History's Secret Heroes: Series 3: Ita Ekpenyon and the Blitz

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When that airway siren blasted, it was panic.

Panic stations.

December 1940.

London had endured 12 weeks of Nike bombings by the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe.

They must have been run ragged and terrified and exhausted and traumatised.

Londoners were now all too familiar with the procedure when they heard the siren.

Make sure I've got my insurance book, my rent book, all these things and keep the children together and making sure you got to safety, which was the air aid shelter.

That night, residents of Mary-lebone in central London crowded down the stairs of Great Portland Street Underground Station.

Even in that shelter, they knew survival was not guaranteed.

It was terrifying.

It was the sheer terror that if a bomb made a direct hit on the air raid, the public air raid shelter, you were gone.

You were goner.

So you never even knew if you were going to be alive or in hospital the next day.

Recently, a nearby air raid shelter had been bombed.

There were now more people inside Great Portland Street Station than ever before.

Around 300 people were squeezed in together, each trying to find a place to rest.

There wasn't enough space.

Everyone was exhausted from weeks of broken, sleepless nights.

The air raid warden in charge of this shelter was a man of Nigerian origin in his 40s, Ita Ekpenyon.

He felt the tensions rise.

Ekpenyon realized he was the only authority standing in the way of a riot breaking out in this enclosed space.

Could he stop it?

I'm Helena Boncarter and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Secret Heroes.

True stories of deception, acts of resistance and courage from World War II.

Ita Ekpenyon and the Blitz

Oku Ekpenyon was five years and nine months old when her father, Ita Ekpenyon, died.

She has few memories of him.

But one thing I do remember was that he bought me a coat and it was white to my mother's horror.

And I know that after he died she had it dyed this dark unimaginative brown and I can understand why because her white coat would be in the cleaners a lot but that that is one memory I do have my lovely coat

but

I I suppose I remember him as this man who was ailing and he wasn't very old either but he was ailing and life in post-war Britain in the immediate years was not easy for anyone.

And

it certainly wasn't easy for him, it wasn't easy for our family.

And

he came all this way,

I suppose one would say for a better life.

September 1939, Central London.

Etech Penyon left his flat on Great Titchfield Street.

The bustle of Marylebone Road was very different from Creektown in Nigeria, where he was born.

The Second World War had begun.

Ekpenyon could not serve in the armed forces.

He was just over the maximum age.

Still though, he was keen to contribute.

He walked into the civil defense office in St.

Marylebone Parish Church.

A counsellor asked him about his skills and experiences.

Ekpenyon had told him that he'd been a teacher and headmaster of a school in Nigeria.

And then he decided he wanted to have a career change, so he came to Britain to study law.

He'd enrolled as a student at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

When war broke out though, his studies paused.

The councillor was impressed by Ek Penyon and his desire to help on the home front.

The majority of black people from across the British Empire that served in the Second World War did so out of loyalty to to what they used to call the mother country.

Historian Stephen Bourne is the author of Under Fire, a Black Briton in Warfare.

At the time, Nigeria was under British colonial rule.

Akpenyon, like many Nigerians, was taught to see London as the capital of a Commonwealth of Nations.

They were brought up to believe that they were British.

Their education was English education.

They were taught about Shakespeare, they were taught about Charles Dickens.

They were never taught about black literary figures from their own countries.

This loyalty was conflicted.

A Nigerian independence movement sought the end of British rule.

In some cases, though, it was the desire for self-rule that drove Nigerians to contribute to the Allied war effort.

A feeling that if we can prove ourselves in the armed services, on the home front,

it would strengthen the argument for independence after the war.

Ekpenon said he was keen to do his share for the British Empire and for Britain itself.

He was concerned about Hitler and the Nazis because this was now his home.

So he was fighting for his second homeland.

Ita Ekpenon signed up with the Air Raid Warden Service.

Though hundreds of thousands of people volunteered for this service, Ekpenon became one of a tiny number of black air raid wardens in London.

In June 1940, France surrendered to Germany.

The focus of Nazi ambition now moved across the English Channel.

By August, the Luftwaffe took on the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain.

The Germans were wearing down British air defences.

The home front prepared for a ground invasion.

As an air raid warden, it was Ita Ekpenyon's responsibility to keep watch on the local community.

So he knew who was who and where they lived.

In case there was an incident and they couldn't find the people because their house had been bombed, then the air raid warden would know who lived where.

Air raid wardens also helped with rescue work.

