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HITLER V. A BRIGHTON SCHOOLBOY

oldbrightonboy

1. Declaration of war

2. Home Front

3. Schoolboy’s war

4. Scouting

5. War’s end

Part 1B

We boys all learned to identify aircraft. At school charts with silhouettes of friendly and enemy aircraft; their plans, elevations and ‘banking’ views appeared on the walls in rooms used for civil defence purposes and those given over to the Air Training Corps (ATC). Before long we knew engine sounds, too. Magazines were published which were devoted to aircraft. Penguin Books produced Aircraft Recognition by R A Savill-Sneath which was revised as new aircraft appeared. We all wanted to be members of the Royal Observer Corps and stand with binoculars on roof-tops scanning horizons. That was an immediate wish; we wanted when old enough to join the RAF and fly.
Gas attacks were everyone's nightmare. When war was imminent all living in the Hollingbury area trooped to Hertford Road School for mask fittings. They came in three sizes and there were special bags in which one put babies. Mums worked bellows which filtered the air needed for them to breathe. Gas masks were put on for our ‘fittings’ by a person with minimal training, the strap adjusted over one's head, fingers inserted under one's chin and a pad placed under the filter for the test. If, when one was instructed to breathe in, the cheeks of the mask deflated and one couldn't breathe, it fitted. "How's that?" one was asked and one made an inaudible response. When the right size had been fitted one was provided with a cardboard box on a string in which to carry the mask which had to be with one at all times. Civilians’ masks had circular metal and charcoal(?) filters, rubber masks and wrap-round transparent visors. Members of the ARP had masks with glazed openings to see through and members of the military services had even more elaborate masks with flexible tube and separate filter in a corrugated tin container which rested in the canvas bag worn on the chest.
We were instructed about the blackout which ran from dusk to dawn. Not a glimmer must be revealed to passing enemy (or friendly) aircraft. Public buildings had ‘dark lobbies’ between internal lights and external doors. Many houses had heavy curtains against outside doors and dim lights in the hall. Alf exercised economy with security and removed the hall light bulb much to Nellie’s annoyance. For virtually the whole of the war we were to move from living room to first floor in the dark. The house had never had electric light on the landing so we were used to feeling our way from bedroom to bathroom. Now we were being trained to grope our way almost everywhere whilst in the house. Indeed, our only properly blacked out room was to be our living/dining-room at the back of the house. Even the kitchen where the cooker and sink were, (which Alf always a called the scullery), was to use light borrowed from the living room and be only imperfectly blacked out. Alf’s argument was that our cooked meal was at midday and one did not need much light to boil a kettle for tea or a hot water bottle. At least, I think that would have been his argument if the matter had reached the point of debate. Nellie seldom argued with her eldest brother; there were occasions, but I don't think blackout was one of them.
So, we were to go from living room to bedroom through dark areas and so to bed without a light or, later I think, with a low wattage bulb and thicker curtains. No reading in bed. There was no heating, except in the living room so pots de chambre were used as they were the utensils which kept one out of bed for the shortest possible time.
There was to be no light in the bathroom as the room was not blacked out so during the winter we took baths during the day. My 1941 Boy Scouts Pocket Diary records that on Sunday 19th January; In the morning I had a bath before going round to Geoff’s house to find out what time we, as scouts, had to report for Baden Powell’s funeral service. Geoff and I had been at school together since we were six. He lived ‘round the corner’ in Hollingbury Rise.
One bath a week was the norm in those days and mine was to be on Saturday or Sunday, during the day-time, in the mandatory maximum five inches depth of water. I don't think all householders lived like that. It was just Alf’s refusal to defer to the war of which he never approved and which he considered had been contrived to cause him maximum inconvenience. He had been through one and that was enough. Alf never really joined in the war. Later, he did what he was required to do but he was a reluctant fire-watcher and unwilling participant. He was obliged to take turns fire-watching at the Royal York Buildings, his office, but he grumbled about it and disapproved of some of the 'goings on' between members of opposite sex while fire watching. I heard about this indirectly, through Nellie. As someone remarked, "those camp beds weren't designed for two people".

So it was that Alf and the government, more Alf than the government, prepared us for war. For the Brighton schoolboy there were to be three strands in his life for the next six years; home, school and scouting. Like a rope they were wound around each other and cannot really be considered in isolation from each other but one has to start somewhere and home seems the obvious place.

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