大象传媒

These chapters summarise two interviews with George Bailey, with his daughter Margaret Lole and his son-in-law Bryan Lole present.
The first chapter covers George's experiences in training and in bomb disposal in London.
(Bryan and Margaret)
Dad was a sapper in the war. He did his training at Launceston, there were four camps, then he was assigned to London, where he volunteered for bomb disposal.
He didn't volunteer to be a lorry driver, because (at the start of the war) they used to put unexploded bombs into the lorries without defusing them, and there were more lorry drivers killed, so dad never volunteered to learn to drive.
Tell them the one about getting the bomb out, and the clock. It was in London.
(George)
The bomb had landed and hadn't gone off. We were sent there and we had gone down 10 feet without any shuttering, and that was a bit of an achievement, but the beauty of it was that we didn't realise what we were taking on.
We'd been picked for this job, took it on, it went on for weeks, we never took on the seriousness of it. Anyway we came to a prison, I can't remember the name of the prison, ... it's a well known one.
(Bryan) It was next to a hospital, wasn't it.
(George)
The hospital was by the side of it, but ... There was five of us, and a lorry and a rubber lunch bag. So we got to this hospital, and the general was a rather nice sort of person, showed us where it was, and he was standing back in one of the wards, so we stood there looking at one another, like somebody gone out (a Stoke expression meaning flummoxed, gobsmacked - the lights had gone out, nobody was at home).
We went for days and weeks, not realising how serious we were ???, but anyway this general came in, he said "Oh you're the lads that have come to see me all right." So he said "I've got to rush." This is the hospital, and I can't think of the name of it, it's a well known one.
So anyway, we started to sort things out a bit. He said "Let me introduce me-self to you." He said "I'm Major Llewelin Lloyd-George", and he said "This is my hospital, I'm the governor of this hospital, and the building right on the other side is the prison itself."
It were all coupled together. So anyway, we started to do it, then it suddenly dawned on us, he was a civilian, so we told him "I shouldn't stop here, mate." He was like to get blown up.
"No, no, no. What you lads can do, I can do", and after a bit, we got stuff all out, planks, and he stood there a bit and he said "Could you do with a cup of tea and some sandwiches?"
"Oh yeh", cause that was the main thing of the war, food. And we started off digging away, and we got a step job, taking it up in steps. We'd got no proper scaffolding, just all makeshift, so we used four-foot jumps, near enough, and I was number fourteen.
This is where the joke come in. Oh, the other majors were hard with me. He says "Well, I'm come down with you, we'll go down together", he says. "And when you've got your four foot out, jump up one, 'stead of jumping down, jump up."
And we did that for a little while, then all of a sudden, someone says "Can you hear anything?"
There were all these voices, seemed miles away, and now I suppose I could hear a bit of a ticking, so I looked up.
There was this lance-corporal, crying his eyes out with laughter. He says "Look here." He showed me the string with the old alarm clock on it, tick-tick-ticking away. By the time we'd looked, we'd got up, jumped all our four foot.
And the major come out, we always called him the major. He came out and he said "What have you been up to?", so we said "It's this fool here who tried to be something big."
So anyway, he says "The master matron and the nurse will be out soon with big jugs of tea." So he says, "Would you rather lay it aside and go some where else? It's likely to go up", and then it suddenly struck us all, that this Corporal Dean had gone and disappeared. He got out of the way because he thought he was gonna get knocked about a bit.
He says ... now this is getting on a bit. I says "Well give us one of the jugs, now clear out. We're all like to get blown up, but you're not supposed to be."
Anyway we carried on, and they had a collection in the wards, money for a pint or two. We were onto a weekend, and the matron, they were on just as well as the major, to bring the tea and sandwiches, as we were to stand there and eat them.
He did say one, "Why don't you try and get out of it?" "We gotta come back to it. "
He says "I got a little surprise for yer" and he says, "these has been collected for yer, this collection's been done in the wards, and it's only for you chaps."
(Margaret) Cigarettes, wasn't it? He give you some cigarettes, and you didn't smoke.
(George)
A corporal said "Gotta find him something to give yer, get him off the site." So they collected the money and bought twenty cigarettes. So he bought these cigarettes, and the box on the big doors that let into the back of the jail, that was left open for us, to give us a chance to run away.
