Counter Attack

The battle of Battersea Bridge Road

Counter Attack

The houses on the bridge road were bombed and empty, they had small gardens with low walls facing the road. Lenny, Alfie and myself were busy making a supply of ammunition for our ambush. The snow was deep and thick just right for snowballs, and we were making piles of them in readiness for the enemy.

The scene is Battersea Bridge Road, London, and the enemy is an American convoy of about a dozen or more troop carrying trucks crowded with GI’s on their way to help win the war. They were our Allies who gave us gum and candy, but did that influence our behaviour, not one bit. We were terrible kids.

Lenny our acknowledged leader devised our tactics. If you aimed just in front of the moving vehicle, by the time it had travelled forward your missile would, aided by the drag of air, zap neatly into the back. It would appear to curve in the air and chase after the poor souls crowded in the opening.

‘Goddam Kids’ they would yell. Later, when I was in the army I had to travel in trucks just as they had. There is no heating in the back of an army truck and in the winter with an icy wind blowing through the canvas cover, the last thing you would want is a snowball smacking you in the face. Thankfully I never got a face full of snow but I understood why those Americans got so mad.

We kept up these attacks for several days and the snow on the sides of the road became a deep dirty slush. The road was empty in both directions when suddenly the convoy appeared on the wrong side of the road, beyond the reach of our best shots. We stood up and jeered at them as they approached, we knew they couldn’t take it.

As the first lorry came almost opposite it veered across the road into the kerb in front of us. A huge sheet of dirty slush overwhelmed us. We were trapped in that garden and there was no escape. Then the second truck did the same, and the third and so on until we were thoroughly drenched. As all this was happening I was aware of laughing shouting soldiers crammed into the backs of the trucks to witness a beautiful revenge. Yes I have to admit it was well planned, first putting us off our guard and then peeling off like a flight of Stuka bombers. We deserved it and we got it.

They must have had an ‘O Group’ (a planning meeting) to coordinate their response to our threat. How many kids could claim that the American Army made a counter attack on them?