大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mr J K Maynard and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

When I was about 10 or 12 I had a friend called John Barlas who had two brothers both older than himself. Richard went into the RAF voluntary reserves and went as a fighter pilot and survived the war. I never had any contact with him and Robert who was in the Territorials and got called up, went over to France and didn't come back. Before that I thought of the war as a game and that rather brought it home to me - he's dead, he's not coming back after the war. Although I hardly knew him it rather shook me at the time.

Before the war in 1937 I was at college in London training to be an Electrical Engineer. I had to do what is now called work experience and between September 1938-September 1939, I worked for a firm called E P Plenty, Marine Engineers at Newbury. Why they put marine engineers building engines as far away from the sea as possible, I don't know! A fellow student called Gordon Hafter stayed at the same boarding house and we both had a motorbike so used to go to work on each other's bikes alternately. His parents were Swiss - they'd lived over here for years. He had the option when he was 21 to become a British or a Swiss national but he hadn't made up his mind. When we went to go to work experience I put down for a firm in St Albans who made control gears for motors in factories - an ordinary civilian job but it had been labelled an ordnance factory, hence my friend as he wasn't British couldn't come to that firm. He joined the RAF and he promptly got put onto secret work on radar and couldn't tell me what he was doing. I could tell him, but he was the foreign national who couldn't work in the factory!

Before the war I went home for the summer holidays in Beckenham - my father was an air raid warden. We used to visit my cousins Margaret, Darrell and Brian every Christmas - they lived in Croydon. Darrell and Brian were both studying architecture and were in the Terriers, both got called up to the artillery. Darrell went to India, caught polio and was paralysed. Brian met a German Jew in Egypt who had managed to get out of Germany - her parents went to America. On a Thursday two days before Poland was invaded, my father was told to report for duty and realised that there was going to be a war and told me to go back to Newbury and stay in 'digs'.

My father thought London was going to be 'obliterated'. He wouldn't let me use my motorbike, he said the roads would be clogged and I had to cycle all the way to Newbury, beautiful weather; this was on the Friday.

The first I heard about it was from a Gypsy on the way, somewhere near Reading who stopped me and said 'Have you heard? Hitler has invaded Poland!' I thought, 'Oh well!' So I was cycling along, not a care in the world, no crowds, no traffic jams, anyway I got to Newbury and stayed there.

Then on the Sunday we heard Chamberlain talk, some people were horrified. A lot of people including myself thought, 'Thank God. Now we know where we are we can get on with it!'

Anyway nothing happened! So I went back home to Beckenham, South East London.

The September college term started again and I commuted up to London every morning and back in the evening. Everything was lovely!

Until Dunkirk!

I used to travel up to London on the 8am something, 9am something train from Beckenham Junction, they were every 20 minutes regularly. In those days if the train came in and you looked at your watch and it wasn't 24 minutes past you knew your watch was wrong and not the train.

Anyway that morning the train didn't arrive. There were typical businessmen, bowler hats and rolled umbrellas standing on the platform grumbling about Southern Railway and suddenly a steam train came through absolutely crammed with soldiers. Because we had heard about Dunkirk we suddenly realised and there was a change in everybody's expression, instead of grumbling they all started cheering at the slowly passing trains, chucking cigarettes, and taking sandwiches out of their briefcases. It was amazing the changes in people's attitudes!

Anyway then the Battle of Britain came.

I didn't appreciate the seriousness of the situation. I don't know whether a lot of people did. I was only 19 years old. Anyway it was my summer holidays.

I remember sitting in the garden, quite happily having tea, thinking, 'What a lovely summer.' Watching the 'dog fights' going on overhead. I thought it would have been fun to have been a fighter pilot, but I was short sighted, and couldn't get in anyway - just as well because I went up in a helicopter a couple of weeks ago and I was scared stiff!

There were quite a number of us locally who were waiting to be 'called up'. So we went to join the Home Guard and LDV. We were told to 'Go away. We don't want you.' They only wanted people who had fought in the First World War. They had no time to train people.

So we got together and took over an empty shop somehow and collected salvage. One of our members, who knew somebody in a theatre, discovered there was a theatrical agency that hired out props and clothing, and that they had over 100 First World War rifles, complete with bayonets and everything. He hired these, hurled them into a taxi. Nobody stopped him. We had 100 perfectly good rifles. We then panicked a bit and thought we ought to tell the police - they of course had kittens and said we must stay with them and guard them day and night. So we did guard them.