He explained it then, just on, "Nobody's free. I don't mind you getting blown up. It's my prison."
I can't think of the name of the prison.
"It's my prison and it's my responsibility. I'll take my share."
The matron and the nurse says "Oh we don't mind collecting money for the... It doesn't take us long." And that was another good gig we had.
It wouldn't take long, a couple of seconds, and we'd have been in pieces.
Anyway, we says "We didn't want you to do this, major."
"Look" he says, "just carry on with your job, and smoke the fags and that's all we're ???."
He says "Look, we can't move the wards, we ain't got time."
He says "The wards are too close together, they are too heavy (the beds with the patients in them), so we had to leave them where they were", and the other ones, the sisters, stayed with them, and we got behind them.
Anyway, we knocked off for that day, jumped on the wagons, went away, "We'll see you in the morning if it's still here."
We were there the next morning. There was a great big box, can't ??? and she said "Oh, there's a present here for yer."
I said "What is it?"
She says, "You'll see in a minute when yer've opened it up."
I opened it up and it were twenty cigarettes, packets. The corporal says "We can't let you do this, taking money off them to purchase fags."
He says "They'll probably go up at the same time as us."
Anyway, we put these cigarettes in the subscription box. They got a big box on the back of table as you led in where they took the prisoners through, and he put the in the box. He says, "Now try and get them out of there.
(Margaret) So you gave the cigarettes back to the hospital.
(George) I don't know why. We didn't have them.
(Margaret) No.
(George) While I'm taking, it seems casual, it didn't happen, but it was that quick.
Every movement and everything that happened was that quick.
(Jim) How far did you have to go down to get the bomb out?
(George) Fourteen foot.

(Bryan) Tell them about he one in Park Lane.
(George) Oh, it was iron-clad for them jobs. It was a case of, we had to go in. Yet it hadn't come out, 'cause every one was a different one.
The state of the ground, and the buildings that were on them ... can't understand why I can't remember the name of the prison.
We had Guy Motors, you know the Americans had Jeeps, we had Guy Motors., a British product. It carried five men and their tools. We used to go ... that was another thing that people didn't use to know about. We used to have to go through Leicester Square to Acton. Acton was Twyford Avenue.
(Jim) So where were your barracks, then?
(George) We was attached to West End.
(Margaret) They were huts, weren't they?
(George) No. No, the Great West Road was just being built. All the factories were being built alongside.
We used to have to go through this square, Leicester Square, it was the square. We used to race one another. Every night as we came back, we'd go "You don't want to go that road", so they used to put a bet on, who was gonna pull him half a pint, for a bet on who was gonna start off.
And we was going down this road, this particular road, and we was the first lorry. We got there and there was a little chap with evening suit on. He said "Oh, aren't I glad to see you lads." So I said "Oh, what's wrong then?"
We thought he'd got a busted water-pipe or summat. So he says "We've got a big do on tonight", he says. The A.R.P. men told him they'd got a bomb in the ground, which they had.
But it wasn't in his ground, it was on ours. The bomb had gone in on one side, hit an obstacle to stop it, swung it round, and it had come round to the Park. I think Hyde Park is near there.
Anyway, he was standing on the kerb there, trying to talk us in, and there was a couple of women - waitresses, and we started off, and it was all red slushy clay. We were plastered. Once we started to dig, it was all over us - tools, clothes, wellingtons.
He says, "Let me know as soon as you can if you find it." So, one of the lads said "You'll know it quicker than us."
While they were talking, two of them, we got a tip-off, it had only gone down about twelve foot. The reason to it, it was real slushy, so it were sinking in it. Anyway, we started to it, we found it. It was Ted sended it away with another lorry. So they sended it away with a bomb on the back, not to anywhere special, just in the centre of the field, but whatever ground it was, I think it was like ???, because there was a big gateway at the top. Then we said "What you want doing? What do you want it. We've got another job on before we take this away . The lorry will be here before this we started." So he said "I want you to ???, come and have something with us.
He got a great table laid out, with all the girls, women, waiting on the tables. They give us a bit of a spread., and he done the same thing with the cigarettes, so the news must have gone around about the cigarettes.
(Margaret) They were hard to get, though, during the war.
(George) You couldn't get them.
(Bryan) And he told you, it didn't matter about going in with clay all over your clothes, and the carpet ...
