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This story was submitted to the People`s War site by Alan Magson of Age Concern Bradford and District on behalf of Jack Toothill and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site`s terms and conditions.
As I start to write my own memories of the 1939/1945 war, I am very conscious of the character of 'Del Boy' s grand-dad, in 'Only Fools and Horses', who could bore everyone to death when he started with .........."During the War'" ...... Nobody really wanted to know.... What
they forgot, was that Grand-dad had not always been a boring old fool, but a young man, with all his faculties, full of himself, thirsting for adventure— facing dangers on the High Seas in the Royal Navy in wartime.
It must have been a glorious experience for a young man—death was never far away, and the adrenalin was pumping through his veins....... This was the real high spot in Grand-dad's life, and when the
war was over, and he was overtaken by old age, his mind kept returning to his youth, when life was really exciting, and worth living. Now, living with his grand-son, rarely going out he kept harkin back to the days of his youth, and who could blame him?
Today, being a grand-dad myself, I can see his point of view; so, I must be careful not to bore you—as my wartime experiences were not always so full of dangers as his!. So, I beg your indulgence— and I promise, that if more than four people fall asleep, we will declare the matter closed.

The first part of mv war memoirs really started 12 months before war was declared in September 1939. Some considerable time before that, Hitler had been extending his domination of Europe by annexing all the smaller countries on the borders of Germany, and subjecting their people to a harsh regime of control and oppression.
Politicians in Britain were at last realising that sooner or later Hitler would have to be stopped by force, and in September 1938, there was a crisis, when Britain was almost on the point of declaring war on Germany . Already, plans were in motion to call up all young men aged nineteen and twenty for military training. ........ war was avoided for the
time being, but it did give us young men time to be more prepared for it when it eventually came. The father of my friend, Arthur Kershaw. called a few lads together to say he was concerned about us? In the 1914 war, young men were called up for military service, sent for only a few weeks training, then they found themselves in the trenches of France, with little knowledge of self-preservation... they suffered a terrible loss of life.
On the War Memorial in Clayton Park, Bradford, are the names of nearly 100 men from Clayton who lost their lives in that war. At that time, Clayton was a much smaller place than now, and to lose all those young men must have been a tragedy that touched every home in the village. . . .Our small group of young men was given the advice not to wait for call-up, but to join a local Territorial Army unit, and by doing so, avoid being conscripted into the Militia. It was some time later, that we realised the wisdom of this advice — When the lads in the Militia were called up, many of them were sent out to Singapore; they walked straight off the ship into a Japanese POW camp. An old school mate of mine, Bernard Hanson, was the only lad I knew to survive this, and he came home a physical wreck, dying soon afterwards.
Joining a Territorial army unit proved to be one of the first decisions I made that helped me survive the war, and come back home in one piece .Born in 1918, 1 was 21 in January 1939, and serving my last year of apprenticeship in the printing trade, at Lund,Humphries ( Ptrinters) of Manningham,m Bradford. I was earning the magnificent wage of 42 shillings a week, and looking forward to being out of my time, and earning £3. 12s 6d, a tradesman`s wage at that time. But, it was not to be. In January 1939, together with four or five of my mates from Clayton, and two or three from work, I went up to Thornbury Barracks in Bradford and swore an oath of allegiance to King and Country, thereby receiving the 'King's Shilling'.
At the Quartermaster's stores we were issued with a forage cap, brown overalls, and a pair of Army boots. We later received a khaki tunic
and trousers, smelling strongly of mothballs. They had possibly been in storage from the end of the 1914-1918 war.
Thornbury Barracks was the headquarters of 398 Company, 49th Searchlight Regiment, Royal Engineers. In those days there was just a few wooden army huts, and little else. As we were all friends together we were made the nucleus of a searchlight detachment of ten men. A young man from Leeds, an experienced driver, and Sgt. Lionel Gresham, a very experienced old soldier, completed the detachment, to operate a searchlight, and begin our training.
From then on life became very hard indeed, we had to put in at 48hour workinig week, five nine-hour days, and a Saturday morning of 3 hours; this was in addition to 2 nights training at Thornbury, for 2 hours, one night at night school which was extra training for our trade. Saturday afternoons and sometimes all the weekend we spent on training schemes simulating wartime conditions, then back to work on Monday. In June 1939 we were all given a month's leave from work, and pioneered 8 Searchlight Sites in the East Riding, setting up camps of bell tents and cook houses at prearranged points. These went from Goole to Howden, and continued almost to York at 2 mile intervals.
The weather was kind, and comparing our lives with what we had been used to previously, it felt like a holiday— we came home sunburnt, and 'fit as fleas', feeling confident that we could do the job we should probably be called upon to do.———we didn't have to wait long........
On 24th August, whilst at work, we were summoned. All Territorial
soldiers had to report immediately to the barracks, complete with kit. This was about 3 in the afternoon. By midnight, we were back on the sites we had occupied only a few weeks before— by 2am, we were able to report to HQ that we were fully operational.
We had our own 'wireless set'— 'radio ' to you, so,on 3rd September, we were able to hear the momentous message from Chamberlain, declaring that 'we are now at war with Germany'.— the gravity of the moment was somewhat relieved by the news that we were now recognised as regular soldiers, and would receive the appropriate pay.—fourteen shillings a week, minus a seven shilling deduction, which was sent to our mothers at home, leaving us with the magnificent total of seven shillings a week spending money. At that time, seven shillings would buy 140 Players cigarettes, 35 small bars of chocolate, 14 visits to the cinema, or 14 pints of mild beer. This was really living the high life!
At the first opportunity, we opened a Post Office savings account and put in half a crown a week——at least, that was our intention; if we could have kept it up until the end of the war, my bank balance would have been £45.10s.0 a sum of money beyond the dreams of avarice—as they say.

