in December 1943) and now also attacked the V-1s in flight (see Countermeasures below). Because of a combination of defensive measures, mechanical unreliability and guidance errors, only a quarter hit their targets.

Once the Allies had captured or destroyed the sites that were the principal launch points of V-1s aimed at England, the Germans switched to missile launches aimed at strategic points in the Low Countries, primarily the port of Antwerp.

Although most V-1s were launched from static sites on land, the Luftwaffe, from July 1944 to January 1945, launched approximately 1,176 V-1s from modified Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Kampfgeschwader 3 flying over the North Sea. The He-111s thus used were extremely vulnerable to night fighter attack, as launching lit up the area around the aircraft for several seconds. Research after the war estimated a 40% failure rate of these air-launched weapons. This would also have been the launch method for the proposed piloted version of the weapon and is how the very earliest experimental versions of the V-1 were tested. Late in the war, several piloted V-1s were built; known as Reichenbergs, they were never used in combat. It was also hoped to use the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber to deploy V-1s, either by towing them aloft, or by launching them from a “piggy back” position atop the aircraft. Neither Ar 234 concept was employed before the end of the war.

Almost 30,000 V-1s were manufactured. Approximately 10,000 were fired at England up to March 29, 1945. Of these, 2,419 reached Metropolitan London. In the London area, roughly 5,500 persons died as a result of V-1 attacks, with some 16,000 more injured.

4,261 V-1s were downed by the combination of fighters, anti-aircraft fire and barrage balloons. When the V-1 raids began, the only direct defence was interception by a handful of high-performance fighter aircraft, especially the new Hawker Tempest.

However, the British were able to redirect V-1s aimed at London to less populated areas east of the city by sending false impact reports via the German espionage network in Britain, which was controlled by the British (see Double Cross System). Since the Germans might send reconnaissance flights to check the impact locations, these could not be falsified. But the times could be, and the trick was for each explosion reported by the agents, they gave the time of an actual explosion of a different V-1 that had traveled farther, so the Germans would think they were overshooting and shorten their range.

Intelligence reports

The codename Flak Ziel Gerät 76 was somewhat successful in disguising the nature of this device and it was some time before references to FZG 76 were tied to the V83 pilotless aircraft (an experimental V-1) which had crashed on Bornholm in the Baltic and to reports from agents of a flying bomb capable of being used against London. Initially British experts were skeptical of the V-1 because they had considered only solid fuel rockets as a means of propulsion, which put the stated range of 130 miles (209 km) out of the question. However when other types of engine were considered they relented, and by the time German scientists had achieved the needed accuracy to deploy the V-1 as a weapon, British intelligence had a very accurate assessment of it.

A deception concerning the V-1 was played on the Germans using double agents. MI5 (by way of the famed Double Cross System) had these agents provide Germany with damage reports for the June 1944 V-1 attacks which implied that on average the bombs were travelling too far, while not contradicting the evidence presumed to be available to German planners from photographic reconnaissance of London. In fact the bombs had been seeded with radio-transmitting samples to confirm their range but the results from these samples were ignored in favour of the false witness accounts and many lives may have been saved by the resulting tendency of future V-1 bombs to fall short.

Countermeasures

The British defence against the V-1 was codenamed Operation Diver. Anti-aircraft guns were redeployed in several movements: first in mid-June 1944 from positions on the North Downs to the south coast of England; then a cordon closing the Thames Estuary to attacks from the east. In September 1944 a new linear defence line was formed on the coast of East Anglia, and finally in December there was a further layout along the Lincolnshire-Yorkshire coast. The deployments were prompted by the ever-changing approach tracks of the missiles which were in turn influenced by the Allies’ advance through Europe.

Anti-aircraft gunners found that such small, fast-moving targets were difficult to hit. At first, it took, on average, 2,500 shells to bring down a V-1. The average altitude of the V-1, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet (610 and 915 m), was in a narrow band between the optimum engagement heights for light and heavy anti-aircraft weapons. These low heights defeated the rate of traverse of the standard British QF 3.7 inch mobile gun, and static gun installations with faster traverses had to be built at great cost. The development of centimetric gun laying radars based on the cavity magnetron and the development of the proximity fuse helped to neutralise the advantages of speed and size which the V-1 possessed. In 1944 Bell Labs started delivery of an anti-aircraft predictor fire-control system based around an analog computer just in time for use in this campaign.

