大象传媒

The war years

At this time the 2nd W War was in full swing and was very exciting for young boys, The second world war and my own army service abroad were the most significant happening in my lifetime. I was just short of eight years old at the outbreak of the second world so was old enough to experience and recognise some of the privations and horrors but young enough not to have to take an active part, but the fact that I was the youngest with a gap of seven years between me and the next meant that I had older brothers and sisters who were fully involved. I also recognised my parents' concern for their children, my father being a survivor of WW1 and my mother had been widowed in that conflict.
The 2nd WW war was the first time in centuries that the civilian population of the U.K. had been in contact with the enemy as deliberate and regular targets whilst in direct support of fighting men who lived amongst them, these latter were of course the R.A.F crews. The headquarters of Twelve Group Fighter Command was at R.A.F.Watnall led by AVM Trafford Leigh Mallory and Nottingham also being the nearest major city to the large concentration of Bomber bases in Lincolnshire, It provided entertainment for many of the crews although I doubt that the civilians appreciated the strange life that those men lead, running a very very high risk of death during the night and then returning ( some of them ) to spend the day in the comparative safety and comfort of home ground.

The R.A.F naturally provided many of the heros who could be seen and recognised on film and in the streets when they were not at war. One such was Johnny Johnson a Spitfire pilot who was credited with the highest number of kills by an RAF pilot and won the D.S.O. D.F.C and bar Croix de Gare etc etc. I am sure that any one reading this will have no difficulty in finding reference to him and his contemporaries in any book on the 2nd W W. ( I am as cynical if not more so than anyone about Wars and the stupid people who start and run them but this should not blind us to the fantastic things that ordinary individuals did or do in wartime). Early in 1992 Air Vice Marshal Johnny Johnson R.A.F. Ret'd as he then was visited my masonic lodge and I was priviliged to talk to him and to discover that he was also a woolyback [Leicestershire man] from Melton Mowbray, We also reminisced about the Half Moon Inn on Nottingham Street in Melton Mowbray which I had nmanaged as relief in the 1950's [the other was the Red Lion at Oakham ] at one time in his post war career he had been C O of RAF Cottesmore and we exchanged some happy memories of Melton and some of the characters who frequented the "Gentlemen only" bar. Johnny died in aearly 2001

During this period in my life and right up until going into the army in 1950 ,the main source of entertainment was the radio at home and the Cinema outside. The Radio & Newspapers were the main source of news during the war, the radio would give very graphic accounts of what was going on but the information would often be weeks old, News of what was called the home front ie German bomber raids and later on RAF bomber raids on Germany were pretty current but it took a week or two before we were told what we were allowed to know; when it involved the closer overseas activities e.g The North African Campaign and the Battle of the Atlantic. When the far east etc was involved then it took even longer. Every Cinema showed a News film as part of every programme and these were the only moving pictures of the war that were seen, they were supplied by a number of different companies "Pathe News" "Movietone News "are just two examples. They were of course heavily censored and full of propaganda which had the desired effect, the cinema being filled with Boos and Catcalls whenever the enemy was shown particularly Adolf Hitler and his ministers. Conversely film showing our leaders or troops invariably provoked cheers and hand clapping. The newspapers more often than not carried maps on their front pages showing the movements of the various Forces in the campaigns being fought at the time.

Apart from the large cinemas in the city there were a lot of local ones which were visited at least once or twice a week. Most of the films were about the war and usually identified with some particular arm of the services . The various types of aircraft flown by both sides were as familiar to us as modern cars are to the present generation.

Many films shewn during the war were of course pure propaganda dressed up as entertainment. Though some of the films were very good indeed and became classics," Mrs Miniver" a film covering the Dunkirk evacuation and "Western Approaches" about the war against German submarines come to mind. Later on when the U.S.A joined in, [ having decided that the German efforts had been effectively blunted (and the British Empire's economy sufficiently bled by American industry , thereby enabling them to assume economic leadership of the post war world). The quality of war films was much improved even if they did then as now tend to overlook the contributions of their allies.

This reminds me of an occassion in Korea when we were shown a film starring Errol Flynn winning the war in Burma single handed, It came close to a riot.

Any history of the Second World War will show that in the early years it was all bad news and we had to accept defeat and disaster after disaster. Examples that come to mind are the sinking of the great battleships Rodney and Hood and the loss of Singapore both of which we had been brought up to believe were impossible, consequently any successes or minor triumphs over adversities were exploited in maintaining civilian moral. One example was our troops withdrawal from Crete where the Germans used paratroops for the first time. The Royal Navy whilst fulfilling its time honoured obligation to bring off British troops it had previously put ashore was having so many ships sunk that Admiral Cunningham C in C Mediterranian was advised to withdraw and leave the troops to be captured. His response was to refuse by saying "It takes three years to build a ship but it took three hundred years to build the reputation of the Royal Navy".

