大象传媒

From my earliest memories of growing up in James Street alongside the Devomport Dockyard wall, the street became punctuated by bombings and gaps appeared in the lines of terraced houses. The sreet was cobbled with back lanes running parallel to it on each side and often these would be littered with pieces of shrapnell - distorted fragments of metal and sharpend by the immense blasts. In the early part of the war a pipeline was laid all alongside the pavement it was some two foot in diameter and at road junctions it burrowed across. I think it was an emergency river water supply. In the early days my Mum would take me to the Devonport Southern Railway station to watch the trains and once when we went there and it had been bombed the previous night - part of its distinctive arched end wall was demolished and the station buildings damaged and with piles of rubble in the goods yard; it was closed and we couldnt go in. Although re-opened within a day or two, the station footbridge stayed closed throughout the War.

In 1943 I started at Infants school and after a time walked there on my own, going up the back lane to Kerr Street and passing the police station with its sandbagged entrance at the back of Devonport Guildhall. At school there was lots of practice putting on gas-masks which had a funny rubbery smell and made us sound as though we were speaking and holding our noses all at once. We also had frequent rehearsals at evacuating the classroom. We were all told never to pick up anything 鈥� shrapnel is extremely sharp, some strange objects could be 鈥榣ive.鈥� A policeman stands in front of the infant鈥檚 class and holds up a brightly coloured small bomb which looked like a light bulb at the end of a stick topped with folding arms and he demonstrates how it unfolds and spins. He instructs us if we see one on the street, 鈥榥ever ever to touch it, just run quickly and tell the first adult you see.' He told us it was called a butterfly bomb.

After school on Tuesdays my Mum would meet me and take me to the womens Methodist meetings. The Methodist Hall had been bombed and so the meetings were held in the large front room of a ladies house at Stoke, entailing a long walk past ruins and across bombed streets into Devonport Park where there were barrage balloon and Ack-ack sites - all of great interest to a small boy. I recall that the smaller barrage balloons with sharp, triangle tails were referred to as 'Alfies' although I have no idea why. The womens meetings were well attended and I remember they had guest speakers and from time to time after the formal meetings and hymns they would put on their own little comic one act plays - I can still remember 'The reading of the Will' and the carefully detailed bequests with the recipients reactions and the constant cry of 'what about little Emily?'

Near our house was St. Mary鈥檚 Cof E Church (where I attended Sunday school and held in the crypt)and its Vicar was a very whitehaired Mr. Bennett - always a nice smile and gentle manner. Early on in the war some men came with torches and cut away the iron railings (leaving small stumps embedded in the stonework)and they removed the ornate gates and carted them off leaving the Church looking bare and strangley exposed. It was a big church with a tall spire, stained glass windows on all sides and apart from its railings it remained largely unscathed despite the bombings all around. Next to the church, was a pub painted black and white that I believe sold Tivvy Beers and at lunch times and in the evenings the small blacked out windows hummed with talk and laughter.
A few doors from us lived my mother鈥檚 parents. In Gran's house all the windows were criss-crossed with brown sticky paper tape and Gran also had cloths rolled above the mirrors ready to instantly cover them. Grandfather had been in the Navy and served in sailing days, he slept upstairs in the attic and refused to go to the air raid shelter (each house had a little Anderton shelter dug into its small back garden). Grandad wore a full set of white whiskers, was very hard of hearing and always shouted when he spoke. His bed was roped, hammock like, to stop the bedclothes falling off as he turned over. I used to wonder why he was tied in! One day while out walking with granddad we stopped at the bottom of James street where where it joined with Duke Street and where a crowd was standing, listening to some people stood on upturned vegetable boxes 鈥� granddad looks and asks loudly , 鈥淲ho鈥檚 that woman, and why is she poly-ticking?鈥� causing some to turn and 鈥� Shssssss 鈥�.鈥� We were watching Nancy Astor address a rally and I remember she was a striking figure and speaking loud and clear.

