Growing into War

by Michael Gill

  Tucked away in our besieged little island fortress, there seemed nothing for us to do but grit our teeth and bear it; or, as in our little group at the Kentish Gazette, to take the pleasures of the moment. There was something else the country was doing: building bombers. We had endured months of destruction in 1940–1. Now, at least, we were in a position to give the enemy a dose of its own medicine.

  The RAF carried out its first 1,000-bomber raid on 30 May 1942; 600 acres of Cologne was declared to be completely destroyed. Altogether, 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped in 90 minutes. It was hard to visualise what that would be like. Perhaps we might not have to imagine it for long, Keith said with an uneasy laugh. We knew what he meant. In the last month or so the Luftwaffe had launched a series of reprisal attacks on ancient cities. Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York had all been struck. Might it not be Canterbury’s turn soon? Like Cologne we were a historic centre with a magnificent cathedral.

  On the night of 1 June I was woken by the ululating call of the airwarning system. It was immediately over-topped by the hooting of our local imminent danger foghorn, and the warning cries of my parents. They wanted me downstairs in the room my father had reinforced with sandbags and a sheet metal ceiling some three years before. It seemed it was going to be useful at last. As I pulled a coat over my pyjamas, my sleepy senses picked out another sound, deeper and more continuous than the warnings. It was the whining of circling aircraft: more of them and much closer overhead than I had heard in the past.

  I ran out onto the landing to the accompaniment of a new sound. It was a high-pitched shriek that grew rapidly in volume as I bolted down the stairs. The scream pursued me and dissolved into a tremendous earshattering explosion. Still on the stairs I was struck by a sharp blow on the head. The plaster ceiling fell around me. I kept on running. Now I’ve actually been hit by Hitler I thought.

  Two more tremendous blasts punctuated my arrival in the strong room. With it went the crash of glass that we thought (rightly) might be the front windows. Through the next hour-and-a-half we did not talk much. We lay on the carpet pressing as tightly to it as we could. It was as though we might be able to hold down the floor from erupting under the force of those dreadful shrieks. Our fear, unexpressed except by an occasional moan from my mother, was infectious. My small Scottish terrier Janie was trembling and whimpering. She tried to bury herself under my stomach.

  It amazed me how quickly we understood what was happing. Like a pack of wolves, the planes circled continuously overhead. From time to time one would peel off and come hurtling downwards, accompanied by the characteristic high-pitched scream generated by the screechers attached to its wings. This note rapidly deepened and grew in volume till it seemed to be vibrating through the very rafters of our house. That was not the end, though it seemed more than the senses could bear. Out of it came a shriller, sharper scream. This was the bomb. Invariably it was not alone, but the first of three. Here was the moment of truth. The explosion was too vast for us to be able to guess how close or far it was. But the second bomb, bursting a few seconds later, would be either closer or further away than the first explosion. If it was the latter, we could take a breath more easily, for it meant that the third bomb, continuing the same trajectory, would be still further away. If the second bomb was louder and closer than the first . . . then there was nothing to do but grit the teeth and dig deeper into the carpet.

  There were times when several planes were diving and shrieking at once, when our innocuous anti-aircraft guns were banging away indifferently and the batteries of Bofors guns chattering like a cage of demented monkeys. It seemed the tortured air itself would rip us apart. There was worse to come. The sounds of destruction would rise to an unbearable crescendo and then suddenly pause. It was as though a predatory lion, having achieved the fit of violence which gave it the kill, was drawing breath before rending its victim. So the assaulted atmosphere audibly sucked in silence before spewing it forth in a fountain of falling floors, crashing girders, collapsing walls, pulverised furniture, destroyed lives. This was the most terrible sound I have ever heard. Often it went on for a long time. The bombers’ wail, the bombs’ shriek, the ear-punching blast of the explosions – these were as nothing to the awful grandeur of the desolation of homes collapsing about us.

