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This is the seventh of Brian Cable’s ‘CHILDHOOD MEMORIES FROM RAYLEIGH IN ESSEX’.

These memories were written by Brian, edited by Jo Taylor of the Holmewood and Heath CAP team, and added to the site with the author’s permission.

ENTERTAINMENT

Often there were events going on in the town, like ‘Salute the Soldier Week’ which brought out parades of troops with their bands. The combined churches would hold large services for peace, the events we lads enjoyed most were the displays of military hardware, when we could sit in tanks and operate anti-aircraft and machine guns. Being as our High Street was so wide, there was plenty of room to put on these displays.
There were also civil defence exercises where volunteer ‘casualties’ were rescued from a mock raid. We had to laugh, because there was one local wag who always volunteered to be a ‘casualty’ and he was always carried off on a stretcher with a big grin on his fat rosy face.
A Heinkel 111 came down just north of the Thames Estuary; it was virtually intact apart from its undercarriage being damaged. It was put on display in front of the Southend Municipal College and My sister and I went down to see it. I sat in the pilot’s seat and my sister sat in the co-pilots and an R.A.F. officer showed us the controls, and a hole where a cannon shell had pierced the cockpit and killed the pilot.

My father was superintendent of the Sunday School, and as we could no longer go to the seaside for our annual outing so other places had to suffice. It was decided to go to Woodham Ferrers, which although built up today was then mainly just fields and isolated buildings. The other problem was there no coaches to be had to take us there.
The problem was solved by a local removal man, who fitted up his van with mattresses and chairs. We kids we thought it was all very thrilling as we bumped along the roads. Once there we had the open fields to ourselves, and played football and cricket, it was a wonderful day with not a cloud in the sky. The only thing that reminded us there was a war were the white vapour trails in the deep blue above.
We had our tea in an old corrugated iron chapel, the only toilet being a wooden ‘two seater’, affair at the rear. During the afternoon when my mate Charley and I were very thirsty, we went up to a farmhouse and asked the lady there for a drink of water. She gave us a big jug of lemon barley water and a slice of bread and homemade jam. We never told the others till we had got back home!
I still look back on that day with fond memories, a day of freedom from the worries of war.

One day we were told that an American Senator was to visit us at the school, I do not recall the circumstances or the reason for his visit but I know we all got very excited. For some time before we painted scores of Union Jack and Stars and Stripes flags. These were hung alternatively and diagonally across our assembly hall and I remember we learned to sing ‘I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy’.
When he finally came it was exciting to hear his American accent, we had never before heard it ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, but only on the radio and in films.
Another bit of excitement in our lives was the visit of a Ministry of Information Film crew, either set up in the school or as a mobile cinema in the playground. Mobile cinemas would also set up in the High Street and other places, they consisted of a large van which when the back opened up revealed a screen. This worked very well when the weather was dull, but was rather difficult to see in bright sunshine.
They would show cartoons, Laurel and Hardys, Charlie Chaplins etc, all interspersed with propaganda on saving paper, taking care in the blackout, how not to waste food, not giving information to the enemy and other advice that the government thought that we should know.
The police and wardens would also visit the school to give us lectures, some were very interesting, some we thought very boring and some wardens thought they were little Hitler’s, like the one I mentioned earlier.

During the war I loved to listen to the radio, there were basically only two programmes, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Home Service and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Forces Programme. There was always Lord Haw Haw of course, but we were discouraged from listening to him. I must admit I did when my parents were out, it seemed very dangerous hearing his drawl ‘Gairmeny calling, Gairmeny calling! I always listened to the news, as did my parents and everybody else, but I also loved ITMA, Much Binding in the Marsh, and Children’s Hour, on which they serialised a play called ‘Winter Holidays’ and the signature tune was the Skater’s Waltz. We used to rush home from school to listen to this; I wonder what children today would have thought of it? On Saturday mornings there was the ‘Ovaltinies’ from Radio Luxemburg with interesting items and competitions and we used to belong to the club and had our badges and codebooks. Each morning they would give a message in code and we would take it down and decode from our books afterwards.

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