Barrage balloons were also deployed against the missiles but the leading edges of the V-1’s wings were equipped with balloon cable cutters and fewer than 300 V-1s are known to have been destroyed by hitting cables.

Fighters had been mobilized as part of Operation Diver. Most fighter aircraft were too slow to catch a V-1 unless they had a height advantage. Even when intercepted, the V-1 was difficult to bring down. Machine gun bullets had little effect on the sheet steel structure, and 20 mm cannon shells were an explosive projectile which meant that detonating the warhead could destroy the fighter as well.

The V-1 was also nearly immune to conventional air-combat techniques because of its design, which eliminated the primary “one-shot stop” points of pilot, life-support and complex engine. A single hit on the pilot or oxygen system can force an abort or cause the destruction of a normal plane, but there is no pilot in a cruise missile. The reciprocating engines of WWII aircraft and the turbojet engines of today’s fighters are also vulnerable, as a tiny nick in a quarter-inch oil line or one small shell fragment can destroy such engines. However, the Argus pulsejet could be shot full of holes and still provide sufficient thrust for flight. The only vulnerable point was the valve array at the front of the engine and the only one-shot stop points on the V-1 were the bomb detonators and the line from the fuel tank, three very small targets buried inside the fuselage. An explosive shell from a fighter’s cannon or anti-aircraft artillery was the most effective weapon, if it could hit the warhead.

When the attacks began in mid-June of 1944 there were fewer than 30 Tempests in 150 Wing to defend against them. Few other aircraft had the low-altitude speed to be effective. Early attempts to intercept V-1s often failed but techniques were rapidly developed. These included the hair-raising method of using the airflow over an interceptor’s wing to raise one wing of the Doodlebug, by sliding the wingtip under the V-1’s wing and bringing it to within six inches (15 cm) of the lower surface. Done properly, the airflow would tip the V-1’s wing up, overriding the buzz bomb’s gyros and sending it into an out of control dive. At least three V-1s were destroyed this way.

The Tempest wing was built up to over 100 aircraft by September; P-51 Mustangs and Griffon-engined Spitfire XIVs were polished and tuned to make them almost fast enough, and during the short summer nights the Tempests shared defensive duty with Mosquitoes. Specially modified P-47Ms (half their fuel tanks, half their 0.5in {12.7 mm} machine guns, all external fittings, and all their armour plate removed) were also pressed into service against the V-1 menace. There was no need for radar — at night the V-1’s engine could be heard from 16 km (10 miles) or more away, and the exhaust plume was like a beacon. Wing Commander Roland Beamont had the 20mm cannons on his Tempest harmonised at 300 yards. This was so successful all other aircraft in 150 Wing were thus modified.

In daylight, V-1 chases were chaotic and often unsuccessful until a special defence zone between London and the coast was declared in which only the fastest fighters were permitted. Between June and mid-August 1944, the handful of Tempests shot down 638 flying bombs. One Tempest pilot, Squadron Leader Joseph Berry of No. 501 (Tempest) Squadron, downed fifty-nine V-1s, and Wing Commander Roland Beamont destroyed 31.

Next most successful was the Mosquito (428), Spitfire XIV (303), and Mustang, (232). All other types combined added 158. The still-experimental jet-powered Gloster Meteor, which was rushed half-ready into service to fight the V-1s, had ample speed but suffered from a readily-jammed cannon and accounted for only 13.

By mid-August 1944, the threat was all but overcome—not by aircraft but by the sudden arrival of two enormously effective electronic aids for anti-aircraft guns, both developed in the USA by the MIT Rad Lab: radar-based automatic gunlaying (using, among others, the SCR-584 radar) and the proximity fuse. Both of these had been requested by AA Command and arrived in numbers, starting in June 1944, just as the guns reached their free-firing positions on the coast.

Seventeen per cent of all flying bombs entering the coastal ‘gun belt’ were destroyed by guns in the first week on the coast. This rose to 60 per cent by 23 August and 74 per cent in the last week of the month, when on one extraordinary day 82 per cent were shot down. The rate increased from one V-1 for every 2,500 shells fired to one for every hundred.

Japanese versions

In 1944, an Argus pulse jet engine was shipped to Japan by German submarine. The Aeronautical Institute of Tokyo Imperial University and the Kawanishi Aircraft Company conducted a joint study of the feasibility of mounting a similar engine on a piloted plane. The resulting design was based on the Fieseler Fi-103 Reichenberg (Fi103R, a piloted V-1), and was named Baika (“ume blossom”).

