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I was a product of the war years. We learned to be street smart, to survive without food and to take care of ourselves in a fight. We lived just for the day. Tomorrow we could be blown to bits.

We grew up with a strong sense of loyalty, bravery and honour instilled into our psyche – even at the risk of death. Although I was too young to fight in the war, the lesson was drummed in: if you were captured by the Gestapo, you would never reveal information, no matter what the outcome. The public were continually brainwashed. Everywhere you looked, on trains and buses, were slogans like: ‘Be like Dad, keep Mum’, ‘Careless talk costs lives’ and ‘Walls have ears’.

As kids, we practised our reading on these public propaganda signs, which were not exclusively directed against the enemy. They also advised on the nation’s health: ‘Coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Trap the germs in your handkerchief and help to keep the nation fighting fit.’

In the struggle to survive within our own little world, the ‘enemy’ became the authorities and the lessons from all that propaganda brainwashing we received as children applied to them too. Cossers in particular: my father’s refusal to talk to police, let alone acknowledge them, was virtually inborn in the family.

The English are a barbaric and warrior-like race, although the public only recognises this attribute during wars. Young men in particular need to let off steam and prisons would have far fewer inmates if the authorities helped youths channel their energies in positive ways.

I am a warrior. I would defend England to the death if need be, and I admire the fighting spirit for which we have been recognised throughout the ages. I remember reading a Roman soldier’s account of the bravery of a British warrior fighting with Queen Boudicca when she rose against the Romans. The soldier sliced the British warrior through the jaw with an axe. A lesser man would have fallen but not the Briton. He tucked his beard into his mouth, holding it with clenched teeth and came back on the attack with his jaw wide open.

Nothing has changed since then. We proved it during the First and Second World Wars and in the Falklands. We are a fighting nation and I’m proud of the fact. Even Hitler said, ‘Give me the British soldier and a German officer and I’ll conquer the world.’ That inbred loyalty, which wins battles and keeps alive national pride, is also evident in prisons. The men I served time with would sacrifice their liberty to stay solid with you.

Looking back, I have learned to understand some of the forces that dictated my actions. Being brought up in a violent era was one factor; obviously, I went over the top on a number of occasions and I would put that down to the madness of youth. Although young men at the time never considered the implications, if someone died as a result of a fight you could very easily find yourself facing a murder charge. And in the 1950s and 1960s, the death penalty was still in force. In spite of that, you continued to risk life and liberty by doing violent battle with others.

As young men, we had no fear. Nobody wanted to lose their freedom or their life, but there was literally nothing that could frighten us. Physical pain was something you accepted as inevitable and confidence inspired by youth made you think you were infallible. If you took part in a serious fight and someone got hurt, you would take every precaution to avoid arrest, but, at the crucial point of battle, nothing could deter you, particularly if your foe was a liberty-taker.

In 1939 when I was seven, Sheepcote Lane was pulled down and we moved to a brand-new block of flats at 32 Croxteth House, Union Street, Wandsworth Road. This was luxury compared to before. Our new home was a three-bedroom council flat that had electricity and a bathroom and wash basin – thank God, no more tin baths.

The only downside – which became obvious to us a couple of months after moving in – was the location. Opposite us was a projectile-munitions factory identified to the enemy by Fifth Columnists. As a result, the factory – and the surrounding area – became a target for German bombers. Next to the factory was a foundry and we would watch a small train carrying the white-hot, glowing shells for storage on a concrete base across the road. In the winter, we kids stood close to the shells for warmth. The factory was targeted many times during the war, but only hit twice. Most streets in the area were wiped out by bombs missing their mark, though.

War was part of our lives. My first memory of it was watching an aerial dogfight high above London on a clear summer’s day. The sky became a spaghetti junction of vapour trails from Spitfires and Messerschmitts. At first, nobody took any notice. It was only when the blackout sirens sounded that we were warned to get under cover to avoid fallout from shrapnel.

From our first-floor window at Croxteth House, I would watch the WAAF girls practise putting up barrage balloons filled with helium gas to deter bombers from flying too low. We lived in daily fear of bombs. Other than being killed outright by a direct hit, windows and doors represented the greatest threat of injury: flying glass could be a killer, and so could a door ripped off its hinges and sent flying through the room. We were advised to cover the glass to stop it shattering or, if the windows were blown out, to staple translucent material in their place until workmen could be sent to make repairs.

