大象传媒

A YOUNG BOY鈥橲 WAR

CHAPTER 2 - THE EARLY WAR YEARS 鈥� LAST FAREWELL

After four months or so, we drove up to Liverpool where my father had rented a furnished bungalow for a few months. While there, we were taken on board the HMS Barham, shown around and treated to an enormous tea in what must have been the wardroom. We were presented with a large tray of chocolate bars of various kinds. As chocolate was one of the many things quite severely rationed, this was indeed a sight for our young eyes. A few weeks later, we were taken down to Llandovery to stay with our Welsh grandfather. In mid June 1940, my father came down for a few days鈥� leave after which my mother drove him back to Liverpool to rejoin the Barham upon completion of repairs. It was the last time my sister and I ever saw our father. Back in Liverpool, my mother said farewell for what was to be the last time. She said that as he walked up the gangplank, it was the only time that he had not looked back to wave. She had a premonition, which was tragically borne out some eighteen months later, that it was to be the last time she would ever see him. Before the ship left for Scapa Flow, my father lodged his 12-bore gun with the Lancashire Constabulary for safekeeping and possible use by the 鈥淧arashots鈥� 鈥� men who had been asked to volunteer to be ready to resist a German parachute invasion. The gun was returned to my mother towards the end of the war.

Prior to the Battle of Britain, reports from Basildon suggested that the raids were quieting down. My father wrote to say that he felt it was safe to return to the cottage by mid September "especially if we put an oil stove in the cellar and make it cozy". I hated the cellar; it was dark and damp and we rarely went down there because the raids had become few and far between. However, not long after we got back we were quite happy to go down into the cellar when we were warned that an unexploded land mine was to be detonated close to the big house at Basildon Park.

Life at the cottage was quite fun because we were a happy threesome except when frightened by air raids. I hated the air raid warnings and longed for the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� although Basildon did not see much bombing. The German planes, which did fly over, were normally stragglers or off-course planes returning after a raid on Reading or Slough. We were taught to recognize German planes by day and at night you could always identify them by the noise they made. We were issued with the most awful gas masks, which we hated putting on as they made breathing much harder, and had a nasty smell.

A typical day would focus around the nine o'clock news with the three of us seated around the old Philco radio. The chimes of Big Ben sounded followed by the opening bars of Beethoven's fifth symphony and then "This is the 大象传媒 6: 00 o鈥檆lock News read by Alvar Liddell". It always seemed to be Alvar Liddell doing the reading. After Dunkirk, it often seemed to be veiled "news of fresh disasters". It amuses me now to remember how the 大象传媒 used to try to boost morale by reporting such as "In North Africa, the Eighth Army made a tactical withdrawal to consolidate its position for a counter-attack". What this meant was that Rommel was on the offensive and had pushed us back. Earlier there had been some good news. In December 1939, there was the epic victory of the Battle of the River Plate when three smaller cruisers, HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter, and HMNZS Achilles cornered the German pocket battleship Graf Spee in Montevideo. Uruguay refused the Graf Spee port facilities and she was forced to sail within three days. The three British ships were waiting for her outside territorial waters. Captain Lansdorff scuttled his ship and rather than surrender, committed suicide. Three against one might not seem to be quite such a remarkable achievement. However, in naval warfare it is the size, speed and range of the guns that counts. I remember my father, in full naval uniform, taking me to watch the triumphant ships' crews march around Horse Guards Parade with Winston taking the salute.

Many British merchant ships in the South Atlantic had been sunk by the Graf Spee. Survivors would be taken on the prison ship the 鈥淎ltmark鈥�. There was some more good news when a few months later the 鈥淎ltmark鈥� was located taking refuge in Norwegian territorial waters with over 200 British prisoners in her hold. The Norwegians were in a difficult position. When they refused to insist on the release of the prisoners, HMS Cossack entered Jossing fiord, boarded the 鈥淎ltmark鈥� with shouts of "The Navy's here" and rescued them. But after that came the blitzkrieg in May and in June, the disaster at Dunkirk.

A few days after Dunkirk, the Fascist Mussolini saw which way the wind was blowing and came into the war on the side of Germany. France fell. It looked as if Spain was going to join the Axis. Vichy France was pro German. Under the terms of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, Russia turned a blind eye to Hitler鈥檚 adventures.

In the early days, there were some initial successes against the Italians in North Africa. However, news of fresh disasters continued as soon as Rommel and his Africa Korps took over.

