´óÏó´«Ã½

What follows is a memoir by Ken Paine of his life in Folkestone during World War Two. It has been typed by Fiona McNeill of the Folkestone Heritage team and added to the WW2 website with Mr Paine’s permission.

My day and night jobs

I was born in Folkestone. When war began in 1939 I was 15 and working in our family’s hairdressing business. I had trained as a musician from the age of 11 and was playing drums during the evenings at Bobby’s (now Debenhams) restaurant.

The restaurant was always full with the Army and the Air Force, mostly officers, who came for the dancing. Due to the evacuation of the town, which had been encouraged by the authorities, the population was down to around 5,000. Local businesses therefore welcomed the service men and women with open arms.

A hazard of cutting the gunners’ hair

Most of the hotels had been taken over by the military. The Army Pay Corps occupied the Metropole Hotel; the Wampach Hotel housed the Green Howards and the Royal Pavilion Hotel the WRNS. It is strange now to visualise all the barbed wire and sentry boxes in Castle Hill Avenue and along the Leas and the sea front.

There were gun sites on the Leas and around the outskirts of the town. We were fortunate to be awarded the contract for cutting the hair of the soldiers who were manning these sites. Two days a week an army vehicle came for me, and I was taken from one site to another. Some were manned by only five men, but others, on the bigger gun emplacements, had 15 to 20 personnel.

Of course, there were frequent air-raid warnings while I was working, and then I lost all my clients. The firing began, and I had to take refuge in a Nissen hut until the all clear.

Watching the dog fights over the Channel

Early in the war, my day job – hairdressing – was in Sandgate Road, adjoining the Leas. When the warning sounded all the shops closed, the buses stopped, and there was scarcely anybody on the street.

As soon as the salon shut we would dash to the Leas, from where we could see across the English Channel to the cliffs of France. We watched the dog fights over the sea, and even saw the bombing of our convoys as they sailed up the Channel toward Dover.

Cutting Donald Duck’s hair

Later in the war Canadians and Americans were stationed on the golf course, only some 240m (300 yards) from our other salon. The boys came in such numbers that when the chairs were full they sat on the floor awaiting their turn. When we’d finished, they signed a sheet, and we collected payment of 10d (4p) per haircut monthly.

Before we became wise to it we found when we checked that we had the signatures of Donald Duck, and Freeman, Hardy and Willis [sic] and a selection of other celebrities. We later made them sign before we cut their hair. They were a good crowd of lads, and we even had letters from some of them when they eventually got home.

Dinner, dancing and Gone with the Wind

One advantage of my night job – working in restaurants – was the choice of a free meal during the evening. Food at home was strictly rationed, but a coupon for a free meal in Bobby’s offered a very good choice. Below is an actual menu for 5 February 1941. The three-course meal cost two shillings (10p).

Grape Fruit or Creme Portugaise or Potage Sante

Grilled Salmon Steak or Omelette Paysanne or Steak and Kidney Pie or Irish Stew or Cold Ham/Tongue and Salad

Potatoes, Brussels Sprouts, and Savoy Cabbage

Stewed Pears and Custard or Semolina Pudding or Jellies and Trifles

Stints at the Odeon

On leaving Bobby’s I played six nights a week for the dancing in the Odeon restaurant. As a member of staff I had the privilege of going to the adjoining cinema free.

On several afternoons I tried to see Gone with the Wind, but each day an air-raid or shell warning sounded, and everyone had to go to the basement. I never saw the complete film until it was on television.

Coping with tragedy

One of our salons was in Cheriton Road and backed on to Morehall Avenue, where my mother's sister and her husband, Winifred and James Sinstadt, lived. We were a couple of hundred metres (200 yards) away in Cheriton Road.

A sad part of the war for our family came at 2am on 29 May 1941, when my aunt and uncle’s house was hit by a parachute mine. They were killed, as were the Mayor and Mayoress, Mr and Mrs Gurr, who lived near by. (An account of this can be read in Target Folkestoneby Roy Humphrey (Meresborough Books, 1990, page 91.)

At the same time the back part of our salon was demolished, and our house lost its front door and all its windows. It was indeed a night to remember.

On fire watch

Looking back we did not appear to sleep very much in those days. All the men in a street took their turn at fire watching from 10pm until 6am. Many had to do the same duty at their workplace.

While the official fire watcher, Mr Ford, was in his hut on the flat roof of the store, all the male staff at Bobby’s (including the orchestra) had to take their turn. This entailed staying alert in the store until midnight.

If there were no alarms by midnight, we would go to the basement and sleep on camp beds. Supposedly for our safety we slept behind huge rolls of carpet. When a siren sounded we had to run up three flights of stairs and then the outside iron staircase to the roof. We stayed there until the all clear, usually some hours later.

One unlikely danger of orchestral drumming

I played in the orchestra at the Leas Cliff Hall for some time, which was built into the side of the cliff. With five floors, the ballroom’s large glass windows provided all round sea views. As the drummer I sat at the back of the orchestra with the windows immediately behind me.

Although, for the safety of the dancers, all the large, glass, light shades had been exchanged for ornate vellum, the huge windows had evidently been overlooked. I believe they did have some sticky tape on them, but, fortunately, the worst never happened.

A bob a nob

After about a year at the Leas Cliff Hall I went north and joined a theatre touring orchestra. We travelled much of the country before joining the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA). As an A company we played factories, aerodromes, barracks and theatres. We even went to the Pleasure Gardens in Folkestone, enabling me to sleep at home for a week.

It was a most enjoyable occupation, interrupted by my call up for army service. After the usual six weeks’ training I spent much of the remainder of the war organising concerts and dances in the Officers’ Mess. I even had a sideline cutting hair at a ‘bob a nob’.

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