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A Wartime Childhood ( part two of two )

Our ‘gang’, of which I was the youngest, consisted of four or five small boys who lived close by. The great ambition of all of us was to fly a Spitfire as soon as we were old enough and shoot down hundreds of Germans. One of the kids would show us his uncle’s bayonet-slashed and bloodstained tunic from WW1 and proudly point out his surname on the village war memorial. It occurred there several times. The First War was always referred to as the ‘Last War’, it was recent and so well remembered and comparisons were inevitably being drawn by the grown-ups and even by we small boys. My mother’s older sister had lost a succession of boy friends and fiancés, new second lieutenants whose survival chances in the trenches were horrific. That the present conflict might degenerate into stalemated trench warfare was an ever-present fear among the grown-ups.

However we small boys built a complete trench system complete with dugouts at the bottom of our garden and took great delight making our wooden guns as realistic as possible. Russian-style tommy-guns were the acme until one boy produced the barrel and breach of a Boer War vintage rifle which we fitted with a makeshift stock to became our anti-tank gun. We listened, grouped in our trench and all-ears, to an uncle on leave from the Far East who lectured us on the Japanese, how they wore thick spectacles and had a horror of cold steel. I learnt long after the war that he’d been a member of the elite Force 136 and had been parachuted into the jungle behind the Japanese lines and had known only too well that what he told us was hogwash.

In the summer we would play Hunt the German - a sort of Hide and Seek - around the gorse bushes on the Common, armed with bracken-stem throwing spears. Eventually every small boy graduated from bows and arrows to a homemade catapult and we’d collect empty brass .303 rifle cartridges which lay in quantity around the ranges on the Common, stuff them with stiff, yellow ‘snake-grass’ as a flight and use them as catapult ammunition. We dubbed them Piats after the anti-tank weapon of that name and used to exchange fire with a rival gang of kids. Of course a hit could well have been lethal — the Health and Safety people today would be horrified - but I don’t recall any injuries and we prided ourselves as being toughies. Bare knees and rolled down socks were de-rigeur and any kid in long trousers would have been ostracized as sissy. Occasionally the rounds we found were live and these were dismantled, the cordite sticks removed and wrapped in a twist of newspaper with a bit of rare camera film added if any could be found, and the thing lit in the school playground as a stink bomb. If we were really lucky a live thunderflash might found — they made a huge bang but were comparatively dangerous - while the little white parachutes from para-illuminating flares were collected, weighted with a stone and we competed to see who could hurl them furthest into the air to watch them floating down. Soon such parachutes were a common sight caught up upon every kind of overhead cable or wire in the village. Later, in the Army myself, I realised that we’d been fairly savvy about what was dangerous and what wasn’t. Nevertheless one of my chums did blow himself up with ordnance of some kind, luckily he was not badly hurt and for months afterwards he would proudly pull up the leg of his shorts to show us the chunk of shrapnel still lodged in his thigh. I’ve often wondered if it’s still there. Unfortunately some kids were not so lucky but they weren’t ones that I knew personally.

Aircraft were always of great interest to us boys and Aircraft Recognition, a subject of great importance in the Forces themselves of course, was a major preoccupation. I still possess several of my favourite Aircraft Recognition manuals. Aldershot was the base for the Canadian Army and the troops smoked a cigarette called Sweet Caporals on each packet of which was a numbered Aircraft Recognition card — the regular silhouettes of each aircraft from three different angles, a photograph and details of purpose, performance, crew and so forth. These we collected assiduously, swapping, begging and even searching waste bins to obtain the complete set of around two hundred cards. I don’t recall anyone ever managing to collect the complete set of Sweet Caps. I delighted in subjecting the grown-ups to aircraft recognition quizzes and was amazed when a visiting maiden aunt, a most unwarlike lady, achieved a 90% score. My mother confessed years later that Aunt had been able to read the captions, in mirror image, through the thin wartime paper. I can still recognize most wartime planes, British, American or German, and thrill to hear the now very rare but so distinctive throb of a Merlin engine.

Being near the RAE at Farnborough we saw all manner of aircraft, not only regular service types and even the odd captured Jerry but also exciting experimental prototypes such as the Gloster E1/44 — the first jet aircraft. Sometimes a plane returning from a mission would crash on the Common and we would cycle out to find it as soon as we knew and if possible filch a little gadget or something as a souvenir. For a while we also collected window, the metallic foil strips dropped by aircraft to confuse the radar, but there was so much about that the craze was short-lived. The most awesome manifestations of the air war were the bomber streams which seemed to monopolise most nights. I would lie in bed listening to the constant throbbing of four thousand or more Merlin engines, which went on and on and on, still throbbing if I woke and continuing into the dawn as the Lancasters came home. Appreciating only later the heavy casualties the bomber crews suffered, these memories are still among my most moving. I was able to put them into context as a soldier myself serving in BAOR, I was able to see the results first-hand and discuss the war and the bombing offensive with my German secretary..

Part of the training to which the Canadian troops were subjected involved living off the land. They were turned out of barracks for days on end and ordered to fend for themselves. Often we met famished and homesick young soldiers on the Common and Mother might invite a couple home if they seemed friendly and feed them up with bread and jam and tea. She had an uncle in Canada who had fought in the Boer War and naturally we were all proud of the Empire and its troops. Several of these lads graciously wrote thanks-you letters after the war which gave Mother great pleasure. Actually we small boys found the Canadians a trifle confusing, their uniforms seemed British yet they spoke American and were game for Got’ny Gum Chum? and for unfamiliar Canadian one cent coins and even chocolate if you were that lucky. I’d come across Yanks when we took the train to our Cornish holiday, it was chock-a-block with American servicemen but they were very polite, did their best to ensure we were comfortable and tried to make friends with my cousin and me — I’m not sure how well we reciprocated? The journey itself was something of a penance, crowded, stuffy and uncomfortable, it seemed interminable - apparently it was far slower than it had been in peacetime.

