大象传媒

The Home Guard

As I said earlier my father was in a reserved occupation producing aircraft for the R.A.F., but this wasn't all that he did, he became a member of Dad' Army,
the Home Guard. When he first joined he was given a white arm band with the
letters L.D.V. on it, this stood for the Local Defence Volunteers, or the "Look!, Duck!, and Vanish Brigade!" as they were sometimes called. This arm band was the only item of uniform issued in the early days, later normal battledress with webbing, boots and badges would be available.

My father wasn't the fittest man in the world and I well remember that during training the recruits were required to jump over a long ditch filled with barbed wire. He told me that he was so terrified of falling in the wire that he cleared the ditch by about four feet!
From time to time he was required to patrol about two miles of Langstone Harbour in case the German Army decided to invade. To enable him to fight off the German hordes, he was armed to the teeth with a very small torch, a rifle and five whole rounds of ammunition! Just how successful this was can be judged by the fact that at no time did the might of the German army consider invading my Dad's stretch of coast! England was safe! I asked him once what he would have done in the event of a landing taking place and his reply was that he just didn't know!
Later as he was the owner of a motor bike, a Velocette 500, he became a Dispatch Rider which suited him much better, and this continued until the Home Guard finally disbanded.

Getting From A to B

Getting about in the war was rather different from today, I don't remember it being particularly difficult but there were some changes.
In those days not many people owned a car so even in peacetime the roads
were far less congested than today. During the war many of the cars were laid up while their owners were serving in the Forces and of course there was little or no petrol available. The authorities had to be satisfied that your need was both essential and genuine before petrol coupons were issued. This again reduced civilian traffic but the amount of military vehicles more than made up for it at some times! Many took to the road on bicycles to get to and from work, I can remember streams of cyclists three and four deep travelling along the main road from Cosham to Portchester at peak times. My father was one of them, he had to get to work in this fashion until he became a Dispatch Rider for the Home Guard when he was given a petrol ration.

Other than bicycles most people used the bus service, this operated throughout
the war virtually without interruption as far as I can remember. There were always queues for buses and the buses were frequently packed to capacity, so
much so that sometimes the conductor could not get through to collect fares.
The windows of the buses were covered with a cloth mesh stuck to the glass, this was to prevent injuries caused by flying glass in the event of bombing. It did however severely restrict what you could see, in the centre of each window was a small, diamond shaped, uncovered section to allow you to look out.
It wasn't too bad during the day but at night there were problems, in order to reduce the chances of enemy aircraft seeing and possibly attacking buses, the interior lights on the bus were drastically reduced in brightness. The ordinary bulbs were replaced with low wattage blue lights, not only did this reduce the amount of light but the blue lights made people look most peculiar!

In addition to this there were no streetlights switched on, the whole world was in darkness making it difficult to be sure where you were, and whether you had reached your stop or if you had already passed it!
In fact all vehicles were fitted with headlight shields for the same reason making driving a matter for great concentration! I also remember that many buses in the city area towed small trailers, these carried a water pump so I was led to believe, which could be used if there were fires anywhere.
I remember that certainly in Manchester and for all I know elsewhere too, workers in certain industries had priority passes on buses at peak times which meant that without a pass you could be left waiting at the bus stop until all these people had gone.

Once a year even during the war, my parents spent a week in Rochdale visiting members of their family, this was the closest we ever got to a holiday. This meant travelling by train, first from Portsmouth to Waterloo in London, then by underground to Euston from whence another train took us to Manchester, then the final stage, a bus to Rochdale. The first part of the journey from Portsmouth to Waterloo was fairly simple as we boarded the train at the start of it's journey, thus we had seats. The train soon became very crowded and I would have to give up my seat to an adult. Many of those travelling were in the Navy or other services and people did give up seats sometimes to allow servicemen to sit down. Waterloo was always a hive of activity and the tube trains were also packed, in the days of the Blitz many people took shelter at night in the Underground. I remember seeing bunk beds in some stations on the platforms with a line painted on the platform surface to indicate just how much space those taking shelter could use. After all the trains still had to run no matter how many were trying to sleep there.