The searchlight site we occupied at the time was on the edge of a village called Airemyn, on the south bank of the River Aire, only a mile before it joined the Ouse at Goole. We had already made friends with the locals during the month's camp, so we joined them again. There was a pub in the village called 'the Percy Arms', Lord Percy being a past Lord of the Manor, and owning great tracts of land in the locality. The pub was owned and run by a Mr and Miss Precious, brother and sister. Our arrival in the village just about doubled the clientele of the pub, but only during daylight hours, as we had to be on site during the hours of darkness, In the pub , four barrels of ale sat on a gantry behind the bar; there were no hand pumps, so the glasses were gravity fed, by a tap from the barrel. This was a very slow process and probably made sure that no-one ever got drunk!
Please do not get the impression that we spent all day in the pub. We were continually improving the camp site and honing our skills on the searchlight drills There were rweekly showers at Selby , fourteen miles away ,and we had guard duties and air sentry duties to perform. We cooked food ourselves in the open air on a simple wood- stove. We slept on ground sheets in a bell tent, which we shared with frogs, mice, beetles, and quite a few other specimens of the natural world. By and By, sectional huts were delivered to our sites, which we erected and creosoted ourselves. We also had the luxury of a palliase each, which if you don't know, is a sack, measuring 6' by 2', filled with straw— a great coat, carefully folded, made a pillow on top, and we had three army blankets. All this made a luxury bed to lay on the wooden floor.
We now had a cook house, a three-sided wooden shed with a roof and some very basic cooking utensils; we took it in turn to be cook, which had one advantage—you were excused night guard duty! So you got a full night's sleep.
We had to guard the site and all the equipment etc., 24 hours a day, this was in addition to an air sentry during the hours of darkness. There was no phone to tell us when the German planes had crossed the coast at Hull; we had to look out for a searchlight beam, making one revolution from HQ for 30 seconds, rouse the Detachment Commander, and everyone else to get out and be operational in two minutes flat. A guard duty was 2 hours- this meant that if you came off at 10pm, you would be on again at 4am until 6am. This would go on for 7 days a week, unless you were due for leave; in that case you could go home for 2 days or spend it on site.
Our driver slept in the lorry which provided the power for the searchlight. He was situated at least 200 yards from the site as the engine noise would interfere with the listening equipment used to locate enemy

