大象传媒

To his dismay, My father was just too old to become a air pilot.
When War was declared, he was Mr Bell, the Furrier in the West End fashion house, Molyneux.
First he became an Air Raid Warden and then applied and was accepted as a War Reserve policeman.
He continued to work both as a furrier and police officer in the Mayfair and Soho areas of London until 1946. This meant very long hours, as a police shifts were eight hours (day or night) or point duty a 4 hour shift - traffic lights were not lit in Wartime. Or any street lights at all.
He had many stories to tell, especially about life in Soho. Once during an air raid, in a butcher's shop,he saw hundreds of little glittering lamps,lit up by the flashes of the bombs dropping. On shining his torch into the shop he saw, to his horror, a hanging carcass of meat covered with rats, who instantly scampered away!
All this contributed to his police anecdotes - though also to his backaches. When he had time he would sleep in his stockroom, and only came home to my mother and I every other weekend, to spend most of his spare time in the garden 'Growing for Victory'.
I have always wondered why this group of War Reserve Police have never been officially honoured - though I gather that my father nearly received a medal.
(He died in 1997 of cancer at nearly 94 years of age).
At the Queen's special 50th Jubilee Parade in 2002, there seemed to be every kind of Civilian Group except the War Reserve Police.
The Metroplitan Police Museum were very helpful and encouraging but nothing more seems to have been done for the WRP cause.
Life would be that much happier to know someone cared for what was done by the War Reserve Police.

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