大象传媒

HITLER V. A BRIGHTON SCHOOLBOY

oldbrightonboy

1. Declaration of war

2. Home Front

3. Schoolboy鈥檚 war

4. Scouting

5. War鈥檚 end

Part 1
Declaration of war

Part 1A
Anyone living in England who was old enough to know what was what, remembers where they were and what they were doing at 11am on Sunday 3rd September 1939. This was when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced over the radio, (or wireless as we sometimes called it in those days), that Mr Hitler had not withdrawn the German troops who had invaded Poland and that Britain was at war with Germany. Wireless was the principal means of instant communication in those days and a day or two earlier we had been asked to listen in for the fateful announcement.
I remember it well, I was on Hollingbury golf course high above Brighton with two young evacuees from London. Ten days earlier I had celebrated my twelfth birthday and a day or two after that event Betty (11) and Eric (8), evacuees from Horseferry Road were billeted on us at 90 Stanmer Villas, Brighton. 鈥楿s鈥�, as far as No. 90 was concerned, was dad Alf, one of his younger sisters, Nellie, who answered the call and came to keep house for us when Alf鈥檚 much loved wife left him a widower a few years earlier and me, Jim, who had been attending Varndean School for Boys in Brighton just one year.
We had, of course, been expecting the declaration. We knew it was building up. At eleven or twelve years of age my contact with the world was through cigarette cards, The News Chronicle, the wireless and occasional visits to the cinema. Probably in that order of precedence. The Gaumont British and Pathe newsreels were a vital part of the entertainment at the cinema and via that medium we knew about tours of the Royal Family, sports events and the bombing and machine gunning of unarmed villagers in Abyssinia by Mussolini鈥檚 fascist troops as he set about conquering that country. We knew, too, of the Spanish Civil War but not what it was about. I still don鈥檛 know what it was about and I have read around the subject over a period of years. But we knew that Hitler and Mussolini were dive-bombing troops in Spain as a sort of rehearsal for another Great War which he was planning.
Nellie and I had been on holiday in Wales and we returned as August 1939 came to its end. The prospect of war was not a matter which spoilt the holiday for me but we knew, albeit only vaguely, that Poland was about to be invaded by Hitler's Wehrmacht and that Britain had committed herself to Poland's support. It was a time of close attention to the radio news. If I thought anything about the prospect of war it was with excitement but the sisters had been through the First World War and were very worried. I think the holiday had been curtailed by a day or two. It has to be said that Alf was not in favour of the war. During the First World War he had served in France on the Western Front from August 1914 to spring 1919, (the war ended in November 1918), and he had a full set of service medals and chronic bronchitis to prove it. He did not wish to join in another war.
We returned to Brighton in the late afternoon as Alf walked slowly up Stanmer Villas from work. He looked very tired and was somewhat grumpy as he said war was almost certain. It may be that Alf, who was 58 and looking forward to retirement rather than a heavier work load, had heard that his recently appointed, immediate boss was to be Controller鈥檚 Liaison Officer responsible for rehabilitating victims of bombing in addition to the normal responsibilities of his office as Chief Public Health Inspector. Alf no doubt saw himself sharing his boss鈥檚 work load without the glory. Boss was younger than Alf and a northerner. Alf was a true Saxon and resented northerners coming south and taking our jobs. He may have applied for Boss鈥檚 job. There was not too much love lost between them but that said, our families met socially and exchanged hospitality from time to time. One can understand Alf鈥檚 irritability.

Our Evacuees arrived within a day or two of our return from Wales as forlorn, tired, homesick, frightened children led by equally tired, irritable and sometimes officious officials trying to find places for them to stay. Their aim was to keep siblings together if possible. They had a sort of formula for Stanmer Villas, mainly built in the 20s, (which was almost exclusively three-bedroom houses), which ordained that we at No 90 should be able to accommodate two evacuees. But the formula did not take account of our abnormal household where the adults did not sleep in the same room. Nevertheless, with a wish to help but with some reservations, we took in Betty and Eric. Betty shared a room with Aunt Nellie and Eric came in with me. Alf was concerned lest they were verminous, (as ever the public health inspector), but they weren't. Evacuees were not necessarily unpopular. They came with an 鈥榓llowance鈥� which if the hostess was very 鈥榚conomical鈥� could provide her with a profit but Nellie made no profit from Betty and Eric. For the short time they were with us they lived as part of the family sharing our board and rations.
Our hospitality didn't last long. One Sunday morning Betty came into the room where her brother and I slept in her nightie and stood on my bed. Alf foresaw sex rearing its head as I saw Betty's nether regions. It, if sex is neuter, was not rampant but Alf looked on Betty as temptation and asked for her removal. Come to think of it, had temptation remained I am not sure I would have tried to resist. Understandably, when Betty was moved on Eric felt isolated and a house was found where they could be together. I think they returned to London after a few months. The anticipated air raids did not materialize until a year or more later by which time Brighton, too, was vulnerable and Brighton鈥檚 children, including Varndean pupils, were being evacuated to Yorkshire.
Evacuees stories were a feature of the war. Most were colourful and many, no doubt, apocryphal. We referred to ours as 'cockneys' but they were probably not really qualified for that title as they came from Horseferry Road where their father was a caretaker or porter or something similar in one of the blocks of flats. He was, perhaps without realizing it, anti-Semitic and during a bus ride down to the seafront; he, Betty, Eric and I; he half-joked about ways to identify Jews. Their hooked noses, greasy looks and nasty ways. I had no idea what he was talking about. At Varndean I had learned that Jews did not attend assembly in the mornings and waited in Room 5 with 鈥榣ate boys鈥� but Jewish-ness meant nothing to me. A year or two earlier a refugee who may have been a Jew had joined our class after Czechoslovakia had been invaded but at that time I knew little or nothing of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. Mr Long would no doubt have got on well with the Nazis. But I digress.

