大象传媒

Get That Siren Suit on

By Ellis Proctor

1281

From: Louis Proctor,
32A Victoria Rd.,
Formby,
Liverpool. L37 7DD
Tel. 01704 872816
E-mail: louiswhoishe@ntlworld.com

Get That Siren Suit On

The events of May 1941 in the annals of Liverpool will always I am sure be ingrained in the memories of those who lived through them. Even though I was only a child, mention of that May blitz brings back a glut of memories. The effect on a young child like myself of having been abruptly awakened in the middle of the night and experiencing his own anxiety in addition to the fear relayed by parents can now only be a matter for the imagination.

"Quick son, up you get. He's at it again. Hitler's lot are paying us another visit. Where did you put that siren-suit? Where's your socks and slippers? Get that siren suit on! Quick, quick no time for toys! I can hear his aeroplanes already. Hey! Don't be nosy, keep those curtains closed. The black out's on. Those A.R.P's have got eyes like hawks. You'll have them knocking on the door threatening us with a fine for floodlighting the road!鈥� Such was the intensity to get out of the house before our own roof came down on top of us. Most streets had volunteer A.R.P's, air raid patrollers, looking out for incendiary and unexploded bombs and generally attending to security needs including seeking out 'stray-light' offenders! My father was in the A.R.P. When he went on duty, he had a yellow armband sporting the initials and "a tin hat" - a replica of the headgear worn by British Tommies during the great world wars. A gas mask in a khaki bag hung from his shoulder and he was usually done up in his smart tram driver's uniform enhanced by the standard white, starched collar and dark tie. This so-called uniform sent my mother into paroxysms of mirth.

"Look out son, here comes the tin soldier,鈥� she would howl with tears falling down her cheeks. "Hitler would have had another go after Dunkirk if he'd known the full strength of our defenses".

To him that was strictly a family joke but he would have been most upset at the thought people outside considering him as inept as the blundering Home Guard adversaries of Captain Mainwaring in "Dad's Army". As far as he was concerned, the job he did in his spare time was his part of the war effort as was his paid job of carrying his passengers, sometimes soldiers and sailors plus all the thousands of workers involved with the port. The entire transport system resembled the helter-skelter mania of the toing-and-froing of hundreds of ants searching for their nest. Steam driven lorries vied with horse driven carts, each suffusing its own odour into the splendour of human life as my father's tram trundled its way through, imprisoned in iron rails which left no discretion for creative navigation.

As for "siren suits" I have to add that fashion moguls in the early forties were just as quick to latch on to a good thing, as they are today sixty years on! They were, as the name suggests, one-piece garments with a single zip up the front, designed to slip quickly over pyjamas and save having to dress children at any time in the night in response to the siren which signaled the approach of enemy bombers. That awesome siren! A claxon, that in full blast, penetrated every corner of the borough, and forebode the terror of the air raid to come.
Well, to get back to my red siren suit I rebelled at wearing it but they were so convenient for worried mothers that I was regularly and unceremoniously stuffed into it as if I were a pillow.
"In any case", I was told, "everybody wears them. Even the great Winston Churchill wears one and if they're good enough for him, they're good enough for you"
"You and dad don't!" I protested, perhaps cheekily, but that brought no remission to my sentence. At least the siren suit episodes were unique because they must have been the only days of my life that I was in fashion!

However, on these nights the air around us ebbed and flowed in harmony with the drone of Hitler's planes. The house was briskly evacuated with a sense of uncertainty. Perhaps it was not uncertainty but fear. More than once my mother looked back wistfully and pleaded, "God spare us!" Our destination was only a dozen feet from the back door. An Anderson shelter beckoned us to its austere safety in our own garden. We were lucky not to have to go into the streets and join dozens of other folk in the brick shelters built hastily in the roads for those who had no gardens to erect their own shelter in. Ours was made of corrugated steel sheets, standing upright and half buried in the ground. The roof was completely covered by a layer of earth three or four feet deep. Inside, bunks like stretchers, resting precariously on angle iron supports, were intended for a sleep which anxiety forbade. "Night Lights", small and squat candles, flickered their yellow light in waves to and fro across our compact bunker. Perhaps I was too young to appreciate the very real fear of the older folk or the danger we were in. Instead, these nights of falling bombs and rattling guns were in a way exciting and remind me of one of my daughters who revels in watching horror videos but hides behind a chair when the horrific scenes are shown. The Blitz was exciting like that - bitter sweet - but terrifying for my mother who trembled during the whole raid as bombs whistled their way down to be followed by the often deafening roar of the explosion. In between these explosions the mobile ack-ack guns chased around the roads of Bootle firing off their own guns with that distinctive crack which was more to encourage the beleaguered citizens than see off the enemy planes. Often after a particularly close shave there would follow animated speculation.
"I wonder who caught that packet...sounded close...my God will we be next?"
On one occasion our family was next, but only in a minor way. On Merseyside fifty per cent. of the region's housing stock was damaged. Bootle was the worst hit area where sixteen thousand out of eighteen thousand homes were damaged. From the force of a blast from an exploding bomb the front door of the house was blown in and the ceiling of our front bedroom collapsed making the biggest mess I had ever seen. My great-grandmother's house fared far worse than ours. No more than two hundred yards from the docks it received a direct hit and was razed to the ground. Nobody was in the house at the time, they had all moved out to the shelter in the road but the family always maintained that "our Nan", well into her eighties was killed by one of Hitler's bombs. They were convinced that the turmoil of the event was too much for her to cope with; there was the difficulty of finding new accommodation for all the family, the cost of new clothes and household equipment and all the rest of the paraphernalia of life. There was also the sentimental value of gifts given and received, items of jewellery, letters and photos from the Great War. The piano, enormous black and polished to mirror-like specification, the centre of every excuse for a merry festival was burnt to a cinder, removing the source of the background melody which enhanced the often tipsy tune-free voices. And, maybe most important of all, the loss of a happy home where a special bond of love had nurtured a whole new generation.

1281 Words Louis Proctor, 21st. October 2003

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