Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s (42 page)

The need to secure the maximum cooperation of the building trade meant a notable step forward in joint consultation between management and men. The official historian believed that ‘the local progress committees’ now set up, consisting of representatives nominated by the Building Employers’ Federation and the building trades unions, ‘played a notable part both in keeping up the pace of the repair work and in sustaining the morale of the public and the workers’.

In spite of general criticism of the bomb damage repair in the press and elsewhere, the people of Greater London were on the whole greatly cheered by the energy and success with which large-scale first-aid repairs were carried out, and they were gratified to see their local representatives joining with those of both sides of the industry in the control of the work.

By January 1945 about 25,000 of the 130,000 building force were living in hostels and camps and many more were in other accommodation away from home. There existed, it was officially acknowledged, a need for ‘hot drinks on the site’ –
i.e.
the cherished tea-break – and for ‘lavatory, washing and drying facilities’, but even feeding an influx of carpenters, bricklayers and plumbers could provide a problem. Occasionally such men were given priority in local cafés during the dinner hour or taken by lorry to British Restaurants, the cheap publicly-run cafeterias opened earlier in the war, which were now sometimes kept open on Sundays for their benefit. Mobile canteens, operating on at least a hundred sites, also helped, and the Ministry of Labour thought the feeding arrangements satisfactory in 83 per cent of the places inspected. A fair index of morale was unjustifiable absenteeism, and at the end of November this was put at under 3 per cent, most of this occurring on Sundays.

Sensibly enough, men away from home sought what recreation they could, and one man then employed on repair work in West Ham remembers seeing an Irish gang one Sunday afternoon playing toss-halfpenny:

There was quite a large ring of men with pound notes at their feet. One man was tossing the halfpennies, I was standing watching, when suddenly a hot wind started screaming around us, lifting the money into a whirlpool. I threw myself down just as the houses around started falling. Then came the explosion. . . . On looking up, the first thing I saw was pound notes flying about and the Irishmen trying to catch them with no worry about falling debris.

To conserve scarce materials as well as labour, maximum (rather than, as was customary, minimum) standards of repair were laid down by the government, which ruled that, during first – and second-stage work, only essential rooms in daily use should be dealt with, and that walls and woodwork should only be painted to make them weatherproof, not for decoration. Non-standard doors and window frames which could not easily be repaired could be replaced by others, however ill fitting and unsightly: half the roof could be covered with slates below standard size, or with concrete tiles; and half the windows given opaque glass. To increase the total number of dwellings available, preference might be given to larger houses, to be occupied by several families, at the expense of smaller ones providing shelter for only one or two people.

The normal limit on repairs was a value of £500, sufficient before the war to buy a comfortable semidetached house in most places. It was realized that often it would take fewer man-hours to build a brand-new house than to reconstruct an existing one, but this solution, owing to shortage of materials, was not possible. House building had, for practical purposes, ceased in 1940 and in the whole of 1944—45 only 5500 permanent homes were built by local authorities and another 1800 by private firms, mainly for the police and armed forces. A few – a very few – ‘Portal’ houses had been built, and some (as mentioned earlier) had already been destroyed by a V-2, but by the end of the war only about 2000 were finished and occupied. The V-2s, in other words, did a great deal to create the housing shortage that was to be the dominant social problem of the immediate post-war years, and before the war finished their effects were visible all around in the oddly unfinished and usually shabby look of houses where the repairers had been at work and in the makeshift, temporary appearance of such property inside.

It was to be a long time before those bombed out were able to forget the experience and resume a normal life. These were the experiences of a South Norwood woman, a soldier’s wife, whose home, as described earlier, had been destroyed in late October 1944:
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The only clothes we had were those we stood in. . . . We were sent to various centres, such as the WVS, etc., but were finally fixed up handsomely at the American Red Cross, who gave us some really good clothes, also some toys for my son. . . . The remains of our home were carted off to a large empty house in Auckland Road and when the council eventually found us a requisitioned place at Addington, Surrey, we went to collect our stuff from this house. The sight was most pathetic. It looked completely useless, covered in dirt and dust, a piano half smashed, tables with legs missing, broken chairs. One of the clocks, however, still survived in working order, also a utility wireless set. . . . We obtained some compensation under the War Chattels scheme, plus a full quota of furniture and clothing vouchers, but this did not help a lot, as things could not be obtained. . . . In fact we did not obtain a bed to sleep on for about another twelve months, having to sleep either on the floor or on some camp beds provided by the council.

