大象传媒

As I was ten years old when the war started and as I have always been interested in technical things I have very vivid memories of so much of it, I think, and hope, that I have an interesting tale to tell: after all, you don't have to use all of it!

PREAMBLE: About me-who am I?

I am a retired primary schoolteacher, but the story really goes back to the First World War - "The Great War" as we knew it in the 'thirties. I "grew up" with stories of that war: Uncle George had been torpedoed and survived, Mum talked about the Belgian refugees coming over, and about the daylight raids by Gotha bombers. Dad mentioned hearing the "Silvertown Explosion" (near North Woolwich) although I have never been able to find just what it was all about (I'd love to know!). There was also the oft-repeated canard that Russian troops had arrived in Britain: "They must be Russian-they had snow on their boots" (I don't suppose you have heard that one, but it was still a joke among older folk when I was young).

Mum told me about rationing, and Dad remembered how the Zeppelin shot down by Leefe Robinson (sic) near Cuffley in Hertfordshire could be seen going down in flames even from Bexleyheath. (In fact it wasn鈥檛 really a Zeppelin, but another make, but "Zeppelin" was the popular name for all German airships at the time).

After the War, in 1919, there was a serious 'flu epidemic, about which very little is ever said. There have been one or two brief mentions of it on television in recent years but I find most people have never heard of it. It is of special significance to me as it killed my father鈥檚 first wife. Left with a two-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter he had to manage, how I do not know, but the family must have rallied round. Eventually he married an old family friend and I was the surprise result!

Dad, a self-employed upholsterer, French polisher (no spray-on synthetic lacquers in those days) and cabinet-maker was by this time 46. Mum a school mistress required to resign on marriage (standard practice in those days!) was 42. I was born on the 18th of January, 1929. with relatively old parents, and step-siblings twelve and thirteen years older than me, I was in some ways an "only child鈥� with the advantages and disadvantages that brings. Dad was hard of hearing so communication was not easy and it put him out of touch with, for example, current ideas on humour, which could be slightly embarrassing at times. Mum was a dour part-Scot but both were very conscientious so I had a very stimulating childhood - museums, exhibitions, outings, a love of reading and so on. This upbringing is probably one of the reasons why I took so much interest in the detail of the War itself.

...AND COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE .

I went to a perfectly ordinary but, I have since realized, very good primary school (Woolwich Road Infants/Pelham Road Juniors). An unusual feature by modern standards, was that the Junior school was boys-only, the girls, on leaving the adjacent Infants school went to their own junior school some distance away.

A very surprising thing, in retrospect, was how well-informed we seemed to be about world affairs, compared with many youngsters today. Of course there wasn't a fraction of the distractions of modern life in those days. Would you believe that, asked for suggestions for a debate, one of my classmates suggested "Should Germany get her colonies back?"- this, in a class of 9 to 10-year olds! Mind you, we had an inspirational teacher, a Mr Stoneman, who addressed us as "rogues, twisters and bad eggs" - and we loved it.

We could all see trouble coming - the invasion of Austria, let alone the Munich affair. We heard of a strange, same-for-everybody machine called "The peoples' car" which was generally considered to be a bit of a joke. There was a story of Germany having a military parade when a private vehicle bumped into one of the numerous tanks revealing it to be made of cardboard! Of course neither of these stories, especially the second, turned out to be quite so funny later on.

We saw trial deployments of barrage balloons, which gave us much confidence (somewhat misplaced as it later turned out). We watched the newly-formed Civil Defence at practice. I well remember a group of trainees (civilians, of course) practising the use of a 鈥渟tirrup-pump", a hand-operated pump so-named because of the metal, "foot" you put one foot on to steady it - leaving both hands free to pump with (we've still got one). It was to be used to deal with incendiary bombs, of course. Those who enrolled full-time in Civil Defence were paid 拢3 a week, a trifling sum by modern standards, but widely considered over-generous at the time ("Throwing taxpayers money about like that!"). Of course, they certainly earned when the Blitz started, but that was yet to come.

