大象传媒

This contribution to People鈥檚 War was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf of Mr Raymond Mallett.
Born 1942 I am of the generation called War babies; that is a person born between 1939 and 1945. My Father鈥檚 family originated from Heacham, West Norfolk and I was one of nine brothers and sisters which seemed to be quite normal for that generation. My Father went frombutche3rs boy to chauffeur to bar assistant at the LNER Sandringham Hotel, Hunstanton. The hotel long since pulled down, when Dr. Beeching decimated the railways in the early 60鈥檚 and the line from Kings Lynn to Hunstanton removed.
From there Father was transferred to the LNER Victoria Hotel in Sheffield. Why he went there is anybodies guess. He was always very good at relating stories about when he was a boy and one episode related to his arrival at this hotel in Sheffield. A man tapped him on the shoulder whilst he was standing at the bar, when he turned round he punched him on the nose. It was a case of mistaken identity and an apology came straight away with the realization that he wasn鈥檛 the right man.
It wasn鈥檛 long before working in Sheffield my Father met a young lady. She worked as a silver service waitress in the first class restaurant and this lady was to become my Mother.
1939 arrived and along came the Second World War. Father seeing it coming joined the Royal Air Force as a military policeman and he worked his way through the ranks to sergeant status. Apparently if you joined up early and volunteered you stood a better chance of selecting a better job. Father travelled all over the country. Mother followed him, with me in her arms.

He was seconded to one of the first radar stations in the United Kingdom, Bempton on the North Yorkshire coast, where the station was located in a caravan close to the cliffs, not far from Flamborough. They resided nearby in rented accommodation; the bungalow had the unusual name of Lartle Hoose. Only last year I visited the area and the bungalow still stood there as good as new.
They used to go down the cliffs on a rope and collect seabird eggs, apparently they tasted pretty fishy. It was whilst they stayed in Flamborough that I was christened, my Godfather was a Canadian airman, however I never did meet him.
Just inland from Flamborough was Driffield airbase, to which my Father was eventually transferred. He told me how, when a German plane crashed on the base, he was detailed to bring the pilot in. When the German pilot climbed out of his plane, he was 7 foot tall, quite the biggest man they鈥檇 ever seen.
In 1944 Father was finally transferred to West Beckham radar station, near Sheringham in Norfolk. By this time I was aged 2 and various flashbacks come into my life.
Accommodation was scarce so my parents lived in a house near the railway station where they were accommodated with a bed underneath the stairs. I can remember Sheringham from the clock tower to the seafront, which was boarded up with shutters, by now my father was Sergeant.

1945 came and the end of the war, Father was demobbed, but as it turned out two of my Mother鈥檚 brothers were called up for national service. One was at Dunkirk in the evacuation and then went on to serve in North Africa and Egypt. My other Uncle came back from Burma with a bullet in his hand, however as a professional sign painter he could still paint a perfectly straight lines for the coachwork of Sheffield transport buses and trams. Grandfather, who had been in World War 1 in the trenches, did his piece in World War 2 and joined the Home Guard.

We went back to live in Sheffield, the city had taken a terrible pounding in the Blitz. There were still barrage balloons flying and on VE Day there were celebrations and street parties. One of my most cherished belongings was put on top of a street bonfire by mistake, I wasn鈥檛 very happy about it.
After taking temporary jobs in Sheffield with myself in nursery, my parents actually bought on the first houses in district called Gleadless. There they remained until after the terrible winter of 1947, when the snow was so deep I had to be carried everywhere on my Father鈥檚 back. There was still rationing, the only sweets I can recall were boiled sweets, but a real treat for me was the bottom of a tin of condensed milk on a piece of jelly. In 1948 my parents took their first public house, the first of four until 1979 when both mother and father had passed away.

I now move rapidly forward in time for reasons that we shall see later. At the age of 17 I joined the Merchant Navy as a radio officer after training at the Radio School at Bridlington. A lot of us though bought radio receivers through Wireless World magazine to practice our morse code on. They came out of scrapped aircraft such as the Lancaster bomber for the price of 拢10.
I managed to sign on as a supernumerary trainee on the Dewsbury, a 1,650 ton ship originally of the Associated Humber Line and now working for British Rail Ferries out of Harwich. She was a 1910 coal burning passenger vessel with steam reciprocating engines, originally carrying 250 passengers and went through two World Wars as a hospital ship without a scratch. I qualified as a passenger ship radio officer in 1959 and joined the S. S. Orcades of the Orient Line at Southampton. This vessel had been built in 1948 to replace the original one torpedoed during the war.
At this point we move forward to 1989 and so after over 30 year鈥檚 service I had to leave the Merchant Navy on medical grounds. The last ship on which I served was the Sealink super ferry St. Nicholas.

My Wife and I lived in Essex after living in New Zealand for the first six years of our marriage. During our time in Essex we bought a static caravan in North Norfolk at Kelling Heath, a place between Sheringham and Holt. On visits there I tried to trace where my parents had stayed in Sheringham during the war; one day we were lunching at a public house called the Red Hart not faraway in Bodham. We started chatting to an elderly local gentleman at the bar and believe it or believe it not, it turned out that he had known my Father during the war.
In 1988 my Wife and I decided to live in Norfolk, my last ship had been the Sealink super ferry 鈥淪t. Nicholas鈥� and my health was continuing to deteriorate. We often go up to the remains of the old radar station at West Beckham, the sentry hut still stands at the entrance. I can imagine father on duty in there during the war and wonder how many time he passed through that gate. He would be so surprised that we were now just living down the road from there. I suppose here we shall stay; no less than five generations on and expecting our first grandchild in June 2005. It is at this point that I shall bring my story to a suitable end.

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