Message 1 - WW2 Munitions
Dear John
Ref; No Bullets Allowed in Class.
What a narrative. I have retained a copy in my WW2 folder as I also acquired munitions during the 1940s.
In 1939, my father aged 22, youngest of seven children, enlisted and fought with Britain鈥檚 7th armoured division in North Africa. Later in, Sicily, Italy and Normandy
I were 8 months old when WW 2 commenced. My mother and I, experienced the loss of two dwellings during the Blitz of New Cross Gate and Deptford, South-East London. Monica, my sister was born in August during the 1940 Bombardment.
In 1942, I were evacuated from the city in a convoy of three London double 鈥 decker, red buses, from a school playground at New Cross - South East London, to rural Batley in Yorkshire.
A woman named Mrs Lilley-White became my surrogate mother, returning me late in 1944, to my real mother, residing at 35 Cedars Road, Hampton Wick. This were a three floor former clubhouse adjoining Bushy Park, separated by a lengthy road called Sandy Lane, stretching from the bridge above the river at Kingston-upon-Thames, and finishing at Twickenham.
Throughout the war, Bushy Park housed a Royal Air Force camp and laboratory (as far as I am aware there wasn鈥檛 an airfield for miles). The Kingston camp within Bushy Park, were the troops living and recreation quarters. The Twickenham camp, being the industrial section, where scientific work were performed.
We kids played cricket or whatever in the park, we would swim in the Dianna lake and if we stayed motionless we could also watch the wild roe deer as they cropped the grass.
We would also watch as the RAF personnel, wander the two miles between camps to work, returning for lunch and, in the evening back to their living quarters following their days work. Very few of these had time to converse with us children. .
A volatile circumstance
One Sunday my friends and I found a metre size hole in the Bushy Park industrial camp wire, made ( we found out later ) by yanks to enable a short-cut to their living quarters.
It being Sunday afternoon and with no-one about we entered the camp through this hole and from what was obviously an industrial dump, we acquired a quantity of cloudy circular glass objects we used as marballs.
We entered a number of door-less disused, huts, one of these were possibly a guard or rest place for it contained a dartboard and two darts, also a lockless cabin -type trunk. On lifting the trunk lid we were astonished to find 27 unopened brown cardboard boxes, each containing at least 200 x.303 mm bullets.
There were also a black tin about 12鈥 square and 2鈥 deep, containing twenty dummy ammunition rounds with the wooden bullets painted brown, the tips were painted red.
As you mention in your article, this were manna to us kids. We wouldn鈥檛 touch the live cartridges for a while, but eventually removed three boxes of the live ammunition and a clip of the dummy ammo and hid two of the boxes of live ammo in an old stove found dumped adjacent to the camp wire.
A share out of the remaining box of 200 bullets gave us four enough to take home with us that evening.
At school the following morning we showed our school friends our booty, they were agog! Especially with my bullets which although dummy, were contained in its rifle munitions clips and looked quite deadly. I kept my munitions for a week, unlike others who sold theirs for 6d each.
On the Friday evening I were visited by two English detectives. Apparently an adult had sequestrated his child鈥檚 munitions and (as you described in your story) attempted to remove the explosive contents by cramping the cartridge in a vice and, striking the explosive cap using a hammer and nail. The explosion blew off most of his forefinger, thus resulting in Hospitalisation and a visitation by the police.
My three friends had already been questioned and were seated in a large green four-door police car and, we were taken to collect the remaining munitions from our hiding place.
We were ordered to take the same course we had taken the week before. The hut where we discovered the munitions were examined, and being without doors the detectives ( or powers that be) decided we hadn鈥檛 broken and entered. On returning home, charges were seemingly forgotten by the police, but not my parents.
Although I promised the detectives I would stay clear of the site, I couldn鈥檛 help notice the hole in the camp wire were repaired when I looked at it the following Sunday. I bet there were a few yanks upset at the extra mile trek now that the wire had been repaired ?
I am so glad that there are a few of us what would now be called 'Young Yobs' still alive to relate our adventures.
Yours fraternally
John Phillip Thornton
Id No 785835
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