My final report on this incident is that it was one of the most difficult ones that have had to be dealt with.

Civil Defence official on Hughes Mansions, Stepney, 27 March 1945

The V-2 attack had begun gradually. It ended suddenly, at the peak of its ferocity. The last week was, in terms of casualties, one of the worst of the whole campaign. As spring approached there seemed no good reason why the rockets should not continue to fall in undiminished, or even greater, numbers till the end of the war. At least, however, the weather had improved, as a strangely complacent Ministry of Information handout later recalled: ‘In March clear blue skies made it possible for people to see rockets bursting in the air.’

On 1 March 1945 Dr Jones, better aware than anyone of the country’s danger from the rockets, updated the analysis he had prepared in January of where the rockets were landing. The diagram he prepared showing the distribution of the first 420 rockets – about half of the total – confirmed his earlier impression of a ‘comet-like’ distribution stretching back to the east coast, with its foremost edge on the north bank of the Thames, and an apparent aiming-point at Wapping, one of the poorest parts of that distinctly poor borough, Stepney.

Stepney was in turn one of ten boroughs within Group 3 of the London Civil Defence Region, which, including V-2s still to come, came fourth in the table of rocket-affected areas, with 45. Where Stepney and its neighbours were exceptionally unfortunate, however, was in the number of ‘outstanding incidents’ which occurred there: 12 of the whole country’s total of 50. The group’s casualty figures, 602 dead and 1141 seriously injured, were the second largest. This was, of course, due to the relatively small area, 20½ square miles, the group covered, much of it, like Wapping itself, a place of large warehouses and mean streets of small terraced houses, heavily built up. Within the ten boroughs the rockets were very unevenly distributed, roughly in inverse relation to the wealth of those who lived or owned property there. Thus the famous ‘square mile’ of the City of London had no V-2s at all within its privileged precincts, though 146 people were seriously injured there by missiles falling outside its boundaries, and twenty landed near premises owned by the City Corporation in other parts of London, a reminder of how widespread the rocket nuisance was. Holborn had one V-2 incident, already described,
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Stoke Newington, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green each had two. Stoke Newington’s two incidents, in Green Lanes on 8 and 10 January 1945, apparently – if the Ministry of Home Security list is correct – caused no casualties. Shoreditch’s two rockets killed 18 people and injured 197, Bethnal Green’s 26 and 80 respectively, all but one of the fatal casualties, and more than half of the rest, occurring in Totty Street and the neighbouring Lesada Street, at 7.40 p.m. on the evening of 22 November. ‘I have never heard such a bang in my life’, wrote a woman, previously quoted, who helped to run a local evening institute, to her soldier husband from her home in Earls Court next day. ‘It was louder than the landmine that went off on top of us in the Dover Road, Blackheath, and . . . seemed to jar one’s whole body as if one had fallen downstairs.’ Its effect on the East-Enders, who had already endured so much, was traumatic, as her subsequent letter, on 28 November, makes clear:

Three of our members, of the regular stalwart variety, have been killed, and dozens have lost their homes. . . . These wretched little houses collapse at the breath of a blast. We had about thirty kids in last night instead of the usual 120 and even these were quiet and dismal to the most astonishing degree. T. and his wife [the school caretakers] are very much the worse for wear, shivering with cold, tired, headachy and exhibiting all the characteristic symptoms of shock.

The New Year brought no respite to Bethnal Green. Early in February another V-2 landed in Parminter Street, in the centre of the borough, close to the town hall, as the same correspondent reported to her husband.

6 February 1945. You will be sorry to learn that poor Mrs X [who ran the institute canteen and lived nearby] was severely blasted by a rocket on Sunday evening [4 February]. You may remember that she had her home totally destroyed in 1940. This time it was merely windows, doors and badly damaged furniture. Mr T., who was visiting, had a bash on the head and glass cuts in his scalp, which are, I think, much more serious than he pretends. He seemed only half conscious yesterday.