Sunday 3rd September 1939 was the day war broke out. Which brings us back to what one was doing at 11 o鈥檆lock that day. Let鈥檚 get the facts straight, war did not 'breakout' on 3rd September, Britain declared war on Germany. A fact which Hitler reminded the world about from time to time. Declaration was the right and only action we could take, in my view, but it was we who took the initiative and put us at war with Germany.
On that Sunday morning I had offered to take Betty and Eric to visit prehistoric Hollingbury Camp which is about 20-30 minutes walk from home in Stanmer Villas. It was the place where visitors to 90, like it or not, were taken for a walk as a matter of hospitality. Perhaps as a test of their endurance, too.
As I remember it was a greyish, breezy morning. At eleven o'clock Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made his announcement on the wireless that Mr Hitler had not agreed to withdraw his troops from Poland and that "Britain is now at war with Germany" although I did not hear him say it at that time. I'm not sure if we got quite as far as the camp when the moan of Brighton's air-raid sirens rose and fell across the short cut grass of the golf course which more or less surrounded the camp. Recently there had been large posters on street-side hoardings advertising a film about a war of the worlds which showed the sky black with bombers over a burning city. I looked over Brighton towards the sea expecting to see squadrons of bombers. No doubt the prehistoric builders of the camp had stood nearby watching for invaders millennia before us.
We hurried down the golf course along the rough flint path through the Sycamore Wood, along the ash path between allotments laden with ripening garden produce, down Hollingbury Rise and home. I was excited but not frightened. Eric was crying and wouldn't or couldn't walk so I carried him piggyback. He was not very heavy. Contrary to regulations about taking cover during air-raids Alf stood anxiously at the front gate of No 90 as we pattered down the quiet empty street. The front door of the house was open. Alf had fixed our hardboard and batten blackout screens in the windows of the living room and drawn the curtains. He'd arranged the table as a shelter for us to sit under. He had not switched on the electric light and we were to sit uncomfortably in the semi-dark. But the steady 'all clear' tone of the siren sounded soon after we arrived home and the blackout shutters were taken down.
No one seemed certain why the warning had been given. There were rumours that an aircraft spotter thought he had seen the enemy. Some said it was intended as a signal that we were at war. As far as I know there was no official explanation of the reason for the siren. That was the first of many alarms, rumours and counter-rumours that we were to experience during the next six years of war.

We were at war but we were not entirely unprepared. Shortly before the war we had been issued with identity cards, approximately 4鈥漻6鈥� folded in two to become 4鈥漻3鈥�. We all knew the number of our card but were seldom called to show them. I recall showing mine to a military policeman on a motorbike near Old Boat Corner when out with the Scouts and on one or two occasions when leaving the coastal belt or traveling by train. But that was it. We were encouraged to wear identity discs on a string around our necks. These were about 1鈥� diameter, white composition discs, intended as a means of identification should one end up under a pile of rubble. I found mine in a drawer many years later. It is grey apart from the small white strip between hole and edge which was covered by the string which rubbed it clean. On one side is our address and on the other my number, EGAX/49/3. The terminal 鈥�3鈥� indicated I was the third member in our family unit.
Then there was A.R.P. The initials stood for 鈥榓ir-raid precautions鈥�. Before the war at least one of the major cigarette manufacturers produced a series of cigarette cards on precautions to take which included how to select a 'refuge room', make it gas proof and blast proof and equip it for a raid; on fighting incendiary bombs and gas attacks. There was also the 'A.R.P鈥� which should have had 鈥楽ervice鈥� attached to it but never did. People were members of the A-R-P, (the letters were always spoken separately, not run together as were Naafi which was the acronym for Navy Army Air Force Institute. The A.R.P. was run locally by the Borough Council for the County Borough of Brighton and administered by its officers of which reluctant Alf was one.
The most lowly officer in the chain of command was the Air-raid Warden who was at risk of receiving the worst possible insult, that of being a 'proper little Hitler'. This happened when he exercised his authority and called on someone to "put that light out".
In the town and in parks men were at work digging trenches in hollow squares. Earth was banked up against the sides of corrugated iron sheets and over the roofs of the shelters. School play grounds gave way to trenched shelters. No one knew what air raids would produce. South of the entrance to St Peter's Church a large rectangular reservoir appeared. Travelled people suggested it gave the Church a Taj Mahal image. Less evocative tanks appeared on other vacant sites. No doubt some War Emergency Regulation empowered local authorities to provide shelters and water wherever they thought fit.
Holes appeared in the Palace and West Piers, too. Engineers cut or blew up the girders and formed gaps intended to prevent invaders from running along the piers, onto the promenade and into town. The beaches were all mined, anti-landing craft spikes dug in and coils of barbed wire concertinaed along the promenade . It all looked very bleak in winter. In the summer the pebbles and thick black oil thrown up by the winter waves were stuck together in patches on the paving slabs under the wire. Oil from numerous destroyed ships all seemed to gravitate to the Brighton sea-ashore from which it was a short jump to the promenade.
Public buildings had sandbags laid like bricks, neatly bonded, into tapering walls in front of the walls of the building. The windows, like those of many homes including 90 Stanmer Villas, had inch wide strips of linen tape pasted on them in diamond or square patterns to reduce the risk of injury to people from flying glass from bomb-blast. Standing in the front room of the house some years after the end of the war, as the sun struck the window pane, I could see faint diamond patterns left behind despite numerous cleanings.

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