大象传媒

I was born in 1923, so I am 80 now, and I can remember quite a lot of my experiences during the War. I never got 鈥渃alled up鈥�, because I was in a reserved occupation, working as an electrician in a rubber hose-pipe factory, in Watford, so my wartime experience was on the home front.

In 1938, when I was 15, we had the Munich crisis when Chamberlain returned, waving the piece of paper 鈥� 鈥淧eace in Our Time鈥� 鈥� The government had decided to issue gas masks to everybody, and I remember helping with the issue of gas masks. There were Large, Medium and Small, also a Mickey Mouse one for the kiddies, and a cot one for babes in arms, which was taken to each house that needed one by the women wardens, and the mother told how to use it with the hand pump. Later on, just before the war, in 1939, they issued gas masks again to those who did not have one. When the mask was fitted, and the straps adjusted, a small hard book was placed over the filter and the wearer told to breathe in, to test the seal. The book used was the instruction manual for the wardens, which was our bible on procedure. The gas masks went into a cardboard box made for it, and it had a string handle to carry it with. Everyone was supposed to carry their gas mask with them wherever they went during the war. ARP workers were issued with a stronger mask called a CD mask, and the services had a mask in a haversack.

The scouts had a badge for CD, and to win one, you had to undergo the same training as the air raid wardens, and just before the war, there were quite a lot of people who were doing this training, finishing with a test, and when I passed the wardens test, I got the badge. I became a Messenger, riding my bicycle.

Wardens duties were to report air raid damage to HQ, and to liase with the other services, Rescue (Made up of local builders), Fire Service, Police and Ambulance men. Their most important job in the beginning, was to check that the blackout was kept. They also used stirrup pumps against incendiary bombs, and made circular pieces of plywood to float in the tops of the buckets of water, to keep the contents from splashing away. They had to recognise and report poison gas attacks. We had a bit of poetry to remind us of the various gases, the persistent ones had a double initial in the name, and the non-persistent ones did not. This is the poem. There is one line that I cannot remember, and maybe I have the names mixed up :-

Phosgene smells like musty hay,
Chlorine is like bleach,
Peardrops come from KSK,
Quite distinctive each,
Face-itch near means CAP (Face-itch is itching under the chin)
And DM grips my nose,
? ? ? ? ? DDT,
Your eyes with tear-drops close.
Garlic means that Mustard鈥檚 free,
Thought oniony by some,
Lewisite, all must agree.
Smells like geranium.

Perhaps some kind soul can help me out with the missing line?

Wardens were organised into groups, based on the areas of political voting awards. We were J Group and we had 3 wardens posts, J25, J26, which had the head warden, and our post, J27.
Before the war started, and at the beginning, the wardens posts were someone鈥檚 house or office, but very soon, the brick wardens posts were erected. They were about 10-12 feet wide, by about 30 feet long, with a flat concrete roof. A sandbag wall was built outside the front door. At the other end was an escape hatch, under which was a desk across the building, with a telephone, the most important item.
There were wooden benches along each wall, and the wardens soon made themselves comfortable with various additions fixed to the walls. There was a one bar electric fire for heating, which was used to make toast, and two fold up beds with blankets. Each wardens post had about 20 wardens or so, and there were two paid wardens on duty during the day, and a rota was made for duty overnight by volunteer wardens, who used the beds to sleep in, because they had to go to work the next day.
As a messenger, I got the job of collecting the weekly newsletters from the Chief Warden of the town, to be delivered to each Head Warden, on my bike in the blackout. When I was 18 I was made into a Warden, and shared the work of the post with the others.

On the day that the war started, September the 3rd, it was a Sunday, and we were all in church for the 11am service, and the air raid sirens went. I thought that we were under attack from bombers with poison gas, but it was a false alarm, and the All-clear went soon afterwards. There were alot of false alarms with the sirens to start with, and the wardens had the job of asking people to take shelter in the public air raid shelters.
Anderson shelters were issued to each house, for the householder to erect in his garden. They consisted of J shaped corrugated galvanised iron sections, bolted together at the top, and placed in a hole in the ground, you got 2,4,or 6 pieces, according to how many were living in the house, and two end pieces, with the nuts and bolts, and a spanner. The excavated earth was used to cover the shelter. They were damp and uncomfortable, although some people used to sleep in them every night.
Later on they issued a Morrison shelter, which was like an iron table to go in the living room, and you crawled inside.

There was no real activity until after the Battle of Britain, when the Germans started attacking London every night. In Watford where I lived we could see alot of activity over London, and we got the bombers picked out by searchlights, very high up. Some dropped their sticks of bombs anywhere, and alot fell into fields, but there were some house that were hit, by the odd bomb.
I remember an attack by incendiary bombs which landed on some of our houses, burning through the roof into the attic, and so on down into the house. There was one chap who wanted to catch the bomb as it came down into his bedroom, in a chamber pot, he could see the ceiling going black. We were at full stretch, with several bombs all at the same time, and with the help of the fire brigade the fires were pout out. On another occasion, we had a small bomb in an old brewery, which hit the spare ground, caused a crater, and set light to the gas pipe. I had to report this one, it was a mile or so from the post, and I had to go up a steep hill. When I got to the post I was so out of breath I could not speak.
We never did get a poison gas incident to deal with, but during the war, an extra filter was fitted to each mask, for some possible stronger gas.

We saw Doodle-bugs, and one Saturday night, one laded on a row of houses demolishing some 6 or 8 in the line, with heavy casualties. They used to follow the same course as one another, and I remember seeing one on the same track, flying very low, a few days later. They were guided by a tankful of compressed air, and fuelled with a rocket engine. If the compressed air ran out before the rocket was finished, the thing would dive into the ground. If the rocket was used up first, the noise would stop, and it would glide down to earth.

Rationing was introduced, until almost everything was rationed. The first that was put on ration, using the newly issued Ration Books, was clothing. There were no clothing coupons in the book, but there was margarine coupons, and they used them instead, for clothing. Some things were off ration, and people got up to all sorts of tricks to get their hands on materials, there was many a bedsheet sold which was made of a fancy pattern, more suited to a dress material. I remember that you got 26 coupons for a year, and a gentleman鈥檚 suit was 26 coupons. Shoes were 7 coupons. You were allowed to use each others coupons, and when someone got married, the relatives would donate clothing coupons to help get the bride rigged out. Meat was rationed by price, you were allowed so much worth, say 10 pence a week, and you made this up with offal which was not rationed. When the butchers had some unrationed meat on sale, a queue would soon form outside. If you saw a queue, it often paid you to join it, and find out what we were queuing for from the people there. Cigarettes were hard to come by, with limited supplies, and you had to be a regular customer to get served.
Bread was not rationed until after the war. It used to be made in 2lb loaves, but with the rationing the loaf was made 1 戮 lbs to allow the weight to be divided by 7. This weight continued after the rationing, and to this day, it turned into 800 grams, which is the same weight.

In 1944, I believe it was, the blackout discontinued, but it was quite some time before the streets were lit again as they were pre-war.
The more that I think about it, the more that I remember.

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