There were six concrete shelters at the back of our flats, with bunk beds littered around them. When the bombing started, people would pour into them, bringing their bedding and food. There were no toilets, just tin buckets behind a tarpaulin sheet for about 40 people. Even back then I thought it was quite degrading to hear the sound of adults urinating all through the night. The refuge the shelters provided was awful. There was no privacy. From a dark corner you would hear couples carrying on their sex lives, grunting and groaning: ‘Ooh, you’re hurting me, Joe!’ Through half-closed eyes, I would be trying to see what was going on, but I couldn’t work out why two people should be lying on top of each other facing the same way…

All my older brothers joined up and fought in the war. Watching them go was a stirring experience. Young men dressed in uniform with kitbags and rifles making their way down to Parliament Square, Westminster, under the gaze of Big Ben. Their first steps to war began with a march across Westminster Bridge amid the fanfare of brass bands and cheering crowds; but they didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for. The younger kids followed them all the way to Waterloo Station. Later, the young servicemen were to say it was safer being with the Forces than facing the Blitz in London.

I still find it hard to believe that some people are alive today who have not been properly educated about what happened to England, and in particular Londoners, during the Blitz. The word Blitz comes from the German Blitzkrieg, which literally means ‘lightning war’. The attacks would happen so quickly – and so devastatingly. By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians had been killed and more than a million houses destroyed or damaged. When the Germans invented the pilotless V1 and V2 bombs, they raised the death toll to 51,509 in 1944 – an astonishing figure when you compare it to the 2,819 that died in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York. Another common misconception is that the Blitz lasted only between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941 in World War II. Oh, no. We lived in fear every day until 1944, and even then the V2 rockets had only just started to fall.

Before the war began in 1939, Wally was in the Territorials, awaiting a posting abroad, but he immediately joined the Royal Artillery, when battle commenced. Herbie had already joined the King’s Royal Rifles (my father’s old regiment) in 1939 and George was in the navy. When the bombing got too bad, I was evacuated with my brother Bert (and 650,000 other children). The people who billeted kids got about 50 pence a week per child – quite a decent amount of money. But it was horrible for me.

The first time I was sent away I was given an apple, an orange, a bar of chocolate and a gas mask in a cardboard box with a string around it. You never went anywhere without that. My name tag was attached by safety pin to my coat, and we said a tearful goodbye to my parents at Waterloo Station.

Bert and I arrived at Woking and were taken to a church hall. We sat on the floor while people walked about, picking children out like cattle. Some stopped in front of Bert and me: ‘I’ll take him, not that one…’

An official replied, ‘You can’t separate them, they’re brothers.’ But they did.

Bert was chosen by a nice family. They had a lovely home and later wanted to adopt him. I was left on my own, feeling totally rejected. Out of a church hall full of young kids, I had endured the pain of watching each of the others being chosen by a host family, wondering when my turn would come. When they took my brother away, my heart sank. How could they leave me? Why not take me? What was wrong with me? I was heartbroken.

Evacuees were generally looked down on. Eventually, an awful woman with five children of her own picked me out. Now that Bert had been taken away from me, I felt completely alone. I was as miserable as arseholes. The woman’s place was dirty. We all had to pile in the same bed with her sons. One morning I woke to find myself and the sheets covered in blood. This kid I was sleeping with had TB and had been coughing up blood throughout the night.

To wash me, this woman would try to get me to stand in the sink with no clothes on. I didn’t like it. There was no relationship within that family. The old man never acknowledged us. There was no conversation and very little to eat. At least at home in London there was love, cleanliness and food. I was billeted for only one reason: to supplement the family income by 50 pence.

My mother visited me there to see if I was all right. Hoping she’d come to collect me, I ran over to her expectantly and she leaned over the fence at the school playground saying, ‘Look at the state of you, Fred.’ And then, to my embarrassment, in front of the other kids, she spat on her handkerchief and tried to clean me up, washing my face and my ears. She even came back to the house with me and I remember thinking, as she viewed the dirt and squalor, ‘She’s bound to take me home!’ But she didn’t. The bombing in London was still too heavy.

Now I was really miserable again. My mother had left me a second time. Then, a month or two later, I was walking home from school and looked up the country road to see my father standing there. I ran up to him, he put his arms out and I grabbed him round the waist. ‘Come on, Freddie,’ he said gently. ‘I’m taking you home. If the Germans bomb us, we’ll all go together.’ He came back to the house, collected my bits and pieces and we went home to London – I was overjoyed.

Unfortunately, the pleasure of returning was short-lived. London was still being heavily bombed, so I was evacuated for a second time, to Irthlingborough, in Northamptonshire. Herbie arranged it for me. While on leave from the army, he had met a girl called Judy who was to become his wife, and he’d asked her parents to billet me. I’ll never forget the journey to King’s Cross Station. I sat silently on the bus, my heart breaking at having to leave my home and family and live once again with strangers.

