大象传媒

These are the stories that my father has told me over the years about his wartime service.

Bob (as he is commonly known) joined the Territorial Army 1938, sensing what was to come and knew sooner or later that young men like himself would either be conscripted into the forces or sent down the mines. He opted for the TA, reasoning that he would prefer to take his chances above ground rather than down below.

The weekend before war was declared, Bob was staying with the Smith family in Edgware, as he was working while his family were on holiday on the south coast. He received his notice to join his TA unit over at Wembley, left word at his workplace that he was called up and began to get his things together. Nelly Smith who was like an honorary auntie to him insisted that before he left he had a good hot bath and she cooked him a substantial meal to keep him going. Then he dressed in forage cap, high collared heavy khaki uniform, boots and puttees - World War 1 pattern uniform as there was nothing lese available and off Bob went to war.

On arrival at Wembley Bob and all the other recruits were processed, including the all-important Army medical. When the recruits were lining up for inoculations, the sight of all those hypodermics was too much for many of them and there were bodies faintng all over the place. Needles never bothered Bob overmuch. He still suspects that the medical people were experimenting with new sites on the human body where to stick their needles in and he received one injection in each arm - and one in the breastbone which really hurt - and then they were all sent outside to dig trenches immediately afterwards, with a parting shot from a sadistic corporal saying, "Get on with it, it'll shift the pain and get that stuff around your body quicker!" On 3rd September 1939 (10 days after Bob's 19th birthday they all heard the news on the radio that Britain was at war with Germany and then the sirens sounded the "Alert" - a false alarm caused by an errant French aircraft flying over London's airspace. Naturally everyone expected all hell to break loose, but instead all were kep incommunicado inside the camp for three weeks.

After some months of training Bob was posted to Norfolk to work on various radar installations dotted around the county. He was involved with plotting enemy activity on the radar screens, notifying the fighter airfields in RAF 12 Group (including Coltishall) and alerting the anit-aircraft (ack-ack) sites and searchlight units. By this time the Blitz was on in London and Bob was worried about his family in Mill Hill, feeling that he was stuck in the wrong place while they were in danger from German bombs. As it happened, not much enemy action occurred as there was little industry there, even though the area was not far from RAF Hendon which was used as a communications airfield during World War 2.

Bob was posted to one isolated unit where they had to go to a local cottage and ask permission to get water from the well, as there was no running water on the site which was a bare field with no facilities. None of the other 20 men in the unit could cook, so Bob drew on his knowledge as a former Boy Scout and got stuck with doing the cooking, digging a trench, filling the bottom with live embers and laying metal bars on the top to put cooking utensils on. (My grandmother, a very practical soul, has also taught him to cook and sew as a boy, saying to him, "There may be a time when you're on your own, my lad, sp you need to know how to look after yourself"). Soon after the unit was issued with Army stoves installed in a hut that served as a cookhouse. There were no grills on these stoves so if one wanted grilled bacon for breakfast, it was laid on a baking sheet and put in the oven to cook. One morning Bob opened the oven to see how the bacon was cooking, the baking sheet slipped and all the bacon fell on the muddy gritty floor. He swore a blue streak, washed each rasher under the tap and put them back in the oven - and no-one was any the wiser. Also he managed to burna stew which takes some doing. Once he admitted that for a while he lived on toast and tea because he could not stand the taste of his own cooking!

Actually Bob liked being up in Norfolk in spite of being stuck in cold, muddy fields, being originally a country lad from Leagreave in Bedfordshire. Some of the men in the unit were notable characters, one squaddie came from Southend and ran his own thriving hairdressing business although he was illiterate. Bob taught him to write his name. Another was a real countryman who would sneak out of camp at night for a spot of poaching. He could creep up on pheasants so quietly that the birds never heard him until he grabbed straight off the nest and wrung their necks. The next day he would go out around the district selling his prey, often to those folk whose land he had been trepassing on the previous night.

One unit Bob was posted to was just south-east of North Walsham, about 20 miles north of Norwich. It was a pleasant little country town with some attractive Georgian architecture, a 14th century church with a collapsed west tower, many pubs and a small cineam (now a carpet discount warehouse) which gave special cheap rates to servicemen. Another time he was moved to the south of Norwich and one day when sitting on the local bus he starting chatting to a girl of 16 called Betty (Bubbles) English, who invited him to her family's farmhouse in the village of Saxlingham Nethergate. She had one brother and three sisters and her parents (always known as Nanny and Grandad English) and a friendship began between the King and the English families which has lasted to this day. (Bubbles actually ended up marrying Bob's army friend Fred Kirkham and they are still together). Later in the war Bob's younger brother Michael was sent up to the farm to convalesce from illness and ended up fit enough to help with the harvest.

There was one army task that Bob did not take to at all. He was obliged to learn how to ride a motorcycle and one day on an icy road he lost control and came off over the handlebars, landing so badly that he distorted his whole rib cage and was in a lot of pain for quite a while after, in spite of being tightly strapped up by the army doctor. Ever since Bob's ribs have jutted out more on one side than another and he never rode a motorbike again. Learning to drive heavy Army lorries with crash gears was safer and more to his taste.

Of course Bob would go home on leave whenver possible. The family were safe and in reasonable spirits in spite of the rationaing and shortages, although by now Catherine was in the WAAF up north somewhere and Michael was still at home. They grew their own vegetables and kept chickens in the back garden, in fact the family had so many birds and produced such quantities of eggs that they were officially registered as poultry keepers and allowed to sell the eggs locally. It was a strange sort of war, where at times the civilians were actually in worse danger from enemy action than those serving in the forces.

To be continued in Part 2.

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