Some time after Munich the B.B.C. broadcast what would now, I suppose, be called a "dramatized documentary" called "Air Raid" (I think I have remembered the title correctly). It purported to show what might happen if a dozen enemy aircraft attacked a British city, mainly to demonstrate the functions of the various Civil Defence units 鈥� Fire, Rescue, Wardens, etc. By August 1939 it was pretty obvious that war was a virtual certainty. There were plenty of notices explaining the various warning signals. Sirens had already been installed on suitable buildings, especially police stations, but also on tubular masts where necessary. The air raid "Alert" was to be "A fluctuating or 'warbling' sound". (Why.. they called it "warbling" I have no idea; it was a simple rise and fall taking some five seconds or so per cycle. The "All Clear" was to be a continuous sound, both going on for two minutes (much later reduced to one minute).

The prospect of gas warfare loomed large; the 'warning was to be by policemen or other CD personnel cycling round with wooden football-type rattles, handbells giving the All Clear. We had already been issued with gas masks and had to practice using them (no fun). There were plenty of articles in the papers about "gas-proofing your home" - well, one room at least. I cannot remember exactly when it was installed, but we had our 鈥淎nderson鈥� shelter (named after Sir John Anderson 鈥� I think he was Home Secretary 鈥� someone in the Government anyway.)

In August 1939 we went on holiday to Clacton, by paddle steamer either the Crested Eagle or Royal Eagle. (The Eagle steamers and several other paddlers regularly plied their trade between Tower Pier and the Kent and Essex coasts. I loved them, in fact I am a member of the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society as a direct result of all that childhood fun.) I clearly remember coming home up the Thames estuary in the evening sun and wondering what lay in store.

There was much talk of evacuation but it mainly seems to have affected schools closer in to the major cities. However, I was put down for the Empire evacuation scheme, which would have taken me to Canada (where I had an uncle) whence I would have been driven to other relations in California, so I might now be a U.S. Citizen or possibly at the bottom of the Atlantic, bearing in mind what happened to the "Athenia". The scheme was abandoned after that (I am a little hazy on precise timings here: I do know that the scheme went badly wrong).

And so we come to that fateful day, September 3rd, 1939. We tuned in our wireless (not "radio", even though there was a "Radio Times") a second-hand set bought for the Coronation two years before. I am sure you have heard the famous recording of Neville Chamberlain many times; it came as no surprise; we just felt bemused as this was quite outside any previous experience, real or imagined. As is fairly weII known, the air-raid sirens sounded almost immediately, so we, my parents and I, took shelter under the stairs (Maybe our Anderson shelter had not yet arrived). It was a sunny late-summer-early-autumn day I remember. Nothing happened - it was a false alarm.

Later that day France also declared war, which gave us some encouragement. And so we settled down to what became known as the "Phoney War". ( 鈥淧honey" in those days was an American word meaning sham or false.) The B.E.F. (British Expeditionary Force) went to France, but not much seemed to happen by way of action. Except 鈥� that is, at sea, but we did not get to hear much about it. Winston Churchill returned to his old post as First Lord of the Admiralty, to the great delight of Their Lordships who sent a signal to the entire Fleet "Winston is back! 鈥�

On what became known as "The Home Front" our main concern was the blackout. Suitable opaque fabric was in short supply. My father quickly constructed covers for the downstairs windows. One was a frame covered in off-cuts of feather-edged board with a knob halfway up each side. You tucked the top under a bracket, rested the bottom on a wooden block and secured the whole with an ordinary turn-button. (It may seem an unusual detail to remember but I will not easily forget the sheer weight of it. The other downstairs windows had light wooden frames covered with lino left over from another side of Dad鈥檚 work, Iino-laying. (Linoleum was a very popular floor covering in those days.) This ritual, on four windows, had to be done every night and un-done every morning for most of the War. I say "most" because, as the end was approaching, there was some relaxation of the rules and we were allowed a 鈥渄im-out鈥�
rather than a strict "blackout".

