ASKEW STREET 1940

I had never been able to write about it and even found it difficult to talk about. But the Tutor of the "Creative Writing" group had insisted. "You must write about your most terrifying experience. That is your assignment for the week." I well knew what my particular Dragon was and searched my memory, in vain, for something else I could honourably substitute for it. I failed and with considerable apprehension I set about facing a Dragon I had almost convinced myself was dead and buried.
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The greatest difficulty and danger in recalling events long past is that the years between act rather like the filters on the lens of a camera. The picture is recorded and clear but much of the subtlety of the event is coloured and changed to produce the picture the photographer wants to see, rather than portraying the event as it actually was.

With these thoughts in mind I set about checking as many of the facts in this narrative as I could. The date is certainly correct; the events still vivid in my mind. I have also been able to obtain photographs of bomb damage in both Askew Street and Frampton Park Road taken a day or so after the raid. In one, an armchair is wedged in the branches of a roadside tree! I hoped that no one had been sitting in it at the crucial moment. The photographs confirmed the memory and drew forth comments from my family like. "How the hell did anyone get out of that alive". It's a question I still can't really answer. Except to say of course that some didn't!

So, it is with considerable nervousness and doubt that I cast my mind back to 1940. Askew Street was in East London and the Blitz was approaching its most ferocious level. I was just eight years old, my brother six. It was autumn and earlier that year our house in nearby Margaret Street had been severely damaged by bombs, what wasn't destroyed by the enemy was looted so our home had gone.

We now lived in an old, solidly built house on the corner of Askew Street and Frampton Park Road. By a strange quirk of fate it was the same house that my father's family had first moved into when they came to Hackney from Bethnal Green in 1910. My paternal Grandfather still lived about fifty yards away in a house between ours and Well Street. Somehow despite the shortages of money and virtually everything else my parents had managed to refurnish the house, albeit rather sparsely, and we were again comfortable, well, as comfortable as it's possible to be in wartime.

My father was employed in producing munitions having been declared unfit for military service, we never did know why. His youngest sister had come to stay with us because her husband had gone overseas with the Royal Artillery and she said she couldn't cope on her own. We didn't mind, we all liked her, she sang a lot and very well as I recall. She made clothes well too, on an old Singer sewing machine that my mother had brought recently from her mother's house.

Memory tells me that the houses in that part of Hackney were always thought of as being rather grand, though I can't think why, I have since established they were virtually the same as the rest of the area. Built towards the end of the nineteenth century, of yellowish brick with prominent designs in black bricks between the windows, they looked as if they would stand there forever. The rooms were big with large windows that had wooden shutters to close across them at night. The ceilings were very high and I clearly remember the ornate patterns of the plaster cornices being matched by the circular pattern in the centre of the room above the lights. The walls over the fireplace had a couple of curly brackets that had been used for gas lighting. They still had the small, white, china lattice bulbs that glowed when they were lit. It all gave a strong feeling of security. I have an abiding memory of the decor being varying shades of green, cream, and brown, colours my mother used to decorate her home with ever after.

I went to school each day with my brother like all the other children in the neighbourhood. The men went to work at the same time and everyone considered it important to "Carry on as usual". It wasn't easy. Each day on the way to or from school large gaps appeared in streets we had known all our lives. Children that we knew well suddenly stopped coming to school, they either had been evacuated or perished in the previous night's air-raid.

We all collected shrapnel, picking up the pieces from the streets despite repeated warning from our parents and others, not to pick up anything from the streets because the Nazis were dropping booby traps to kill us. No one believed that for a moment so we collected our shrapnel with confident enthusiasm. It almost achieved a monetary value after a while. For a particularly large piece with lots of jagged edges it was possible to obtain at least six good marbles or a dozen cigarette cards. Less interesting pieces were of course worth less. We discovered early on that it was very unwise to grab the first piece you saw, it could and often was red hot and a nasty burn would appear on small fingers and last for ages. It had a strange smell too. The children held endless debates about the value of shrapnel and whether it came from the exploding enemy bombs or the Ack-Ack shells fired from the nearby Victoria Park gun emplacement. We never did resolve that point.

On a particular evening in late October at about nine-thirty or ten o'clock, the family was sitting quietly in the living room. My father, in his straight-backed wooden armchair, was listening to "The Wireless". My Aunt, sitting at the sewing machine in the far corner of the room, was puzzling over the intricacies of a new dress pattern. Opposite her with her back to the now shuttered and barred window, covered also with black material to prevent the escape of even the smallest shaft of light, was my mother. She was holding the paper pattern up against her body to further clarify a point for my Aunt. My brother and I were playing with marbles on the floor between the door and the edge of the sofa. All was quiet, all was well, no air-raid sirens had sounded their mournful wailing that evening so far.

