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The Police Auxiliary Messenger Service — The ‘Pams’

With a friend, one George Richardson, I joined the service during the last two years of the war, giving my age as sixteen, when in fact I was quite a lot younger. How I achieved this subterfuge I do not know fore I was by far the smallest of the whole group. We were equipped with a uniform (mine had to be tailored to make it fit!) and trained in first aid and the use of a stirrup pump. We, of course, had to provide our own bicycle. After training we were allocated two of us to a post. There were several of these placed around Grimsby and Cleethorpes, mine being Weelsby Street School. Each of these posts were manned by Special Constables led by a Sergeant, and received merciless teasing from the constables as we messengers became known as the ‘PAMS’. However, we soon became an accepted part of the team, our role being to take messages from the Sergeant to other posts and the Battle Room, a nerve centre situated at the Municipal Offices in Grimsby. Particularly in the event of an air raid and the possibility of communications being disrupted.
The air-raid siren sounded constantly, usually during the night, and without fail I would dutifully don my uniform and despite the entreaties of my Mother, would take the short ride from my home in Hope Street to the post in Weelsby Street School. The first few months were completely un-eventful, with most of the activity taking place in the air as the German planes flew down the Humber Estuary on their way to targets such as Hull and Sheffield. Human nature being as it is, we became rather blasé about this routine, so much so we would stand in the school playground watching the searchlights probing the sky for enemy aircraft, accompanied by the thunder of anti-aircraft guns placed on the North wall of the docks. This complacency was about to be rudely shaken. One June night (I am not sure of the date. Others will know, but I think it was either the 11th or 13th of June) the siren sounded and I made my way to the School. Upon entering the playground it seemed as though the whole town became lit up from the sky, as though it was daylight. I knew later that these were chandelier flares dropped by German planes. As I stood mesmerised by this sight I was seized by a Constable who propelled me to the door of the post, telling me in his words ‘We are going to catch it tonight’. And catch it we did. I have an abiding memory of all of us in that post crouched on the floor of the school hall as explosion followed explosion, with debris clattering on the roof and choking dust swirling around, accompanied by the acrid smell of cordite.
As this mayhem subsided, we managed to collect ourselves together with Sergeant Hodds (A well-known barber with a shop in Oxford Street) directing operations. Then followed a strange almost uncanny incident. The Sergeant handed me a sealed message and instructed me to make my way with urgency and take it to the Battle Room. For some reason, I have never discovered why, he changed his mind and gave the message with the same instructions to the other messenger, a lad named Lawson (Maybe he thought I was much too small to negotiate the damaged streets?).
Little did we realise then that the German planes had dropped hundreds of ‘Butterfly’ anti-personnel bombs on the town. I believe Grimsby was one of the first, if not the first, to be the recipient of these deadly weapons. I refrain from describing how they operated. Suffice to say they would fall to the ground inert, but would explode it touched. As it was, Lawson drove out of the post and it seems he struck one of these bombs with his cycle wheel and was killed instantly. What a strange twist of fate! The Lord certainly looked after me on that occasion. The days and weeks that followed the blitz were full of tragic incidents involving human courage, tragedy and sadness. One of these involving Sergeant Hodds who, as he approached one of these bombs, it exploded, injuring him very badly and he died as a result of these injuries. As for me, I carried on as a messenger through to the end of the war, encountering other incidents, but nothing quite as traumatic as the one just described.

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