Brenda Joyce Martin: Childhood Memories of the Blitz

Brenda Joyce Martin was just 8 years old at the outbreak of war. She lived with her parents, Walter and Phyllis, and brother, Jack, in the Surrey town of Coulsdon. This was just a few miles south of London at the edge of the North Downs. During the Blitz, the area gained its nickname "Bomb Alley" because many of the German air raids on the capital came that way.

The family's home was at the end of a terrace, with a long, narrow back garden that stretched up the hill behind. The photograph is of Brenda, Jack and Walter at the back of their house. It was taken around the end of the war.

One day, while in the garden, the family spotted a German bomber heading towards them from the direction of London. To their dismay, they saw five bombs drop from the plane, and they were coming their way. Presumably the aircrew had not found their London target and then dropped their lethal load indiscriminately after turning for home.

The family ran towards their Anderson shelter just a few yards away. Brenda's parents and brother got there first. As Brenda reached the entrance, one of the bombs landed at the edge of the garden and exploded just a few feet away, propelling her into the shelter. She recalled her experience in a recording made a few years ago by her son, Chris Tombs. This is what she said about the bomb:"I was in the open air when that went off: I didn't hear it, I didn't hear a sound. I felt as if I'd been hit on the back by a plank. I couldn't breathe. I thought"make yourself go limp", then I breathed. I just thought"I've got to go limp". But, yer, it was a bit of a near go! I either thought it was that or the rabbit hutch hit me on the back. But the smell the next morning was cordite: very strong".

As it happens, another of the bombs made a direct hit on a house further up the hill, killing the entire family. This devastation was, of course, not unusual. Brenda told of a separate occasion, when a bomb exploded nearby, blowing in the windows of a neighbouring house. Tragically, a baby, just a few days old, was killed there by a flying shard of glass. Brenda would walk to her school in the valley. She shared a particular memory of looking across to the many rows of houses on the opposite hillside:"When I was going to that school, I used to walk down the hill and look up to see what houses were missing. You know,"oh, there's a gap there now!"".

The mention of the rabbit hutch is a story in its own right, one that was recorded on another occasion. Brenda said:"My father screwed the rabbit hutch to the back of the coal-shed. He always made a good job of it, so it was the right height for me to get it out. When the bomb dropped, it blew the rabbit hutch off the back of the coal-shed, but it left the back wall of the hutch still screwed to the shed. And the rabbit hutch landed face downwards so it was on its wire door and, when I got there in the morning, I didn't walk to it straight away: it was either dead or had jumped out and run away. But it wasn't dead and hadn't jumped out - it was just sitting on the door!". Brenda was to rename her pet Rocket after that, in recognition of its survival of a journey through space!

There is a post-script to this account, one that brings home the sometimes cold, cruel-hearted reality of wartime rationing. Relatives visited the Martin household at one point, and stayed for a meal. They allowed themselves the luxury of meat on that occasion: rabbit. The circumstances of the decision to dispatch Rocket are unknown. It seems beyond credulity that anyone should even think about this, let alone do it. Perhaps gnawing hunger had got the better of the adults. Unsurprisingly, such callousness traumatised Brenda. It took her over 70 years to finally reveal this awful event; obviously the memory for Brenda was still very raw.

On a lighter note, several decades after the bomb incident, a couple moved into the house next door and converted the attic into a bedroom. They mentioned to Walter and Phyllis, who were still living in their wartime home, something that was baffling them. The couple had found huge chunks of chalk in the attic and wondered why anyone would have put them there. Walter enlightened them: they were left over from the bomb blast, which had made a large crater, flinging chalk everywhere, including through the roof of their house. The tiles were replaced, but the debris was left in situ!

Brenda had another close call during the war. Her parents had planned to evacuate her and Jack to relatives in Canada. Brenda recalled the day she was due to leave the house:"I remember standing on the front door step with a little suitcase and then my mum said"you're not going!"". Phyllis could not bear the thought of being parted from her children, despite the dangers of living near London. However, this selfish act probably saved their lives. The ship on which they were due to cross the Atlantic was the City of Benares. On the very journey they missed, the vessel was sunk by a U-boat. Of the 100 children on board, only 19 survived.

One other story that Brenda recounted tells something of the horrors occasionally witnessed by children of the air battles fought overhead. She recollected:"I was going blackberrying with my friend Joyce and, a plane had crashed beyond the bushes, very near to when we were there, you know. But when they crashed, they were gone the next day: cleared away! And we were picking the blackberries and, I think it was just a young sapling, and there was a boot hanging from the top of it. I said"oh, there's a boot - there's a foot in it!". Joyce had got a basket of blackberries - she shot them [in the air] and ran: she left me! She was so shocked. That was horrible, a furred flight, you know, airman's boot". Brenda added:"I can't think how they managed to pick up a crashed plane and take it all away so quick. I know Spitfires are small, aren't they, those sort of planes? But I always remember seeing the back side of her just disappearing, and she just kept running 'til she got home!"

The sky over"Bomb Alley" was not only the haunt of enemy aircraft. It was also frequented by flying bombs."They used to cut off and turn round, and just go any old where", Brenda recalled. She went on to relate one incident involving Walter, who had returned to Coulsdon after working as a tinsmith in the northern shipyards. On this occasion, the family heard the characteristic buzz of a V1"Doodlebug" approaching."When my dad was at the top of the garden, he'd come down from the north, he wanted to watch what was going on and this one cut off fairly close by us, and I've never seen him move so fast in his life! Course, you're safe all the time you can hear them, but all the time it's silent, you're waiting!"

Walter did something extremely reckless when out blackberrying one day with Brenda in the nearby village of Chipstead. They noticed, in a field in which they had been picking berries, a neat hole in the ground. Walter just had to investigate, so he and Brenda went over to take a look, but the hole was too deep to see what lay at the bottom. Unbelievably, Walter dropped a stone down the hole, and counted. A couple of seconds later they heard a metallic"ting". Brenda remembered what happened next:"He said"we'd better move!". Anyway, mum wanted some more blackberries, so we said we'd go back into that field because it's, you know, you couldn't pick enough: they were so lovely big ones. What was in that field? A massive crater, right where that hole was! I mean, wasn't he barmy? I mean it was obvious what it was: unexploded bomb".

As a final memory, Brenda recollected the sounds at night during bombing raids. She said it was possible to tell what had been hit, whether it was a house or a road, just by listening to the explosion and the sound of debris and shrapnel crashing to the ground.

Brenda sadly died of dementia in December 2022. Until the disease took its toll, she enjoyed retelling stories of her wartime childhood, but it is likely some of her more traumatic experiences were kept to herself. This was a world that is almost impossible for the post-war generations to imagine, but perhaps, because Brenda was a young child, she just accepted what was happening around her. For Brenda, war was almost a norm.

Brenda had known several people in the neighbourhood who did not make it through that perilous time, and she realised how close to death she herself had come. It seems extraordinary that so many children who survived the war years, like Brenda, were unaffected, at least outwardly, by what they saw, smelled, heard and felt. By and large, they grew up to lead fulfilled lives and raise their own children in, thankfully, more peaceful times. Theirs was truly a remarkable generation.

Chris Tombs