I learnt an awful lot about rifles, because I was on one of the guard duties and I stripped it down, every nut, bolt, screw - everything! Far more than you're ever taught to strip in the army. Then the police said that on a Monday morning we had to take them back. They said they are dangerous and not accurate, so we said that a German you were firing at wasn't going to turn round and say 'Excuse me, have you got a certificate of accuracy for that gun?' They had bayonets, but still we took them back.

After having done a year at college, I then had to do another year at an engineering works so I went to Electrical Apparatus Company at St Albans which was North London, so I was out of the way.

I still used to go home at the weekends, and my mother was very worried that I was going home right through the centre of London while the Blitz was on.

I finished my training, and then got fed up of sitting in a drawing office designing electrical equipment. I heard they were calling out for Radio Maintenance officers in the army. As I was a qualified electrical engineer, I volunteered. They said, 'Jolly good, you will have to do 6 weeks' basic training and then you will go on to be a Wireless Maintenance Officer.' So I did that at Derby. It was then Ordnance Corps. R.E.M.E. hadn't been started then. My parents were being bombed to hell in London. I think they dropped one bomb on Derby, the whole time I was in the army.

So I joined up and was sent to the War Office Selection Board having done the 6 weeks' basic training. They said I wasn't suitable to be an officer, mainly because I had a very bad stammer then, which I have got over now. So they didn't quite know what to do with me. So they sent me to another barracks in Derby. It was a store for the army, a motor store; they stored every component for every motor vehicle in the place. The officer said, 'What are you?' I said, 'An electrical engineer.' He said, 'Oh, you either ought to be a store man or a clerk.' I said,'Well I'm not,' so he sent me into the garage.

When I got there the sergeant said, 'The back light on that lorry doesn't work, see if you can fix it!' so I thought 4 years training as an electrical engineer and I end up fixing a back light.

The army then though that I was to become an officer, so I was sent to Kent which was quite near home which was very convenient. So I went there, and they decided that I was to be released to civilian work, so I thought, 'Make your mind up!'

So then I was sent to Aldershot to a holding battalion. I was, of course, Ordnance, but R.E.M.E had been formed, but I hadn't been sent to R.E.M.E. because I was going to be released.

So I asked if I could go to the R.E.M.E workshop next door (Radio Workshop) and work there - at least I would be sweeping a workshop out with people who talk the same language.

Anyway, I went there and saw a Major, who said, 'Why are you here?' so I said, 'I'm a graduate I.E.E.' He said,'Good God, that's more than I am!' So I was given an exam paper for Radio Mechs. He said, 'I'll give you 10 minutes to do it.' I did all the questions. 'Right, you are Radio Mech now, get your flash up,' he said, so I put the flash up and and went back to Ordnance.

The next morning, the sarge said, 'What's that?' I replied, 'Radio Mech's flash Sarge!' He said,'There's no Radio Mechs in Ordnance, take it off,' so I took it off.

So then I went back in the radio workshop and the sergeant there said, 'I thought the major said put your Radio Mech flash up, why isn't it?' I replied, 'Because the Ordnance Sarge told me to take it off.' He replied, 'Well put it on again!' So I learnt to tack it on with two little stitches. In the end they allowed it and I was the only Radio Mech in Ordnance.

Eventually, I had to get a form to apply for my release to Standard Telephones, North Woolwich for which I got permission, so I was in the army for a total of 400 days, wasting my time, the army's and everybody's time. We used to test cables, one we had to test for pressure and fill it with water. We found out after the war that it was PLUTO - pipeline under the ocean - which they laid across the Channel after D Day to pump petrol to France. We heard later that they had laid it in Loch Ness as a trial and when they got it out again water poured out. The lead had collapsed under the pressure, water had got in between the collapsed lead and the armour wires.

I then got digs in South Woolwich, Standard Telephones were in North Woolwich so I went to work and back every day. I was doing work on armed capacitors for RADAR. We were told they were failing in service and wanted to know why - we couldn't find anything wrong.

They didn't tell us how they were being used. We were told they worked on a different frequency and we were told we were using the wrong frequency for testing them. They said they would lend us a generator. Anyway, that didn't work, it just brought up other questions, but they wouldn't tell us anything - talk about keeping secrets! It was on a 'need to know basis' and we didn't need to know.

Anyway, we eventually sorted out the problem. We found that the ATS were turning the voltage up and then down which initiated a 'breakdown'. But this took about a year messing about with to find out what was wrong and various other things.

By this time, the doodlebugs had started coming over and of course everyone took cover whenever you heard one. We all thought this is using thousands of man hours.

Anyway, the factory put a 'watcher' up on the roof with a public address system and a microphone which went all over the factory. He was a very cultured chap and when he saw a doodlebug coming in our direction, he would announce over the microphone, 'Attention - take cover, take cover please!' and then you heard them buzzing over and then they would disappear.