  Sometimes the collapse began with a mere trickle of falling bricks and sharding windows. Steadily, but mercilessly, the downfall grew in speed and volume, till at its apogee it overwhelmed all other sounds. It was at this climax that we listened most intensely for a human participant. How pitifully small and thin was the occasional distant cry, rarely repeated. Occasionally closer at hand was the exchange of more robust shouts and warnings. Uttered in the chinks and crevices of all the conflicting bedlam, it underlined the casual inhumanity of this mechanistic rape of our cherished home city. Would there be anything left? The cathedral, dominating the approach from all directions, must have been a target. What other motive but destruction of its historic treasures could have brought the bombers to this small market town?

  It seemed quite likely that we would not survive to know the answer. Within minutes of the first bombs falling all the lights failed. My thoughtful father had filled a drawer with candles and matches, but so violent were the sounds outside that none of us wanted to get off the floor. Ridiculous though it was, it seemed unnecessarily dangerous to draw attention to ourselves even by lighting a match. We never even discussed it. The only window in our little strong room had been completely blocked up by sandbags; so throughout this cacophony of explosions we remained in absolute darkness. Most of the time I kept my eyes tight shut. I had regressed to the sort of childish fear that a nightmare or ghost story might once have stirred in me. I kept thinking it must be going to end soon. Then a further wave of attackers made itself heard.

  A new and menacing sound crumpled still further the overloaded air. It angered me, because it blurred the concentration I needed to pick out the paths of the falling bombs. What good did it do me to know that a particular stick of these was getting closer or further away? None at all, but I hung on to this momentary knowledge as a tiny comfort of rationality in all the rampage of destruction which I could barely imagine. Meanwhile, the crackling sound steadily grew in volume. Fire. You could sniff it in the air. We had heard of the firestorms which incendiary bombs could unleash in crowded streets. Here was a danger we had not considered: to be sucked into a maelstrom of flames.

  An absurd idea when you thought of our road lined with massive trees and solid, mostly Edwardian, houses. You could see this was the way panic spread. Get back to analysing the direction of the bomb explosions. That was getting harder to do. Not only was the fire crackle getting louder; there seemed to be fewer bombers circling overhead. My father stood up and lit a couple of candles. We looked at our pale, taut faces. No bombs were falling. Wordless, we hugged each other. My mother cried.

  ‘I can’t make us any tea,’ said my father. ‘The electricity’s off.’

  ‘No, don’t you remember Gag?’ said my mother (she only called him by his initials, G.A.G., in especially unguarded moments). ‘Don’t you remember? When we bought the emergency food tins you got a Primus stove. It should be in the cardboard box in the corner.’

  It was. Though lighting it created nearly as much of a crisis as the Jerry bombers. Eventually, red-faced, my father discovered the knack of pumping it up. By the time we had had a cup it was about half-past three. We reckoned the actual raid had lasted an hour-and-a-half.

  As we had thought, the plaster had come down over the stairwell and the front windows had blown out, frames and all. They were four long windows, two on the ground floor and two on the floor above. Thanks to my mother’s careful taping-together of the adjoining panes, they had remained unshattered. They lay twisted and tangled across the front lawn like monster serpents. But where had the bomb fallen?

  II

  We persuaded my mother to take an aspirin and go back to bed. Though relatively lightly damaged, our h
ouse had lost all the communicating services: telephone, electricity, gas, radio. Water was running out, and we had not heard or seen anyone since the raid. Our neighbours we knew were away. My father and I decided to go into town to find out how bad the damage was.

  First, where was the bomb hole that, judging by the noise at the time, had so nearly contained us? We walked gingerly to the front gate. Our feet crunched over more than gravel. Shining the narrow torch beam that we were allowed to show, dozens of pinheads of light gleamed back at us. Were these jagged fragments bits of our bomb? My father gave them a comprehensive feel and pronounced them friendly ack-ack particles. No wonder they didn’t bring many planes down if they burst into such insignificant pieces.