In June 1944 I was nearly seven yrs old when, for several days and nights our street was abruptly filled with American soldiers and their amphibious landing vehicles - we called them "Ducks!鈥� The vehicles were parked nose to tail for almost a mile, stretching from near Fore Street, past the ruined Sailors Rest and up our Street and then down to the River Tamar at Mutton Cove. in places the parking was on both sides and the milkman and bread man were fordced to use the back lanes for their deliveries There were also some great high Dodge Lorries, with folding windscreens and canvass hoods that stretched over the driving seats. All all were camouflaged, some with netting and all had white stars within a circle painted on their bonnets. The soldiers with all their gear, camped out along the street and James Street became incredibly busy and exciting. The Americans seem very friendly and happy-go-lucky and suddenly we鈥檙e chorusing, 鈥淕ot ne gum, chum?鈥� They give us chocolate. We gave them cans of water. We play hide and seek around them, clambering under and being lifted into the vehicles. Whilst there, one of the soldiers took a fancy to our dog - an Irish Pointer - and offered me a bar of chocolate to tell my Dad he wanted the dog. I think my father was outraged at the very suggestion. I woke one morning to find they had all gone, leaving nothing 鈥� not a trace of their passing. I did not connect their stay with events broadcast on the radio - not that I remembered much of the news, instead my few memories are of snatches of ITMA, Arthur Askey, Sandy Powell, of Flotsam and Jetsom, Gert & Daisy, the Weston Brothers and Harry Hemsley. I also heard the strange gloating voice of a character known as Lord Haw Haw which all the grown-ups laughed at. For some strange reason our dog Sport would howl as Big Ben chimed for the 9.0鈥檆lock news.

I can鈥檛 remember much about our food, but can see Mum with the ration books. At the butchers I would watch as Mr. Radmore, a big hearty man as befits a butcher, fed fresh mince into the machine and turned the handle and made chains of sausages. We often had marrow bones and mum would add split peas and boil it all up. Then next day skim off the fat (and keep it), leaving a jelly into which the vegetables were dropped ready for a lovely stew. We also had big long sides of stiff dried fish that had to be soaked and repeatedly rinsed to get rid of much of the salt. A corner shop sold Vimto from an upturned bottle 鈥� dispensed into a glass and drunk immediately 鈥� the glass would be shaken and put down for the next person. The shop floor was filled by sacks of things that were weighed and put into anymous blue and brown paper bags. If good, I鈥檇 get given a carrot and then on my way home enjoy scraping it along the walls to clean off the mud and skin and eat it. We didn鈥檛 starve and even now I prefer vegetables to fruit. I never saw an orange nor a banana until well after the end of the War and at first didn't like the looks of them at all. War time fruit was what came occasional very red apples and what people could grow for themselves - I do remember the stained hands from blackberry picking. I also remember Milk powder that came in tins, cartons of egg powder and even potatoe powder.

Our street led down to Mutton Mutton Cove on the banks of the Tamar and across from Cremyll. From there you could watch the multitude of shiping for the great naval Dockyard. Opposite was a boat yard and nearby an anchorage for MTB's. I remember seeing an aircraft Carrier launched almost at the end of the War, named HMS Terrible that was later sold to Australia. From the waters edge it seemed like a huge block of flats sailing past. At the close of hostilities with Germany a numbered Some captured U-boats and Minesweepers were brought into Millbay Docks and moored at the ols railway liner terminal. These were opened to the public so my Mum took me to visit them - everyone was saying how luxurious they were compared to ours - I only remember black leather covered bunks and the smell of oil everywhere and an odd type of railed veranda around the base of the conning towers. At the end of the war gradually the Tamar filled with warships and many were placed in store at anchorages from Millbrook to St Germans and beyond the Royal Albert Bridge.

During 1940 and onward I got to know the sounds of sirens and it is a unique sound which still brings back sharp memories of gunfire and explosions and of rushing to the shelter. As a young child it seemed that as streets disappeared beneath the bombs we were constantly being stopped and told to turn back. The route to the shops was never the same and there was no guarantee the shop would be there or open. The ruins were quickly tidied and then they mellowed: bombed areas were flattened, turning green with weeds between the piles of bricks and jutting metal pieces, puddled with innumerable muddy pools whenever it rained, obliquely crossed by shortcut paths, perhaps edged by a house wall with its wallpaper peeling and fireplaces marooned high above. a playground for us children that often smelled of burnt wet wood and with air that tasted of ashes.

Yet despite the War and blitz the summers belied the horrors and were hot and sunny. My father, invalided from the Marines, would regularly take me for walks along Richmond Walk following the river passed the closed and barbed wired open air swimming baths and landing stages to Stonehouse pool. We'd cross the busy railway goods line on the level and later by a bridge next to the old Devonport Quarries leading to Cumberland Road. A gap in the railings (some that hadn't been removed) led down to the lineside where a large colony of lizards thrived and basked on the rocks and on top of the rails. My father said, if I picked one up then its tail would drop off, which in reality was great news for the Lizards as I left them alone. Despite the many trappings from war that were all around, the old Quarry was disturbed only by the occasional litle tank locomotive pulling up the bank and the many grasshoppers; it seemed an unchanging sanctuary from all that destruction and warfare. It reeked of permanence and yet 60 years later all that remains is a whisp of memory.

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