Here 's an interesting site about WW2 called, " 1940s Sounds and Music " The Music of the 1940s There's some great nostalgic songs which some list members will remember. I like the version of Lilly Marlene sung by Anne Shelton but here 's another site if you want to hear it sung in German as the British soldiers of the Eight Army fighting the Afrika Korps in North Africa first heard it when they tuned into the German radio. It was soon adopted by the British troops and eventually became the most popular war song of all time. Lily Marlene
The war sounds of the 1940s
Actually, the representation of the sounds of an Air Raid didn't, from my experience, capture what it was really like to be on the receiving end during a raid, apart from the sound of the air raid warning at the beginning, which still affected myself and my wife even after all these years, and the welcome sound of the all clear at the end, the representation sounded too muffled and remote to impress me.
In my experience an air raid was a very noisy affair from the moment the big anti air craft guns located nearby opened up and blasted their shells skywards with an ear shattering mighty cracking sound, in addition there was the rapid popping sound of the light ack ack guns and the sounds of falling bombs some of which made a frightening high pitched whistling sound as they fell followed by an enormously loud crashing sound when they exploded on impact. After each bomb had exploded we felt an earth tremour as shock waves from the impact spread through the ground. If the bomb fell close by the tremor was powerful enough to shake the bunks we were lying on in the Anderson shelter, which was in a shallow hole dug in the back garden of our house, where we spent the night during the heavy air raids. If we stayed inside the house, every window pane in the window frame rattled noisily due to the vibrations from the guns and bombs outside. As a precaution , we stuck a paper cross on each pane to prevent the glass in it from breaking. During one raid a large model of HMS Campbell, the destoyer my dad served on which he had made while at sea fell off the piano and was smashed beyond repair.
During a raid it was usually too noisy to hear the bombers but we heard the familiar steady, throb throb, sound of their engines as they approached us before the din from the guns took over. If you looked skywards during a raid you would see the brilliantly white beams of dozens of search lights darting across the black sky, criss crossing backwards and forwards until they found a target and then several search lights would focus on one bomber which would drone on looking like a tiny white insect while the gunners took aim. Sometimes a bomber which had been hit would pass over the roof our house for just a few seconds with a terrifying deafaning roar just before it crash landed, hopefully in a field and not on someone's house.
The sound of the Doodlebug was spot on. When its engined stopped, everybody held their breathe until we heard a mighty explosion and we knew that it had, at least, missed us.
That's how I remember it.
Regards.
Patrick.
Perth, Western Australia.
The events I descibe occured while we were living in Morden in Surrey on the fringe of the South London area. I was born in Lambeth and lived there until we moved to Morden the year the war started. Before we left Lambeth, I saw barrage balloons being hoisted outside the Imperial War Museum which was close to where we lived. I had no idea that the sight of these strange looking objects meant that we were close to war.
We were living at Morden the day the war started on Sun 3rd. Sept 1939 and I continued to live there until I was evacuated soon after the Germans started to attack the London area with their V2 rockets in Sept 1944.
Before I left Morden I saw the start of " Operation Overlord " , the Allies invasion of enemy occupied Europe. All day long the sky was full of the noise of all types of planes flying towards the continent. On the ground all roads leading towards the English Channel were filled with a non stop noisy procession of vehicles carrying men and equipment all heading towards the coast and the ships that would carry them to France. Nobody went to school on that day.
I was sent to Smithies a small, close knit, coal mining community in South Yorkshire. The local people spoke with such a strong North country accent I could hardly understand what they were saying. Apart from their strange dialect, they used words and expressions I never knew existed in the English language. When winter came, for the first time in my life, I saw pure white snow drifts nearly twice as high as a tall man and skated on the thick ice on the local resevoir. It was a complete contrast to the way of life I had known so far as a kid living in the narrow, congested streets of Lambeth and a council estate in Morden where people kept themselves to themself, yet it was one of the happiest times of my life.
My younger sisters went to Leicester in Lincolnshire while our mother remained in Morden with our eldest siter. Dad was away at the war serving on HMS Campbell an escort destroyer which had an exciting war including an abortive attempt to stop the German battleship, Scharnhorst as it sailed in broad daylight out of the French port of Brest and up the English channel. One of Scharnhorst 's 11 inch shells hit the bridge of another destroyer, HMS Worcester, killing nearly half the ship 's crew. On D-Day, HMS Campbell was on patrol off the Normandy landing beaches as the Allies began the invasion.
