大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Lucy Thomas of Callington U3A on behalf of John Tunnicliffe. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

I AM A DERBYSHIRE LAD. (Example title)

I鈥檓 John Tunnicliffe, born 1935 in Derby. My father was Frank Tunnicliffe and my mother was Hilda Caddick and we lived in a terraced house in Russell Street, Derby. We moved to Osmaston Road, a bigger house, near my maternal grandparents, around the outbreak of war. Opposite the houses were fields largely given over to well kept allotments.

EVACUATED TO POLPERRO IN CORNWALL
At the outbreak of war, I recall being put on a train with my mother, and we went to Polperro and stayed with the Jolliff family. He was a fisherman and she boiled up lobsters in a huge pot, which I think was just inside the door of their cottage. I don鈥檛 know why my father didn鈥檛 come with us, obviously something to do with what he did. He spent some time based in Bromley, from where it was his job to assess the safety of bombed buildings. He apparently acquired a sixth sense for this and frequently, having put a foot inside a building, decided it would be better done the next day. For example; the building might collapse the moment he left. I think he came home at intervals.

MANAGING
We returned to Osmaston Road, (I do not remember how long we stayed in Polperro) and we took in boarders from time to time, either that or they were billeted on us. There was one RAF chap, with his wife or girlfriend, and I do recall his moustache. We also had staying with us, a Nurse Evard. She was Estonian and a devout Catholic. She must have been in her early twenties. She took me for walks. I still have a card from her written in Estonian and another in English, with Christian Sentiments. She decided to return to Estonia when either the Germans or the Russians were burning bibles. She wanted to save her people. We never heard of her again after she went back. I鈥檝e no doubt that she must have died soon after her return. I think she had a strong influence on me. I do remember she had strongly accented English, but I learned to understand her and she me. We had long conversations. I remember that, but not what she said.

My mother used to do her ironing in the middle room, which had a full-height window overlooking the back yard. The yard was paved in blue brick. She plugged her iron into the light socket. The socket on the wall was taken up by the wireless. One day she was a bit too enthusiastic and pulled the whole lot out of the ceiling.
I found that very funny but she didn鈥檛. Laughing out of place was usually rewarded by a clout on the side of the head, which left my ears singing. I didn鈥檛 mind the occasional thumpings, it seemed the norm. Similarly, I never expected, or received any displays of affection.

I started school at St. Dunstan鈥檚, which was further along Osmaston Road from our house, where there was similar fairly harsh discipline, like not being allowed to go to the loo even when pleading to be allowed out.

One day, when walking home from school, I was hit by a Rolls Royce car which had pulled silently out of a side road. I span like a top with one shoe ending up way down the road. I completely ignored the car and went to retrieve my shoe, then sat on the doorstep waiting for Ma to come home. The car had been carrying Rolls Royce executives to the Rolls Royce factory just behind us. They manufactured the Merlin engines there, for Spitfires, Lancasters and others. The passengers picked me up, and took me to the medical centre inside the factory where I was treated. The collision had taken the skin almost completely off my right thigh and has left me with no sensation over a large area there.

AIR RAID ATTACKS ON ROLLS ROYCE
Because Rolls Royce was a tempting target for the Germans, they had lots of barrage balloons round about. One day there was a violent thunderstorm and most of them were struck by lightening. The lifting gas was hydrogen, so they all caught fire and landed mostly in places were they didn鈥檛 cause any damage, but one did land on the bus depot and set fire to several buses parked in the yard in front of the depot. It was on my route to school and lots of us were fascinated to see the remains the next day, lots of smoke and water.

I can鈥檛 put times together but at one stage, they built a gun platform in reinforced concrete, it must have been about twenty feet high, in the fields opposite our house. I don鈥檛 think they ever hit a German aeroplane but they made plenty of noise.

My father built an air raid shelter in the back garden, Anderson I think, that鈥檚 the type made of corrugated iron and half buried with earth. All the gardens seemed to have one and the men cooperated in the building of them. We spent many a sleepless night out there. Nobody could sleep through the pounding of that gun!

It certainly didn鈥檛 stop the Germans coming one morning just as the workers were going into Rolls Royce. They dropped sticks of bombs all the way up the main entrance road within the factory and killed over 400 people!

Betty, my sister, and I hid ourselves as best as we could in a chair between the fireplace and the staircase wall. The blast took the entire window, glass, frame and all and scattered it throughout the room. It also blew my mother off the loo upstairs. She came down clutching her bloomers and dress around her waist. She spread herself over us until the Germans left, their work done. A triumph of maternal instinct over discipline perhaps?

The kitchen window was also blown in. That faced into the yard too and there had been a milk bottle on the windowsill containing flowers in water. The entire thing crossed the room to the other side and we found it upright, on the floor, with flowers and water intact. Such were the strange things done by the blast. Some ceilings came down and there was other damage. I can remember nothing about the repairs.

DAY TO DAY LIVING
A man came into school one day to urge us to save paper. He brought with him a cartridge clip made of cardboard which we were encouraged to stand on to demonstrate its strength. The cardboard clip made from the saved paper was certainly strong enough to feed into a gun. Another day, a man came in uniform, and brought along several examples of German delayed action and incendiary bombs, anti-personnel bombs and booby trap bombs, the kind designed to attract children鈥檚 curiosity and blow them to bits when they picked them up. These had spikes on them, which would detonate the bomb at the slightest touch.

At times during the war, my mother and us children were shipped off to house sit for one of our past Vicars. Bert Bunting had been moved to a parish called Holloway, a village north of Derby, which to me was an earthly paradise. It was always warm, sometimes hot and we arrived by train in a tiny station set at the bottom of a cutting with a tunnel at each end. The station was Whatstandwell, (the home of Ellen McAthur). When the steam cleared away after the train had gone we could see the banks were lined with bluebells and wild garlic. The green was so lush after the smut and grime of industrial Derby it took your breath away. A taxi took us up the hill to Holloway Vicarage and I remember the sun soaking into lovely limestone cottages. The vicarage was a large house next to the church, smelling of lavender and rose petals. Mrs Bunting had arranged lots of big bowls here and there all over the house. A smell that lingers with me still
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ETIQUETTE?
An American airman was billeted onto us while we were there and I remember being shocked that he cut his food up then ate it with a fork in his right hand. Why wasn鈥檛 he disciplined for that I wondered. He insisted that I call him by his first name but of course, I could never do that.

ALL OVER
I don鈥檛 remember when the war ended, that is, victory in Europe, but I do remember the bonfire, with Hitler in effigy, going up on the verge opposite. It set fire to the fence of course but nobody was bothered about that. VJ Day was another matter and that was held in the nearby village of Dethick.

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