  But at our gate we got our first sight of what the enemy could do. In the middle of the gateway opposite was a large crater about twenty feet across by some fifteen feet deep. It was exactly at the spot where every day for so many years our neighbour had turned to wave goodbye. Remembering that, my eyes automatically lifted to the first-floor window where his wife had waved her response. There was something strange in its appearance. A dark cleft ran down the façade of the whole house. It seemed to be leaning inwards about to collapse like a house of cards. And, indeed, it had to be demolished later. The morning farewell ritual had already been interrupted. The war had carried our neighbour into the North African desert and his wife back to her parents in the safer Midlands.

  On this night of 1 June 1942, there were other things to occupy us. From our front gate we could normally see straight down the Dover Road to the centre of Canterbury dominated by the cathedral. But now there was nothing but billowing clouds, sooty dark and pink tinged. So the cathedral had been destroyed, as we had feared.

  We set off at a quick walk in the direction of the town. It was a strange experience; like Dante being shown hell. We did not say much; we met not a soul. After all the deafening cacophony of the raid our ears felt naked not being wrapped in layers of dissonance. At the same time, the clatter of our feet seemed disturbingly loud. Why was there no clangour of ambulance or fire engine? No shouts or cries?

  Off to the left, beyond the wayside trees, we could just make out that one of the big Edwardian houses had been reduced to rubble. I tried to remember who lived there. I was almost sure it was an eccentric spinster who kept at least a dozen dogs and many cats. Should we stop and look for her? I shuddered at the thought of what the bomb must have done to all those assorted animals. No, said my father, when we find a fire engine or a policeman we shall report it. We hurried on.

  About a quarter mile from our house the road passed over the railway bridge on the main line to Dover. Several bombs had been dropped here uprooting and damaging a number of trees, but, as far as I could see, not hitting the rail-track (more houses were destroyed here and on the neighbouring St Augustine’s Road than I could tell in the dark).

  Just beyond the bridge the road curved and revealed a spectacular sight. A pair of modern detached houses faced the entrance to Erskine Road, where I had danced the spring evenings away in the clutches of Miss Hanbury. Luckily she was on holiday visiting cousins in Scotland. Her windows had blown out, giving a ghoulish appearance to her house as it glared skull-like across the road. There, the two modern houses seemed to have been sliced in half by some giant trowel. The front wall had been shovelled away, leaving the contents of each room completely visible and hardly disturbed. Baths, lavatory, beds, dressing-table, toys, kitchen plates, armchairs hung suspended in space. All these objects closely resembled the ones in the house next door, as though they might have been models at a House and Garden exhibition. The final weird congruity were two columns of flame that hissed out of the bowels of the houses and shot straight up more than twice their height, illuminating all this part of the road with an unearthly light.

  ‘Gas,’ muttered my father, ‘they’ve punctured the gas main. No pipe smoking here.’ (Pipe smoking was something I was just trying.)

  There were no signs of any victims. Later we were to discover that the occupants had already been dug out. A little further on we saw our first people. Past the ugly new telephone exchange the road widened where the old city wall and the Burgate had been replaced by a car salesroom. Here groups of men were standing silently looking at the sight before us. Our road narrowed again into a long terrace of Georgian houses. Beyond it was the Regal Cinema where I had so often danced. Perhaps it would be better to say the cinema had been there.

  We were looking at a huge living mass of flame. It was coming towards us from the heart of the old town. As we watched it leapt from window to window up the Georgian terrace. The speed and gusto with which it fed itself made it seem a monster of pulsating energy, weaving and writhing with dreadful gluttony.

  My father recognised that most of the men were from the fire brigade. They could do nothing to fight the flames. Bombs had fractured all the water mains. They were waiting for mobile water carriers. By the time they arrived they agreed there would not be much left of the old city. They believed that the Bell Harry Tower still stood. It was impossible to see through the dense flame clouds. They did not know how many people had died. A senior and popular official, the Town Clerk, had been killed when his home got a direct hit. His house was one of those ruins in St Augustine’s Road that we had failed to notice.