Stepney’s first, but by no means its last, ‘outstanding incident’ occurred in Goulston Street, very close to the site of the famous Sunday morning ‘Petticoat Lane’ market in adjoining Middlesex Street. Fortunately this rocket landed on a weekday, at 2.20 in the afternoon of Friday, 10 November, but the results were bad enough: 19 dead and 97 other major casualties.
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A fireman stationed in Whitechapel was ‘in attendance’.

We had finished our lunch and were on ‘stand-easy’, which was normal after a complete scrubbing of the station floors. All appliances cleaned up and everything freshened up and ready for . . . another week of routines and incidents. I was talking to one of my mates on the first floor when there was a terrific double bang, near enough to shake the whole building. In no time I was down the pole and on the pump, the bells were still ringing as we left the station, their ringing to be taken up by the deeper clanging of our fire bells as we sped towards the dense cloud of reddish brown dust, so thick it was hard to see through it. We stopped a few yards down Middlesex Street, the glass and bricks thick underfoot. . . .

We jumped from the pump and it was a case of each member of the crew of five working on his own, locating and rescuing trapped victims. Shovels could not be used, debris had to be moved piece by piece, brick by brick. My first job came within a few yards of where we stopped our pump. A red Brooke Bond van lay on its side; the horse had gone but the driver was trapped under the van. By this time quite a number of men were around, and shouting to them to lift the van, I crawled under and dragged him free. He was injured and with willing hands was laid near the van. He was worried about his wallet with the day’s taking in it, which was in his overcoat under the van seat. I went back and got his coat and wallet, placing his wallet in his hand and making a pillow of his coat. A doctor came along and said ‘OK, fireman, I’ll look after him.’ . . .

Moving on, I met a number of people and some of our crew. They said they were looking for a girl, missing from a shop or office demolished by the rocket. I believe by that time all others had been accounted for. What had been blocks of flats and shops and offices were now a smoking heap of rubble.

Pieces of timber and large pieces of concrete were passed hand to hand and placed in a space already searched. Occasionally we came to a spot where we could scrape bricks and dust away fairly easily. It was on one of these occasions that I thought I could feel a cushion through a hole I had made, but soon realized that it was human hair I was holding. Calling for help, I was relieved when the other members of our crew came and soon enlarged the hole enough to show the girl’s head. A doctor and stretcher were called for and both were there within a minute. The doctor asked me to hold her head back whilst he looked at her eyes and examined her head, which was severely gashed. He shook his head and we finished getting her body free and on to the stretcher. We spent the rest of the time on this incident putting out a few minor fires that were still smouldering among the debris. I remember looking up at what had been the inside wall of a third-floor flat and seeing not only the fire grate still intact but the ashes of a fire still glowing red and smoking.

An officer of the LCC heavy rescue service has equally vivid memories of what became known as ‘the Petticoat Lane incident’. First came the strange sight of ‘men and women . . . running out into the street minus their clothes’ because ‘the public baths had been partly demolished’. Then, as darkness fell and a fog descended, the searchlight unit was called in, producing another incongruous spectacle:

During the evening it had been snowing heavily. . . . The fierce glare of the searchlight lit up every corner of the snow-covered debris and thousands of twittering starlings, no doubt thinking it was sunlight, were circling amid the falling snowflakes around and around overhead, their wings silver in the rays of the light.

Stepney averaged during the V-2 campaign roughly one missile a month, so that one could never feel free of danger. The fireman whose experiences at Goulston Street have just been quoted became, one spring-like morning in 1945, a casualty himself:

I came off duty one fine sunny morning at 0900 hours. . . . Having a whole day to myself I decided to walk along Commercial Road towards Stepney Station to buy myself a sponge roll and a few things to take on duty next morning. . . . A few hundred yards along on my return journey to Whitechapel, I was passing a bombed-out shop, the windows of which had been barricaded with corrugated-iron sheets. The sun was shining and people were going about their normal daily routines. . . . A double-decker bus was discharging passengers about fifty yards ahead of me . . . when I suddenly found myself on the ground, buried by the corrugated-iron sheets from the shop front. All was dark and dusty. . . . I managed to get to my feet. My fireman’s cap was still on my head, the swiss roll still in my hand and, like the rest of me, was as black as the ace of spades with dust and soot from the damaged shop.

