大象传媒

Each school morning we started the day with a religious service fifteen minutes long, called 鈥榓ssembly鈥�, at which the headmaster officiated.He had recently taken holy orders in the Anglican Church in preparation for a second career as vicar after his impending retirement.It was generally a lot of fun with uninhibited singing of rousing and inspiring hymns. Those boys whose voices had not yet broken formed a choir that was chosen to sing one or more verses on their own.Before dismissing us the headmaster would make any announcements. On one memorable day, he waved a note received from a resident of a neighbouring house. The resident wrote that he appreciated he would have to put up with the occasional unseemly noise from the school but 鈥渁 nigger minstrel show at two in the morning鈥� was too much. The miscreants apparently could not be apprehended so we all got the lecture for that one.At least our firewatchers had been awake. I should point out that the 鈥渘igger minstrel鈥� show was a popular singing event on radio at the time by the 大象传媒鈥檚 men鈥檚 chorus.They would sing songs from the southern U.S. and elsewhere accompanied by banjos, etc.With the advent of television the chorus dressed up in the striped jackets and white trousers and blackened their faces.To put more visual appeal, there was a troop of white ladies in tights who performed dances.With the advent of 鈥減olitical correctness鈥�, this popular show was eventually renamed 鈥淭he Black and White Minstrel Show鈥�.

During the spring of 1944, the radio news began reporting a succession of 鈥渆xplosions of gas mains in the South East of London鈥�. The explanation offered was that there had been no maintenance during the war and the pipes had deteriorated.In fact, the explosions resulted from the landings of the first V2 rockets.

It was learned later that aborted take-offs of these rockets killed as many people at the delivery end as the successfully launched ones did at our end.The V2 was my first exposure to supersonics.You would hear the explosion before anything else and then the noise of the rocket coming.They were really not very effective.So many blew up on take off while others would explode in the air on re-entry.

At noon hour one day, I was walking along a road in Harrow when one of these rockets exploded far above the ground both above and in front of me so I had a grand opportunity to pick up souvenirs from the bits that fell down onto the road. Surprisingly, I saw nobody get hurt.It never occurred to me that people might get hurt by the falling fragments, some half a metre in length, that were clanging to the ground all around me.

By now I had become a cadet in the school鈥檚 Air Training Corps that met every Sunday morning as well as after classes one or two evenings during the week.Some of the masters served as officers and others as instructors.We studied aircraft recognition, Morse code, drill etc., in preparation for joining up when we became eighteen.The organization was really a pool for aircrew training.At least being in the ATC gave you entry into the Air Force which was generally regarded as better than the army and excused you the first six weeks of basic training. Nobody gave much thought to training for a job in civilian life. The ATC was nationwide and even had its own radio programme on Saturday mornings with a rousing theme song 鈥淲e鈥檙e the sons of the lords of the air, the ATC鈥� We were given tickets to attend a broadcast and I joined a group that went to London for the occasion. Instead of the young, manly types we had envisaged singing our theme song we were shocked to find a row of tubby, elderly men! This was only reasonable as all the young singers would have been in the services.We were taken to aerodromes for experience flights and to camps in the spring.It was all fun and we got to see a lot.

On one memorable Sunday morning, our group of cadets was addressed by an old boy from the school, probably no more than five years older than the youngest among us, who had been a member of the crew of a bomber shot down over France.With some of his crew, he had, with the aid of the French Resistance, managed to escape to neutral Spain without being captured.It was an enthralling story and well told.One of the crew was captured when he rode a stolen bicycle into a village in broad daylight while still wearing his British uniform. Our hero kept a lower posture until found by the resistance people.