I was approaching eight in the spring of 1944 and well aware that the Russians and certain elements at home were clamouring for Second Front Now. It was spelt out as graffito on so many walls. We were very taken with the brave Russians who we’d seen in films wearing white cloaks while they fought in the snow. I knew briefly what the Second Front entailed and everyone knew that sooner or later it had to come. The Hog’s Back in Surrey is a long narrow chalk ridge stretching some six miles between Farnham and Guildford. Today it’s traversed by the busy A31 dual carriage-way but in those days the road — which my mother recalled as still unsurfaced in the early twenties — was little more than a green lane, fringed by yards of grassy verge between high hedges of yew and thorn. One day my father on a 48-hour leave took me on a bike ride to the Hog’s Back. It was quite an expedition, probably the farthest I’d ridden at the time. When we reached the crest I was astonished - hard up against the hedges, the grass on either side was lined with military vehicles. Tanks, trucks, jeeps, half-tracks — every kind of vehicle I could imagine, parked side by side. There must have been almost twelve miles of vehicles, thousands and thousands of them. And I don’t recall any camouflage nets although surely there must have been. It was obvious to me that this was part of the build-up for the coming Invasion but while agreeing, Father would comment no further — they were his balloons flying over the gathering invasion fleet in the Solent.

And then one bright June morning as I left home to run down the lane to school I saw that the sky was full of planes. Below a blue sky streaked with high cirrus there were hundreds of them in layers, stretching from horizon to horizon. Each layer was of different planes and each was going in a different direction. Lowest of all were a myriad gliders and their tugs, Albermarles I recall — we didn’t see many of those - and Halifaxes. All had these unusual white stripes on their wings. The whole world throbbed with aircraft engines. There was great excitement in the school playground. The Second Front — The Invasion — had come at last.

The final year of war provides few specific memories. We saw the odd DoodleBug but they caused more derision than alarm where we lived. There was even a popular ditty :
“ Doodle doodle little bug / How I loathe your chug-chug-chug / As a secret weapon you’re a /
Washout like your crazy Fuhrer “
The postman finally retired, a frail, friendly old chap who wheezed badly — he’d been badly gassed in the First War - and every day he sat down for a breather at our house while Mother made him a cup of tea. Things seemed to relax a bit and we boys — I was now nearly nine - ranged further afield on our bikes and even went swimming, unsupervised, in the local canal or the several lakes in the area. My cousin was sent away to school in Devon and in the autumn of 1944 we took the train, once again full of friendly Yanks, down to Exmouth to visit her. I remember we were both stuck in the lift at the Beacon Hotel (it’s still there) when, the fist time in such a contraption, we kept a finger on the button for too long and the thing jammed between floors. The beach was deserted of course and the sea unapproachable through an endless maze of steel obstacles ranged along the tide-line as far as the eye could see. We were taken up to London shopping and to have lunch in a suitable restaurant — the Chicken Inn it was called - where the surroundings were impressive but the food not up to Mother’s standard. And we rode on the Tube where the stations were still crammed with steel bunks and the carriage windows had thick netting glued all over them with just a little diamond left open in the middle through which one could catch the station names if one was quick. There was bomb damage and sandbagged walls and windows everywhere but this seemed the norm as I’d been too young to recall what things had looked like prewar.

On VE Day the village had a huge bonfire on a patch of open ground and everyone was very jolly. There was some sort of party for the kids but SDI (wartime Soft Drinks Industry) cordial and Spam sandwiches were hardly memorable although I do recall some kilted Army pipers. It was not only the grown-ups who were aware that the war in the Far East had still to be won and we boys were horrified by the Japanese Kamikaze attacks and morbidly fascinated by the simple Baka Bombs they often flew in which the cockpits, once closed, were unopenable. We knew that the Mitsubishi Zero was a fighter to be reckoned with ( “ Johnny got a Zero “ was a popular song ) but also that the Spitfire was the finest plane that had ever flown and was certainly more than a match for mere Zeros and FW190s. And then there was a General Election and I well remember the posters portraying ‘Winnie’ with his V-sign and the slogan “Let him finish the Job “. All the adults we knew were aghast when Churchill lost the contest and Attlee moved in to tie up the ends, to a nine year old it seemed so ungrateful. I had a favourite book in strip-cartoon comic-book format ‘The Life of Winston Churchill’ and to youngsters and most grown-ups Winnie was a hero of Olympian stature.

In the summer of 1945 we spent a weeks holiday on the Isle of Wight, staying at a boarding house in Seaview. Over breakfast one morning an elderly gentleman, a Mr.Squire with who we had become friendly, showed us his newspaper. ‘It’s all over’ he said ‘they’ve dropped a thing called an Atom Bomb on the Japs and they’ve given in.’

Was it an anti-climax? I suppose it was. On VJ day there was another village bonfire and I cycled around the village waving a large Union Jack but wondering what peacetime would be like? I was just nine and I supposed it might be rather tame. Carnage and suffering meant little at that age, wartime rations and restrictions were the accepted norm and no longer would there be Spitfires to fly, Germans to shoot down and Japs to bayonet when I grew up. I fondly assumed there would be new Dinky Toys and coloured bikes and ice cream and lashings of sweets and sticky cakes. It was rather like the aftermath of winning the last football match ever. The action and excitement of following and supporting our team is over, so what now?

ENDS

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