大象传媒

CHAPTER THREE

WANDSWORTH GARAGE

My one-day honeymoon over and my first day on the road alone in front of me, I reported in plenty of time to the Depot Inspector at Wandsworth. Of course, my sudden change of status and new name had caused quite a lot of extra work involving the issue of my PSV (Public Service Vehicle) licence and also my permanent sticky - but both were ready and waiting for me - my PSV number 3821. Since I had plenty of time on hand, I was taken on a tour of the Depot and shown over a trolley bus - which was the first I had ever been aboard. Then into the canteen for a cup of tea and another woman conductor was good enough to show me the ladies rest room that had recently been completed and nicely furnished with a couple of settees and several blankets in case an air raid made it necessary for a girl to stay at the Depot overnight. Should this situation arise, a London Transport Official would notify the girl鈥檚 home and she would be excused the following day鈥檚 duty. If she volunteered to work the next day then she would be paid an extra four hours money. The eagerness to keep the full services running was such that the crews only went home for a change of clothes and practically lived in the rest room till the raids subsided a little.

I soon found that there was no standard procedure for working when the air raid sirens went. It was left entirely to the discretion of the crews involved. Almost all of us adopted the same routine. First of all the tram would stop at the nearest point to a Public Air Raid Shelter. The crew would go along the upper and lower decks to tell the passengers the siren had gone and point out where the shelter was. If it were in a blackout, the conductor would shepherd the passengers to the door of the Warden. Then the crew would be met and taken over by the Duty Warden. Then the crew would decide whether to take shelter themselves or carry on working. If enemy planes were close, the anti-aircraft guns blazing away and the air thick with shells going up and bombs coming down then we dived into the shelter with the passengers. If the action was some distance away and several passengers anxious to get home to their families or report for work then we carried on going at half speed, quite often with the conductor and driver both at the front of the vehicle to keep a close lookout for danger. We rarely went full speed in an air raid, not only because it took some time to bring the vehicle to a halt but also because the trams made such a noise that it was impossible to hear gunfire or even the bombs dropping unless they were quite close.

We watched the probing fingers of the search lights, sweeping across the blackness of the sky, seeming to grope through the clouds and when a glint of silver winked in their ribbon of light, the rest would hurry across the night sky to pinpoint that tiny silver gleam which would stand revealed like an actor spotlighted on a darkened stage. Sometimes what we saw revealed would be the fat friendly shape of an Anti-Aircraft Barrage Balloon and we would sigh with relief, the searchlights would hurry away to criss-cross another area of the sky and, if we were lucky, the noise of gunfire and bomb would become more and more distant till the all clear sounded. Then we would stop at the next Public Shelter and call out, 鈥淎nyone want a twenty six tram to the Embankment?鈥� And off we would go again, keeping our fingers crossed, hoping we would be back to the Depot before it started all over again.

When the raids were heavy and wave after wave of enemy aircraft passed over all through the night we would go through the same routine - dropping passengers at one shelter and picking up another tram鈥檚 load farther down the road - over and over again. As frayed nerves got tighter and the tram further and further from the Depot we found the tension affecting us all crews and passengers, in different ways. Some seemed to withdraw and become silent, only clenched fists and tapping feet hinting at the tension, others became more alive, apparently thriving on the danger, joking and laughing and seemingly determined to enjoy every moment of it - to the last, if necessary, while some people started to swear - cursing the Nazis, the gunners for not shooting straight enough (鈥淚 could do better than that with a bloody bow and arrow,鈥� one assured me) and even the majestic barrage balloons were censured for not floating high enough to entangle the unwary bombers in their wires. What impressed me most was the relatively few cases we had of tears or hysteria, for the most part people stood up to it all very well and the efforts people made to get to work amazed me.

All the factories making armaments or, in any other way, devoted to helping the war effort were working shifts round the clock and all personnel were issued with special passes so they could buy workman鈥檚 return tickets whatever shift they were on, and it was these passengers who urged us to carry on. 鈥淜eep 鈥榚r going, mate,鈥� they鈥檇 say and it was these people who would often be the deciding factor when things got a bit lively. I used to tell myself that if these men and women were eager to get to work making ammunition with bombs falling around them then, surely, I could summon up enough courage to help them get there. We went through the most appalling slums on some of the routes but the people who lived in them were the salt of the earth - cheerful, kind, helpful and brave. I was proud to work among them.

