大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Brian Warren with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

I was born in 1934 about the same time as a certain Adolf Hitler was climbing to power across the North Sea. My parents were ordinary working class folk probably worried about the warlike rantings coming out of Germany. I can鈥檛 remember much about my first five years but one memory stays clear in my mind. The first day at school, sobbing as my mum disappeared into the distance and being ushered into the classroom by the kindly Miss Summerfield, the headmistress of the Beeston Rylands Infant School. This must have been in that fateful year 1939 when the world changed forever. We as a family moved to Beeston Rylands in that year and took up residence on Grenville Road in a newly built terrace house. My Dad was a Toolsetter at the local Ericssons Telephones factory and was classed as 鈥渞eserved occupation鈥�. My mum had been one of the operators on the machines that Dad looked after but had left work to care for me.

First memories of the war proper were the preparations for Air Raids, the building of bomb shelters at both ends of the street, clearing the understairs coal cellar of its contents and giving it a coat of whitewash and carpeting the floor. No one knew what to expect and as a child I imagined living in this confined space whilst bombs rained down upon us from above! When the air raids did eventually happen and the eerie sound of the siren sounded the warning my parents would marshall us together and we would make our way to one of two air raid shelters on the Ericssons site to stay there until the 鈥渁ll clear鈥�. In fact our little shelter under the stairs was never used. My dad was a 鈥渇ire watcher鈥� and I never could quite imagine what this entailed. All I know is that he used to keep a look-out for fires caused by the bombing.

Beeston as a whole did not suffer a lot of bombing but it was said that the German bombers came up the Humber estuary and followed the silvery ribbon of the Trent up to Nottingham where there were some strategic targets such as the R.O.F., Beeston Boiler, Ericssons etc. One string of bombs caused great damage to Mona Street (adjacent to the boiler works), another string landed in the fields just outside the Ericsson boundary. Not bad aiming when you think that there was no Radar and it was all done by dead reckoning. While we were confined to the air raid shelters we dined on endless slices of toast done to perfection on electric radiators situated in the basement, and very brave (as I thought then) Air Raid Wardens would brave the hail of bombs to go down to Milners chip shop on the corner of Victory Rd. for copious supplies of chips. Speaking of food, rationing was well under way and to supplement the food supply for the growing family our rear garden was turned into a minor smallholding and we kept rabbits, chickens and ducks whilst any spare ground grew vegetables such as potatoes, cabbages and carrots. I can honestly say that I can never remember going hungry during all the war years due to Mums skilful management and the thriving barter system that existed in the neighbourhood. In my sparetime I would go here and there fetching and carrying items of groceries that were traded between neighbours. All this and the fact that at this time Beeston Rylands was on the edge of the countryside and items such as blackberries, mushrooms and other wild food was there for the asking. Coal was another commodity that was in short supply and on a Sunday morning the local 鈥渨illow woods鈥� would echo to the sound of saws and axes at work cutting firewood which was transported by hand barrows back to home The woods were almost decimated but soon recovered when this practice stopped. These same woods were used by the Home Guard to practice manoeuvres armed with wooden machine guns, gas rattles flour bombs and the like and we had great fun as lads acting as a 鈥渢hird force鈥� creating confusion amongst the opposing sides and it was a bonus when we came upon their horde of flour bombs usually stored to one side in tea chests. Needless to say we were sometimes discovered by an umpire or such and given our 鈥渕arching orders鈥� but we accepted this with good grace and we didn鈥檛 argue or give backchat. Such behaviour was almost unheard of then.

Down Prince of Wales Terrace going down to the canal was the 鈥淏oat and Horses鈥� public house which was an old pub which possibly catered for the once flourishing barge traffic on the canal between Beeston and Nottingham. At the back was a large garden which housed a flock of geese which were very fierce and better than any watchdog. Woe betide any urchin that tried to make off with their eggs!!. To one side of the garden was a long room which was called the Ballroom and it was a mystical place with the walls adorned with the trappings of wars long gone鈥�.spears, shields, assegais and the odd stuffed crocodile are some of the things that spring to mind!. At the weekends the grown-ups used to converge on the 鈥淏oat鈥� for dancing and it was here that I had my first experience of our American cousins. Apparently they came form far and wide to these dances and one can only imagine the reason for their popularity! (the dances that is) By this time I had reached the conclusion that the Luftwaffe weren鈥檛 conducting a war against me personally and I wasn鈥檛 going to be bombed into oblivion every time I poked my head outside so I graduated to the chip shop run and made some very good tips additional to my meagre pocket money.

Other memories come back to me such as the menacing sound of the attacking enemy aircraft, Unmistakeable like a throbbing drone. Never heard such a sound like it since. People said the unique sound was due to the heavy bombload but I鈥檝e never heard a Lancaster or Lincoln make the same sound!. On the subject of aircraft, about 4 miles away at Balloon Woods were some test beds for the Rolls Royce Merlin engines and these were run almost continually day and night and were audible as far away as Beeston Rylands.

Overall, the war for me was something that was happening far away and it was the occasional reminder like the sight of a bombed out house or a serviceman with a limb lost in action that made one realise that for many millions of people the war was very real. It was only much later in my life that I discovered how close our lovely country had come to being invaded and our way of life destroyed forever.

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