We can’t quite believe it, but it has been one whole year since the release of Bill Wyman’s touching and enlightening childhood memoir Billy in the Wars.
Thank you to all the readers who have enjoyed Bill’s title this past year, especially all the young readers who connected with this wartime tale!
If you haven’t yet read Bill’s journey through the Blitz, then here is the opening chapter to Billy in the Wars – complete with Eoin Marron’s illustrations.
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Beginnings
I am named after my father, William George Perks, who came from Lower Sydenham in South East London. He was born poor, I mean Charles Dickens poor, and had become since the age of fourteen a bricklayer by trade. On 16th of January 1935, he celebrated his twenty-first birthday by walking with his mate the three miles to the Penge Empire to see the Music Hall — the traditional variety concerts that were the most popular live entertainment at the time.
With the cheapest tickets in their hands, they climbed the stairs to the top of the house, only to find two very pretty girls sitting in their seats. Too shy and overcome with their beauty to ask them to move, they sat in the two empty seats directly next to the girls. During the interval they plucked up enough courage to converse with the girls and asked if they could walk them home after the show. Flattered by the boys’ interest, the girls agreed. It turned out William and his mate both fancied Kathleen May Jeffery, known to her family and friends as Molly, so they tossed a coin to see who would be the one to walk her home. William called his favourite ‘lucky tails’, which he had called eight years earlier when captaining The Lewisham Schoolboy’s cup-winning football team and earning him his one and only medal. He won, and later walked Molly the short distance to her home around the corner.
At Molly’s doorstep they chatted, and as the sharp wind chilled them, William and Molly agreed to meet again soon, and their courtship began. Fate has always been present in my life, with events out of my control. I can’t imagine what would have happened if Dad had called heads. The right toss seemed destined to happen.
Their meetings were unchaperoned, and they were restricted to public walks in the local lanes or romantically strolling by the little River Beck that meandered through Kelsey Park in Penge. Sometimes Dad would scrape together enough money to take Molly to the local cinema to see the latest romantic film. He was falling in love, and he invited her to his home to meet his family and friends. They were having an evening of ‘sing-songs’, where he played, having taught himself the piano and piano accordion when he was younger.
Six months after that first meeting, they were sitting on a park bench holding hands. I can well imagine my dad looking at his shoes, in his usual embarrassed way, and mumbling the words, “Will you marry me?” He didn’t have money for an engagement ring, but Molly didn’t care, and eagerly agreed, also fallen in love.
The following weekend William and Molly wanted to celebrate in style, and they went on a day’s outing by train to Southend-on-Sea in Essex. After an enjoyable time together on the warm and sunny beach, they strolled along the sea front, window-shopping. There they came upon a small photographic studio, where they had their very first photo taken.
After she left school at the age of fourteen, my mother Molly had gone into domestic service for a family in Dulwich and was now happy to start a family of her own. My father, being the second oldest of ten children, had been contributing to his family’s financial survival, together with helping to look after his younger brothers and sisters. But he had been saving a little money of his own as best he could, and he and Molly went together to a department store in Peckham, where they bought furniture for the tiny little flat that he had rented in Forest Hill in preparation for their wedding. The total cost was £75.12.0d, and William paid a deposit of £4.10.0d and agreed to pay ten shillings a week to pay it off. Molly was now eighteen, and dad was twenty-one.
With the coming of potential war in the background, they were married on his mother’s birthday, Christmas Day 1935, at Christchurch, Penge, where Molly’s family attended services, and where I would sing there as a choir boy years later. It was a small, quiet wedding, and being impoverished, there were no photos taken to celebrate their special day. I would realise in later years that mum become pregnant with me soon after, and exactly a year to the day of father tossing that coin at the Penge Empire.
Three months later they left their tiny flat in Forest Hill, and moved to 38 Miall Road, Lower Sydenham — further up the street from Dad’s parents’ house. There, my parents would often sit listening to the disturbing news of Germany’s military build-up on Grandfather’s handmade radio. It was possibly one of the only radios in our street, which consisted of ordinary terraced houses. They were all the same, three up and three down, with a small fenced-in front garden and a hedge. They had gas lighting, no bathroom, no electricity or heating or hot water, and the toilets were in the small back gardens attached to the rear of the houses.
In August 1936, Adolf Hitler opened the Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, with the intention of glorifying the Aryan race and the Nazi regime. But Jesse Owens, the Black American track and field athlete became the star, winning four gold medals, and a furious Hitler stormed out of the stadium.
I was born two months later, just before midnight on Saturday 24th October 1936 at Lewisham Hospital. While there, mother caught scarlet fever and we were put into an isolation ward for a week. My father’s visits consisted of standing below her window waving. Mum told me years later that he was very sad to be unable to spend time with his new wife and their first-born baby. She also told me that after we left the hospital, I was a problem baby. The neighbours complained so much about me crying, that my parents had to take turns walking me in the street at night in my pram until I fell asleep. This embarrassed Dad no end, as he was not happy to be seen doing what he regarded as ‘women’s work’.