Incidental to the foregoing. During the war we schoolboys naturally looked upon our forces as hero's and even allowing for the intensity of the propoganda that we were constantly subjected to, some of them quite rightly became individual stars. The ones we saw on newsreels receiving their awards became household names. Although their exploits were often shrouded in secrecy and we didn't hear so much of the many thousands who won their awards posthumously.

There were of course some very serious events. Just after the evacuation of Dunkirk I was walking down Arkwright Street Nottingham with my mother when she noticed a dirty and bedraggled looking soldier on the opposite pavement in front of St. Saviours church (still there) she recognised her eldest son my brother Fred (Snow) who was a sergeant in the Leicestershire Regt and who prior to going to France had only recently returned from seven years service in India. He saw Mum at the same time and they met in the middle of the street where they and I stood embracing for quite some time whilst the traffic moved round them sounding hooters.

One or two local men were killed in action. The father of one of my school friends Alan Brown lost a leg and was captured before Dunkirk. He and several others were mentioned in morning prayers every day and I recall he was one of the very early ones to be exchanged and repatriated later on in the War.

Houses with gardens were supplied with "Anderson air raid shelters" which consisted of corrugated iron semi hoops which were bolted together and erected half buried in the ground with the removed earth piled on top. Some country homes [my uncle Joe's for example] were supplied with a heavy steel cage which was placed in a room within the house and was of a height which enabled it to be used as a table or worktop. In the towns we were provided with communal brick built shelters which stood in the streets and were equipped with three tier wooden bunks, there was'nt any light or heat and they were very dark and dank. They did provide additional hiding places for the children and having a flat concrete roof provided the boys with an excellent climbing opportunity.

Nottingham suffered comparatively little damage from air attack, but many nights were spent in the air raid shelters which had been built in all the streets. Our worst experience was when a land mine destroyed several houses on Mayfield Grove at the bottom of Glapton Rd, We went down the following morning to watch the search for survivors. One of the searchers was a young man in army uniform looking for his wife and child. I cant remember whether it was the same occasion but one night the Boots printing works on Station St. was bombed and several people were killed, the following day the streets all around were covered in Boots labels being blown around by the wind. My father was so concerned for our safety that for several nights we took bedclothes and slept in an air raid shelter which stood on Wilford Lane close to where dad had his allotments,

When the sirens sounded dad always had difficulty in waking my brother George and on one occassion in the dark mistook the staircase for the entrance to George's room and fell from top to bottom . Again it was only in my later years whn studying the first World War that I came to appreciate my Dad's concern for his family based on his own terrible experiences of war.
.
On several occasions a German fighter managed to get as far inland as Nottingham without being detected and strafed some streets with his machine guns, One day when going to visit my sister Ivy who lived on Spalding Road , I saw the German aircraft pass over with guns rattling, I don't remember being frightened by this but it gave me something to brag about to my school chums!.

The large garden areas in the four corners of the old market square were excavated and turned into emergency water reservoirs to fight the expected fires. Bombs were dropped on the Victoria embankment, at least three fell very close to the suspension bridge which incidentally was permanently sealed off for the duration. If the Germans were aiming for that bridge they were very accurate as a bomb fell either side and within a few yards of the ramp approach on the city side.On another occasion an R.A.F.Wellington bomber crashed into a field on the Clifton side of H'penny Bridge close to Ironmongers pond. Many young boys including me visited the site the next day and tried smuggle away souvenier bits but the police were too good for us,

Trent Bridge itself had huge blocks of concrete installed at the City end reducing the road to one lane. Soldiers and policeman were on duty there and identity cards had to be shown when going over, we kids must have been the bane of their lives as we repeatedly crossed the bridge for the experience. This must have been at the very beginning of the War when invasion was expected because I don't remember that restriction lasting very long..

There was at least one anti aircraft gun emplacement on the recreation ground next to the pavilion at the side of our school. The guns were Bofors and the gunners lived in wooden huts alongside surrounded by a simple 4 feet high split stave fence. One day just in front of the camp I knelt on the remains of a broken bottle and cut my knee quite badly, hearing me yell one of the gunners ran out and picked me up and took me into the ablution block where my cut was bathed and covered with a large yellow and brown wound dressing. A day or so later my mother walked with me to the camp and handed the soldier who had helped me some packets of cigarettes.

All of those recreation grounds alongside the Victoria embankment were ploughed up and made into garden allotments for the local residents many of whome dug wells and istalled pumps. There was absolutely no attempt at security the allotments simply marked by grass paths between each one.

