Thursday 19 April 2018

A Story From Long Ago

Long ago and far away (well 1928 to be precise), we moved as a family, from the East End to a country village in the "provinces", further out even than the Tram Yard turn round, to where, it was said, they drove pigs down the High Street. Nothing could be considered more rural than Tottenham or more goyish, further out even than Stamford Hill. It was rumoured that there was an outpost of yidden hidden there but this idea was greeted with derision. "Schon fertig", nothing more to add. It was accepted that Judaism ended at Stamford Hill, to where the New Synagogue had been transferred from the East End, to cater for the nouveau riche Schneider Masters who clustered around the East Bank and West Bank near the railway station. 

I have written about this period in my young life many times in the past so I won't go into it again, except to say that one incident comes back to me every so often, particularly around autumn, actually a few weeks before Yom Tov 1940. The Blitz had stated in earnest and there was talk of an invasion, although none of us seemed very concerned - life went on. Hitler was cursed on every occasion, my mother was more worried about making Shobbas and her twice weekly schlepp to Ridley Road in search of a chicken from Mrs Marks. When the war started, my father's business,( he was an expert furrier), had collapsed and he had got himself a job as an accounts supervisor at Woolwich Arsenal , something to do with the Iron &Steel Federation. All I know is that he used to get a train very early in the morning direct from South Tottenham to Woolwich. I had come back from evacuation to March (not a wise choice, the largest railway marshalling yards in the country) and had started an apprenticeship as a toolmaker at Littons in the Caledonian Road, to which I cycled every morning to start work at eight o'clock.

With the prospect of bombs falling anywhere in the London area, a public shelter had been dug in the Lordship Lane recreation ground near Downhills Park for the local residents. We lived a five minute walk away so every evening after supper my father and I would take my mother and younger sister, with sandwiches and blankets and a flask of tea, to the shelter whilst we returned to the house to sleep under the stairs, as suggested by the Government as the safest part of a house. Morrison and Anderson shelters came later.

It became quite a communal centre, people chatting, playing cards, others trying to sleep, whilst we could hear the noise of the air raid all around. I recall other people whom we would sometimes see there, nuns from a local convent who sang hymns and offered comfort, neighbours who lived nearby, and one old man who led off music hall songs. Next morning very early we would return to take my mother and sister home, then off to work.

September 19th 1940 1 was 14, my sister Barbara was all of 4, and our elder brother, Leslie, 20, was called up and in the Army. We had heard guns and banging during the night but nothing to prepare us for what we found at the shelter next morning. The whole area was full of ambulances, police, rescue workers and firemen - the full panoply of a major incident. It seemed a landmine had fallen directly onto the shelter; there were many casualties, we were told, some still buried, a few survivors but no names or details or where they had been taken. We spent the day rushing from one rescue centre to another, and finally late that evening we found my mother, screaming hysterically, in the old Prince of Wales hospital and my sister in the Children’s Fever Hospital in St Ann’s Road.

How many were killed that night is still something of a mystery, anything from thirty to a hundred and there were hints that the whole incident had been covered up to allay public disquiet. There were also dark whispers circulating that the bombsite had been completely bulldozed over with bodies still buried there to this day.

We never found out how my mother and sister were rescued. There were reports at the time that when the rescue teams got into the shelter they found people still sitting there, seemingly untouched but covered in dust. They were of course dead, killed by the blast. Two bombs were dropped, possibly aimed at the shelter or at random, the other hitting houses in Walpole Road two hundred yards away where a family was wiped out. At the time there were anti-aircraft batteries nearby in the allotments, so maybe these were the target. In 2003 there were preparations for a centenary festival of the park and a local historian became involved researching the incident. He was at the time in contact with my sister and others (my mother had died some years earlier); subsequently there was an appeal, by way of the local Friends Association, to erect a memorial at the site, which is now in place. 

Looking back at those reports and others written then and since, including one from my sister, who also has since died, it is a sobering thought that I may be one of the very few, perhaps the only one left, who can still remember that night over seventy seven years ago. I wonder sometimes what happened to the nuns and the old boy with his music hall songs.

Eddy Summers

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