Page 21 - HGS Suburb News 150 - Summer 2022

Wartime memories of the Suburb

IVAN BERG on benches along the walls, gas bread and jam she pinned a label
masks on laps, mostly silent, at on me, gave me my gas mask and
t was 1943 and there was a war least to start with, until our teacher took me and my small suitcase on
on. I was seven years old and as asked us in turn to recite a favourite a bus to a railway station, probably
I far as I knew there had always poem or sing a song to pass the Victoria, put me on a train and said
been a war on. I had always had to time until we heard the continuous that ‘some nice people’ would meet
wear my gas mask in its cardboard tone of the all clear siren. me at Farnham station – where I
box over my shoulder, and carry Cousin Nina was my age and assume she told the Guard to put
my ‘Under Sixteen’ Identity Card the fun and games included the me off.
with my name and address. My usual Doctors and Nurses, Hide I was sent to Rowledge
mother was in hospital, my father and Seek in the huge overgrown House in Farnham in Surrey. A
was in the Royal Artillery in Iraq. garden and ‘Parachutists’, a game ‘Kindertransport’ hostel, set up by
So in the late summer of I invented that led to my downfall. the Central British Fund for
1943 I was taken to stay with my The parachute game employed German Jewry in the months
father’s sister Anne, her husband umbrellas in lieu of parachutes. I leading up to World War II. How
Joe, and cousins Paula, Mavis attempted to persuade Nina that uncle Joe managed to get me in
and Nina in their large detached it would be perfectly safe to jump there as a child refugee I will never
house in Meadway, Hampstead out of a top floor window with an know. I remember trying not to cry
Garden Suburb. open umbrella. The umbrella would during the day and then feeling
I was enrolled in the Suburb work just like a parachute. Nina unloved and unwanted, crying
School and remember walking the said that she would only jump out myself to sleep. I don’t know how
length of Willifield Way to and from of the window if I did it first. long I was there, probably not
school every day. The Suburb was Someone grabbed me just as I was more than a few months during
bombed in 1940 during the ‘Blitz’ about to jump out of the open the winter of 1943 and spring of
and although I walked past the window with umbrella unfurled. I 1944, but the experience was
‘bomb sites’, most particularly don’t remember who it was, but both traumatic and formative; the
Fellowship House which had been my Uncle and Aunt were rather feelings of abandonment lasted
completely destroyed by a land upset and shortly afterwards I was for years.
mine that fell on Willifield Green, I collected by my mother’s brother, My father managed to get a I was also welcomed back to
accepted the sights as unremarkable. my uncle the Reverend Joseph compassionate posting from Iraq the Suburb School. Spring 1944 yanked inside by my teacher so I
As unremarkable as the brick and Halpern, who lived close by with to a Royal Artillery barracks on was the start of Hitler’s campaign never saw it drop, just heard the
concrete air raid shelters in the his family in Temple Fortune. Hampstead Heath, found out of Vergeltungswaffen-1, (Revenge boom of the explosion.
playground which we trotted into, Uncle Joe took me on a bus to where I was and rescued me. My Weapon 1 or V1), flying bombs We spent a lot of time in the
class by class, carrying our gas Bloomsbury and thence into the mother was out of hospital and as aimed at London which all us kids air raid shelters that summer.
masks every time the ascending Jewish Board of Deputies building she had nowhere to live she was knew as Doodlebugs or Buzzbombs. Lights were installed, blackboards
and descending wail of an air raid in Bloomsbury Square. A rather staying with her brother Joe and I particularly remember hanging appeared and primitive lessons
siren sounded. nice woman, probably a secretary, family. So for me it was out of the about outside the playground were attempted. But it worked. I
The shelters were dark and brought me a glass of milk and frying pan into the fire of living shelter watching a V1 flying low learned to love poetry, I learned
damp, with brick walls and a flat some bread and jam and asked with the uncle who had so over the Suburb, waiting for the to love stories, best of all I
concrete roof, the only ventilation me if I would like to play with a dispassionately dispatched me to throbbing pulse-jet engine to stop learned to love to read. Strange to
being the open entrance. We sat typewriter. When I finished the a hostel for child refugees. to see where it fell, but I was tell I really enjoyed it.

“For me they were always small packages of delight”

DOROTHY COWLIN
MARIE-CHRISTINE O’CALLAGHAN Bats can be found practically sonar, which allows bats (and
everywhere, with the exception of dolphins) to emit calls that travel
n balmy summer evenings I very hot deserts and polar regions. through the environment until it
delight in watching the They vary widely in size and shape. hits an object and echoes back
Owayward flittering of bats The smallest, the Kitti’s hog-nosed to the sender letting it know where
around my garden. Bats have had a bat, weighs less than a penny, the the object is. Bats can make 160
really bad press and are often seen largest, the Flying Fox, has a wing- calls per second so they are unlikely
as dark creatures of the night, not span of 1.5m. (5 feet) and can to fly into your hair and you are
least because of their association weigh up to 1.4 kg (3 lb); by the unlikely to hear them as they use
with vampires. I blame Bram Stoker way, this one is a fruit eating bat. ultrasound frequencies.
who, in his book Dracula, has his To go back to the bats in the Bats are truly amazing creatures
hero, Jonathan Harker, write: garden, they are called Pipistrelle that are actually good for the Lyle’s flying fox bat
“Between me and the moonlight and are common throughout environment and for us. They eat (Pteropus vampyrus)
flitted a great bat, coming and Britain. They hibernate in winter so many insects they reduce the
going in great, whirling circles,” (sleeping through Halloween!) amount of pesticides farmers need Perhaps, we should join the
forever linking bats to Dracula. emerging around April and, being to use. They have been called the Chinese who associate bats with
Vampire bats do exist, they live in very hungry, will each proceed to gardeners of the rainforest to bats as they are the main good fortune. In Mandarin, the
Central and South America, and eat up to 3,000 insects in a single because they pollinate plants and pollinator of agaves. Remember word ‘bat’ is a homonym of good
though they will, occasionally, feed night. Bats are the only mammal help spread their seeds. Without the vampire bats? Recent studies luck; consequently, bats fly
on humans, they prefer other that can truly fly which is just as bats, bananas, avocados, mangoes, have shown their venom contains joyously across fabrics, tapestries,
mammals or even birds, and, while well as they catch most of the nuts, figs, vanilla and cacao would an anticoagulant toxin (aptly jewellery and porcelain.
there are over 1,300 species of insects in mid-air. They find them have a problem surviving. If you named Draculin) which helps Watching bats fly at night should
bats, only 3 species are vampires. using echolocation, a biological like tequila you should be grateful stroke victims. indeed inspire delight.

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