大象传媒

MEMORIES OF JIM BACKHOUSE AGED 79

At the outbreak of the war in 1939 I was a 14 year old telegraph messenger at the Post Office on Pride Hill delivering telegrams to all parts of Shrewsbury.

We became very busy in the days leading up to the declaration of war and when the war began, as few people had telephones and a telegram was the quickest way of communication.

[Initially] we worked 8 hour shifts, 6 days a week, with 2 boys being on on a Sunday morning, but this became a 7 day week when the war started. The first shift started at 8.00 am and the last one finished at 9.00pm.

We were allowed into War Department and government establishments, such as the barracks, the Maltings and other places after reporting to the guard room, but we soon got well known and were usually waved straight through.

The discipline was pretty strict and we were inspected at the start of a shift before we went out. Brass buttons, cap and breast badges shiny, belt buckle Brassoed and belt and pouch polished with black boot polish. We had to wear a shirt with a white collar and a black tie. We were issued with a pair of black shoes for the summer and boots for the winter and a uniform every six months. We were also supplied with patches to repair the trousers as they wore our pretty quickly riding a bike all day. We also had waterproof leggings and a cape for wet weather.

In those wartime days, the sight of a telegraph lad, as we were called, coming to the door, especially if there was a member of the household in the forces, was frightening for most people but usually it was not bad news, but men coming on leave or asking for something to be sent to them.

Many times we were asked by people to open the telegram and read it to them as they did not want to do it themselves; many telegrams brought relief and good news, but not all.

The two worst times I remember were, as a 14 year old, delivering a telegram to a lady telling her that her husband, a sailor, had been killed when the Royal Oak was torpedoed in Scapa Flow just a few weeks after the War started in October 1939.

She was of course hysterical and I fetched a neighbour to her. I think her husband was the first War casualty from Shrewsbury.

As the war went on, we did of course get more bad news telegrams, including one in 1941 which I took to my grandfather to tell him his son, my uncle, who had gone all through the First War and had come back from Dunkirk, had been killed. As our parents were dead my brother, sister and I lived with our Grandad and uncle so I then had experience of knowing what it was like to have a bad news telegram.

I joined the Home Guard at 16 and delivered telegrams until I joined the Army at 18 and served in Normandy and the Far East, but that is another story.

[Mr Backhouse wrote his memoirs down and brought them to the Shropshire Family History Festival after which they were typed onto the website by a volunteer. He is aware of the site's terms and conditions.]

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