Hello, I remember, as a young kid living in the London area during WW2, having several encounters with POWs.
The first time we had been fishing and were on our way back home with a few sticlebacks we had caught in a jam jar when we saw a working party of German POWs on the side of the road. As we passed them one looked up and looked directly at me, I was very surprised at how young he looked, not much older than us, and the sad expression on his face suggested that he wished he was with us instead of being in a POW camp.
I also remember riding past Kempton Park on my push bike and looking at the POWs through the barbed wire. Another time I saw some German POWs in the school grounds of a school in Cheam which had been converted into a POW camp. We stood and stared at them and they stared back at us.
Just after the war ended I saw a German POW walking along the pavement in Croydon. He was very tall and looked smart even in his POW gear.As he strode along an elderly lady noticed him and walked over to him and gave him an orange which he accepted graciously. Several people passing by expressed their disapproval at what she had done but she seemed unmoved by their comments.
The most embarrasing time for me was when just after the war had ended, I was walking along the pavement in Morden with my brother in law who was serving in the Black Watch regiment. We saw 2 Italian POWs walking towards us on the pavement. As they drew nearer my brother in law went towards them and barged them off the pavement and into the gutter with the comment that that 's where they belonged. They just smiled nervously and kept walking. I felt my face go a bright red as other people passing by looked at us.
Regards. Patrick. Western Australia The war ended and we all returned to Morden until I left to start on a new adventure as a National Serviceman in the RAF serving in parts of England I 'd never been to before and Singapore and Hong Kong. I had a wonderful time, particularly while serving in the Far East. Here are some web sites that cover the period:
THE LONDON BLITZ
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN
ROCKET ATTACKS ON LONDON
4. Civilian losses in London during WW2 : CIVILIAN LOSSES IN LONDON DURING WW2
Nearly 30,000 civilians were killed and 50,000 seriously injured in London alone during the war. Many civilians in other parts of Britain were also killed and injured when their cities and towns were bombed. see:
COMMUNITY WEBSHOTS
I can only tell you about what it was like to be a kid living in London during the war. Most of us kids who were evacuated from London had already lived through 5 years of war. In addition to the air raids we were used to years of food rationing and many other restrictions and hinderances to living a normal life. We were well used to danger and adversity, we were resilient and self reliant so that when the time came for us to be evacuated we were already mature beyond our years.
Also, even as children, we must have adsorbed some of the culture of the British stiff upper lip. For us kids that meant if you cried you were a cissy. So when the time came to say goodbye to our mothers both parties put on a brave face and joked and teased one another about the smashing holiday we were going on.
I can 't remember seeing anybody crying but there was a lot of activity on the platform as dozens of children, labelled and carrying parcels or suitcases boaded the hissing train. I 'm sure that some of the younger children cried and clung to their mothers but that would have been only a small part of the total scene as children, parents, teachers, railway porters and the organizers jostled one another in a state of anarchy. We had no idea of where we going to nor who would look after us when we got there.
The train started the journey with a loud release of steam and all the kids hung out of the carriage windows and waved like mad to those we were leaving behind on the platform and then we settled down for a while before some of us began to explore the other carriages on the train and then later in the afternoon we found out that we were heading for Yorkshire. I immediately thought of rolling green fields and cricket but the coal mining village I spent that night in was nothing like that. Yet it was the start of one of the happiest times of my life.
I can clearly remember the night before I left Morden because we had a very heavy air raid and as the bunk I was in shook and the battle betwenn the guns and the German bombers raged outside I suddenly thought how terrible it would be if I were killed that night after all the other nights I had survived just before I was removed to safety. My luck held and next day off I went. Actually, that night was the first and only time I can remember ever having been frightened during an air raid. I sat there in the bunk, sweating and shaking. I had never done that before.
Post script : The 1940s was a time before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or counselling had been invented. The British remedy for handling the arrows and misfortunes of our lives in those days was to have a nice cup of tea. It always seemed to work.