大象传媒

GOOD MORNING MR. HESS.

Our Wireless was fed by a large high tension battery and also a wet battery, the accumulator. It was contained within an extravagant black crackle enamel case and was connected to an external loud speaker. In spite of these refinements its tuning was accomplished by my Father twiddling the right hand knob with his right hand and the raising of his left hand and the periodic utterances of 鈥渟hush鈥�. The left hand knob needed no attention since it was always at maximum. Several 鈥渨ee-ah-wees鈥� indicated that Dad was closing in on 大象传媒 Droitwich, more 鈥渨ee-ah-wees鈥� interspersed with 鈥渨hatdeesay鈥檚鈥� then it was Mr. Chamberlain announcing that a state of war existed with Germany.

Nothing much changed at first. The posters at Abergavenny station exhorting visits to 鈥淪unny Torquay鈥� and 鈥淏lackpool Illuminations鈥� gradually faded . Smaller posters laid over them depicted the top echelon of the third Reich serving drinks at British military cocktail parties and reminding all that careless talk costs lives.

Our knowledge of the appearance of Herman Goering for example was established by watching barrage balloons aloft over the neighbouring port of Newport, since all English cartoonists lampooned his substantial girth in this manner.

We roamed far and wide without supervision, my Father being on Home Guard and my Mother on Red Cross duties.

We learned to goose step--鈥漀o! it鈥檚 Brian鈥檚 turn to be Hitler today鈥�. We learnt to identify the many and varied aircraft that traversed our skies. We learnt to shoot them down by the simple expedient of leaning on our backs in the heather and shouting 鈥� eh-eh-eh-eh-eh鈥�. We tossed hand grenades made from moist clay stacked along the banks of the canal, at the opposing gang.

We amassed collections of regimental badges , cadged from the soldiery encamped nearby. We constructed flotillas of warships out of wood. Their propellers were cut from sardine tins , their propeller shafts from bicycle wheel spokes and their propulsive power strips of bicycle inner tube. These fleets were subject to aerial bombardment as they sailed under the canal bridge. My high freeboard aircraft carrier was one of the early casualties , its flight deck split asunder to reveal to all a hull hollowed out with the aid of a red-hot poker.

We kept records of all sorts of military information, sometimes written in invisible ink, the ink being a copper sulphate solution which would turn blue on being heated. Another method of record keeping was ito use a code. Within these documents lay the dispositions of the army camps ,the location of our armouries in the beech woods above our house . Folded inside the front covers of our note books were copies of basic German phrases which had been issued to the Home Guard, terms like 鈥渒amerade鈥� and 鈥渉ande hoch鈥� which we knew would be essential when encountering the enemy. We stared at the Nuns from the towns convent to check if they were German paratroopers in disguise.

My bedroom really was an armoury for the Home Guard at one stage. Boxes of Canadian Ross rifles were stored under the bed. Their rapier length bayonets lay in a corner and my chest of drawers contained boxes of twelve bore ammunition, primed not with pellets but two sizeable lead balls. Lower down were cotton bandoliers of 300 calibre bullets for the Ross rifles.

Goebels, the German propaganda minister was always depicted as a dwarf, but it was one of his henchmen by name of William Joyce , always referred to as 鈥淟ord Haw-Haw鈥� that captivated our attention. He broadcast on a powerful transmitter commencing 鈥淛armanny calling, Jarmanny calling,鈥� and go on to detail the British cities which had been bombed then adding an undertaking to straighten out a notorious stretch of mountainous road near us when they took over.

Entry into the Grammar School with its chemistry lessons made us proficient in the art of making gunpowder . Sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal, ground together in an old marble pestle and mortar. The key ingredients were obtained from the chemists, 鈥淢y Mother sent me to get some flowers of sulphur for my fathers boils鈥� . Later another would go in with 鈥淒ad鈥檚 killed the pig and wants some saltpetre to preserve the bacon sides鈥�. Charcoal came from the remains of our garden fires. Fuses were saltpetre soaked string.
One such bomb making endevour between Percy and myself involved packing our gunpowder mixture into an old Vim tin. Try as we may we could not detonate our bomb, and in the end we threw it to the back of the shed -in frustration The mixture somehow managesd to slutter into life during the night and partially burned our shed down.
Results were not spectacular until we livened up the mixture with cordite strips extracted from bullets. Reference to my Fathers Home Guard manual enabled the manufacture of Molotov Cocktails , although our kerosene versions didn鈥檛 really have a tank stopping capability The manual also detailed the abrupt and bloody way to stop traffic by stretching a wire across the road. Fortunately we limited our experiments to my sisters skipping rope and our bicycles.

When a few bombs did fall around the house, they were as the propagandists had predicted, duds, or as we preferred to say 鈥渢ime bombs鈥�, but interestingly the screams they made when falling were the same as the ones we used when hurling stones at rival gangs. The only incendiary bomb that landed in our garden one wet night burned with all the ferocity of a Boy Scouts first attempt to light a camp fire under similar conditions.

The arrival of the Deputy Reich Fuerher in Abergavenny was made known to us by our intelligence sources some weeks before my Mother told us in hushed tones that Rudolf Hess was imprisoned in a section of the military hospital in which she worked. We knew too that Hess was on occasions taken for exercise on the surrounding mountains, Abruptly our interest changed to taking long walks and just what would we do if we saw him.

We were ascending the Sugar Loaf mountain quite early one morning when three figures approached us, the sun full on their faces . 鈥淚t鈥檚 him it鈥檚 Hess鈥�. On each side of him was a Welsh Guardsman with slung rifles. Hess was equal in hight to the six foot plus guardsmen bare headed ,,bushy eyebrowed with deep set eyes. He wore a long civilian overcoat. Hands in pockets ,head bent as if deep in thought.

鈥淕ood morning Mr Hess we called, he nodded gravely and gave us a school masterly look. We saw him three more times , each time his greeting to our 鈥済ood mornings鈥� was the same, -a slight mouthing of a 鈥済uten tag鈥�.

Each time he was guarded by a lesser unit. Next time it was by men of a county regiment, then the Pioneer Corps .The last time I saw him was when I was out walking on the mountain with my first girl friend. This time he was accompanied by two unarmed mental hospital attendants.

Shortly after that, Hess made that long journey back to his homeland by way of Nurenberg and Spandau.

W1114
ALAN TOSSELL 21 JULY 1998.

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