´óÏó´«Ã½

An 11 year-old boy’s war recollections.

As an 11 year-old when the war started, the war for me was interesting, sometimes exciting and very often very frightening. My first recollection is the winter of 1939-40. Heavy snow followed by freezing conditions left roads icy until spring, but there was no traffic (as we know it today). Ice sliding off the roofs of terraced houses with no gardens made it suicidal to walk on pavements in the blackouts. I was starting at a new school which had not been finished, so I had to catch two buses across the city, to a girls’ school until Easter. Not many boys can say they attended a school for girls! There was a war on!

When the bombing raids started in earnest, the school was evacuated to Bourne in Lincolnshire, and later to Bingley in West Yorkshire. It was a case of opposites — one good, the other not so good. Early in 1941, I went back to Hull.

In late February I was playing at a friend’s house when the sirens went. There were no air-raid shelters at that time, so you had to manage the best you could; under the stairs or under a table — if it was of a sturdy hardwood construction. A 1,000 kilo bomb, one of two that were dropped on Hull, landed less than 100 metres away. As it came down, it sounded like a steam express train going through a tunnel. There was a split second of silence followed by a horrible noise as it buried itself 29 feet deep next to the main railway line into Hull. We were very lucky that it didn’t explode. The next morning we had to put up three relatives, as houses within a half mile radius of the bomb were evacuated. This lasted for two to three weeks. Our house was on a corner, and we couldn’t use the back door. We had to go in and out through the front door. There was a policeman on the corner to enforce this.

In May, we had the Blitz. A landmine, besides putting a few windows in, also deposited a lot of soot from the chimney into the house, most of it on me under the kitchen table. With no hot water, electricity or gas, wiping the soot away with a damp flannel was not easy.

As Hitler was preparing to invade Russia, the raids’ intensity eased off. During this spell, we went to London to see my father, who was there on a ship. My sister and I went to see St. Paul’s Cathedral. On the walkway round the dome we viewed the damage all around. It certainly was a miracle that St. Paul’s wasn’t destroyed as well.

Back at home, if the sirens sounded after midnight we didn’t have to go to school the next morning. As the Germans used to mine the River Humber, and we were on the flight path to Manchester and Liverpool this used to happen regularly, but no bombs were dropped.

At school one day, a quartet was singing when the whole assembly walked out, leaving them open-mouthed. The sirens (or buzzers as they were sometimes called) had sounded and we had to evacuate immediately. On another occasion a paratrooper in full combat gear came to give us a lecture. During 1943, a Lysander aeroplane came over the allotments and the poplar trees and dropped down over the quad (playground) and then with full power climbed over the building. He did this eight or nine times. We were on the first floor and could actually look down on the pilot. This was repeated several weeks later by a Hurricane. Lessons were almost impossible under these conditions!

In May 1944 I joined the Merchant Navy, and joined a ship in Greenock, on the River Clyde. One night whilst waiting for the convoy to form, the Queen Elizabeth arrived and moored on the other side of the river. I didn’t think she was very big, in comparison to the tugs along side her — until one of these little boats turned out to be a paddle steamer with about 1,000 American troops on board.

After a four and a half month trip to India, I arrived home on leave the day before V.E. day. My mother was especially pleased to see me, having one son in the Royal Navy, her husband and one son in the Merchant Navy, a brother who was lost at sea, and another brother who was a prisoner aboard the Graf Spee during the battle of the River Plate. Her relief was short lived, for shortly afterwards, I set sail for Australia. The passengers aboard were former prisoners of war; Australian seamen that had been captured by a commerce raider. Among them was a stowaway hoping for a lift around the Australian coast. It cost him five years as a prisoner of war. We arrived in Sydney two days before V.J. Day. On my first trip to the Mediterranean, a rainbow ended on the deck of the ship less than a yard away from me, but there was no pot of gold. Later, I was reliably informed that I was looking at the wrong end!

That was my war, but I feel I should mention my admiration for the housewives and mothers who coped with rationing, shortages, war work, air raids, and the worries of their loved ones fighting overseas.

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