Young and middle-aged commentators get very excited on TV and in the press about just

how bad things are for us – the economy, the floods, global warming, England may not

qualify, swine fever, avian ‘flu and on and on, and they love it. The most devastating news I

There has never been another year like 1940. We were at the centre of world attention as

we never shall be again. Mr Churchill came on the wireless and told us that the Battle of

France was over and the Battle of Britain was about to begin, and, on its outcome, he said,

the future of Christian civilisation depended. That’s what he said. Fortunately, our feeble

efforts to defend ourselves against the might of the panzer divisions and the Tiger tanks

were never tested. We erected hay ricks in the middle of fields to disrupt the landing of

gliders; we stopped the ringing of church bells, except to alert us that parachute troops

were descending; we had a little old horse timber wagon at Beam Bridge to deter enemy

tanks, and the Home Guard had enthusiasm unsupported by ammunition. Mr Churchill’s

My own most vivid recollection of 1940 is Wednesday, September 23^rd. It was a bright blue

jewel of a day, more like high summer than early autumn. I had been sent to the apple

orchard to pick up fallers. At about a quarter to mid-day I heard what I took to be a very

heavy aircraft approaching from the south, and, being, because of the war, interested in all

To my astonishment, I saw, not one, but dozens or scores of aircraft right overhead, and so

high they looked a few inches long, all silver, and with smaller aircraft shepherding the main

force. Shortly after, someone came running out to tell me to take cover, they were German

aircraft. This was the occasion of the big daylight raid on Filton. What neither the young

men flying those planes knew, nor I watching them from below, was that they were sowing

About 600,000 civilians died in Germany from allied air raids, 10 times the number of British

air raid deaths. One example of the whirlwind would be the RAF raid on Darmstadt, a town

just south of Frankfurt, and now twinned with Chesterfield, in September, 1944, and

described by Max Hastings in his account of the Bomber Command offensive. The raid

carried out by 218 Lancasters and 14 Mosquitoes lasted just 51 minutes, and about 49% of

the houses were destroyed, and although it will never be known exactly how many died on

this night of September, 11^th, 1944, because so many bodies were never identified. Nazi

statistics showed that, of every 100 deaths, 15 were caused by blast, 15 by incineration,

Of the 12,300 Darmstadters who died from wartime air raids, the majority perished on this

night. All over Darmstadt, men, women and children were being asphyxiated in the deep

shelters. Two pregnant women collapsed as they fled through the streets and gave

premature birth, their bodies and those of their infants incarcerated where they fell. As the

flames leaped a mile into the night sky, they sucked in cold air to fan the blaze sweeping

from street to street. People who were not burned suffocated, the overwhelming roaring

terrified them. Temperatures exceeded 1,500°C. In the morning, in the cellars, a worse

sight than the suffocated were the amorphous heaps of melted bodies including more than

“You would think the fury of aerial bombardment would cause God to relent; the infinite

I think there were 6 night raids on Bristol during 1941, several on Fridays, including Good

Friday. The village got away with a large bomb crater in Ropers Lane, and a very large one

on Wrington Hill, but no one was hurt. One noisy night a German bomber whose crew had

baled out, crashed in the cowslip field and adjacent land beyond the River Yeo. Next day an

RAF guard kept sightseers and souvenir hunters at a distance. I remember seeing the word

Fridays are remembered because it was “picture night”. Mr Catermoul brought his mobile

cinema to the village hall on Friday evenings. Several times as I was preparing to go, the

searchlights would light up the sky, the AA batteries would open fire, and it would be very

alarming and noisy. We had had cinema in the village in past years, but this was superior to

any of that. The screen was erected on the stage. The sound and picture quality were

excellent. The programme consisted of cartoon, sometimes a serial, “Wild Bill Hickock”, a

main feature, second feature and the Gaumont British News. The newsreels were very

important in those preTV days. They were very gung-ho in tone and stiff with propaganda

as Gaumont claimed to present “the truth to the free peoples of the world”. Without it I

would not have seen the inauguration of President Roosevelt in 1940, or the lying-in-state

My employer did not hold with the pictures. He was a legend locally. Some said he never

went to bed. He couldn’t have spent much time there. He was short and heavy and very

energetic and quick on his feet. He can have had few equals in his pursuit of business – not

the man to play barefoot on the beach with a soft ball. His idea of spending a light day

would be to go out and whip up a few orders, collect some outstanding accounts. He was

quite nice on Sundays. The picture shows didn’t begin until 8pm and he said to me “I

suppose if there were no fools there’d be no fun, my son”, and to emphasise his

disapproval of my wanton, wasteful ways, he loaded me up with as much work as he dared,

After the show one night Mr Catermoul stood outside as we left and said “I’m sorry, folks,

but you’ll have to bring your gas masks next week. I’m sorry, but they’re tightening up on it.

And then came the sad night when he told us he would not be coming again because he’d

had his calling up papers. The mobile cinema never returned. And then, of course, as our

own 18^th birthdays came up it was just a few weeks before we were ourselves whisked off

During the next years of much travelling, marching , training, of many days too long, too

short, too swift, too slow. August 6^th, 1945 came and the detonating of the first of the two

atomic bombs which ended the war. This saved our age group from being entertained by

the Japanese as they defended their islands with all the intensity and ferocity with which