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HITLER V. A BRIGHTON SCHOOLBOY

oldbrightonboy

1. Declaration of war

2. Home Front

3. Schoolboy’s war

4. Scouting

5. War’s end

Part 3B

The ladies who farmed chickens at Newlands, two or three miles north of Mayfield sought just one hand and I filled the bill. They were the sort of confident pair who a few years later saw off Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya.
I did anything going. Cleaning up the sheds, collecting eggs and, again, milking their small herd. There was an outbreak of foul pest in the area and many of their birds had to be slaughtered. This I did with the aid of a sort of guillotine lever which broke their necks without actually beheading them. I collected them, batch by batch, into a death-pen from which I performed the executions. It is amazing how quickly one overcame whatever squeamishness one may have had as one caught the victim, pulled the lever, discarded the still flapping bird, picked up the next and so on. A hundred or more birds in a morning.
We got on well together, the lady farmers and I, and they asked that I be allocated to them the following week. "We cannot speak too highly of his work"; they wrote in their note to the camp. They later suggested I should work for them when I left school but I did not think it was for me. Examinations were over for the year and camps were almost holidays. We were paid only a few shillings but we were not much bothered about the pay.

One learned the facts of rural socio-economic life on the farm. The labourer on one farm who issued us with tools and told us what to do, also told us that his wife bought yesterday’s bread for the family at the village shop because the children didn't eat as much ‘second-day’ as new bread. At another farm the 'real' labourer lived with his wife and children in a sort of low shed about 8 feet long and 6’ wide divided horizontally into two ‘floors’ which were more like shelves. The upper floor was only about 3’ from the roof and the total height of the shed can’t have been more than six or seven feet. There was only a rough canvas over the open end of the shed and one morning when I had arrived early the canvas was hitched up and I could see the heads of dad and mum still in bed where they had spent the night with two or three children on the top shelf. They must have slid or crawled in. This was where they were living! Perhaps they had something better for winter but I have my doubts. For us, from our sheltered, middle-class homes, this was a revelation and education.