Baika never left the design stage but technical drawings and notes suggest that two versions were under consideration: an air-launch version with the engine mounted under the fuselage and a ground-launch version that could take off without a ramp.

Intelligence reports of the new “Baika” weapon are rumored to be the source of the name given to the Yokosuka MXY-7, a rocket-propelled suicide plane better known as the “Baka Bomb.” However, as “baka” means “fool” in Japanese, and the MXY-7 was officially designated the “Ohka” (“Cherry Blossom”), the true origin is unknown. The MXY-7 was carried by a larger plane, then the pilot would light the solid-fuel rockets and guide his flying bomb into a ship. During the Boeing B-29 firebomb attacks on Japanese cities, the Baka was also deployed against American bombers.

After the war

After the war, the armed forces of both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with the V-1. The most successful was a U.S. Navy experiment to mount V-1s on submarines. This was called the KGW-1 Loon, which was an adaptation of the U.S. Army’s JB-2 Doodle Bug. The JB-2, built by Republic Aviation (airframe) and Ford Aerospace (pulsejet engine), was reverse-engineered by inspection of V-1 wreckage found in England and was first flight-tested less than four months after the first V-1 attack. While the first flights were from Eglin AAF, Florida, extensive testing was also done at Wendover Army Air Field in Utah, launching only a few hundred feet from the sheds where the first atomic bombs were being developed under Project Alberta. The JB-2 was intended as a weapon in the invasion of Japan, which was prevented by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the war, testing at Wendover continued, including comparison tests between the original German missile and the American copy.

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Parts of this article are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “V-1 Flying Bomb “.

As several contributors have already mentioned, the Whitehall Cinema, and several other buildings in London Road, were hit by a cluster of bombs from a lone German raider on 9 July 1943. I witnessed the attack at close hand.
I was exactly five and a half years old that day. I had been evacuated with my mother from the east-end of London two years earlier after our home had taken some bomb damage. My father had stayed in London to work and my elder brother had been evacuated with his school to Cambridgeshire. We had a room above a shop in London Road opposite Woolworth’s – part of the site now occupied by W H Smith.
All afternoon I had been nagging my mother to buy me a toy cardboard clock that I had seen earlier in Woollies. It was now almost 5pm and the shop was about to close. Persuaded by her irascible and tearful child she went to buy the toy while I watched from the window. I stared at the entrance to Woolies until my mother emerged a few minutes later. Just as she did so the sound of a low-flying aircraft could be heard coming our way and I saw my mother look up at the plane while running back across London Road to our street-door next to the shop. The sound of the plane became a roar and by the time my mother had mounted the stairs to our room the plane must have been overhead. Just as the bombs started to explode she flew into our room and launched herself at her precious son, knocking him to the floor and covering him with her body. Terrified by the noise and my mother’s strange actions, I was shouting ” It’s nothing Mummy, it’s nothing”. It was several minutes before she allowed me to emerge from underneath her.
In 1944 the shop where we had lived opposite Woolworth’s took a direct hit from a ‘flying bomb’. Another contributor has already mentioned that lightning did strike twice in the same place on that occasion.
Why Hitler wanted to get rid of my mother and I so particularly isn’t clear. However he was thwarted. We had returned to London earlier that year, only to be evacuated again, this time to Leeds, when Hitler began his ‘last-ditch’ flying-bomb campaign.
Well that’s my war story. By the way, I wonder if anyone else remembers when a ’spitfire’ was put on display on the wide pavement in East Grinstead High-Street sometime in 1942/3? I didn’t dream it, did I?

© John Jacob Lyons

My mother, Irene May Chatfield, was born and raised in East Grinstead and lived there during the war. Before the war she worked for Dixon’s Chemist in the High Street in the office above the shop. She became very good friends with Mr. Woosenham, the chemist at Dixon’s, and his family who lived in the house attached to the shop. One of their daughters was at home along during an air raid and was so traumatized that she suffered from epilepsy for the rest of her life, brought on by the terror she suffered according to the doctor.

My mother was a very fast typist and shortly after the war began she started working as a teletype operator in Vital Communications at the Post Office in London Road. She told me of having to cope with the rationing and the hardships and deprivations of everyday life. But she also spoke of the community spirit, of everyone working together against a common enemy, saying that in many ways it was good times. One weekend she went to London for a show and her purse was stolen while she and her friends were having tea. Without identification it was almost impossible to do anything or get any rations but her friends rallied around and helped her to make it through until she got replacement documents.