We still heard the dreaded air raid warnings at night and came downstairs to huddle under upturned armchairs to wait for the all clear. One day I was out in the garden, looked up and saw a fighter plane that appeared to be spiraling down out of control; I was quite frightened. I looked up again to see that it had leveled out. I then realized I had seen a pilot doing a "falling leaf" manoeuvre. We were ruled by the blackout; occasionally, an air raid warden would knock on the door and reprimand my mother for having a slit of light showing from one of the windows. We were blitzed by posters like "Careless Talk Costs Lives", "Dig for Victory" and suffered under the rationing of foods, clothes and petrol. There was extra milk and orange juice for children and kindly farmers would occasionally give us a chicken or extra eggs. Living on the edge of Basildon Park, we could pick blackberries, and cadge loganberries from neighbours and medlars from our own garden. We had our own apples and I would shoot the odd rabbit with my 4.10-gauge shotgun.

It must have been a few months after Pearl Harbour that we saw some American soldiers who were billeted at the stately home in the middle of Basildon Park. To us, the soldiers appeared huge, well fed and friendly, doling out chocolate from time to time. We caught an occasional glimpse of bren gun carriers churning up the park. According to a National Trust publication, Basildon House had been empty since 1910 except for the temporary billeting of soldiers of various nationalities and prisoners of war in both world wars. There was some talk of Gable Cottage being requisitioned which caused both parents some alarm, but fortunately this never happened.

We survived quite well on what would now be regarded in the west as a very meagre diet. Fried bread was a staple and occasionally during the week there would be an egg to boot. I think the ration was two eggs per person per week. We did not have a refrigerator and eggs were kept in a large glass bowl in a white slime - isinglass - to prevent them from going off. Rarely would we have a joint of beef or mutton and a joint for three was small. But when we did, the "gravy from the dish" was savoured and the dripping used for the next round of fried bread. We particularly liked fresh bread spread with mutton fat and marmite. We saw the occasional orange but no bananas until sometime after the war. We got the odd box of dates which I used to enjoy, and strangely, "Turkish delight". A highlight was the food parcels from Australia. Occasionally, the monthly parcel did not arrive presumably having been sent to the bottom of the sea.

Every now and again, I dig out a copy of the Sunday Times Magazine May 2nd, 1965 commemorating 1940 which graphically shows a week鈥檚 food ration during that time. I do this to impress our children what we had to survive on. A re-read of the diary I kept in 1946 includes a reference to food in virtually every entry. In those days, food was more than just a passing interest.

Christmases were very homely affairs. Financial resources, rationing, and the fact that there were no shops within easy reach made it difficult to buy presents. We enjoyed making our own cards, decorations and virtually all the presents at home, often using glue made from flour and water. My sister and I used to raid the larder to put an orange at the bottom of my mother鈥檚 stocking and then fill it up with dates, nuts, boxes of matches, and the odd pencil from school, anything we could scrounge to bulk it out.

Many years later, while living in Victoria, British Columbia, I met a neighbour who was a retired nurse. She had been a child in a village in Germany during the War. It was interesting comparing notes about food rationing and life in general. It seems that our lives were similar in some ways. There was little if any bombing and they did not know much about what was really going on other than Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda鈥檚 noon radio broadcast.. It was not 鈥渘ews of fresh disasters鈥� but news of 鈥渞esounding victories鈥�. However, the news got quieter towards the end of the war. Soldiers were treated as heroes and f锚ted when they returned on leave. The older men, women and children of the village joined together in co-operatives to grow vegetables, collect wood and perform other survival tasks. I asked if they had any Jewish families in the village. They had two such families with whom they were quite friendly. One family moved away but they did not know where. The villagers managed to help the other family from being rounded up. She said she had no idea of what was happening to the Jews who were rounded up because they did not know any who were; and she did not think her parents did either.

Censorship and intermittent mail meant news for us at home was scanty. Later, it became evident that my father had seen a lot of action on HMS Barham off the coast of West Africa, and in the Mediterranean. Besides being dive-bombed repeatedly, he had been in major actions at Dakar in September 1940, Taranto, off Bardia in early 1941, Matapan, the Tripoli bombardment, and Crete. A more complete description of these events, with extracts from letters written home, and various historical sources are set out in a separate book. By comparison, it was quiet in Lower Basildon.

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