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A Schoolboy at War 1939-1945
In 1939 I was 9 years old and living in Leicester and my first memory of the impending conflict was during the summer of that year. On returning home one Saturday afternoon from the local cinema I found my father digging a large hole at the bottom of the garden. Several weeks earlier a number of shaped corrugated iron sheets together with a bundle of steel angles had been delivered to all the adjoining houses, these were the component parts of Anderson Air Raid Shelters.
It was hard work for my father because it was necessary to dig into the very heavy, stiff underlying red clay. The excavation was approximately three feet deep into which the lower half of the shelter was placed and bolted together, the exposed upper part of the steelwork was covered with the excavated subsoil. The entrance into the shelter was about four feet high and covered on the inside by a length of sacking. The total size of the shelter was roughly seven feet six inches in length and five feet wide, once the small camp bed was erected there was very little space for our three deck chairs.
In September 1939 I was in the top class at my local primary school and preparing to take the dreaded eleven-plus examination sometime in the following spring, at the time this examination was known as the Scholarship.
I attended St John the Baptist Church of England School, which occupied a three storey Victorian building. The high windowed classrooms were reached by way of dark and uninviting stone staircases. When war was declared and air raids were anticipated the school authorities decided the structure would no longer be suitable as a school. All of the classes in the school were moved a short distance and integrated into a local Board School where most of the classrooms were on the ground floor.
The headmaster was strict but very fair, I still have a letter he kindly wrote to my father in 1938 telling him of my improved result in an arithmetic test. Everyone tried their best for him and the teachers. His desk was located on a raised dais on one side of the Assembly Hall, on the other three sides were the classrooms which were entered through glazed partition walls, this arrangement gave the headmaster a complete view of both staff and pupils. I remember he would punish any pupil who broke the rules, with a swift blow with the thin red coloured cane he kept by his desk.
The autumn days passed by and I followed the progress of the BEF in France on a wall map and positioned coloured map pins to indicate the front line. For several months there was little movement on the front line, until the German breakthrough and advance during the following May it had been a very static war. We were all very aware of the coming danger of invasion and following the withdrawal from Dunkirk we listened on to the radio and to Churchill’s inspiring speech to the country. At this time my father decided to enlist in the LDV, the Local Defence Volunteers, in the early days, members of the new force were drilled using wooden rifles.
At the outbreak of war the whole population were issued with cardboard boxes containing the standard civilian gas-mask. When the boxes eventually fell apart people replaced them with many kinds of container ranging from metal cylinders to fabric bags.
During WW1 my father, like many others, enlisted in the army at sixteen years of age and was twice wounded, first at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and two years later at Ypres. He was always reluctant to talk about the carnage but from time to time he did tell me stories of the suffering he had experienced and witnessed.
In June 1940 at ten years of age I did ‘pass’ the Scholarship and was offered a place at the ‘City Boys’ School ‘ which was one of local grammar schools. On the very first day, despite clothes rationing, all new boys were smartly clad in a new school uniform, which included a blazer, long trousers and caps. The school was located in the centre of the city and built on a very compact site with accommodation for approximately 500 boys, which included a small sixth form. A number of the sixth form boys were made prefects being recognised by either the small metal badge on their lapel or by the large golden coloured tassel on their caps, their jobs was to maintain discipline and monitor the behaviour of the other boys.
On the first morning of the first term all new boys entered the school-yard through a large gate, we were known as first year fags. We were forced to run the gauntlet between the ranks of the second and third year pupils, at this stage our new caps were knocked off our heads and trampled upon. The new caps were decorated with bright golden piping with which picked out the several segments but with this treatment quickly became grubby.
We were directed to our respective form rooms which was followed by air raid drill. In the event of an air raid each class was allocated a specific underground shelter which had been formed in an adjoining public car park. At times in the following years we sometimes wished for an air raid warning to sound so that we could avoid the terror and sometimes the humiliation of a mathematics test.
During the dark evenings of autumn and early winter of 1940 the air raid warning sirens seemed to sound almost every night at about eight o’clock which was shortly after I had completed my homework, sometimes the all-clear siren did not sound until about three o’clock in the morning. On a number of occasions my father arrived home from work to be greeted by my mother with his cooked supper, often he would eat his meal in our air raid in the garden. The atmosphere in the Anderson shelter was very dank and the clay floor was often alive with snails and slugs, only the small oil lamp gave light and a little warmth.