Doodlebugs were an excitement of the second camp I attended which was again at Mayfield in June/July 1944. By that time doodlebugs had flown over Brighton but I saw more in 'close-up' at Mayfield near the Kent/Sussex border. Memory plays tricks, particularly after one has read accounts and seen films, newsreels etc of events, but I think I first heard about the doodlebugs whilst walking across the playing field at school. There was always someone with the latest news or rumour. I don't think there was much time between hearing about them and seeing them.
The ‘V-1’ was described as, and sometimes called, 'the flying bomb' but 'doodlebug' or occasionally ‘buzz-bomb’ were the names we used among ourselves. I suppose we must have been among the first people in England to see them because they were more or less bound to pass over Kent and Sussex and we knew they were headed for London so I don't think we were particularly frightened. We had been living for a quite a long time with 'hit and run raiders' and doodlebugs were less frightening as one had more notice of their arrival than of a traditional aircraft. And anyway, unless one had being flattened one was, at seventeen, excited rather than frightened by things of that sort.
Some were shot down over the sea but they were not so much shot down as followed over Brighton. Fighters sat on their tails until they were north of Brighton and into, what we called, the killing ground before opening fire. There was plenty of open country behind Brighton and we would hear the machine gun or cannon fire as the fighters reached the doodlebugs. We watched in the same way as we had watched the dogfights during the Battle of Britain.
I had a ringside view of the main bombardment during the week or two that I was camped at Mayfield. The school camp started as exams came to an end so I suppose it was late June or early July. We camped, as we had the previous year, on Mayfield village green which is a hillside looking east over the Weald and what a literary friend, the previous year, described in a letter home as; ‘a panorama of multicoloured fields’. That year we had been under canvas and in 1944 we again erected tents although we did not use them because the teachers in charge decided, in spite of our protests, that we would be safer in the nearby village school hall.
In the event, the camp was abandoned because of the danger presented by the doodlebugs as they were shot down all round us. I have tried to remember how many I saw in a day but I can only a recall impressions which might be unreliable. I am almost certain I remember seeing two or more doodlebugs being chased by fighters at the same time.
We had an extensive view and my impression is that there were doodlebugs either coming or going almost all the time. They came in from our right, the south, and those which got through rattled off to our left. Some came in from the southeast (half-right) and passed almost over our heads to disappear over the hill behind us. I was one of the advance-party. We became so used to doodlebugs that we only stopped digging the trench for the latrines or pitching tents to look up if the doodlebugs were being chased by fighters or shot at by ack-ack.
Doodlebugs were natural prey for ack-ack. They flew level, straight, what appeared to us to be relatively slowly and quite low. Once the guns had got the range and plotted the track they were easily destroyed. Some would explode in the air and others would be damaged and come down to explode as they hit the ground. Occasionally, one would be deflected from its course by blast from ack-ack shells or, possibly, shrapnel and fly off in a different direction.
The fighters were even more effective because of their mobility. Cannon appeared to be more effective than machine gun fire. We watched the cannon and tracer trails and waited for the explosions as the shells hit the target or the ground below if the fighter was above the doodlebug. It was said that fighters would nudge doodlebugs off-course and away from a town with their wings. They certainly flew very close to their quarry and I believed at that time that I did see a nudging but I am now less confident. We were very impressionable and a mythology developed to which we all wished to contribute. I know the occasional fighter was too close to an explosion and crashed as a result.
We waved to the pilots who we could see plainly and they waved back. Situated on top of the hill as we were we were pretty much at their level and we were quite close to them. From their patrolling they obviously got to know what was happening below. I don't think we cheered them but we certainly shouted to them knowing very well that they couldn't hear. I must have seen, literally, dozens of the doodlebugs shot down by fighters during a few days of that summer.
The farm workers in the pubs in Mayfield called them ‘they doodleboogers’ but then everything from a reluctant cow to a corn-stook was; ‘a liddle ol’ booger’ to them. Changes in direction of flight were quite common if a doodlebugs was disturbed. I am almost certain that I remember seeing one bank and go to the left for no apparent reason.
I witnessed the aftermath of several crashes in the Mayfield area. Considering the acres of Weald in which they could land without causing much damage it was sad that several seemed to land, as a result of AA gun or aircraft fire, on the few isolated farm cottages or houses. But, of course, had they been left to make their way they would almost certainly, have caused serious damage and loss of life in built-up areas. I saw one badly damaged farm the day after the bomb landed. There were, I believe, two casualties and the damage was immense. On one occasion a descending bomb landed on the trunk of a tree near the ground. The blast had spread and bushes and trees for, perhaps, a radius of 75 yards were stripped of leaves and branches. The damage was, of course, less as the distance from the explosion increased. The branches were pale green where the bark had been stripped from them.
But the nearest I came to an exploding doodlebug was on a Sunday evening in Shoreham, Sussex when I was visiting cousin Michael. ‘Please God don’t let the engine stop’; was everyone's prayer when they heard a doodlebug approaching. We were playing billiards in the ground floor front room of their house opposite the entrance to Buckingham Park when we heard the doodlebug approaching and I offered up the prayer. The engine stopped when it was overhead. Indoors we could not hear the wind noise around the wings and bodywork as the machine glided down but we knew what was happening. When its proximity had sunk in I dived under the billiard table and I believe the others did the same. There was a loud explosion from behind the house which rattled windows and there was a bang in the house which turned out to be the kitchen door bursting open and its door-knob hitting the wall tiling.
We got up and went to find the others. There were no broken windows, only a flat brass door knob and faulty catch. No one was hurt. The bomb had landed about 50 to 75 yards away in the soft earth of the market garden which ran behind the back gardens of the houses in New Shoreham Road. Later I was given a piece of the doodlebug which I think was a gyroscope. I was a source of envy among my friends.
When we looked at the billiard table we found the balls were all down one end. The folklore of war experiences was boundless, particularly regarding ‘blast’. Everyone had a story. I bored for Brighton with my account of the relocation of the billiard balls.
I don't remember the end of the doodlebugs season but it obviously came to an end and quite suddenly as far as we were concerned. They were superseded and overshadowed by the V-2 rockets which did not affect us personally but which were more effective, frightening and deadly for Londoners. There was no warning engine noise such as one had from aircraft or doodlebugs. One minute all was quiet and the next there was utter devastation. We had great admiration for the Londoners because of their ability to stick it out. We heard rumours that the V-2s came near to cracking them.
(I refer, above, to doodlebugs travelling relatively slowly and so it seemed at that time but later published works state they flew at 400mph which was at the upper limit of the fighters’ speed range if not beyond it. I still find it difficult to accept that they flew so fast. They appeared sluggish compared with fighter aircraft.)
Jets arrived at much the same time as the doodlebugs. We heard different aircraft engine sounds and saw the occasional aircraft travel across the sky faster than we imagined possible. We seemed only to see them through clouds. Did they fly them over towns only when we couldn't see them? Whatever, the jet had arrived.