She told me of the wonderful work done at the Queen Victoria Hospital on the burned pilots. As part of their rehabilitation the pilots went into town to the pubs, sometimes wheeled in their hospital beds, and the townspeople of East Grinstead were asked to treat them normally, which they did. That says a great deal about the spirit of the town and its people.

The Brighton to London road ran through East Grinstead, and the German bombers follwed the road, turned at the St. Swithun’s church tower, and headed to London. My mother watched them and the dog fights and saw the reflection of flames from the London Blitz in the sky. She remembered all kinds of heavy military equipment being parked around town in the run-up to D-Day and the sky being black with planes on the day itself. She told me many stories, including one about a lady haunted by dreams of being bombed in her bathtub who left London and moved to East Grinstead to be safer. During a bombing raid her house was hit and she was found – in the bathtub. Luckily she recovered. People with cats were often the first people to be warned of an impending raid. According to my mother a full 10 minutes before the air raid sirens went off the cats would disappear to a safe place, usually under the stairs, and the people who watched this behaviour were able to get to safety faster.

I asked my mother if she had been bombed and she said yes. Her very typical British response to my question of what was it like was “Well, you just climbed out of the rubble and carried on.” Although she never directly said so I think she may have been working at the Post Office in London Road when the Whitehall Cinema was bombed in July, 1943. I know that for the rest of her life she ducked whenever a low-flying aircraft flew overhead.

My father, Jack Ward, was also born and raised in East Grinstead, and emigrated to Canada in 1928 to join his brother Arthur on a farm near Vancouver, British Columbia. Arthur enlisted in the Royal Westminster Regiment soon after war being declared and left Jack to help with the farm work. But Jack could not stay away from the action and enlisted in the same regiment. He was sent to England in 1942 and became one of the many Canadians stationed at Aldershot. He knew my mother from childhood and they met again and were married on December 29, 1943 at St. Swithun’s Church in East Grinstead. By late 1944 my mother was pregnant with me and the V2s were taking their toll in southern England. She went to stay with friends in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and I was born there on May 15, 1945, a week after VE day. In May, 1946, my mother and I sailed Canada with many other War Brides and their children.

My father remained stationed in England training troops throughout the war, while his brothers fought in Italy, Europe and Burma. Miraculously all came home with no injuries and no-one in his family was injured in the bombing at home. One of my mother’s cousins was killed during the strafing of a schoolyard by a German bomber, but the rest of the family came through the war safely.

Not long before he died my father gave me a small book written by T. P. Peters, Head Warden, Norton House Post, East Grinstead, Sussex, entitled “Reminiscences of 1938-1945 By a Head Warden”. Reading the book I found many of the stories she told me and so much more. I have nothing but admiration for the people who lived during that time and I am very proud of my heritage.

In 1955 my mother and I visited East Grinstead and some of the bomb scars were still visible and I was able to see some of the places where bombs had hit. When we returned for another visit in 1960 all the damage had been repaired. I’ll always be glad that I had the opportunity to see a little bit of what my parents and their generation went through, and to come to know the beautiful town of East Grinstead better.

© vicjacqui

East Grinstead was our nearest town and was home to Archibald McIndoe’s pioneering work on burns injuries to war victims, mainly RAF personnel. I can remember the walking wounded in normal uniform but with white shirts and red ties, most terribly scarred and one I recall having a hole right through his throat. Early in 1943 Forest Row was shot up by low flying fighter bombers returning from a raid on south-east London – I vividly recall two FW 190s passing low over my head with guns blazing as I stood outside my school. Happily no-one was injured in the attack but they had aleady wreaked havoc on Sandhurst Road school in Catford. In the summer my mother was caught in a raid on East Grinstead by a lone bomber and escaped with extreme shock – a lot of damage was caused in that attack and a bomb hit a cinema killing a lot of people.