Upstairs we had roller blinds made of some sort of dark material resembling glazed cotton material: these were adequate) on their own, provided you did, not have a bright light in the room which we never did anyway. We did not have bedside lights or table lamps. I remember seeing them in shops I but I think they were a bit 鈥渘ew-fangled" for my father, who grew up with gas lighting, as indeed I did; electricity wasn鈥檛 fitted to our house until the mid-thirties, lights in three rooms at first, followed a few months later by lights in the remaining rooms and three power points as we called them. Two-pin unshuttered they were, with a tumbler switch that gave a mighty "clonk" when you switched on or off. The two downstairs living rooms each had one, beside the fireplace, and there was one beside the upstairs front bedroom fireplace (all bedrooms had fireplaces right up to the War and even after. Central heating never really 鈥渢ook off鈥� for ordinary homes until after the severe winter of 1962-63).

Dad thought modern ideas on electric lighting were extravagant. The main living room had one 75-watt lamp (on a pendant fitting in the middle of the ceiling, just like all the others). Other rooms had a 40- or 50-watt lamp as their sole illumination. Indeed, the long, rather dark hallway was only allowed a 25-watt lamp, while the outside toilet had a (Woolworths) 5-watt bulb that lasted for years and years! So, you see, blacking-out the bedrooms was not difficult with such meagre lighting. Actually, Dad could not see the point of lamp-shades: "Why spend money on electricity and then waste half of it putting a shade round the lamp?鈥� Gas lamps never had shades (fire risk) so why should electric light be any different? However, he did defer to Mum's wish to soften up the rather harsh light of a bare bulb.

All through the War we had very few electrical appliances (nor did most other ordinary people, come to that). We had a two-bar radiant "electric fire", as we called it. Later on we had a single-bar "fire" as well. Fan heaters and convectors did not come into our lives until the sixties or later. We did have a vacuum cleaner, and an electric iron, although not so technically advanced as to have a thermostat. You switched on and off to get the temperature about right, some advance, I suppose, on the pair of irons heated alternately on the gas stove. We had our second-hand "wireless", as already mentioned. There had been television before the War, but only in the London area, and for a very few hours each day. Few ordinary people could afford it, so we did not miss it when it closed down "for the duration" as the all-too-common expression was. Later in the War we had an electric toaster, very basic, not "pop-up", non-automatic and no heat setting - you just had to take the bread out at the right moment. It did have a rather clever way of turning the bread over manually, without burning your fingers so as to toast the other side (did I say it was "basic"? It was pretty "high-tec" for those days!)

I have rather drifted off the subject of the blackout, but we often read in the local paper of somebody or other being fined for failing to black-out properly. (As ever, I think some officials rather enjoyed using their new-found powers to the full, like the Warden in "Dad's Army".) A persistent offender was the furniture shop close by Bexleyheath Clock Tower.

Electric torches were in great demand, of course. In any case, pre-war street lighting was nothing like it is today. Typically you would have lamp-posts, each with a single bare bulb on alternate sides of the road spaced as much as 150yds apart. (As a child in the thirties I well remember new gas lamps being installed along Bexleyheath Broadway. Gas street lamps were in use well into the fifties).

At one time there was a widespread shortage of 鈥淣umber 8" batteries, a popular size for pocket torches (about twice the diameter of a modern AA battery and about half as long again). We later heard that they were used in part of the anti-aircraft rocket batteries that were installed in great numbers about the middle of the War.

Quite early in the war I remember hearing that enemy aircraft dropping magnetic mines in the Thames estuary and elsewhere were causing much anxiety. Much was made of the bravery of Lt. Commander Ouvry and his assistant who successfully dismantled the mechanism of a mine that had landed in the mud of the Thames estuary so that counter-measures could be devised, which involved fitting heavy electric cables round ships to neutralise their magnetism. It was called "De-Gaussing" (Gauss; German scientist, 1777-1855, who studied magnetism among many other things). Prior to this aircraft like the Wellington bomber had been fitted with a huge ring containing cables. The plane flew over shipping lanes and the cables produced a magnetic field which was supposed to set off any magnetic mines. The plane had to be low enough to fire the mine but not so low as to be hit by the column of water thrown up by the explosion. I have mentioned this at some length because there was not much war news coming in and we desperately needed some "successes", so much was made of the magnetic mine saga. Besides, the dismantling story was the first one we were to hear of sheer cold-blooded courage, although many more were to come, of course. It ought not to be forgotten.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.