The End Of The Second World War

A Memory of Streatham.

Newly born in October 1939, and with the Second World War just starting, I was quickly evacuated to a village called Harpley in Norfolk. My dad, who was in a reserved occupation, remained in London, but for whatever reasons, wanted us home towards the end of the war, during the Doodlebug campaign. My first memories of Streatham are from about four years old towards the end of 1944. Our house was in Baldry Gardens near the high road end. I remember that it was covered in scaffolding, and I had to sleep down in the coal cellar on a deck chair for safety. There were not many bombing raids at this time, as Germany was too busy defending its home territory, but there were quite a few false alarms when sirens sounded but nothing happened. Most of the V1s were landing short of London, some of which landed in Streatham. One landed on Streatham Common, which was only a few hundred yards away from us. The whole house shook, and I heard glass shattering. It was pitch black in the cellar, then suddenly the whole sky seemed to light up through the grid that covered the coal chute.  I remember mum coming down the cellar steps to make sure I was all right. After that night, nothing else as serious as that happened again, although I remember Dad taking me up on the roof through the skylight one night to watch what must have been one of the last air raids of the war. Guns boomed out, and searchlights were everywhere, and there was a strong smell of aviation spirit in the air from ruptured fuel tanks.  When we came down, Dad took me into the living room where there was a blazing hot coal fire. Mum screamed at him. With all that aviation spirit about, we had got quite a lot on our clothes.  We could have gone up like tinder-boxes! This was my most vivid memory of Streatham. A neighbour who I recently made contact with, suggested that it wasn't an air-raid by the Luffewaffe as there were no night raids at that time, but it was probably a V1 raid, and the guns were attempting to knock out the V1s coming over.  The ruptured fuel tanks may have been our own planes being accidentally hit by our own ack-ack guns, or alternatively, our brave pilots made some daring manoeuvres to attempt to scuttle the V1s in mid-air, and one might have exploded, destroying itself, but also the fighter plane that scuttled it.  This was quite common. I remember a building was mentioned that suffered damage during that raid, called Walkers Building on the corner of Hopton Road. Does anyone know what happened to it?