Kilburn In The War

A Memory of Kilburn.

Born in Kilburn Square in the early 30's we moved to Iverson Road and were there during the war. I used to act as messenger for the ARP who used the DOB club in Maygrove Road as their base and went to Beckford school walking through the Black Path by the LMS station to get there. In January 1945 a V2 exploded over the railway behind Iverson putting my mother and I in hospital for three months and killing our landlady. The plot holding our house is now a children's playground. My friend Sandy was calling for me when the bomb exploded and lost an eye, he used to say "I'm not coming to your house again, you knock on the door and the house falls down" I remember taking wireless accumulators round to a place in Maygrove Road to be charged, also to Coffees newsagents in West End Lane for cigarettes for dad, in the war it was usually only Tenners. On the way to school we used to taunt the huge Great Dane in Taveners wood yard near the top of Iversons. When we came home from hospital Gillings the butchers in Brondesbury kindly gave us meat more than the ration allowed and Liptons gave us a dozen eggs. We were rehoused in Sherriff Road and by this time I had moved on to William Ellis School at Gospel Oak. Later in life my daughter played in a scout band in the final Gang Show at the State but we had moved to Edgware.