Incredibly the whole crew, except for the cyclist, travelled together in French clothes to the Spanish frontier by train. Our hero spoke enough French that he was allowed to speak when addressed but if asked where he was from he was to account for his strange accent by telling the Germans he was a Flemish speaking Belgian. An American among the escapees was not to speak on any account but was obliged to say something when he accidentally trod on the toes of a fellow passenger.His tortured rendering of 鈥減ardonnez moi鈥� elicited the reply of 鈥渢hat鈥檚 alright old chap鈥� in English from the apparent Frenchman he had offended.It turned out two independent groups of the Resistance movement had put Allied Pilots on the same train without knowledge of each other!
One of the greatest attractions of the ATC was to go to Bovingdon for the day, generally on a Sunday.This was an American air force base about one hour away by truck.We would sometimes be taken there for flights, and were always given American food cafeteria-style attended by black men, the first I had ever encountered.One such occasion was the first time I ever ate corn. We would sit and look at the food on our plates wondering what some of it was. Dessert would be canned fruit,a luxury none of us had seen in years.

What the attractions were in the experience flights I cannot now understand because many of us would be airsick into a bucket that was passed up and down the aisle as need dictated. There were none of the discrete little envelopes seen today for use by the ailing traveller, paper was too scarce for such niceties to be manufactured.I don鈥檛 think we even wore seat belts as I remember one friend lying prostrate on the floor of the plane calling to God to bring us all down quickly.
The planes we flew in from our local RAF base at Northolt were mostly old twin-engined biplanes no doubt very nostalgic to some but not my choice for comfort.The Americans gave flights in Dakotas but I was never lucky enough to get one.We all kept logs of our flights with the registration numbers of the planes, the minutes we had flown and an officer鈥檚 signature.Most of the flights were for twenty minutes or so. The big thing was to be able to brag about how many hours flying you had.Flying was still very much a novelty to the average person.I don鈥檛 recall ever meeting anyone who had flown before 1939 and I was certainly the first among my family to fly.

ATC camps were a lot of fun and good replacements for the regular holidays that we missed.I attended two such camps both for one week.One was at a Wellington bomber station in the Midlands and the other a naval Fleet air Arm station on the northern coast of Cornwall where Swordfish biplanes training for torpedo attacks were stationed.

We got more experience flights at each and for the first time I was not sick! Great amusement was caused at the Naval Station where we were required to sleep in hammocks.At the bomber station we were impressed by the Commanding Officer who sported a classic wide moustache and all the language affected by many aircrew of the time.He gave us an explanation of how radar worked which made us feel we had been given secret information.I think everyone by that time knew what radar did but nobody talked about how it worked.
Troops from all over the world were by now a common sight.Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before France was invaded. Our classroom was on the upper floor of the school.We heard marching feet on the road outside.Our French master always an extrovert, threw open the window to waive with one arm at a column of troops from New Zealand while he encouraged us in the singing of the Marseilles with the other.Before the end of the first line we were all at the windows singing and waiving too.How he got us all to settle down afterwards I do not recall.
D-Day, the appointed time for the landing in France came on June 6th, 1944.The landing had been delayed several days by bad weather but we knew nothing of this. All we knew on the appointed day was learned from a brief statement on the morning news that Winston Churchill,the Prime Minister,would broadcast an important announcement at one o鈥檆lock. Those of us considered old enough to behave and to be interested in what was happening, were allowed into the chemistry laboratory where there was an ancient radio (even by standards of the time),at the appointed time during lunch hour,along with many of the staff, to hear what was going to be said.The announcement of course was that several landings had been successfully accomplished early that morning.It turned out later that Churchill insisted on doing this job himself whether the landings were a success or not.

