Memories of World War Two: Edward Babbs
I was born on 3rd May 1928 at ‘Hawthorn Villa’, Derry Downs, St Mary Cray, and spent the first four years of my life there. Derry Downs was an excellent example of Edwardian villa development, and I have memories of a rather gentle, old-fashioned community.
When I was about four we moved to Sevenoaks Way, St Pauls Cray. My father was a local builder. He built a long row of bungalows across the road from where we lived and backing on to St Paul’s Cray recreation ground. Then we moved back to St Mary Cray. My father bought a fairly large house at the Reynolds Cross end of the High Street. Photo: Reynolds Cross, 1914.
During the 1930s St Mary Cray expanded considerably. Previously the old village had consisted of the densely developed High Street, plus the small area that adjoined Orpington and was known as South Cray.
On the international stage the war clouds were gathering, and it was clearthat one Adolf Hitler was out for trouble. I remember my father saying: “There is going to be a terrible war, but I don’t think that I shall be here to see it”. Sadly he passed away in July 1938.
In September 1938, I started attending Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School for Boys, located then at Crittall’s Corner. In September 1939 war was declared. We boys attended school regularly, but we spent a lot of time running between the classrooms and the air raid shelters. Those were noisy days and nights! In addition to the bombs coming down, there was an anti-aircraft battery, situated behind Nash’s paper mill, so whenever enemy planes were within range, the gunners would let fly at them.
Due to a mixture of first-class leadership and dogged courage and determination, it became clear to the enemy that they were not going to win the Battle of Britain: on the contrary, their aircraft losses were huge. So in the skies above Kent the daytime air raids were phased out, to be replaced by relentless night-time bombing. During the war my mother had remarried, and we continued to live in St Mary Cray High Street. We took shelter in the large cellar beneath the house. It wasn’t too bad if you didn’t mind sharing with some newts and a huge toad who was ushered out into the garden every day, but who insisted upon returning every evening. Then one night in 1941, disaster struck. There was no warning whistling noise as there was with a conventional bomb, just a huge explosion. It was a so-called land mine, a large bomb which weighed about a ton, and had a parachute attached so that instead of burying itself in the earth it exploded at ground level, causing the maximum amount of blast damage. It blew the heart out of St Mary Cray High Street and caused many deaths.
The war dragged on. Hitler’s last attacks on the UK consisted of the V1 flying bombs and the V2 rockets. Both types of weapon brought much damage and many casualties, but the threats gradually lessened as the invasion of Europe by the Allied Forces meant that the launch-pads were captured.
After the war, St Mary Cray was slowly reconstructed, but not as it had been before.
The above is an extract from our book Wandering Through the Crays (Cray 150 Publications, 2015)
I was born on 3rd May 1928 at ‘Hawthorn Villa’, Derry Downs, St Mary Cray, and spent the first four years of my life there. Derry Downs was an excellent example of Edwardian villa development, and I have memories of a rather gentle, old-fashioned community.
When I was about four we moved to Sevenoaks Way, St Pauls Cray. My father was a local builder. He built a long row of bungalows across the road from where we lived and backing on to St Paul’s Cray recreation ground. Then we moved back to St Mary Cray. My father bought a fairly large house at the Reynolds Cross end of the High Street. Photo: Reynolds Cross, 1914.
During the 1930s St Mary Cray expanded considerably. Previously the old village had consisted of the densely developed High Street, plus the small area that adjoined Orpington and was known as South Cray.
On the international stage the war clouds were gathering, and it was clearthat one Adolf Hitler was out for trouble. I remember my father saying: “There is going to be a terrible war, but I don’t think that I shall be here to see it”. Sadly he passed away in July 1938.
In September 1938, I started attending Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School for Boys, located then at Crittall’s Corner. In September 1939 war was declared. We boys attended school regularly, but we spent a lot of time running between the classrooms and the air raid shelters. Those were noisy days and nights! In addition to the bombs coming down, there was an anti-aircraft battery, situated behind Nash’s paper mill, so whenever enemy planes were within range, the gunners would let fly at them.
Due to a mixture of first-class leadership and dogged courage and determination, it became clear to the enemy that they were not going to win the Battle of Britain: on the contrary, their aircraft losses were huge. So in the skies above Kent the daytime air raids were phased out, to be replaced by relentless night-time bombing. During the war my mother had remarried, and we continued to live in St Mary Cray High Street. We took shelter in the large cellar beneath the house. It wasn’t too bad if you didn’t mind sharing with some newts and a huge toad who was ushered out into the garden every day, but who insisted upon returning every evening. Then one night in 1941, disaster struck. There was no warning whistling noise as there was with a conventional bomb, just a huge explosion. It was a so-called land mine, a large bomb which weighed about a ton, and had a parachute attached so that instead of burying itself in the earth it exploded at ground level, causing the maximum amount of blast damage. It blew the heart out of St Mary Cray High Street and caused many deaths.
The war dragged on. Hitler’s last attacks on the UK consisted of the V1 flying bombs and the V2 rockets. Both types of weapon brought much damage and many casualties, but the threats gradually lessened as the invasion of Europe by the Allied Forces meant that the launch-pads were captured.
After the war, St Mary Cray was slowly reconstructed, but not as it had been before.