If a house had been bombed, part of their job, responsibility would be to go through the rubble the next day.

and try and find survivors because you know some people can be buried for days and still survive.

and they warned people about blackouts if people had a chink of light showing they could get fined and if you had even like a chink of light through your window through the blackout curtain the germans would spot that right up high and drop a bomb on you but it was the air aid warden's responsibility to make sure

that either warn them or find them

because it was breaking the rules and it could draw attention.

Ekpenon knocked on doors, creating a census of all the businesses and residents in his sector.

He used the census as an opportunity to get to know his neighbours.

He was an easily identifiable person

who people could easily go to for support and support they knew they would get.

He later wrote about this in a pamphlet titled Some Experiences of an African Air Raid Warden.

It amuses me to know know that in the district where I work, the people believe that because I am a man of color, I am a lucky omen.

I'd heard of such childlike beliefs, but I'm delighted that such beliefs exist.

For wherever my duties take me, the people listen to my instructions and orders and are willing to allow me to lead them.

So I am able to control them, which makes my duties lighter in these troubled days.

Because

war was a scary time, and if there was something one could cling on to, it did make people feel better.

So there was this man, a man of colour, of which there weren't many around, which made him easily identifiable, it made him different.

And so I can understand why people would think he would be a lucky, well, someone who would instill sort sort of confidence

eight and a half million people lived in london at the time but only 15 000 of those had black african heritage while in the united states policies of racial segregation were imposed britain had no such policies at least not officially so if you jumped on a number 12 bus in oxygen street in 1940, if you were black, you could sit next to a white person.

If you chose to, in some cases, the white person might get up and move.

But we didn't segregate.

We didn't put black people at the backs of buses.

Unofficially, though, some forms of racial segregation sprang up.

We had a thing, what was called the colour bar.

So there were some pubs, public houses, that would not welcome black patrons.

Many pubs did.

You know, they were in business.

And so there was discrimination in some professions and some places, but by and large, white British people hadn't seen huge numbers of black people, unless they went to the seaports of Liverpool and Cardiff and the East End.

Or to the cinema, where they might see black people on screen.

When he was a student in London during the 1930s, Ekpenyon made a little money on the side working as an extra on film sets.

British film was booming.

If a a film required black extras, the word would go out on the London grapevine.

You would drop everything and go to the studio, tell your boss I'm off for a few days to be a film extra.

And you would appear in

mainly the Paul Robeson films, but they also made these other colonial films set in Africa.

They look very patronising and condescending now,

but they gave work.

A guinea a day is what they were paid.

It was a lot of money.

Ekpenyon met Paul Robeson, one of the great black American singers and actors of the era.

For a film production of King Solomon's Minds, he coached Robeson to speak the FEC language of Nigeria like a native.

Perhaps the glamour rubbed off on Ekpenyon.

He brought the same charisma he showed on screen to his role as an air raid warden.

My presence seemed to cheer the people, for they felt the wardens were looking after them.

People asked Ekpenon for advice about all sorts of things: the correct lighting in a stairway, how to treat a sick cat.

To the people of my sector, it does not matter whether I am on or off duty, for if they want to see me about anything, they call at my place of residence.

There had been a great deal of preparation for air raids.

Wardens had been recruited and trained since before the war.

Gas masks were distributed among the population.

So far though, they had not put much of it into practice.

That was all about to change.

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Saturday, the 7th of September, was an unusually warm day.

Londoners were enjoying the last of the summer sun in the public parks.

Ekpenyon had recently married a woman called Winifred, who he'd met in an antique shop.

I think the war speeded up many relationships because one didn't know

how long it was going to go on for what the outcome would be.

At around 4 p.m., the skies darkened.

950 German aircraft flew over the city.

For the following two hours, they dropped high explosive bombs.

Adolf Hitler had ordered the Luftwaffe to switch their attention from military to civilian targets, towns and cities.

This was the beginning of what would become known as the Blitzkrieg, or Lightning War, nicknamed the Blitz, as Londoners made for the air raid shelters, Ekpenyon went into action.

First, he had to tackle an incendiary bomb.

It was a race to put the raging fire out before its light signalled to the next wave of the Luftwaffe that the area was a target.

Ekpenyon stamped his foot quickly on the extinguisher's stirrup pump.

Water spurted out.

Ekpenyon managed to contain the fire, then he turned and saw a member of the public trying to put out another blaze.

Ekpenyon stepped in and put that fire out too.

The afternoon raid was followed by a night-time assault on London.

Over just 24 hours, 430 civilians were killed.

1,600 were seriously injured.

The day became known as Black Saturday.

And this was just the beginning of the Blitz.

What followed were nightly bombings of London.