One day he announced there was another one and we had to take cover, then he realised there was another one coming from the opposite direction. This time he announced, 'For Christ's sake take cover!' There was a crash as he dropped his microphone, but the doodlebug landed miles away of course.

There must have been some air raid shelters at Standard Telephones, but I can't remember them. We never ran to them, we just dodged under our desks.

I was talking to my boss one day, who had a desk next to mine, and I suddenly realised he wasn't there. I found him under his desk. I asked him what he was doing there. He said he thought there was a doodlebug. I informed him it was a motorbike. The motorbike sounded very like a doodlebug.

When I was in St Albans I was actually in the Home Guards, but I was rather like 'Pike' from 'Dad's Army'. All the others were a lot older. We guarded the gas works at night. Why and what for I don't know. I joined the Home Guard in 1944 at Beckenham, although I wasn't living there, because I knew Beckenham because I was brought up there. When the doodlebugs went off they took out all of the windows and took tiles off the roofs. The Home Guard volunteered to go and mend the roofs, and this was one of my jobs. The council used to tip a pile of tiles at the end of a road, and within a couple of weeks I was going up the ladder holding on with one hand and going along the roofs, even though I was frightened of heights before this. It's amazing how you can get used to it.

As I had a motorbike, I was put into the Dispatch Rider Unit. So I used to go to Beckenham every weekend and do some 'training', which was really an excuse to do 'scrambles' all around Brands Hatch. That was before Brands Hatch was a racetrack. That was very enjoyable.

The doodlebugs finished and then the V2's started. Everybody was very worried about the V2's because you couldn't hear them coming. I said that there was absolutely nothing you could do about them - ignore them! If one has got your name on, it's got your name on. You will never know because you won't hear it coming.

I could say that I had as normal a life as possible. I lived in digs with a woman called Mrs Duck with two or three other lodgers. Two of them were about my age, I was in my early twenties by then, and they also worked at Standard Telephones. I worked in Power Cable Development. When I started, I asked for 拢4 per week, which was a pound more than I was getting before I went in the army. They said, 'Oh no, we pay all our junior research engineers 拢4 10 shillings.' I thought, 'I'm in the money!'

The cost of living then was quite different. Petrol was one shilling and tuppence per gallon.

My fellow lodgers all worked on cables, but of different sorts. One of them, Mike Bennett, lived in Hull and he had gone home for the weekend, which was quite a journey in the war, because you never quite knew when the trains were running or the lines were bombed. He turned up on Monday morning as we were having breakfast. He had come down overnight. He said, 'I'm absolutely shattered, I'm going to bed. To hell with work today.' So he went upstairs and then he came down again and said,'Oh I'd better go to work.'

So we all went to work. About 10 o'clock we had a phone call. It said,'Can you come home, there's been a V2 in your back garden.' 'Oh hell!' I said. So we went home. It hadn't brought the house down, but it had taken out the windows, window frames and brought ceilings down. So we started clearing up, getting the rubble off the stairs and going upstairs and collecting what we could of our belongings.

Mike went into his bedroom and came out absolutely white. He said, 'Thank God I went to work.' I said, 'Why?' He replied, 'That huge oak wardrobe has fallen right across my bed and driven the legs through the floor.' If he had gone to bed, he'd have been in it. He is now retired, living in Sheffield.

The three of us then found a furnished flat around the corner - this was in Blackheath, Shooters Hill Road, which was the A2 and we took this flat, the three of us.

We knew nothing about housekeeping or anything. Anyway we coped. We went round all the shops with our ration books. We were treated very kindly by people who realised we didn't know what on earth we were doing. Anyway, the woman in the butcher's, the cashier, gave us some advice and she lived two doors away. She sent her daughter round to clean, who was about nineteen years old. We thought, 'Oh, this was very convenient.'

Then a bit later we got to know her quite well and she introduced us to some friends of hers. She told us later that she told her friend Anise who lived at the other side of the Heath, who had just left school and worked in Harrods, that she had found three funny blokes living in a flat and you must come and meet them. They came and met us. Anise was wearing an emerald green suit. I can remember this, because later I married Anise. She died in 1994 up here.

By this time the V2's had stopped because the army had over-run the site and then the war was over. It was either V.E or V.J day, I was in a crowd outside Buckingham Palace to see the King and Churchill, which was a bit frightening because the crowd was really getting crushed.

The other one I can remember is walking down Charing Cross Road and down to Trafalgar Square - no traffic - everybody was walking on the road. I got Anise hand in hand with the other girl, I remember some sailors calling, 'Hey, he's got two -it's not fair!'

That's the end of the war!

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