I liked Judy’s father, but her mother was not that keen on having me stay. They were middle class and owned a shoe shop. A south-London Cockney kid was not really their cup of tea. Next door to them lived a nice young lad with whom I got on really well, but when his parents noticed that he started talking like me, a true cockney, they stopped us playing together. That’s the kind of neighbourhood it was.

I worked in the shop putting eyelets in the boots for laces, and doing a bit of cleaning. One day, I was cleaning the upstairs windows and fell out, rolled down the shutter blinds and into the road! A bus was heading straight for me, but luckily saw me in time. I broke my arm, but at least it kept me out of school for a few weeks.

I was grateful to move away from them to a family called York, who were bakers. I spent the summer sat in Mr York’s delivery van, saving his cakes and tarts from hungry wasps as he did his rounds. It was a new freedom. While I was staying there, Herbie arrived in a Bren gun carrier, chewing up the street and leaving deep marks in the bitumen. Then Wally came to visit. He was an army despatch rider, wearing trousers with leather inside legs, big brown boots and a .45 gun in his belt. Their visits were the highlights of my stay. I was so proud, especially when all the neighbours came out to admire them in their full army regalia.

The Yorks were upset when I left. Although they had a son and daughter of their own, they had grown quite attached to me. The curious thing is that I always kept myself apart. In winter, the family would gather around the fire and invite me to join them, but I would sit on a hard-backed chair on the opposite side of the room, listening to the radio, thinking how pleased I would be to get back to my own family. I hated being sent away and missed my parents and brothers. Nobody could take their place.

After Northampton, I was evacuated twice more, to Hove, Brighton. The house where I stayed was on a hill facing down to the sea. One day, I saw several dray horses shed their load as they bolted down the hill and crossed the main road, crashing through the window of the David Greg grocery shop. The whole episode was very messy but I watched, fascinated, as police held down the horses while a man in a suit put a metal frame on each horse’s head, with a hole in the forehead. He then killed them with a spike and one blow with a club hammer to the brain. I was close enough to look into the horse’s eyes, and held its stare as the man clinically struck the fatal blow. I saw the pity in the horse’s eyes, then nothing, just emptiness. It was a mercy killing. The man showed no emotion as he carried out this macabre task. I remember the blood was so thick it stuck my shoes to the street. Those images stay with you for life. For a boy of 10, I saw far too much blood and guts.

Mrs Freeland, my Hove billet, was quite a fat lady who sold her body as a sideline. She used to tart herself up with rouge and bright-red lipstick, then march out to the seafront in her white strappy sandals to earn a bit extra while her husband was away on nightshift. She always made sure she was back before he returned.

Mrs Freeland’s son and I once nicked a whole tin of chocolate biscuits and sat in bed eating them until we felt really sick. We did quite a bit of nicking and I became a dab hand at it. I remember, during one air raid in London, a blast blew out the window of a grocery shop in Wandsworth Road. We loaded up an old battered pram – which I used to fetch coal from Nine Elms coal yard for my mother and her two neighbours – with Australian canned fruit that we’d been salivating over through the window for days, and made a dash back to our flats. My parents would not have approved of us nicking, so me and my mates gorged ourselves on it in secret in the bomb shelter till we made ourselves ill again. Kids never learn, do they?

After Brighton I returned to London, determined not to be sent away again. There had been a lull in the bombing, due to the Germans having lost most of their planes. But new and more dangerous missiles were imminent – the V1 and V2 rockets. After we had gone through those terrible doodlebugs (V1s), we thought it was over. Our armies were at the gates of Berlin, for fuck’s sake, yet 84 V2 rockets fell on the borough of Wandsworth alone between September and November 1944, not to mention the rest of London. At first, the government misled people about the V2 bombings. To avoid panic, propaganda was spread throughout the media, putting the blasts down to gas explosions rather than the rockets, which were killing thousands in central London.

As frightening as the bombing was, it was also fascinating. I will never forget the sight of a young woman caught in a V2 bomb blast under an arch. When I noticed her, she was picking herself up off the middle of the road, her clothes had been blown away and her stockings were in shreds. I watched as she tried to hide her modesty. For a 12-year-old, it was a very erotic scene and the first time that I had laid eyes on a semi-naked woman.

Large numbers of civilians were killed by doodlebugs and rockets and you would see young children whose limbs had been torn from their bodies, and rows of dead people laid out on the pavements, some killed in shelters, others pulled out of their wrecked houses. Tragically, a bomb scored a direct hit on the King’s Arms one night, killing nearly all the customers, including several of our neighbours who were in there having a pint.