Trains from Euston to Manchester too were always filled to capacity with people sitting on cases and kitbags in the corridors, indeed anywhere they could, no matter how crowded the trains were if you could get on you could travel, there seemed to be no limits! I recall that on one occasion as a child I was hoisted up on to the luggage rack where I stayed for most of the journey. Long train journeys were frequently delayed if for example, there was an air raid in progress or damage to the line. Trains would stop and wait several times before proceeding, nobody knew why, it was just one of those things. The carriage lights were also dimmed as on the buses and sometimes went out if as I suspect a raid occurred.
On one occasion as we were sitting on a very crowded train at Euston waiting to start the journey to Manchester, My father noticed an American soldier on the platform who was obviously searching for an empty seat, one such seat was in our compartment and my father attracted the attention of the soldier and invited him to join us. The soldier was most grateful and on the long journey north he talked about his home and asked questions about England and the time passed very pleasantly. He was fascinated by my school blazer badge which bore the date 1721 which was about fifty-five years before the United States came into existence, I think he found this difficult to believe!

Before we parted company he gave me an American coin, ten cents I think it was and I thought that was great. He was a very pleasant man and the first American I had ever met.
One other thing I remember about the train journey to London was that as we neared the city there were bombed houses at the side of the railway line. Some had been sliced in half and in the half which remained, clinging to those walls which still stood, you could see pictures and mirrors on the remaining walls and even furniture such as chests of drawers or chairs or even a bed still on a fragment of flooring on the upper storeys. Everyone looked but you felt faintly embarrassed because you were seeing the private part of somebody's life exposed to the public gaze, it was an invasion of people's privacy.

Good Days and Bad Days

Throughout the war there were good days and bad days, good news and bad news. The sinking of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee was a day for celebrating just as the loss of H.M.S.Hood was a time for mourning. The sinking of the German battleship Bismarck was cheered but in and around Portsmouth almost every street had someone serving in the Royal Navy and the loss of great ships was a matter which seemed to touch everyone.
The valiant battles fought by the Jervis Bay and the Rawalpindi against overwhelming odds were a source of great pride and the Ark Royal was a household word among the youngsters at that time. Something which boosted morale was the capture of the German ship Altmark by H.M.S. Cossack, the Altmark was filled with survivors from ships sunk by the Germans and when the prisoners were released to the sound of the words "The Navy's here!" everyone rejoiced.
I recall that the retreat from Dunkirk was something that I was very aware of without fully appreciating it's significance, I knew it was a loss for our side and yet people tended to regard the whole affair as something to be proud of, it was only later that I understood why. The convoys to Malta were something else that comes to mind and the Eighth Army's battle against the Afrika Corps in North Africa was in all the news bulletins. Names such as Tobruk, Benghazi, Sidi Barani and Mersa Matruh became known to everyone and of course El Alamein! General Montgomery became a national hero as he pushed the German army back from Cairo and Alexandria, that was definitely a very good day! Yet funnily enough there was a certain amount of admiration or perhaps I should say respect for General Irwin Rommel, the Desert Fox as he was known, he fought a good, clean fight and was respected by the British soldiers. To set against that the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese was a very bad day as was the sinking of H.M.S.Repulse by Japanese aircraft. I suppose I knew that the Americans had entered the war on our side after the attack on Pearl Harbour and that the Russians were putting up a great fight at Stalingrad and although these were good things from our point of view, I can't remember getting too excited about it. During the Battle of Britain the news readers gave out daily the numbers of German aircraft shot down and of course our own losses, when things went in our favour that was certainly a very good day! There were of course many more such events but these were the ones which made the greatest impression on me at the time in the early part of the war.

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