The above is an extract from our book Wandering Through the Crays (Cray 150 Publications, 2015)
Memories of World War Two: John Walsh
The school magazine of Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School for Boys was entitled The Chronicle. Its long-serving editor was John Walsh, head teacher of the English department. In 1965 he re-read the editions of 1940 and 1941. He then re-printed some details of wartime life as recorded by school pupils at the time.
The British public was exhorted by poster and press to ‘Dig for Victory’, and many boys turned their attention to the work of vegetable-growing: some on their fathers’ allotment gardens, others on the school allotments into which a fair-sized corner of the playing field had been rapidly converted.
Summer brought the evacuation of the British Forces from France, and boys of the school who lined the railway at St Mary Cray were able to watch the trains going past, train after train all day, carrying Londonward the men who had been rescued from the Dunkirk beaches.
Before long, there was talk of invasion. Signposts in the Cray and Darent areas had the village names painted out. Flat open spaces were a problem, for invading enemy aircraft might land in them. In such places it was necessary to erect obstructions. The most easily-improvised of these was a pair of stout poles, planted some distance apart, with a taut wire or rope stretched between. Farm wagons and large-size lawn rollers were also placed in fields and meadows as obstacles to prevent landings.
After the start of the Battle of Britain (it wasn’t called that at the time; nor till long afterwards) the boys could see German warplanes passing over in considerable numbers. Parachutists were seen floating down in the sunny air. At night when the noise of planes became more intense, many Sidcup and Orpington eyes were turned towards London, where the upward reflections of large fires were seen along the line of the clouds, especially from the direction of the dock areas.
Nine of the masters had left the school to take up war work or serve with the Forces. The teachers left behind found that after the air raid sirens had emptied the class rooms, attempts to conduct lessons in the cold, draughty and ill-lit underground shelters were half-hearted. In autumn and winter, as the school had no provisions for a “black-out” and it was dangerous to show any exposed light, the boys would be sent home early. Food rationing had started, but the boys were meant to bring so-called “iron rations” to school every day, in case of requirement to spend long hours sheltering underground. The carrying of these rations – usually just a few biscuits – soon ceased, as did the carrying of gas-masks.
By 1941, incendiary bombs had become a new menace. Nocturnal “fire-watching” was duly established. There was little threat to the “glass house” school building at Crittall’s Corner – how can you set fire to a building made of iron, concrete and glass? With the aid of a stirrup-pump, the bombs could be quickly extinguished, whereupon the next day the boys would expend enthusiastic energy digging out the empty bomb-cases from the school field for taking home as souvenirs.
The above is an extract from our book Wandering Through the Crays (Cray 150 Publications, 2015)
The school magazine of Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School for Boys was entitled The Chronicle. Its long-serving editor was John Walsh, head teacher of the English department. In 1965 he re-read the editions of 1940 and 1941. He then re-printed some details of wartime life as recorded by school pupils at the time.
The British public was exhorted by poster and press to ‘Dig for Victory’, and many boys turned their attention to the work of vegetable-growing: some on their fathers’ allotment gardens, others on the school allotments into which a fair-sized corner of the playing field had been rapidly converted.
Summer brought the evacuation of the British Forces from France, and boys of the school who lined the railway at St Mary Cray were able to watch the trains going past, train after train all day, carrying Londonward the men who had been rescued from the Dunkirk beaches.
Before long, there was talk of invasion. Signposts in the Cray and Darent areas had the village names painted out. Flat open spaces were a problem, for invading enemy aircraft might land in them. In such places it was necessary to erect obstructions. The most easily-improvised of these was a pair of stout poles, planted some distance apart, with a taut wire or rope stretched between. Farm wagons and large-size lawn rollers were also placed in fields and meadows as obstacles to prevent landings.
After the start of the Battle of Britain (it wasn’t called that at the time; nor till long afterwards) the boys could see German warplanes passing over in considerable numbers. Parachutists were seen floating down in the sunny air. At night when the noise of planes became more intense, many Sidcup and Orpington eyes were turned towards London, where the upward reflections of large fires were seen along the line of the clouds, especially from the direction of the dock areas.
Nine of the masters had left the school to take up war work or serve with the Forces. The teachers left behind found that after the air raid sirens had emptied the class rooms, attempts to conduct lessons in the cold, draughty and ill-lit underground shelters were half-hearted. In autumn and winter, as the school had no provisions for a “black-out” and it was dangerous to show any exposed light, the boys would be sent home early. Food rationing had started, but the boys were meant to bring so-called “iron rations” to school every day, in case of requirement to spend long hours sheltering underground. The carrying of these rations – usually just a few biscuits – soon ceased, as did the carrying of gas-masks.
By 1941, incendiary bombs had become a new menace. Nocturnal “fire-watching” was duly established. There was little threat to the “glass house” school building at Crittall’s Corner – how can you set fire to a building made of iron, concrete and glass? With the aid of a stirrup-pump, the bombs could be quickly extinguished, whereupon the next day the boys would expend enthusiastic energy digging out the empty bomb-cases from the school field for taking home as souvenirs.
The above is an extract from our book Wandering Through the Crays (Cray 150 Publications, 2015)
Our Wandering Through the Crays book (published in 2015) can still be purchased for readers to enjoy reading a social history book featuring the memories and analysis of multiple contributors who are current or past residents of the area.