It was by no means certain that the landings would be successful. Not only was the weather uncertain but several trial raids and landings had not all gone well. One raid by the Canadians at Dieppe is still remembered as one that went tragically wrong when it was discovered after the landing that the movement of the troops on the beach was impeded by the very coarse pebbles on the beach. The soldiers could barely stand.This time there were several landings, and all more or less accomplished their objectives. The German command had suspected landings would be made during these summer months but had guessed the wrong beaches to defend. Selection of the beaches on which to attempt landings was not made lightly.
It was essential that the beaches be of the right composition to support tanks.A public appeal was made for photographs taken by the public during beach holidays in France. The army also engaged a geologist who was skilled in the science of soil technology. He would be landed on a beach of interest with a small group of commandos.While the commandos created a diversion, the geologist would conduct whatever sampling and testing he could. For the convenience of the moment the geologist was made a colonel,however he refused to shave off his beard as required by Army Regulations and had to be given a special dispensation from the War Office.
Bombing was thought to be the way to get the Germans to give in.The fact that bombing had only strengthened morale in Britain was overlooked.鈥淭he Germans are different and do not have our moral fibre鈥� was an indication of the misguided thought pattern of the time.The U.S. planes were far better armoured and equipped with more machine guns to battle enemy fighters than the British planes were. While being so much better protected they could not carry the weight of bombs the British planes could.These differences between the aircraft of the two nations lead to the Americans bombing by day and the British by night. By the end of the hostilities, the British were mounting 1000 bomber raids with some planes carrying 鈥渂lockbusters鈥� weighing 12,000 pounds each. We could only hear these planes passing overhead at night on their way out and back. Specially equipped 鈥減athfinder鈥� aircraft equipped with special navigational aids led the main force of bombers to their targets. Pilots of these aircraft wore distinctive insignia and were heroes of schoolboys everywhere.
The American planes we could see. They would pass over in great clouds composed of groups of twelve each made up of four clover leaf patterns each consisting of three planes. On their return the planes would keep in the original pattern but there were often spaces left where planes had been lost in action. Great holes were visible in the wings and tails of others. We were amazed how some of them kept in the air let alone stayed in formation. Occasionally we would see a flight of fighter aircraft flown by French pilots. These could be easily distinguished by the custom of arranging the aircraft in the pattern of the cross of Lorraine. This pattern was adopted as a morale booster for the French who it was thought would be pleased to know that their own kind were flying overhead.

The outcomes of the battles that raged back and forth over France and the Low countries were not always in our favour but the progress of the front eastward was something we all watched keenly. Eventually the first troops were into Germany and reports of the conditions found in concentration camps filtered back. Several boys a couple of years my senior had chosen to attend medical school before joining the army. (University courses during the war were run on a system of four terms per year so a three-year degree was completed in only two). The medical schools were cleared out and all the students sent to the concentration camps to administer care. The boys I knew spent their entire time injecting people against typhus and cholera. After several weeks they returned to their studies. They appeared quite nonchalant about the experience.

Once the allied troops were in Germany, air raids of all kinds came to an abrupt end and at school,we were allowed to eat the iron rations we had stored in our desks for the five war years. Mine consisted of chocolate rye vita crisp bread of a variety long since gone from the shops. Everyone had much the same and I can remember us all eating whatever we had with great relish. Mine would not have sustained me for long. Like my friends,we were at an age when boys can never get enough to eat. We would slip out of school after lunch to buy a small loaf of bread or a fruit pie to eat before afternoon classes began.

The other building we used was the Science Building of Harrow School.This is the very elite place where Winston Churchill went to school and is amongst the most expensive of its kind in England. We did all our chemistry and physics laboratory work there as well as took several classes. We also were invited to join 鈥渢he Boys鈥� for scientific demonstrations after school. The 鈥淏oys鈥� generally seemed a stuck up lot but I could never decide whether this was true arrogance on their part or whether a school rule forbade them from talking to outsiders.

The war years with their lack of distractions were ones of considerable scholastic achievement at the school I attended. We did not have the money to go to the cinema more than about once a month, there were few dances held, the street lights went off at ten thirty to save power, and so on. On weeknights there was really nothing else to do but go home listen to a bit of radio and do homework.
The war in Europe seemed to just taper off in the end as there was no formal surrender. The enemy was simply over-run. Other enemy countries such as Italy had quit earlier and were now on our side. Whatever happened to erstwhile enemies such as Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary never seemed to make headlines. They just faded away!

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