I realized that a V-2 had fallen, yet I had not heard a thing, and, to my surprise, had not even been scratched. Looking along the road I saw the bus on its side, with people being assisted from it. Somebody in the pub shouted something about his mate bleeding. . . . My ears were gaining their normal sense of hearing and the bells I thought were ringing in my head were actually those of the pump from my own station arriving to help in the rescue work. . . .

Next morning I was back on duty at 0900 hours and at tea-break, about 10.45, agreed to have a quick game of darts, but when I tried adding up my score I found that I could not count properly. . . . The ‘old man’ [in charge of the station] . . . sent me to my doctor who said I was suffering a severe nerve shake-up and promptly put me on the sick list for one week. Actually I was fit again within a few days, but the extra days off gave me a good chance to catch up on some much-needed rest.

Hackney, in the north-eastern part of Group 3, was hit by 10 V-2s, which killed 51 people and seriously injured 58, largely in two ‘outstanding incidents’, in Canley Road in the early hours of Thursday, 7 December, and in Woodland Street exactly four weeks later, around teatime on 4 January. Islington, with 8 rockets, suffered far more casualties, 161 dead and 133 badly hurt, thanks to four ‘outstanding incidents’. The first was at Grovedale Road, on 5 November; the rest were concentrated in a three-week period about Christmas, which included the ‘pub bombing’ at Mackenzie Road already described,
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a serious residential incident at Stroud Green Road, just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, and another at Salterton Road at 6 a.m. on 13 January. Poplar had 9 V-2s, leaving 51 dead and 51 seriously injured, with an ‘outstanding incident’ early on in the campaign, at 8.30 p.m. on 24 November in McCullum Road, already mentioned and another near its end, around midday on 7 March in Ide Street, in each of which nearly half the total casualty list occurred.

Throughout this period the steady drain of ‘minor’ incidents, in which perhaps a dozen people were killed or injured, continued, contributing to the perpetual cloud of grim anticipation which hung over the whole East End and of more prosperous suburbs further out. The evening-institute teacher previously quoted, travelling daily between rocket-free Earls Court and rocket-plagued Bethnal Green, was deeply conscious of how localized the nuisance was, as she made clear to her husband in a letter in early February:

I am surprised at your ignorance of the present rocket situation. . . . They are still coming over but in a very restricted area. Almost everyone I know in the eastern suburbs, Ilford and Epping Forest way, has been blasted two or three times in the past month. One Sunday the district was positively plastered, and they all came to work looking like ghosts. The papers are so quiet about it that no one seems to be particularly concerned. . . . How incredible it is that this business should be still going on, with the Russians almost at the gates of Berlin!

Nor, at last, was it only the Russians who were advancing. On 16 January 1945 the British and American armies containing von Rundstedt’s pre-Christmas thrust into the Ardennes joined hands; the German counter-offensive had finally failed. On 5 March the Western Allies reached the Rhine, crossing it in strength on the 23rd. The Germans in Holland still held grimly on, firing off V-2s in undiminished numbers in what the woman just quoted considered ‘the last display of spite before the surrender’. In the week ending at noon on 7 March 1945, 58 V-2s arrived, 36 of which reached London. From 7 to 14 March, and again from 14 to 21 March, 62 reached the United Kingdom; in the following week, the 29th of the offensive and the 249th in the Ministry of Home Security’s wartime records, there were 46.

These final shots included some of the most deadly of the whole campaign, producing no fewer than eight ‘outstanding’ incidents, two of which, at Folkestone Gardens, Deptford, on 7 March, and the Great West Road at Heston, on 21 March, have already been described.
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Four of the others, at West Ham, Poplar, Leyton and Enfield, attracted little attention outside their immediate localities. Two more of Kammler’s closing salvoes were to demonstrate that, whatever might be happening to the German armies elsewhere, Abteilung 485 was still very much in action.