大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jenny Ford on behalf of Mr. Len Savage and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

鈥淲hen the Reverend Jo Spray asked me if I would like to talk about my war experiences at the service in All Saints Church, Turvey on 10th July 2005 I said, no! To me there are some things very private and personal, and there are others that I would rather try to forget. I will say that it was not easy for any of us.

After having said no I mentioned that I felt that not enough was being said about the role of those people not in the Armed Forces. They really were wonderful. So to stress my point I relented just a little and I would like to share my knowledge and experience of two events during the early part of the war. The events happened in May and June 1940 (Dunkirk) and from August onwards until the end of the year (the Battle for Britain). The recent bombings in London brought back vivid memories of that. Things could have been totally different without those people not in uniform.

I volunteered for service on 4th September 1939 but was not called up until February 1940 which happened to be my 18th birthday. Two of my friends from this village, who were a little older, had already had their papers and were in France. And so, like many, many others of my age I thought that we must get in on the act before it was all over! It was at that time being suggested that it would be all over within six months. I looked for the postman every day from September to February expecting my call up because it would soon be finished and I would miss out. Silly fool!

We then heard of the German advance through Belgium to France and that there were hundreds of thousands of service men trapped in Dunkirk. It was estimated that only twenty to thirty thousand could be rescued by boat. The large ships that were available had to anchor in deep water and men were ferried to them by small boats. Some men even swam the distance from the shore to the boats but the sea was always rough at that point. Then what I feel was the biggest miracle of the war, and there were many, the sea became calm - in fact, it was reported that it was the calmest for over thirty years. This allowed hundreds of small boats from England to get in close to rescue as many as they could. In the end over three hundred thousand servicemen were saved 鈥� my two friends included. I learned afterwards that one of them was picked up by a small two man fishing boat being manned by a father and son 鈥� the son being no more than sixteen years of age. They had already made several trips and were going back again. Most people manning those small craft were not in the forces so we must never forget them. Things could have been very different without their help. I never heard how my second friend was saved because we never saw him again before he was sadly killed in January 1942. However, his family gave the altar in the Lady Chapel to his memory so we shall always remember him.

After I had finished my initial training, square bashing as they called it, I was posted to Kidbrooke in London, not far from the Woolwich Arsenal, which was a big munitions factory in those days. The Battle for Britain had just started, so it was not the best of places to be in. My day job if you can call it that, was to deliver full gas cylinders and collect empty cylinders from various barrage balloon sites around London and sometimes down called 鈥榖omb alley鈥�, as it was called, to Dover. We tried to get all the lorries back to base by nightfall, for obvious reasons, and if you were not on other duties you had to report for fire duty when the raids started. Everyone was called to help out where needed. We had long handled shovels and rakes to scoop up the incendiary bombs and douse them in water. We also put out small fires with hand pumps or even buckets of water passed along a chain of people from storage tanks erected for that purpose on the side of the road. On the off occasion we had to rescue anyone who had been trapped. At that time all non-service personnel had to take to the shelters when the air raid sirens were sounded, that was once or twice a day at times, but if, when the raid was over, or there was a lull, you relaxed and had a chat. It was surprising how many people there were not in uniform. Many helped us in the water chains or dousing incendiaries, and in a lot of cases brought us a jug of tea. Imagine if you can tons of bombs falling during those raids night after night, week after week, month after month, not only on London but on other cities as well. You never knew when or where but you could generally rely on civilians being there to help out. They were all heroes. They really were marvellous and without them things could have been very different. After all, we servicemen were getting paid for the job, in my case two shillings and six pence per day with no overtime.

So by all means let us celebrate 60 years since the end of the war and give thanks to all the service personnel who took part. I am proud to be one of them. We are told that this could be the last of the big celebrations of that war, so please don鈥檛 let us forget all those people not in uniform who helped us win that war. Things would have been very different without them.

By the way I served both in the Royal Air Force and the Army, and in my case that six months prediction turned out to be six and a half years in uniform. So I need not have worried that poor postman!鈥�

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