When my grandmother Florence Jeffery (Mum’s mother) came to the family gathering at our house to see the new-born baby for the first time, she picked me up in front of everyone and announced, “This child is going to be world-famous.” Both my dad and everyone else there thought she was joking, and they all burst into laughter. It was unheard of in those days for a boy growing up in a working-class family to aspire to anything better than his parents.
In the highest part of London above Sydenham Hill at this time, stood the stunningly magnificent palace of glass called the Crystal Palace. It was originally built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had it built to inspire the world with Britain’s industrial achievements. When the original exhibition closed, the enormous glass and metal structure was relocated, and designed larger to impress. It brought life to our neighbourhood with unbelievable galleries of artefacts from all parts of the world, with extensive gardens and fountains. They would be later grassed over and converted into entertainment and sports facilities. The English F.A. Cup Finals were held there from 1895 to 1914, and the Crystal Palace football team was named after it when formed in 1905. They have been my favourite team since Dad took me to my first match after the war, on my tenth birthday in October 1946.
In the late evening of Monday 30th November 1936, when I was just five weeks old, my parents stood in the street holding me in their arms and experienced this magnificent glass building being destroyed by fire. They were mesmerised by the massive red glow that illuminated the south London sky for hours and hearing the wails of almost a hundred fire engines that came from all over London. They were unable to save it, and the magnificent Crystal Palace was burnt to the ground, never to rise again.
Throughout 1937 my parents were aware of the grave concerns across Britain, of Germany seen to be increasing their military build-up and holding the largest manoeuvres since the First World War. In response, Britain and France began to increase their own military strength. Plans were also being made for the future evacuation on a voluntary basis for mothers and children to leave London and other major cities if war became imminent.
The threat of possible war with Germany increased when on 12th March 1938, they annexed Austria, and it was decreed by the British Government that air raid shelters should be erected in Britain’s towns and cities. England had been manufacturing gas masks for some time, and began demonstrating them to the public, in fear of Germany possibly launching gas attacks, as they had done in the trenches in the First World War. By August that year the Royal Air Force was greatly strengthened when the legendary British Spitfire fighter plane entered service.
However, fears of war were put aside briefly, when on 30th September, Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, arrived home from meetings in Munich announcing to the cheering crowd and media that war had been averted. He was waving the agreement that Hitler had signed promising ‘Peace in Our Time’.
A month later my brother Brian John was born but was always known as John. I was told by Mum that I had been a very early walker and talker — as she put it. But John was frailer than me, and Mother took a great shine to him, seeming to be much more attentive to his needs than mine. She expected me to just get on with it, which I did in the end, resulting in me becoming much more independent that he would ever be.
In February 1939, Anderson air raid shelters, made with corrugated metal, were being installed as planned in most back gardens. They were partly covered by a foot of soil for more protection. Then gas masks were issued to everyone. The smaller children’s masks were made to resemble Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse in an attempt to make them less daunting. The older children had more grown-up ones and were obliged to carry them wherever they went, in brown leather boxes with shoulder straps. I remember Mum later showing me how to put a gas mask on over my face, causing me to feel very claustrophobic, and scared and worried that I wouldn’t be able to breathe with it on.
Meanwhile, Germany had completed its occupation of Czechoslovakia, and signed a military alliance with Italy, which increased the possibility of war. Britain and France pledged to defend Poland against any attacks by Germany, and the Territorial Army was doubled, and Britain began to seriously brace itself for war.
In late August, Blackout Regulations were imposed by the government. This required the public to put tape across the window glass, and then to cover all of the windows and doors with whatever materials they could find. This was done to stop the house lights being seen and benefitting the German planes if they attacked our towns. Throughout my early childhood I would live with these blacked out windows, being unable to look out into our street, and being scared of the total darkness it caused in the house at night. A fear that has stayed with me into my adult life.
Street lighting was also extinguished, and vehicles were required to drive on their dimmed side lights, making driving much more difficult. However, England was blessed by the invention of what was called ‘cats eyes’ by the Yorkshire inventor and businessman Percy Shaw. They were made of flexible rubber and could be driven over without a problem. They contained two marbles that would reflect any small light, making it possible for drivers to follow the centre of the darkened roads in safety. The downside was that when us children got a little older, we began to damage these, having discovered that we could dig out the marbles to play with.
It was then advised that mothers and children should start to think about possible evacuation from the cities. But families were confused and concerned about being separated from their loved ones. I imagined my parents would have had many conversations with friends and relatives looking for guidance. They finally decided that we could not evacuate at that moment in time. Because of my mother’s pregnancy, and with two small children under the age of three in tow, relocation was physically out of the question.
Billy in the Wars is available in paperback and on the Kindle Store.
Special signed copies of the hardback are also available.