Adolf Hitler hoped the Blitz would wear down the morale of British people, so they would press their government to surrender to the Nazis.

Bombing campaigns were designed to divide and terrify communities.

Once, Ekpenyon was with two other wardens a hundred feet up at the top of a building.

The sky was lit with sea searchlights, the bursting shells of anti-aircraft guns, the big fires in some parts of the city.

The droning of the planes was to be heard, and to crown it all, I saw an explosion of an enemy bomb about a quarter of a mile from where I stood.

On another occasion, Ekpenyon helped evacuate people from a shelter that had been bombed.

As I was leading a lady to another shelter, a whistling bomb came sailing overhead and I had to throw the lady down on the pavement and lie on top of her.

I was pleased that she was not hurt.

though she was very shaken.

In the shelter to which I took her, I noticed there was uneasiness.

But I assured the people that all was well and that there was no need to be alarmed.

Ekpenyon had to keep going to check on another shelter in his sector.

It had been damaged and inside was completely dark.

There were over a hundred people in there, confused and frightened.

As I was standing on top of the stairs, I shone my torch on my face and signaled them to be quiet.

I managed to make myself heard and told them plainly that if they wanted to be safe from fire, they had to keep cool and take orders from me.

Failing that, they and I would have to remain in the building and face our fate,

which would be a very unpleasant one.

The people became quiet.

Ekpenyon and his fellow wardens evacuated everyone to safety without any serious casualties.

Every day, Ekpenyon saw new parts of the city around him destroyed.

One night a hospital was bombed, the next a church, a theatre, pubs, schools, museums, London zoo, high explosive bombs, damaged enclosures, including the rodent house, the civet house and the zebra house.

Astonishingly, no animals were injured during this attack.

One zebra escaped and galloped off for nearby Camden Town, where it was safely recaptured.

It must have been really grim.

You'd hear the planes coming over and then the sirens and

run to the shelter and then

survive for another day and the repetition of this must have been very wearing.

Day after day, Ekpenyon heard the alert and went towards danger.

He probably absorbed it like most people during wartime.

They get on and just carry on because there isn't any choice because if you don't what happens?

In October 1940 a bomb dropped at the east end of St.

Paul's Cathedral lifted the choir roof.

Chunks of fallen masonry destroyed the high altar.

Another bomb later caused even more damage, blowing out the windows and creating a huge hole in the floor of the north transept.

Though Though it was rocked by the bombs, the cathedral's magnificent dome, designed in the 17th century by Sir Christopher Wren, miraculously survived the blitz.

A photograph of the dome rising through the smoke of bombs became a symbol of London's resistance.

By the end of November, though, Londoners were exhausted.

Ekpenyon had worked through more than 350 air raid siren alerts.

Not a single 24-hour period had gone by without at least one siren going off.

As the year 1940 was drawing to a close, the raids got very frequent and very heavy.

So the population made use of the shelters from early evening till morning.

They also slept in them, so sleeping banks were put in.

Sometimes there were as many as four to six raids before nightfall.

So life in London was a matter of going in and out of shelters.

In my own shelter, I was faced with all kinds of problems.

The people inside Ekpenyon's shelter in Great Portland Street Station that December were shaken after weeks of bombings.

To make matters worse, there was not enough space.

I know that one shelter he was involved in was actually demolished, which meant that they couldn't go back,

which was quite difficult because

people in shelters became like a family.

So, if a shelter was destroyed, first of all, they lost members of their sort of family, but secondly, it put pressure on the existing shelters.

Thereby,

these

pressures sometimes created, I think, antagonism because other people felt, oh, they shouldn't be there.

There were now around 300 people crammed underground in Great Portland Street Station.

So many people confined in a small area.

No privacy,

having to share facilities, what facilities there would be.

Everyone wanted to lie down to get some rest.

That night, though, there wasn't enough floor space.

The shelter was crowded with young and old, refugees from overseas, people of different backgrounds.

The bombing of London forced a mixed crowd to be in one another's company, though their ways and manners and views of life in some cases were as opposite as the North and South Poles.

A lot of people actually didn't have homes to go back to once the period of bombing was over, so they had to find basically second homes and shelters became the second homes to many people.

Among the crowd, arguments broke out.

Some of the shelters told the others to go back to their own countries, and some tried to practice segregation.

A spirit of friendliness and comradeship was lacking.

If this continued, Ekpenyon feared it would lead to a riot.

Ekpenyon knew he had to do something.

If he drew attention to himself, he could become the target.

He wasn't an Englishman by birth, and people could have

said or thought,

what right have you got to say this?

He weighed up his options.

