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Ted Power has written a book — waiting to be published at the moment — about his experiences during the war as an ARP driver, his time aboard the HMS Balta and HMS Rosevean. Here are some of the moving first hand tales he offered to Steve Murphy to be reproduced for this project.

After the long period of ARP training, practicing, waiting for attack from the air and sometimes responding to an occasional false alarm, this time the wailing of the sirens was for real. Our ARP Depot was located beside Welling railway station. Sitting with Frank and others of our shift in the rest room we heard the alarm and all waited for orders to get cracking. We heard no anti-aircraft gun fire nor the swish and crack of falling bombs, so we assumed some other poor devils were copping it; not too far away though, for the sirens we heard were alerting areas fairly close by.
‘What do you think, Frank, another false alarm?’ I asked, casually turning the page of my C. S. Forester.
‘Possibly’, says Frank, a taciturn man. ‘We’ll know in due course I expect’.
He should have kept quiet for immediately after his words were out we were called.
‘Bother!’, I said. ‘I’m just on the part where Midshipman Hornblower is on his way to take command of a captured French cargo ship!’
No reply from Frank as we ran off to the duty room for instructions. The incident was a Messerschmit 110 shot down and crashed into a row of farm cottages, only a mile or so from our depot as the crow flies. Not being crows but knowing the area very well, I had to take that beautiful great lump of an Austin ambulance along roads now busy with buses, trolley-buses, goods vehicles and other lunchtime traffic and pedestrians. No sirens on our vehicles in those days, not even the largely ineffectual bell clapped to the front bumper, banned since the decree that bell ringing would be the signal warning of enemy invasion. Wouldn’t in any case have been heard amid the noise of Welling and District going about its business, many of whose vehicles traveling in our direction seemed to be driven by the deaf and blind, oncoming traffic moved smartly over to give passage to our ambulance hogging the middle of the road with clearly no intention of deviating.
The site of the crash was off the main road; turning onto the narrow approach road we could already see the twin fins tail end part of the ME fuselage, sticking up from a field behind the row of scattered properties.
As a schoolboy I used to spend a lot of time around here in the summer, picking wild strawberries and blackberries, enjoying the elevated view across open fields and farmland undulating on its way to Shooters Hill.
A row of tiny terraced cottages normally stood here by ‘Fanny-on-the-Hill’, a Beasely pub, our local brewers. They stood no longer, only a pile of bricks and a broad scattering of rubble and pathetic personal belongings of the former occupiers. The survivors were now standing together in a small group, talking excitedly and effusing high pitched laughter which confirmed the classic symptoms of mild shock. There were no physical casualties but all needed minor shock treatment. We were soon done and went off to have a word with the uniformed policeman standing a bit further off near a dark inert bundle on the ground; it was the dead pilot of the German aircraft.
The officer said he’d checked for names and presence of all the former occupants of the cottages and there was none unaccounted for.
‘What about the crewman in the Messerschmit?’ Frank asked. ‘The Me 110’s a two seater and normally carries an observer/rear gunner.’
‘Didn’t know there was one. If there was he must still be inside the ‘plane.’
‘Well, he’ll have to be seen to even if he’s a goner. We’ll get a rescue team to come out from the Depot.’
So ended our first call out and we drove soberly back to make our report.
This had been a sobering experience. Practicing first-aid on colleagues at instruction sessions in the large hall at the Depot was a very long hop, skip and jump away from doing it for real under the actual conditions to be found at the site of an incident. Even then I didn’t realize how fortunate we’d been in having that comparatively quiet and easy initiation to our first war encounter.
I’d had bright daylight in which to drive, find the site and do our stuff; there’d been no injured among the casualties; we’d had no cause for delay at a casualty clearing station or diversion to another hospital (when the one you’re at is already chock-a-block); there’d been no fires, fierce or otherwise with attendant smoke to hamper our proceedings; no delayed-action bombs at or near the site waiting to blow us all to kingdom come before we’d had our dinner!; the ‘all-clear’ had sounded in the distance just as we got to the site so there wasn’t even anyone still up there dropping bombs on us as we worked!. Piece of cake compared to what was coming. Just as well we didn’t know that yet.

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