Despite the friends I鈥檇 made, both in the Depot and on the road, I did find the long journey a strain. I鈥檇 feel the urge to dash off the tram at London Bridge and run up Great Dover Street to see if Gran was okay, especially if I was late turn and the air raids were bad or I was away so long on day shifts when I had a spread over duty. Hours were pretty long in those days and quite a few spread-overs lasted thirteen hours or more. I would sign on in the morning, about 6 a.m., and cover the morning rush till around 9 a.m. then resume again at 4 p.m. and work to 7.30 p.m. With the long journey to and from work this would mean an absence of anything up to fifteen hours. So I took the Depot Inspector鈥檚 advice and applied for a transfer to a depot nearer home. He was not able to tell me how long I should have to wait because there were not any vacancies at that time, men discharged from the Armed Forces were beginning to appear as conductors now and no one would deny them the right to their priority on the waiting list after what they had been through over there. Staff were encouraged to stay on past retiring age, it had never been the policy of London Transport to make retirement compulsory - all they insisted upon was an annual medical check up. Providing a man passed the doctor鈥檚 examination he could stay on as long as he liked. There were two drivers over seventy years old at Wandsworth in 1941 and probably many, many more over London, and conductors too. So vacancies only occurred when staff were bombed out and moved from London or retired for reasons of health.

The staff of a depot would be composed of a nucleus of crews working through a rota and several more drivers and conductors going spare. The spare staff were there to cover duties when regular staff were having a day off (resting), off sick, on their annual week鈥檚 holiday or subject to suspension through disciplinary action. There were also extra duties that were not on the rota. For example: the Trolleys (612) put out a Special Service on two evenings a week running from Tooting to the Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium and the spare crews would work on these. There would be spare staff standing by, signing on every half-hour from 4.30 a.m. to 8 a.m. to cover duties when regular crews were late. Altogether, being on the spare list was hectic to say the least. I did not know what duty I would be doing till midday of each day and, though the drivers had a Police Regulation which allowed them eight hours off between shifts, there was no such rule for conductors and although the office staff did their best, it was frequently necessary to switch from late turn one day to early turn the next. When the rotas started at 4.30 a.m. and finished after midnight a sudden switch of shifts could mean sixteen hours work in twenty hours. I tried to get over to Staines to visit Bill鈥檚 family and my own about one week in four, but frequently my treasured sticky stayed in my uniform pocket and I spent most of my day off in bed.

Although the official rush hours were in the morning and evening, catering for travellers who worked in offices and shops, we had very few slack periods. The shifts in the factories were staggered so that we always had a certain number of factory workers on and housewives shopped in the cheap midday period. Staple foods like eggs, butter, sugar, bread, meat, etc. were rationed and only obtainable at the shops where one was registered but fruit and other such luxuries in short supply (like nylon stockings, cigarettes, etc.) were sold to the first in the queue. A queue outside a shop meant that a delivery of this nature had been observed and women often took a thru鈥檖enny midday ticket, jumping off the tram and joining any queue along the way. Standing on the platform, I would wonder what the other women were standing so patiently waiting for, and envied the lucky ones who clambered on the tram with their trophies - two hours for three oranges or a pair of stockings, even longer for ten cigarettes sold loose, some of them with brand names we had never heard of before (or since) and popularly believed to be made of old rope and tram tickets. Having smoked quite a few of them myself I should think that was a pretty good description.

Although all places of entertainment had been closed down when the war first started, the authorities soon realised that people needed some relaxation from long hours of work, frequent air raids and worrying about the long casualty lists of their men in the Services, so cinemas, theatres and dance halls reopened and people resumed a more normal way of life. There was no television in those days, of course, but we did have wireless. The 大象传媒 put out two channels, the Home Service and the Light Programme. For the most part, though, people went out for their entertainment and the sixpenny evening tickets were very popular.

At first, I wondered why new conductors were always put on a late turn for the first week or two. It got dark by 5 p.m. and made learning the road almost impossible in the blackout. With half the lights missing and the remainder dimmed with paint, it was barely possible to see more than a few feet inside the tram, and with no lights at all outside in the blackout I could only guess at where we were along the route. So I adopted a technique of asking boarding passengers where we were and then calling it out to help people wanting to alight! The passengers found it difficult too because all windows were covered with thick layers of netting glued on to prevent injuries caused by flying glass. Only a peephole, three inches by two inches, at eye level gave a very restricted view of the road outside. However, although people used Public Transport in the evenings then far more than at present, the late turns were less hectic than the early ones (air raids excepted, of course) and I soon realised that it was possible for me to conduct my tram quite efficiently with only one pair of hands after all!

Just as I was gaining more and more confidence on the tram routes I found myself due to do a trolley duty and, since the motion, platform and stairs were all totally different, I found myself back to square one again - landing on passengers鈥� laps when the trolley was weaving amongst the other traffic (the trams couldn鈥檛 do that of course) and yet another strange route to learn in the blackout. I missed the eternal grinding, groaning rumble of the trams, too, especially after the air raid alert had sounded. The trolley buses were so silent - no engine noise at all - just the humming of the tyres on the road and the click - click as the pole head ran over the joins in the overhead wires. It was better for the passengers to be able to step straight off the pavement on to the platform instead of boarding a tram in the middle of the road but I was told there were more accidents when the trolleys first began operating because, especially in the blackout, passengers stepped off while the trolley was still moving - the silence fooling them into believing it was stationary.

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