My parents were lucky to have four boys survive the war, although there were moments when they feared the worst. I can remember Lord Haw-Haw’s propaganda programmes on the radio. (He was hanged in January 1946. Amazingly, many years later, I would get to stand on his grave inside Pentonville Prison.) In spite of the fact that he was a Nazi propagandist, he pulled a large audience. One particular night we heard him say, ‘Germany calling, Germany calling. This is Lord Haw-Haw speaking… The Führer’s navy today sunk the minesweeper Fitzroy in the English Channel. All hands were lost…’ George was on that boat and we were all convinced he was dead. My mother burst into tears. My father was visibly distressed but kept a stiff upper lip. I sensed their tremendous sadness. Over the next day or two, we waited with anguish for the knock on the door and the official telegram that would confirm the bad news.

Days later, I was leaning over the balcony, deep in thought and looking down at the square when I saw a figure coming into the housing estate in a boiler suit and a sailor hat. As it loomed larger, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was George! My George! He was alive. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I could hear my mother washing up in the kitchen and shouted to her, ‘Quick, Mum, it’s our George. He’s alive!’

Mum rushed out, disbelieving me, but wiping her hands on her apron as she joined me to look over the balcony into the square. ‘Georgie!’ she cried out.

George, a big grin on his face, waved his arm cheerfully and my mother rushed along the balcony to the top of the stairs to greet him. She hugged him and cried with joy. The old man got out the hard stuff and that night it was down to the local Portland Arms for a good session.

George told us the story of how his ship had struck a mine and went down in four minutes. He had just finished his duty watch in the stoke hole. The ship had capsized and he crawled out hand over fist, upside down along an escape ladder and jumped into the North Sea. He’d managed to get into a life raft, but had to go back in the water again to make way for a petty officer with an injured back. He was in the water for two hours before they were rescued by HMS Elgin, another minesweeper, and taken to Great Yarmouth. All his possessions were lost and he and the other seamen were given fresh clothes and two weeks’ compassionate leave. But they were recalled after only a week because they were concerned they might leg it, so they sent him off to Mombasa, East Africa, on the Stirling Castle troop carrier. While he was out there, George joined the cruiser HMS Mauritius. It was a notorious ship. They had more arrests on that ship than on any other in the British fleet, because of disquiet onboard. The crew of the Mauritius were in the thick of the action for 18 months during the invasion of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and the Greek islands, having just one break of leave in Malta, so they had the right hump. The crew were also unhappy with the ship’s number one over an incident that occurred during a swimming break off the coats of Italy. Many of the crew were allowed overboard to have a swim, but, when German bombers attacked and the alarms raised, the captain simply took off, to become a moving target. The men had to swim like Tarzan to reach the rope ladders in time! When my George eventually arrived home on leave it was the first time he’d laid his eyes on Georgina his baby daughter, who was 18 months old.

A book could be written about my brother Herbie, who fought in 11 different countries for King and Country and escaped death on a number of occasions. He was one of only 22 of his battalion of 600 to survive a drop into Arnhem, an event that inspired the movie A Bridge Too Far. To any folk who have served their country, Herbie’s records from the Ministry of Defence are nothing short of tremendous. From 1939, he fought for the Parachute Battalion and in countries from North Africa, to India to Singapore, winning a host of medals. Sadly, he passed away last year, but I will always remember his smiley little face. When Herbie met Prince Charles on the commemoration of Arnhem in Holland, he instantly recognised him because he was so small. ’Erbie was five-foot five – and I’m giving him an inch there. Charles looked at his medals and said, ‘You got about a bit!’ and ’Erbie replied, ‘I must have been a hard target to hit!’

As I said, we’re a fighting family, the Foremans. George himself was awarded six campaign stars, clasps and medals during his service, including the Atlantic Star, Africa Star, Italy Star and the War Medal 1939–45. I’m so very proud of all of my brothers. I’m afraid there is simply not room enough in this chapter for me to list their military achievements and bravery in full.

Whenever the boys returned home, we kept an open house to whoever was a friend of theirs. They would come to Mum’s and stay on their short home leave. When friends of my brothers came on leave to stay with us, I would lead them to the local pub during blackouts. I knew my way there blindfolded. One was Bertie Chapman, a pal of George’s who would end up working for the Inland Revenue – and chasing me for tax evasion!