One clear wartime memory concerns a visit I made with my parents to the barracks near Tilshead in Wiltshire occupied by my brother Fred's parachute unit after returning from their part in the invasion of Europe in June 1944. We were entertained in the sergeants mess where several of the members still bore evidence of their recent exploits in the form of bandages splints etc. Whilst we were staying in a small thatched cottage in Tilshead, my eldest brother Fred called and left a canopied truck parked outside and, being an inquisitive 13 year old I went out to have a look at it and was astonished and a little frightened to find it was full of German officer prisoners. One of them seeing my fear took the badge from his cap and handed it down to me. I still have it. Later that year I arrived home from school to find my mother in tears, she had a telegram in her hand advising her that my eldest brother Fred was missing in action. She had been widowed in 1917 and could not bear to think that her eldest son was like his father to be a victim of war. Fortunately though wounded he did recover and returned home safely.

Soon after the outbreak of war my brother in law Jack Dawes was called up and soon posted to the middle east where he served in Palestine Lebanon and Syria, My sister Edna then joined the LNER [London North Eastern Railway] and was given the opportunity to learn to drive. At this time Edna was living with my sister Ivy who lived at 10 Spalding Road Sneinton, as Ivy's husband Jim Attewell was also serving in North Africa. During school holidays I often went to stay with these two loving sisters and I remember air raids when the three of us would have to climb the 90 odd steps at the end of Spalding Rd to get up to the shelter on Windmill Lane. I would often spend the days with Edna travelling around in the Bedford lorry she drove, One of the places she went to collect Rolls Royce aircraft engines was a test centre situated at the end of the Balloon House straight at Trowell. I remember this because I had to stand at the gate of that secure establishment until she emerged. For lunch she would sometimes take me to one of the "National Restaurants" set up to provide cheap meals for the workers, the one we used was in the Brdgeway Hall at the corner of Arkwright Street and Kirkwhite St and if memory serves me correctly we would get a meat and two veg dinner for a shilling [12 old pence and 240 to the pound] and a serving of pudding and custard for threepence. She would sometimes also go to the Players bonded warehouse at the bottom of Ilkeston Rd and I recall my gorgeous looking sister being the subject of some good humoured banter .

My other brothers in Law were Arthur Musson husband of sister Winnie Jock Greaves husband of Gladys and Jim Attewell husband of Ivy. Arthur who was a tailors presser with Cooper and Keywoods in Nottingham had been injured playing football before the war and failed the medical on call up but was then directed to a government training centre before being posted to the Ruston Bucyrus tank factory at Lincoln where he became a fitter. He was an absolutely lovely man very kind and softly spoken, he returned to the tailoring trade at the end of the war. Jock was a regular soldier prior to the war serving in the Royal Tank Regt at Chilwell Ordnance Depot when he met Gladys. He was a Sergeant Tank commander during the liberation of Europe. After the war he retired from the army and the family came to live in Nottingham where he joined the Post Office and served in that until his retirement when he and Gladys emmigrated to Australia to join up with their children. Jim Attewell suffered severe disentery whilts serving with the Royal Artillery in North Africa, he was invalided out of the army and rather than go back to his prewar job in tailoring took an out door job with the local gas company maintaining street lighting.

My father [a blacksmith] who had gone to work at the Royal Ordnance Factory [The Gun Factory ] about 1938 worked there throughout the war and remained there until his untimely death. My mother also worked there as a capstan lathe operator during the war. As munitions workers they were allowed a regular supply of Cadbury's and Rowntree's chocolate bars which despite threats of prosecution they smuggled out of the factory for me, this was a great treat as such confectionery was not available elswhere. My mother said she could not eat the chocolate knowing I could not get any other. Dad always walked the two miles to and from work irrespective of the weather, and I well remember him coming home absolutely drenched on many occasions.

My older brother George being too young for the forces until the end of the war joined the LDV's later renamed the Home Guard and he had to attend for training on Sunday mornings. He was supplied with a Sten Gun a very simple and not very reliable 9mm machine gun. He kept it under his bed and unknown to him I quickly became expert at disassembling and reassembling it,this proved a useful and rewarding ability when I joined the army as I was able to perform those tasks whilst blindfolded winning many bets.

At the end of the war there were many German POW's around and I particularly remember a family Christmas party when my eldest brother Fred, still serving in the Parachute regiment who had been wounded in Europe and had lost his father in WW1 dashed outside when he saw a German POW passing by, the family was fearful of what he intended but he simply dragged the German inside and offered him a drink!

VE and VJ days were great celebrations and seeing street lights and shop windows illuminated was really magic and the day the local Greengrocer had BANANAS for sale unforgettable.

Natinal service and service in Japan/Korea was to come later but that's another story.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.