It would only work if people cooperated with each other.

He stepped up, cleared his throat and spoke to the crowd in his best headmasterly voice.

I told the people that the British Empire, which is also known as the British Commonwealth of Nations, is made up of peoples of many races.

I said that though I'm an air raid warden in London, I'm still an African.

I also said that I'm one of many peoples of other countries that make up the empire.

Ek Penyon said there were three groups of people in this shelter.

His Majesty's subjects, protected persons and refugees.

Refugees, he argued, were entitled to the protection of the Union Jack.

With this being the case, he asked to see a spirit of friendliness, cooperation, and comradeship at this trying time.

For those who would rather quarrel, he warned, I would advise those who did not agree to seek shelter somewhere else.

For to remain in the shelter and to behave in an unfriendly way would force me to report them because they were trying to create disunity in the Empire.

The shelter fell silent.

In Nigeria, as a headmaster, he had often addressed groups of pupils.

But here in London as an Air Awarden, his class, if you might say, was of a greater number

and a greater age range.

Finally, the silence broke.

The people responded

and few left the shelter.

I think because he'd made it clear what he was prepared to accept and not accept, and so it was a matter of choice for the individual.

So at the end of the day, probably people wade up and thought, well, I'd rather be here in than on the outside.

Most people remained in the shelter and settled down peacefully for the night.

Ekpenon had calmed the crowd that night.

Now he was determined to prevent such a dangerous situation from arising again.

He worked with the other wardens and marshals to transform the shelter into a more welcoming environment with a sense of community.

They arranged concerts and dances, cinema screenings and darts games, tea, coffee and soup.

They hoped that happy, warm and well-fed people were less likely to turn to violence.

Gradually, merriment and friendliness spread in the shelter.

Its fame spread beyond the district and almost every night visitors came from far and near.

Some of these visitors expressed a desire to stay,

but this was impossible, for the shelter was quite full.

Ek Penyon and his fellow air raid wardens played a crucial role in keeping up the blitz spirit of their neighbours.

This man who came to a foreign country

left everything that he knew was familiar to him behind in Nigeria,

that

during Britain's darkest hour

he made a phenomenal contribution.

In the early summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler called off further bombings of Britain.

The Blitz had failed to break the British spirit of resistance.

If anything, it had made it stronger.

Hitler withdrew his air power from Western Europe and directed directed it east to attack the Soviet Union.

This decision proved disastrous.

The war in Europe ended in 1945 with Hitler's death and Germany's surrender.

After the war though, Britain's economy was in a dire state.

Ekpenyon now had a wife and two children to support.

He gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer and looked for another job.

The only work he could get was as a postman.

And he didn't come to London to tramp the streets carrying a heavy sack and delivering mail.

Ultimately his ambitions were unfulfilled, his potential wasn't realised

and

his aspirations came to naught.

Many of Oku's memories of her father are of a man who was regularly in and out of hospital.

Ekpenyon had a heart condition.

He died in 1951.

When she grew up, Oku followed her father into a career in education.

She became head of history at a London secondary school.

In 2010, she was appointed an MBE for voluntary service to the history of black British people.

Recently, she was gratified when a school textbook was published called Black Lives in Britain, 1500 to the present.

Because it includes my father's contribution to the war effort as an air raid warden.

All these years later, after his death, his contribution has been acknowledged in this way.

It will be there for posterity.

And that's a good feeling.

History Secret Heroes is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC, Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

It's narrated by me, Helena Boncarter.

The series is produced by Suniti Samaya, Emma Wetherill, Lorna Reeder and James Shield.

Additional research and production from Rhiannon Cobb, Rachel Oakes and Aisha Antui.

The series is written by Alex von Tunzelman.

The executive producer and editor is Paul Smith.

Fact checking by Caitlyn Wraith.

Additional fact checking by Lena Zlock.

Ita Ekpenyon was read by Jude Akudike.

Anya Saunders is the development executive.

Athene is composed by Jeremy Walmsley.

The mix engineer is Melvin Rickabee.

Elena Boateng is the production manager.

Juliette Harvey is the production coordinator.

And Laura Jordan Rowell is the production executive.

Legal business affairs advice from Edward Murdoch.

The editorial policy advisor is Sarah Nelson.

The commissioners for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds are Rhiann Roberts and Abigail Willer.

Archive from BBC Archive.

Recorded by James Murray.

Thanks to Multitrack, Philip Sellers, Greg Seiger, Juliet Martin, Ella Squire, Zerenesh Spitalnik, Raina Pennington, Irina Sokirko, Kate Plumpton, and Molly Milton.

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