© Denis McCarthy

East Grinstead Winter 1940-41.
Having arrived back from a course on new equipment, promoted to Bombadier at the ripe old age of 17 I was sent to command a new searchlight cluster site at East Grinstead. On arrival I found a 150cm searchlight,120cm circa 1916 and a 90cm (searchlights are named after the diameter of the reflector i.e,90cm) and a Mark 8 sound locator and generators. They were 30 men and one L/Bombadier. No officers or senior NCOs the nearest being at troop headquarters six miles away. We had two huts and a cookhouse complete with cook (more about him later). The men were a mixture of prewar territorials and un-trained conscripts, fortunately, mainly from London. In 1940 the threat of invasion was still with us so, apart from our night operations, we had daytime ground defence duties in a platoon defensive position. It was very much “on the job” training. Because of the rapid expansion of AA defences skilled personnel had been taken to form new units (I think I survived because I played in the first 15 for the regiment). I got a good telling off from the commanding officer when I volunteered for the commandos and a very large NO.

Being under the main bomber stream we were in action every night and I spent most of my day calibrating the equipment and supervising maintenance. The 30 men soon whittled down with leave and sickness until we were very short handed. I needed 12 men per night to operate efficiently. The men,mainly from the East End of London, felt they were doing something in defence of the city. Unfortunately our illumination rate was about 2%, as we were in a fighter zone the likelihood of a fighter being in the right position when we illuminated a target was minimal. By the middle of winter everybody was pretty exhausted. Bombers often thought the searchlight site was a better bet than flying into the barrage, fortunately we didn’t get any direct bits although several sites did. One morning a Royal Engineer sergeant walked onto the site and said to me “that’s got rid of that” “rid of what? ” I inquired “oh didn’t you know? I’ll show you”. We walked across the road and 30 yards from the farm buildings where the generators were parked was the largest aerial mine I had ever seen just being lowered onto a lorry from the tree that it hung in by its parachute. “Don’t worry we have defused it” “Er what would have happened if it had gone off” “Oh probably wiped the buildings and generators and probably turned your searchlights over as well”. What you don’t see you don’t worry about!. Another time my troop officer was looking at our ground defences fairly late in the day and said “I want a slit trench there and I will be round at 8 tomorrow morning to see it is done”. As we were likely to go into action in an hour or so my reaction was “you’ll be lucky” but under my breath. Having been in action until about 4 a.m. I got up about 7 to get a cup of tea from the cookhouse No cook! so I went to look for the sentry No sentry.! Looking around I saw the sentry hauling a bucket out of a hole. At the bottom of the hole was the cook “What do you think you are doing”. “Well I heard the geezer tell you he wanted a slit trench here so I’ve dug it” I should tell you that the cook was a London tunnel miner an ABA boxing champion and came from the Mile End Road and as tough as they come. “Couldn’t see you getting into trouble Bomb” Needless to say no 8 a.m. inspection but two days later “Would you like to see that slit trench, Sir” anyway it was full of water.”Bomb there is something wrong with this light” said the operator of the 150cm searchlights when he was testing one morning “what’s the problem” “it won’t strike arc” “Is the power on” (75 volts 150 amps)”Yes” so I climb onto the platform which is about 6ft off the ground and look inside at the lamp (Carbon Arc several million candle power) the carbons were locked back. I leaned forward and unlocked them. After picking myself up off the ground I realised he had left the main switch on and the arc had struck in my face. Fortunately no damage done Just a couple of weeks in the life of a 17 year-old.

© John Absolon

Memories of WWII – Maurice Dann

I spent the first years in hospital in chailey in susex,treatment was for tb we spent every day outside.so we watch the dog fights over our heads.i left hospital in 1942 i was 8 years old, went home to east grinstead.the german raids went over every night my family all 7 of us slept down stairs in a shelter made of steel plate.my brother was injured in the whitehall bombing.all time i had these calipers on my legs so i could not wmove very fast.when the first v1 came over a lot did not reach london they fell on or arround eg.we had our house damaged several times.roof,windows and doors all blown out,it was not funny at time one sunday morning early it was i was in our toilet by our back door. i heard the dronning engines of a v1 i heaved myself onto the seat push the window up,I still wonder what save me but there was this great explosion i was blown off the seat the irons my legs had wedged me beteen the walls.It was ages befor rest of family got me out uninjured .but the house was damaged like the others on our estate(sackville gardens)

On the days leading up to D day where I lived,sackville gardens and buckhurst way. All the front lawns had armoured vehicles parked on them, every space was filled. Every morning they started the tanks up the noise was deafing. Now the first large house in buckhurst way was used as a prison camp for Italians, before they surrendered. Is anyone living in east grinstead who remembers? I was 10 years old.

© Maurice Dann