One inevitable problem arising from the war was the amount of armoury entering the country. My brother Herbie brought home Lee Enfield bolt-action .303 rifles, and his mates would bring back pistols and knives as souvenirs. My brothers presented me with German bayonets and daggers, which I proudly showed to my friends. Herbie and Wally, both paratroopers in the First Airborne Division, had access to all kinds of weapons, including knuckle-dusters. They even had dyed-blue wooden bullets, which had been used to save on metal. Everywhere you went in the less gentrified areas of London, metal railings had been pulled out to help the war effort – though the middle and upper classes living in areas such as Belgravia and Knightsbridge were spared this inconvenience. Schooling was regularly interrupted by bombing raids too.

The bombsites around us were ideal for fighting. All around were tunnels and wasteland, where mock battles would be fought. Fireworks represented live ammunition, although, on some days, real bullets were used. I broke into a shed next to the temporary school and nicked all the smoke bombs and crackers belonging to the army and let them off in the girls’ lavatory. The school notified the police and three of us responsible for this outrage were dragged to the front of assembly and given a terrible dressing down by the headmistress. ‘You are nothing but Nazi children! Hitler’s children! Nazi youth!’ she told us venomously.

This was too much. I protested, ‘I’ve got four brothers fighting the Germans. I’m not a Nazi!’

One of the problems with school was that, by the time I was 14, and showing an interest in learning and developed a thirst for knowledge, it was time to leave. But, even so, they could have encouraged my natural ability in art, the only subject in which I excelled.

My art reflected my environment. I drew battle scenes, tanks, artillery, aircraft and scenes of carnage. I had an artist’s eye for detail: I could tell a Wellington bomber from a Lancaster, a Hurricane from a Spitfire, a Heinkel from a Messerschmitt and could identify enemy tanks. I drew gory fights in which death came at the point of a bayonet or a bullet.

Those images were true to life. I was getting the violence down on paper. My reputation began to spread. Schoolkids went out of their way to see what I had drawn and offered to swap their comics for my art. I started to take this further and drew my own action comics. This led to a fight between two pupils who argued over what I was drawing one day.

One of the kids punched the other in the face, and a pencil he was holding went right through the victim’s rosy cheek. I got the blame for that and it alerted the teacher to my art. He took my drawing and examined it in detail. I probably had about a hundred figures on it: Germans and British troops, action scenes involving tanks and aircraft, buildings being blown up, barbed wire, killings. A lot of work had gone into it. The teacher summoned his colleagues and examined it, showing a lot of interest. I thought I’d get just one word of praise, but no, instead they said, ‘This is one sick little bastard.’

But it was a comment on the times. There were always guns in the house, German Lugers, old service revolvers, Japanese swords, crudely made scabbards and Arab daggers. I used to love playing with them.

In spite of my bad school record, I had a grudging respect for Mr Nye, even though he regularly beat me with the cane. He had a withered arm and had this amazing robotic capacity to administer six of the best while speaking to the rest of the class at the same time. Unlike other teachers, however, he would pay me compliments for my sporting abilities. I won all the races at school and he would tell everyone, ‘That boy’s got shoulders on him like a horse.’

At one point I remember seeing a parachute come down. Men ran to it, prepared to lynch the German pilot who’d dropped these bombs on us. But, instead of a German, there was a landmine attached to it and a couple of streets were blown up.

Towards the end of the war, my father was on warden duty when a doodlebug hit us late at night. My mother and I were in the shelter and my father came down, his face covered in brick-dust and blood trickling from his forehead. ‘I’m all right, Lou,’ he told my mother. ‘But we’ve lost everything.’

Croxteth House was reduced to rubble and we were moved first to a two-roomed temporary accommodation in Wickersley Road, Battersea, and then to Usk Road, at the top of Clapham Junction West Hill. Our balcony overlooked the railway. Bertie arrived home on leave once in his navy outfit, all nice and white, and whenever one of the boys came home they’d be cooked a special breakfast of bacon and eggs. But, while Mum was preparing this treat for Bertie, there was a terrific explosion.

As Mum walked to the kitchen the blast lifted up the thick lino from the floor, stopping the door, which had been blown off its hinges, from hitting her in the face. Soot blackened the flat and all you could see of Bert was his white teeth and eyes, looking like a Kentucky minstrel. ‘Oh, Bert, look at your eggs and bacon!’ said Mum. She was more concerned about the pile of soot over his eggs and bacon than the fact the front of the flat had been blown away! It turned out a V2 had dropped on the other side of the railway embankment, shielding us from a blast that had killed 42 others.

Eventually, Croxteth House was rebuilt and we moved back again. Most of our personal belongings and family ‘treasures’ were lost, though. We had to make do with very few possessions. Furniture was non-existent. You had to improvise tables and chairs from tea chests.

Understand: these were really hard times.