My Mother, still holding the dress pattern against her, walked across the room to confer with my Aunt, as she did so the entire window, shutters and all, began to fall. Slowly at first but with increasing speed it followed her across the room, until with an almighty crash the top of the frame landed about two inches from my Mother's heels. Only then did she turn round, only then did anyone speak. Not that there was much time to say anything, the crash of the falling window frame was overtaken by the overwhelming sound of the most almighty explosion and without any warning of any kind the world suddenly descended into chaos all around us.

The noise was indescribable, the howling of the wind rushing through the now empty window hole, doors being ripped from their hinges, the sound of screws screaming as they were torn from their sockets, wood splintering and glass smashing against a background rumbling noise of falling masonry. From outside we could hear the same sounds magnified a thousand times over and in addition human screams and cries for help. It was as if judgement day had arrived and we had all been found guilty.

Mother proved to be the coolest of us all. Her quiet voice called us all to her side. We held hands as she directed and moved in single file to the door…there was no door. Out into the street, it's was bright as day. Fires everywhere, fire engines rushing into position, A.R.P. wardens marshalling all the survivors into long lines and leading them away from the danger of burning houses, falling walls and gas mains that were shooting great plumes of flame up into the night. Houses were collapsing on both the right and left of us. Intense heat, and the noise…that fearful noise! We could hear the droning sound of aeroplanes overhead and, glancing upward, saw them caught in the accusing fingers of light from the searchlights. In response to the deadly load the planes had dumped upon us, the anti-aircraft guns sent streams of shells and tracers up into the night seeking retribution. The pattern they made would have been beautiful in any other circumstances. Then, as if they hadn't done enough damage for one night, more incendiary bombs rained down upon an already roaring inferno. Our nostrils were assailed by a myriad of smells; cordite, wet plaster, seared paint, sulphur, and the unique smell that only someone who has been involved would recognise or could understand.

The man who lived opposite was shining his flashlight up the walls of his house. Why, I shall never understand. My Father went across the street to him, said something, the man replied, my father hit him very hard, just once on the point of his chin. He collapsed onto the pavement. My father left him where he had fallen and re-joined us. By now we were well away from the seat of the explosion Having passed Loddiges Road we turned into Devonshire Road and headed towards the comparative calm of Mare Street, though our actual destination remains a mystery to this day.

We were about three quarters of the way along Devonshire Road and could see the intense activity in the major road ahead of us. But we never reached Mare Street. On the left hand side of the road stands a Synagogue, until then I was unaware of it's existence even though I must hast have passed it many, many times. Outside the tall grey building stood The Rabbi looking like Moses himself directing all those who passed into the basements of his building. We all gratefully tumbled down the stairs far below the street level and onto the bunks that had been prepared. His assistants handed out hot soup, crusts of fresh bread and mugs of scalding hot tea. That night the Promised Land was in Devonshire Road and Jerusalem far underground. I have never forgotten that Rabbi and I never will.

The following morning we were taken to school as usual, after which we returned to our Grandmother's house and stayed there until we found another place to live. At the first opportunity we all trooped back to the ruins of what was once Askew Street and Frampton Park Road. The sight that met our eyes will live with us forever. Great piles of rubble, twisted metal, and burned timber was all that remained of what had been an elegant area. Where a wall did still stand the holes where the windows had been looked like sightless eyes staring across the desolation. Our neighbours, also looking for anything that had escaped destruction, stood in groups with a lost air about them, like us wondering what to do next. It was all caused, they said, by a new weapon they had just invented it was called a Landmine. Apparently it drifted down silently on parachutes and detonated on impact. Since it exploded higher up it caused more damage. That was obviously true even to an eight year old.

Looking back I can't truly say that we were terrified or panic stricken. I think, largely due to our Mother's indomitable spirit, that we were all so busy surviving, dodging the flying debris and concerned for each others safety that the idea of being frightened simply did not occur to us. It wasn't the last time it happened. We had changed home six more times by the end of the war, but were lucky, none of our family were killed and only Granddad suffered injury that night. He was pinned under a girder for two days but soon recovered

I returned to Hackney some time ago to see what had happened since. It's all so different that I hardly recognised the place, some of the old streets are still there, so is the Synagogue, but the houses are now all modern styling or high rise flats. I wonder if the old community spirit still exists, somehow I doubt it.