  The firemen advised us to go home. They did not think the flames would jump this wide open space. We were not the only creatures putting their trust in it. Dozens of assorted dogs and cats were running about distractedly, barking and occasionally chasing each other. The fires cast an unreal, excessively brilliant light on the scene, so that the shadows of the cavorting animals were sometimes longer than the real height of the motionless firemen. This surreal element of fire dogs must have occurred at other blitzed cities, but I have never seen it referred to.

  On our way back I told my father that I would take a short cut from New Dover Road to Old Dover Road, where Christine lived, to make sure that she was all right. He did not object. Just beyond the railway bridge a narrow footpath ran parallel to the line, connecting the two roads. I had often used it as a short cut back home after leaving Christine at her house.

  Now I ran along it in a mixture of excitement and apprehension. The gas flames from the two nearby houses had stopped. The clouds, rolling low overhead, cast a strange pinkish glow down onto the high brick walls of the cut. My diary tells me it was 5.30 a.m. and just beginning to be light.

  Turning a corner I ran full tilt into a mass of bricks some twenty feet high. There was no way round them. They completely blocked the narrow footpath. It was as though a giant had picked up the walls on each side of the cut and thrown them together. And for good luck he had then kicked over the small private hotel which had been on the other side of the wall.

  It may seem disproportionate, but nothing that happened that night shocked me so much as this total destruction of a footpath. I had only discovered it in the recent months. I had hurried along it so often, aglow with the pleasure of having just left Christine. Now it was gone, transformed into a barrier between us, just as real life, another aspect of the war, was going to separate us in a few weeks when I would be eighteen and a half and called up. Now I had to find another way to reach her.

  I had to run all the way back into New Dover Road; down to where the firemen still stood, and the dogs still barked, and where the Georgian terraces were now one indistinguishable mass of flame. I turned left as though I was going to the railway station. Over another railway bridge and there was the leafy expanse of the Old Dover Road. One of the pleasant small Georgian houses was where Christine lived with her parents. And there outside, on their doorstep as though waiting for me, were the three of them. Here the fires seemed further away. The first rays of the summer sun tinted Christine’s dark hair. A new day was coming.

  III

  Later on that day I wrote in my diary: ‘Went round for Christine again at 9.30. Found Keith and Joan B. there. Tried to go down town with t
hem’ (in an attempt to reach our office). ‘Place a terrible mess, fires still burning, our office, like all Upper High Street, gone. Lost Keith.’ (He could not push his bike over the piles of still smoking rubble.) ‘Made way by devious route back to C’s house. J.B. left us there and I stayed with C. all morning as her people out. Glorious weather for first time this summer so picked her up at 2.30 and went for long country walk round Bishopsbourne and Bridge arriving back 5.30 pretty tired. Strange such a beautiful afternoon should follow such a night of grotesque horror. C. never looked lovelier.’

  There followed a strange hiatus; a sort of regrouping of psychic forces. Often such moments are referred to in memoirs of wars. About this time I clipped the following quotation from Siegfried Sassoon’s memoirs of the First World War: ‘What I felt was a sort of personal manifesto of being intensely alive – a sense of physical adventure and improvident jubilation, and also . . . a feeling that I was in the middle of some interesting historical tale . . .’.

  With the town centre, including the office of the Kentish Gazette, crumbled to ashes there was nothing to do but read, walk and talk. This we did. Even in this benign midsummer the war maintained its surreal presence. In one field we came across a peacefully grazing herd of cows. At least they appeared to be grazing until we saw that one was lying on its back with its legs sticking straight up in the air like a child’s wooden toy. Another had leaked yards of snakelike intestines across the field before falling on its head. The field, we now noticed, was pockmarked with bomb holes. The most curious and repulsive detail was the behaviour of the uninjured cows. They were munching their cud in a characteristically bovine way, apparently unmoved by the fate of their companions.