(George) That's what I mean about the ground being slushy.
(Jim) It must have been very sloppy work. I mean, you couldn't do this four-feet business.
(Bryan) You pulled it out on a tripod, didn't you, dad?
(George) No, not that one. That was behind the other, that prison column thing.
That was another one, part of it hard, the ground was hard, then the other one as we come across, it was still slushy. There were one or two like that.
We had two. The first one we had was down Willesden, in the ... there's an airport, isn't there ... off Acton Airport.
(Ronny) Was he ever hurt?
(George) Bar bruises, like spots ...
(Margaret) I never saw ...
(Jim) What did you ... You talk bout these four foot steps. What did you do? Did you hammer a plank of wood into the soil or something?
(Margaret) Make your own steps.
(George)
There were different degrees of ground. I mean, there was one with the stones in, then there was one with the slushy black ... Thames mud, we called it, and there was the other one fro Hyde Park.
(Jim) ??? red clay?
(George)
That was a mixture of them. It weren't very friendly, I hesitate to say it, it was holding yer back.
What I couldn't never understand at that time, what made us rush to the job, 'cause we hadn't got no chance o' ... we hadn't got a chance of being alive, but they could never catch us, all the way.
They'd got a system, which was, one group didn't talk to the other. We'd get up in the morning, the roll call was just simple, so many men to an hut ... or a lorry.

(Bryan) Tell them about building all them huts along the South coast.
(George) That was ...
(Jim) That was a lot later, wasn't it?
(George) Well, we were a company that was on spur-of-the-moment. The company that was in ...
The beginning of the story, Launceston. Now, we'd been in London all them weeks, we were all shattered with nerves, and yet we hadn't taken no notice of anything, bar ... "Look, lads, we're in London." Now, we were proper chuffed because we were in London, but we weren't chuffed about it being blown.
(Margaret) No, London had it worse than Coventry, didn't they?
(George) Well Acton, on the main night when we had the big raid, there was a hundred and thirty German planes knocked down, and you couldn't cross the road at Acton where the police station was for fire-hoses. The A.A. ??? men, traffic wardens, everybody walked in. It was the football match.
(Jim) What did you do in the evenings? Did you go out to the pubs, or ... go dancing?
(George) Well I'd only got six and six (32陆 pence).
When they thanked you, when people started to get cheerful about us and pleased to see us ... 'Cause as soon as we got there, there were the traffic warden and the A.R.P. men and all, they cleared the deck, pushed everybody back, and they must have been doing their job right, because they knew exactly how many yards to send you back.
Because when there were some of them went up, you know, there'd be a lorry, or a house would disappear in no time.
(Margaret) And what did you do at night time then, for entertainment?
(George) The White Horse, at Acton.
Well down below Acton there was a 'lectric train station. There was one road as went to Hammersmith, and that was a good evening out ... Hammersmith Palaces of Dance (Hammersmith Palais). 'Cause they used to open it up for a big band, for dancing. That was one road, and the other road was down to the Great West Road, that was another one. They were all big main stations, 'lectric stations ...
(There was an interruption here ...)
(Margaret) They'll come back. Electric stations ...
(George) I'm going to kick myself in a minute. It's a well known place, it's as well known as Parkhurst ... They'd all got the same system of operating, in any case. Birmingham follows London ...
We all had so many hours to stop on a job. You all get out of the way. You'd be working away, sweating away, and a lorry from one of the other companies would come, and he'd just simply pull up, all the blokes knew what to do, jumped straight off their lorry, we jumped on ours and went back to a new site or new billets.
(Bryan) You were there all through the Battle of Britain, weren't you?
(Jim) Wormwood Scrubs?
(Margaret) Wormwood Scrubs. It's in your book.
(George) That's it, Wormwood Scrubs.
(Margaret) We got there eventually. You can sleep in peace now, now you've remembered.
(Jim) So you used to go dancing a lot, when you were in London.
(George) Well yes, we took the raids in our stride.
There were some people who would dive for cover, we'd just stand there and wait for it to go on past over. And the amazing part that we'd been through, warned three times, any house where there're steel railings in front, when a raid comes on, get out of the way. The bombs would make little pieces of them, and they'd come flying through the air like shrapnel. They were more dangerous than what the bomb was.

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