There were a number of raids on the city during which several factories and houses were destroyed. I particularly remember seeing the shreds of a parachute hanging in a damaged tree, I gather the attached bomb had destroyed a number of large houses in the tree-lined street.
After a few weeks of damp autumn weather the air raid shelters in our gardens began to fill with water because the clay floors retained water and so the shelters became unusable. In the playing field of a nearby secondary school a series of underground air raid shelters had been formed and after school hours they became available for use by local people. The shelters were well drained and kept dry all winter, there was also a rudimentary ventilation system. The only disadvantage was the nightly trek in the frosty air from my house to the shelter carrying our blankets and trying to sleep on rickety slatted benches. The nightly routine caused by the Blitz continued for many months but life both at home and school carried on as normal.
One lunchtime I was walking home with a school friend when we heard the sound of an aircraft. It was flying very low, we could clearly see the blank crosses on the pale blue underside of the wings. We decided it was a Dornier 17 bomber, and shortly after it passed from sight there were a series of explosions. It appears the bombs were intended for the local gas works or the nearby power station but all of them missed these targets landing, with a devastating effect, on a row of nearby terraced houses.
My father continued service with the newly named Home Guard and rose to the exulted rank of lance-corporal. Prior to marrying my mother he had served as a regular soldier in the cavalry, having joined the Second Dragoon Guards known as The Queens Bays he was stationed in India. During his army service he became an expert horseman, he also qualified as a marksman and a signaller, it was clear he was far more equipped to be a soldier than many of his fellow Home Guard.
Because of his army background and his ability to read and transmit the Morse code became the platoon signaller, the principal task of the platoon was to guard the nearby railway yard and tunnel. All these night-time duties were in addition to his very tiring day job. It was at this time, I was shown how to strip, clean and handle his ex, WW1 Lee — Enfield 303 rifle. This experience I found to be useful later during my National Service in the Royal Engineers.
On my fourteenth birthday I was presented with a bicycle, it was not new but it gave me greater freedom, and enabled me, and my friends to explore the nearby countryside. On one of our trips we came across a gigantic dump of crashed aircraft which had been piled at least four high, I believe they were awaiting recycling. Our quest was to salvage rubber inter tubes from the landing wheels for use when swimming in the local canal, we also coveted any instruments which may have been left on the control panels. We climbed up into the cockpits of numerous aircraft, which included Avro Yorks, Spitfires, Avro Ansons and Hurricanes, due to the many sharp metal edges this was a very dangerous activity. It was also necessary to avoid discovery by the local Special Police Constable who often patrolled the perimeter fence of the dump. The last time we entered the dump was after I had climbed into a pilot’s seat under which I discovered a flying helmet. This would have been a great find had it not contained the remains of the owner’s scalp, I threw the helmet down and we sped from the dump never to return.
On one of our many cycling expeditions we discovered a number of open ended corrugated steel shelters which had been placed on the grass verges in the more remote areas of the nearby countryside. To our amazement they contained boxes of .303 calibre bullets and also the larger 50mm cannon ammunition, they were being stock piled for use during the coming invasion in Normandy.
The discovery of this ammunition was a great find and with just one visit we now had adequate cordite sticks to make our own fireworks. The brass cases of some of the .303 ammunition were made into cigarette lighters, this possible by braising on a flint wheel. However, firstly the percussion cap needed to be detonated which was done by using a centre punch, then the filler hole was formed by using a tap which gave a thread for the screw cap through which we inserted the cotton wadding and wick. We managed to carry out some of these operations at school, clandestinely, during the metalwork class, the noise of the detonation was disguised by the whole class hammering on the metal work benches.
The local golf club was sited on the outskirts of the city on which a gigantic tented camp had been erected and surrounded by a high barbed wire fence. We were very curious and gladdened when it was filled with American Airborne troops, I think they were members of the 101 Airborne Division wearing smart smooth clothed uniforms with long brown lace up jumping boots. On several occasions I made a detour on my way home from school in order to lean on the wire fence and chat to the soldiers.
