大象传媒

Monty

I was a very puzzled little boy sitting in the back seat of a taxi while my father, a motor engineer, rode in front talking cars to the driver. When we got out I asked.

鈥淒ad, was that a man or a woman?"

"Oh, that's. Monty, she dresses like that because people don't expect to see a woman driving a taxi."

This was nineteen thirty eight and I already knew that nuns did not drive cars at all, but had a man to drive the convent's car, so this was no surprise to me.

All too soon the war started and Monty was driving her taxi by day and an ambulance by night. I heard later about one of her adventures.

Plymouth was having a firestorm, courtesy of the Luftwaffe and Ebrington Street was alight. Monty looked at the scene and asked a fireman.

"Can I get through? I have a badly injured man in the back."

The shortest way to the hospital being through Ebrington Street, Monty had no wish to take another route.

鈥�1 wouldn't like to try it but someone has just got through the other way鈥�, was the reply.

That was enough, and with buildings ablaze both sides and the tarmac melting in places, Monty drove the last vehicle through that street that night.

C.D. (Civil Defence)

Between these two occasions my father had been walking with my sister along Houndiscombe Road, when they saw coming toward them a man proudly wearing a smart blue battledress uniform which they had not seen before. Strange uniforms were nothing new by then as military personnel were coming into Plymouth from many allied nations, but, this did not appear 1o be a military uniform.

As they got closer they could see the letters C.D. on the left breast pocket, this was a real puzzle. We did not take long to find out however.
Not long after that father was wearing a similar civil defence uniform with arm flashes announcing that he was a "FIRE GUARD".

TABLE LAMPS

To explain what comes next a little knowledge of the standard German fire bomb is necessary. It comprised a machine turned magnesium case about thirty centimeters long and some five centimeters diameter, its hollow centre was machine threaded both ends. The nose which screwed into it was either of magnesium or of steel to give it enough weight to penetrate a roof, and this held a firing pin. A detonator was assembled on a spring just above it. Behind that was a primer comprising a powdered mixture of iron oxide and aluminium which we called "Thermite". A magnesium plug under the pressed steel fins completed the fiendish device.

Father was by now a lecturer running fire fighting courses and being able to show trainees the foe was all part of the game, so he soon learned how 1o make them safe.

They also made fine table lamps. Take out the innards; put an electric lamp holder in place of the plug. Run the lead out of the holes obligingly designed into it for that purpose, (although the Germans thought they were to provide air to the detonator), add a lampshade, and you had your table lamp. Especially if the one you had found had a nice heavy steel nose to keep it stable.

One day when father went into the fire guard office a secretary asked him to deal with one she had collected and wanted to get wired up.
"Oh that's no problem," said father unscrewing the nose. "Once this detonator is removed it's quite harmless. I'll tip out the Thermite if you have something to put it in then just scatter it around the garden and that takes care of it. I'll look after the detonator."

He looked up to see if there was a bag or box for the primer coming his way and found that the office was empty.

When I hear of someone calling in the bomb disposal people because they have found a terrible bomb in the attic, I often wonder if it is in fact some-ones perfectly safe table lamp come to light. I would love to get hold of one just for old time鈥檚 sake.

SMOKE HUT

As a schoolboy I was under pressure to join a cadet force or something similar, but I was by now helping father with his training tasks. I was especially involved in smoke hut training which was featured in one episode of "Dad's Army". My task was to get the fires going for the right moment in his lecture. Not a simple job for sometimes the old straw was wet and needed the contents of a practice incendiary bomb spread into it to get it going. At other times it was dry and would go up like a torch too early for the lecturer to reach the right point.

There were also smoke bombs to get people to understand how to cope with smoke filled rooms, the air is clear close to the floor but nowadays there can be toxic fumes in that space from furniture fillings which had not been invented then.

A smoke bomb failed to go off one day, then as I approached it to find out why it went off bang. Something shot by a few centimeters from my head and hit the roof where it stuck, burning. I stared in horror at what would have hit me in the face had it exploded a second later. That is how I learned to take care with fireworks.

Obviously with toys like these accidents happened. One of Hitler鈥檚 little charmers was a standard incendiary with an explosive nose designed to do a mischief to those who dared to fight the fires he started. We were told of one incident, where the explosive bomb we used to simulate this in the smoke hut training, had showered the onlookers with burning straw. Not of course the people who were fighting the fire and who were in the right place, so at least it proved the point.

Fortunately Jerry also used similar bombs with separating noses which were intended to simmer in the next room and boot the fire fighters up the rear. So I set our firecrackers off outside the actual smoke hut and had to stand guard until they exploded to make sure no one blundered over them.

AMERICANS

When I was about 14 years old, we went into Millbay docks to give a special training session to the people there. We were pestered by a couple of American soldiers on bikes who continually buzzed the group. The only safe place I could find to set off my fire crackers was in the middle of a sort of parade ground.

As these two cycling menaces went by I yelled "Excuse me" as I tried to block their path, but they ignored me and the two firecrackers I had set out went off better than I could have planned it right under their pedals, we did not see them again.

We had also been told that it was a safe area in which to light our fires, so father asked me to light a practice incendiary under the wheels of a railway wagon, taking care not to put it where it could catch the grease in the axle box. After lighting the bomb I checked the wagon, it was full of jerry cans of petrol, so I did the almost unforgivable, I interrupted the lecture by sidling up to father and telling him. As the jets from the stirrup pumps hit the fire an American military policeman about two metres and eleven centimeters tall stalked up, climbed onto the buffers of a wagon, and said in a perfect southern drawl.

"Do you know there's petrol in those trucks?"

Father replied, "Yes thank you, we know," and we did not see that American again either!

BLACKOUT

On another occasion I went with Father and a few others to Plymstock to give a training session and when the whole thing was finished, including the indoor lecture, it was absolutely pitch black outside. Standing in the blackout it was impossible to see the ground under our feet. To get back to the railway and catch a train home in an unfamiliar road system we linked arms with some locals to act as guides. The end one on the left walking in the gutter to feel for the edge of the pavement with his feet.

I was on the other end as we spread across the width of the road, with my arm linked to that of some unseen and unknown woman in a lovely soft coat, a gorgeous feeling.

FIRE GUARDS

In addition to running training courses father was sector captain for two sectors. Fire guard sectors were not necessarily the same as the areas covered by the air raid wardens with their famous cry of "Put out that light." but were subdivided into areas covered by fire parties with party leaders. Stirrup pumps and associated equipment were held at the sector point and at the party leader鈥檚 houses. Our house, Five Pearson Road, was of course the sector point.

At the bottom of our garden was the side of the house in which a man lived on his own who presented a problem for the bureaucrats. There was no way he could be persuaded to sign on into any official organisation, and prosecution was threatened by the officious know鈥攁lls sitting at their desks. However, every time there was an air raid he would be found standing in the goods entrance doorway of the co鈥攐p shop on the opposite corner from our house.

If things got too hot, everyone else, fire guards, wardens, and the curious, would all get under cover, but not he. If too much shrapnel was falling around he simply moved over to the southern side of the road, nearer the guns, so that he was protected by the house which was then between him and them.

On many occasions the fire guards and wardens came out of their holes at a quiet moment and asked him what had been going on and he could tell them, but although this was reported back, the desk dictators were still not satisfied. At last their threatening letters stopped and he thought they had given him up as a bad job but it was not quite like that. My father had gone into the fire guard office to discuss what could be done and collected the form to sign him on as an official observer. Of course there was no way he would sign it so he was not asked. Someone forged his signature, now I wonder who would do a thing like that?

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