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Keith Ranger — Wartime Memories Part Two

Q: Can you remember how you felt when you were in the shelters, because you were quite young weren’t you?
A: Yeah, this is something I have firmly believe in that when you are young, if you see this sort of thing going on around you, you don’t really realise there is anything else in life. When I see people in Iraq or not so much Iraq but certainly in Ireland when the troubles were bad there. The young people, people thought wasn’t it terrible if they were throwing stones or something but if you were bought up in that environment you really don’t know anything else. You don’t know that there is a better life because that is the life you live with so you don’t know anything else. I was quite happy with my childhood I thought it was great.

Q: Can you remember any other changes in the house? So for instance, what happened if you showed a light?
A: We did get partially bombed. A bomb fell quite close to us, in fact it demolished some houses not faraway from us and the blast actually blew out our windows and took some slates of the roof. So I remember for sometime we had it just boarded up. It was quite interesting because next door to us that was even nearer to the bad blast was, they had their roof taken off. The roof was very badly damaged in that house as well and in 1984 I think it was, they finally got around to putting a new roof on, no sorry the new roof was put on prior to that. I think the new roof was put on in about 1980 or something. But unfortunately the roof that they repaired, they put on concrete tiles so they put these concrete tiles that you see on modern houses these days, but our house was quite an old one and we had the old fashioned slates on which weren’t quite as heavy as the concrete tiles and my mother and father were still living there in 1984 and I used to go back and see them because I lived in Berkhamsted then and the front of next doors house started to bow and I said to my mother and father that doesn’t look very safe and I was around there one day and there was an almighty crash and the concrete tiles proved to be too heavy for the roof and the whole roof just collapsed through, so it was just like being in the war again. Fortunately the woman that lived there was in the back of the house so she wasn’t hurt. I lost my grandfather in the first World War, but my Nan for many years lived on her own and I was the only one until after the war when my brother came along, I used to go and sleep with my Nan a lot of the time when the raids weren’t too bad and she used to sing me the old London songs and that is where I got the interest in musical hall. The favourite song I used to like was ‘Strolling along down the Mile End Road’. My Nan used to sing it every Saturday night and I have still have got that interest in the old time music hall. I belong to a group in Berkhamsted that does old time music halls for charity, we raised I think £4,000 about four, five months ago, so I love the old songs and I also like music and try to play the keyboard as well, so I think I have got that interest from those times as well.

My Mother used to do some War work as well along with my Nan as well. They used to make clothes for the troops. They were both good machinists and we had two singer machines in the house and they used to make clothes. One of the things they used to make a lot of were the khaki ties and the RAF ties and I don’t know if you know, but the ties are made inside out and when you make them you make them inside out and then you have a stick which you put in it and push one end and it goes in and it turns them the right way round and that was my job. Nan and Mum used to make these ties and I used to have this special stick and used to have to push these sticks through the ties to put them the right way round. So that was what they used to make mostly, they used to make shirts as well but mostly ties.

Q: Did they have to collect the material from someone?
A: That I can’t remember. I can’t remember where they got the material from it just suddenly appeared and I don’t know where they went but I know they used to make these ties and the shirts at home.

And the other thing that my Mum used to do, which I have got an interest in is Maps because after the D Day landings of course, Mum and I used to plot the advance of the British and American and Canadian troops and so on as they advanced through Europe. So we used to have this big map of Europe on the dining room table every morning and we used to listen to the news and we used to try and pick out the towns that the troops advanced into. I used to enjoy seeing the advance of the troops and Mum and I used to draw this line on this map of Europe to see where they advanced from and of course we also invaded Italy and we used to plot the advance of the troops along from the bottom of Italy. We used to plot the Russians coming in from the East of course, so we had three advances on Berlin, that’s were I got the interest in maps from, I have always had that interest and that stems from those days as well.

As I said to you, we had quite a lot of bombing around the area and there was one area that was particularly badly hit and a number of houses, perhaps 10 or 12 houses, were almost completely demolished and it was left like this for a long while. So at the end of the war we had lots of wood for a bonfire night so we had this big celebration after the war and there was plenty of wood because there was a lot wood on the houses like the staircases and the furniture and the window frames so we had an enormous big bonfire with a big guy on the top. So we set light to this bonfire and there was not restrictions in those days but the bonfire was so enormous that unfortunately that the heat was so intense it burnt the paint off of the house that had in fact survived the blast which were on the other side of the road, how they survived I don’t know but that is one of the peculiarities of bombing and all sorts of peculiar things happened. But the whole paint was burnt of the houses so we had to make a quick retreat but I remember people came out to through water on the bonfire but it took some time to douse the fire because it was so intense, the heat.

The other thing that I remember, in Finsbury Park itself, I don’t know if any of you know the park it is a venue now for a lot of concerts, pop concerts, it is a big venue but I can remember it because I used to go and kick a ball around and knock conkers off the trees that were there of course. But also during the war it had barrage balloons, these were balloons that were filled with light gas, you have probably seen pictures of them. They were suspended in the air, the idea was the planes would get caught up in the wire and they would get hit the barrage balloons but to my knowledge they didn’t work very well. But also they other thing they had in there was the anti aircraft guns. So not only did we have the noise of the aircraft’s but we also had the noise in the nights of the anti aircraft guns trying to shoot the aeroplanes down. But then of course the Germans stopped sending aircraft’s over then they started send the V1 rockets called doodlebugs and these things used to come over and they were quite slow but we knew they were coming because the noise of the engines you could hear them coming and they would stop and then Mum used to pray that it wouldn’t hit us and fortunately it didn’t. But of course it was a terrible time when the engine stopped and you just hopped that it wasn’t going to hit you. But when the V2’s came they were much quicker and you didn’t hear them coming and you didn’t know they were coming until you were hit and that was much worse. Perhaps it wasn’t worse were you didn’t have the suspense it was going to drop on you and it was worse when the engine stopped almost above you, it seemed as though it stopped almost above your house.

Q: Can you tell me how you used your ration book?
A: The ration books, well I didn’t do much shopping as I was too young but Mum used to take great care over the ration book because when you went into buy your whatever it was, your groceries because very often you were rationed as to how much you could have like margarine or bacon and you had points and those of you of have seen Dads Army and Corporal Jones in his butchers shop received the points on the customers and they had special customers that received just a little bit more. These ration books continued until after the war. You have probably heard people say that they never saw a banana, well I never saw a banana but I saw these imitation bananas used to hang up in these grocery shops and I never could understand what these things were because you never saw bananas and I have made up for it since because I quite like bananas.

Q: How did you think changed after the war? Because you were used to life during the War although to everyone else they would have been going back to times before the War.
A: I just think you though it was your lot you didn’t think that it was strange or anything. The end of the War was declared the War in Europe was declared over, the War in Japan was declared over and you just continued your life really, the only difference was that there was no one trying to kill you really.

Q: You didn’t have to carry gas masks?
A: No, you didn’t have to carry gas masks anymore. Wish I had kept them really know because they are quite valuable especially the mickey mouse ones.

Q: Do you remember the Morrison shelter leaving the house.
A: No not really, I think I can remember the Anderson shelter next door being taken away and I could also remember after the War the prefabricated houses being put up. Where I mentioned earlier on when we had the big bonfire and the houses were completely destroyed, that was eventually flattened and prefabricated houses were put on it. You can still see a prefabricated house in the Chiltern open air museum. These prefabricated houses were only supposed to last for a certain time, five or six years, but people were still living in them 20, 30 years after the War I think. In Lancashire, they are still living in them.

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