The war years were by no means all danger and fear for a Brighton schoolboy. With virtually no traffic of the roads we could cycle safely wherever we wished. Geoff and I roamed far and wide by ourselves or with the school’s Field Club which arranged meetings devoted to natural history foreys. On our own the most usual destinations were Lewes brooks and Mount Caburn chalk pit near Glynde, to the east and Small Dole, Shaves Wood and Burgess Hill to the west and north. About as far as we could go, spend the day searching for fossils or live stock for our aquaria and return home in time for tea. One tends to remember and recount the dramas but the periods of following the normal pursuits of teenage boys far exceeded those when one was in danger or in fear. Hours were spent identifying specimens, cleaning and exhibiting them often to the accompaniment of Geoff’s father’s comprehensive collection of gramophone records. Geoff built up a splendid, almost unique, collection of beetles. Much of a boyhood’s splendid friendship is contained here in a sentence or two. A friendship which was to last through the years to come. But one could not of course ignore the war. It was always with one as was the hill up which we had always to push our bikes to get home loaded with satchels, hammers, bottles and specimen boxes, tired and grubby.

Many boys went almost straight from the sixth form into military service. They were lost to our sight until they made a casual return visit to school in a khaki or blue uniform. Then, they might be seen strolling along the corridor or waiting outside the headmaster’s study to say’ hello’ to ‘Butch’. Occasionally he, Butch, looked more serious than usual when he appeared on the platform for morning assembly and announced the death of an old boy, killed in action. There would be a pause for remembrance.
The older boy whose departure on military service I best remember was John. I suppose I had a crush on him when I was thirteen. Some years older than I, he had two polecats with which we went ferreting on the chalk hills near Patcham. John was knowledgeable about natural history. My diary records that we hunted, killed and collected for dissection three adders over the hills behind the waterworks one day. When, this was my mice and genetics period, I wanted mice ‘sexed’ he was the person I turned to. He taught me some taxidermy, too. A diary entry records; ‘skinned mouse and stuffed it’. My subjects invariably looked rather tired if not deformed but they stood and few actually decayed. John was in the Sixth Form, reading botany and zoology, and went almost straight from school into one of the Scottish regiments, saw action and was wounded. Before he left he gave me his copy of Alfred Russel Wallace’s The World of life — ‘a manifestation of creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose’ which still sits on my shelves. We had discussed the relative merits of Darwin and Wallace at some length as we lay full length in the long grass over the hills and enjoyed the sunshine between adder forays. A relationship which remains pleasurably in the memory as part of wartime schooldays.
What should I do when I had completed Schools Certificate Examinations? Military service was inevitable but not imminent so there was a void. My examination results were better than I expected but I had no career plans. I spent a year in the sixth form reading zoology and botany. I stayed on because I enjoyed school and did not particularly want a stop-gap job. I attended classes but spent most of my spare time on wider reading in the library or in the summer with my back against the bank on the playing fields. I was a very reluctant school leaver.

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