One of the best alarms we had about the approach of enemy aircraft, was the cackling of pheasants in the area, they have very sensitive hearing and they could hear gun fire at Hull or Spurn Point long before we could, and it usually meant that a German raid would soon be passing overhead at 30,000 ft or so on its way to Liverpool or some target in the west.
One of the difficulties of locating an aircraft at night by sound alone was the six second delay in the sound reaching the ground, by which time the plane was a mile or two further along its flight path. We had a system of aim-off, but it was a very hit or miss method and an aircraft six miles high could take evasive action if caught in the beam.
Radio location was in its infancy at the outbreak of war, and it was 3 years before we were provided with it. Hull Docks did suffer in the early part of the war, and from our position at Airmyn , we could see the flash of bombs when they exploded on the ground.
A few weeks later, we moved, as a complete mobile detachment to a position nearer the east coast together with an Anti Aircraft Gun Battery, to stiffen up the resistance to the raids on Hull. This was a temporary move, and we returned to our former site near Goole in a few weeks time. Some more huts had been added to our camp, and when they were erected, two very large drums of camouflage paint , brown and green arrived, and all the huts were painted in large areas of broken colours. When the farmer came by and saw it he remarked " By gum lads, tha's made a reet good job o that , it looks like a proper Army camp now", which, of course, was just the opposite of what we intended to do!.
Christmas 1939 came and went, but there was no leave or turkey, just ordinary rations plus a bottle of beer per man and a bit of Christmas pudd. The weather had turned very cold with heavy frosts going on for weeks. Each morning two men were detailed for coal scrounging parade, combing the local railway line for any bits of coal fallen from the tenders of passing trains. Two buckets would keep the hut warm for 24hours. So, each day we had to walk further and further to find enough coal. Eventually we did get coal with the rations, which saved us miles of walking. There was no water laid on at the camp, it was brought in each day in two-gallon cans. This was barely enough for washing and cooking purposes and it had to be kept in the hut near the stove to stop it freezing. Close by, in the field, was a small pond which had frozen over — the last guard on duty from 6am to 8am had the duty of chopping enough ice from the pond to pack it into a sawyer stove, find some wood for the fireplace below, light it and by 8am we all had enough hot water for the morning shave. We had to ignore the bits of grass, dead newts and sticklebacks floating in our shaving water and get the job done as quickly as possible.

With the temperature well below zero, a two hour spell of guard duty consisted of walking briskly between the huts, searchlight, and lorry 200 yards away with much stamping of feet and blowing of frozen fingers. We had reason to be grateful to all those kind ladies who knitted balaclavas which now kept our ears from freezing. Once, but only once, a ration of navy rum was issued out to every man. Mixed with a pot of hot tea before going out on guard duty, ensured a feeling of euphoria, and a warm feeling from head to toe. It made us wish we had joined the navy instead of the Army as sailors get a rum ration every day.
The River Ouse flowed only a few fields away from our camp, and began to freeze over after a fortnight of heavy frost. At first it was just a few pieces of ice moving up and down the tidal reaches. Each day these ice floes grew bigger, until they joined into one solid mass of ice from shore to shore.lt was too dangerous to try to cross it. When the thaw came at last, and the ice began to move, it was a sight I shall never forget. Huge blocks of ice half as big as a house came tumbling down the river, rolling over and over, making the most weird noises as they bumped and ground against each other I shall always regret not having a camera at that moment, but those images are still as bright in my mind as the moment they happened.
In ancient times, before the river banks were made higher by fifteen to twenty feet as they are now, the river must have come flooding over the fields by the river side, in times of flood or very high tides.I am led to this belief by the name of an area close to the river called Saltmarsh, which at times must have been covered with sea water floods from the river. That same area is now the site of Saltmarsh Hall with beautiful gardens etc. A small village only a mile away, was called Laxton, and I have since found out from the Oxford English Dictionary that 'Lax' is an old English word for 'salmon'. I began to wonder if the salmon ascending the river were sometimes washed out at Saltmarsh and were caught by the local villagers from Laxton, hence the name.
When the spring weather of 1940 came along, our lives became much easier. We still had to get up in the middle of the night occasionally if there was a raid, but we had to do that any way for guard duty. The days were taken up in taking care of the equipment we had, maintaining and improving the site, making roads up to the camp from the main road that ran past 30 yards away. About this time, we actually had rifles issued out to us with a few live rounds, but the troops in France got the lions share of what arms were available .The unpreparedness of the British Forces to wage war was a scandal and if the Germans had known, they would have been over the Channel in rowing boats after Dunkirk.

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