The troops were confined to the camp and were clearly very bored with life. I stuck up an acquaintance with several of them who passed to me through the fence sticks of chewing gum and finally packs of cigarettes. Being only fourteen years of age, I did not smoke but knew who did, I sold my cache of Lucky Strike, Camel and Chesterfield cigarettes at a modest price, which probably helped to boost my Post Office Savings account.
Eventually I became particularly friendly with a soldier called Tex, at the time he seemed to be very old, I knew he was married and I suppose he was in his late twenties or early thirties. I told my parents about my talks with him about my entrepreneurial activity with the cigarettes. One Saturday night he was invited for supper, I remember him being very homesick and pleased to meet an English family and share their meagre food ration. I often wondered what became of him, we never saw him again, because without warning a few days later the whole camp became deserted, it was late May 1944.
Several weeks later the camp was occupied by German prisoners of war. They seemed to be very uncertain and were clad in unkempt uniforms there was very little response to our attempts to strike up conversations.
One of my interests was making models but very few ready made kits were available, so with a school friend we bought scale plans of each class of ship in the Royal Navy. We began to make our models using scraps of ordinary scrap wood. This was a slow and very difficult task because we had very few tools the work took us many weeks to complete. A friend of the family had access to a supply of genuine battleship grey paint with which the models were finished, this gave the models a very professional and authentic look. We were very proud of the result and took them to school for all to see, one of the teachers had connections with the Royal Navy through the Sea Cadet Corps. The models were considered to be of excellent quality which resulted in us being persuaded to hand them over to the Royal Navy to be used as an aid to ship recognition, they were never returned.
During the summer holidays at the later stages of the war I used to stay with relations in rural Bedfordshire, one was a local butcher and living next door the others owned a small farm. My journey from my home city entailed taking my bicycle and catching a train to Kettering where I changed to another heading for Cambridge. I alighted at a small country station, which was about four miles from my relations and could be easily reached by bicycle. There was no public transport within at least four miles of my destination, and there was just one bus a week to each of the three nearest towns, which made having a bicycle essential.
I helped with the weekly routine of the butcher. Monday was the day a bullock and pig were slaughtered and I experienced the use of a ‘humane gun’ and followed by helping with the gory task of dismembering the animals, this is something I would not be able to do today. Tuesday afternoon was devoted to the manufacture of wonderful home made sausages, which included the use of home, grown herbs.
Delivery of the meat rations were made to the nearby villages and hamlets using an old Fordson van, at this time rationing was in full swing and the meagre portions were exchanged for food coupons. Many of the customers were full of character and spoke in a broad local dialect, some of them remembered my mother before she departed to live in the city which had been twenty five years ago.
Because I was an only child I had no problem in amusing myself in the countryside. I spent many hours either talking to or helping to feed the various animals. At this time I was a keen recorder player and to everyone’s amusement I found great pleasure in serenading the chickens in their coop. I also enjoyed sitting high up and playing my recorder in the tree house I had constructed in the branches of an elm tree.
Helping with the harvest was great fun, especially riding on the back of the carthorses and bringing the loaded wagons back to the farm. At the time I was fairly proficient with a catapult with which I attacked the hordes of rabbits who appeared from the wheat fields as the corn was being cut. I could also increase my meagre pocket money because the local gamekeeper would pay sixpence for each dead Magpie. Sweets were also on ration but I enjoyed buying fruity water ices with my earnings and also the home made lemonade at the village shop.
The pace of life during my stay in the country was very gentle, there was no running water or electricity in the houses. The water was obtained by filling buckets from a roadside pump. There was no sewerage system, an earth closet was located at the bottom of the garden well away from the house. The house was lit by oil lamps or candles, which made the night time very cosy, but power was available in the butcher’s area during slaughter and sausage making days by means of a very noisy petrol driven generator. I was often asked to collect a newly charged acid filled accumulator from the nearby village, without which there would be no radio and therefore we would have no news of the outside world.
Sunday was a special day, apart from milking the cows and feeding the chickens no work was done, we always dressed in our best clothes and attended evensong at the local church following which a stroll was slowly taken back home along the country lanes. Sunday tea time was spent in the large parlour where the best china was used accompanied by triangular cut sandwiches and Madeira cake.

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