A 102-year-old former staff sergeant’s memories of escaping the Blitz

Staff sergeant Ernest Horsfall, now102, recalls his narrow escape as the Blitz hit the UK

As a young man from Bradford, I joined the Army in March 1940, aged 21, and was sent down to London that August – just as the Blitz was getting going. At 6pm every evening the sirens went off. It was chaos.

I was a private with the Army Ordnance Corps and was posted to St Dunstan’s College in Catford, south-east London. The college is still there today, which is more than you can say for many other buildings that didn’t survive the Blitz.

There were about 200 of us posted at the college and 50 or 60 brand-new six-wheel Leyland chassis [trucks]. Our job was to fit the vehicles up for various duties [such as transport, engineering and supplies]. We were working on rota systems with civilian mechanics and doing guard duties as well.

One night our guard room got hit by a bomber. There were about 12 lads in there. Nobody was killed, but they were all badly injured. They were taken to hospital and I never saw them again. That was the opposite shift to mine – and on another night it could have been me.

One night, a landmine came down on a large parachute and spread itself over a derelict tram outside one of our workshops. I was sleeping in this workshop and sharing guard duties when the mine went off. There was a metal roll door on the other side of the building and the explosion blew it out like the sail of a ship, and the roof caught fire. There was a truck in the workshop that I tried to drive away, but the force of the blast had burst all the tyres.

Eventually the fire burnt itself out and I went to the airraid shelter on the opposite side of the road. The corporal who was meant to be on guard was crouched down, hiding – he was a bloody great coward.

Fear didn’t come into it for me. You can’t be scared all day, every day and at 21, what are you scared of anyway?

We had a dining room in our barracks and had a dance every other Saturday, which we would invite local civilian girls to. Once a month we would go into the West End. The pubs were so crowded in those days that you had to fight your way to the bar to get a drink, even when the bombers were flying overhead.

I remember whole families being camped down on the Tube platforms and having to climb over them to get on the train – but the atmosphere was still cheerful. The devastation was everywhere. You would very often see bits of German bombers, which had been shot down, on street corners. Sometimes they would be there for months before someone removed them.

There were lots of civilian casualties, too. Three girls from our local coffee shop got hit one night – one of them was killed and two badly injured.

It was a relief when the Blitz ended after eight months. I sailed to North Africa in May 1941 and was quickly promoted to staff sergeant. The following year, I joined the newly formed Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. In 1944, I was posted to Italy and eventually came home in August 1945.

After the war, I worked for Vauxhall Motors and met my wife Nora (who died in 2011 after 57 years of marriage. We also had a son, Peter, who died in 2001).

Looking back at the Blitz now, I remember how quickly it just became a way of life. And I can still hear the sound of those bombs in the distance. — Interview by Joe Shute britishlegion.org.uk

Mornington Crescent in London, after being hit in a German bombing raid in 1940

Horsfall (right) in Egypt in 1942