大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Louise Angell of the CSV Action desk at 大象传媒 Radio Derby on behalf of Frank Lund. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

In 1938 my first involvement in events which were to lead to the 2nd World War was when, one afternoon in September, all the males in the Sheffield Valuation Office as well as from all departments in the Town Hall were asked if they would be prepared to stay for some time after office hours to do some work, (we were not told what). Several of us stayed only to find that we were required to put together lots of bits and pieces which transformed into civilian gas masks. This was immediately after Neville Chamberlain's return from Munich waving his bit of paper and announcing ''Peace in our time''. I think most of us realised that this ''Peace'' would not last for long.
Way back in about 1927 or 1928 when I was only a lad of 5 or 6 my eldest sister Phyllis, for a laugh, had sent to the Sheffield Telegraph and Star for horoscopes for all of us, Mum, Dad, Phyllis, Norah, Gwen and myself. I only wish I had kept mine! Horoscopes, a pile of rubbish you will say, BUT, in mine, it said (and remember that this was in 1927/8 when aviation was in it's infancy and we only saw such as Sir Alan Cobham and his air circus and the flying flea at Coal Aston airfield,) that I would be involved in aviation and that I would survive two air crashes.
On September 3rd 1939 the Second World War was declared and we all expected continuous attack from Germany. I remember that Sunday morning, Dad and I were in the Broadfield Road chapel at 1045. A Mr Robert Styring was the preacher. The service had started and someone came in at just after 1100 o'clock and went to the pulpit. Mr Styring announced that he was sorry to have to say that we were now at war with Germany. I remember that prayers were said hoping that this would not last for long. Little did we realise that six years of war lay ahead of us.
The German air attacks did not materialise as was expected, although, no sooner had war been declared, the air raid sirens sounded. Many of us had been supplied with an Anderson shelter and Dad and I had dug up our small lawn and sunk the shelter into the garden and covered it with the earth we had excavated. We built some wooden seats into it to provide some degree of comfort if we ever had to use it. We lived in a terrace of houses which had a common yard, but the first two houses in the yard did not have enough garden in which to put a shelter, so the end house, occupied by Mr and Mrs Morton, had their cellar reinforced with corrugated iron sheets supported on wooden posts. This had the advantage that if you were down in the cellar you could have lighting and heating. We completely forgot, of course, that in a raid it was most likely that power would go off!
On the Monday morning, 4th Sept, most unusually, we put the wireless on and heard that the Cunarder, SS Athenia, had been sunk by a submarine and that many children who were being evacuated to Canada had been drowned. This really did make us realise that the war really had started. However there was little more activity on the home front. We kept a large map of Europe on the wall in my office. By now, November 1939 I had moved from the large drawing office into a lower floor office, shared with Arthur Bloodworth, because some of the senior valuers had been called up into the Army. They were involved in arranging the requisitioning of premises for military use all over England and Scotland. Most of the work remaining for us to do was relating to any building which was underway at the beginning of the war and there was nothing much new coming in the pipeline.
To avoid the loss of the survey and valuation records in the event of an air raid all the juniors in the department had the job, every afternoon just before the end of office hours of taking all the files out of the filing cabinets and taking them down, in the lift, to the basement . Then in the morning our first job was to take them back upstairs again!
The big crunch came on the night of December 12/13th 1940 when Sheffield suffered its first heavy blitz. There had been a few ''hit and run'' raids in 1939 and during the earlier months of 1940. On one night in early 1940 I was asleep in my bedroom in the attic when I awoke to hear an aircraft overhead followed by a tremendous flash of light and a massive crash. I was down those attic stairs three at a time. The bombs dropped opposite the Midland Railway Station on the Pond's Forge foundry.
But now it was the real thing. The sirens went about 6.30 in the evening and at first we didn't take a lot of notice until we started hearing the clatter of anti- aircraft gunfire and then the scream of dropping bombs in the distance. That was enough. We all went to number 101 (the Mortons) where their cellar was reinforced. We settled down for the night in the cellar with electric light and an electric heater. About two in the morning as we heard the sound of a bomb screaming down there was an almighty crash, more or less at the same time. The lights and heater went out, there was a sound of fire crackling and we were covered in dirt and dust. Not knowing what was happening above us, Dad and I went up the cellar stairs by the light of a small torch. I remember crunching over something as I went into the Morton'.s living room , it was part of their light fittings which were broken on the floor. There was light from flames and carefully we looked out. The City looked to be a massive blaze of fires. The building immediately behind ours had been a house and bakery. It wasn't there any more. We still had some of their produce, (I can't remember what, probably an apple pie), which we had bought the evening before for our supper.) About 5.00am the ''All Clear'' sounded and we all emerged, very dirty, very tired and not knowing what lay ahead. All our window frames at the back of our houses had been blown in and all the glass had gone from all the windows at the front of the houses. Our living room was a complete shambles. The ceilings were down and the pictures and a clock, which had been hanging on the wall, were all scattered everywhere. Broken glass was everywhere but at least the house was not on fire. Dad quickly lit a fire in the Yorkshire range as it was so cold. There was frost on the ground. The water in the large copper kettle which had, as usual, been on the range, was soon boiling and a welcome cup of tea was prepared only to find that the water was full of soot which had come down the chimney, and was quite undrinkable. We drew from the kitchen tap from which, strangely enough, water was still running. Little did we appreciate that, as we drew more water through the pipes, we would also be drawing sewage which had leaked into the water pipes where the roads had been blown open! Further up Olive Grove Rd there were two blocks of houses which had been demolished and there were several fires burning. A piano lay on its side in the middle of the road. I took the stirrup pump but, by now, there was no water so there was nothing to be done.
We then made our way down to Norah's to see how she was. Queens Road was almost impassable, there was a massive fire by Lowfields School where a gas main had been hit. Trams were damaged and couldn't move but, most importantly, Norah was alright although there was an unexploded bomb nearby.
There was no counselling in those days, in fact if anyone had even thought of wanting someone to ''counsel'' them they would have been thought of as incompetent and incapable. The support was from all around you with friendship and help across the board. You were all in the same boat together and you got on with the next job that needed doing.
Dad's concern now was to get down to see what had happened at the stables where the railway horses were kept. The stables were on fire but one of the stable boys had been able to get most of the horses out and they were roaming around the marshalling yard. Dad was in tears as he found Mary, his horse, safe and sound although somewhat frisky. Little more could be done on that Friday morning but during the day Dad collected his horse and van and brought it to our house and with two or three loads we collected what we could salvage and took it down to Norah's. We stored all we could in the chapel vestry and some in Norah's wash-house. I recall that Dad was not very pleased when one of our Chapel stewards, Mr Marsh, asked why we had cluttered up the vestry with our furniture! It was a case of ''Any port in a storm''!
We all had to settle in at Norah's for several months as there was no hope of anywhere else to live. On the Monday morning I went to the office and, with some trepidation, went in to see the
Deputy, Bertram Rhodes, to ask if he minded if I went over to the Cutler's Hall to volunteer for the Fleet Air Arm. He gave me his blessing and I volunteered. A few days later, I had my medical exam there, and, early in January 1941, I was called to go to HMS St Vincent at Gosport. This was the first time I had travelled any distance on my own and it was quite an experience. I was somewhat surprised to find that HMS St Vincent was not a ship but a naval shore base. Portsmouth Harbour Station had been damaged by bombs so, together with a lot of sailors, returning to duty, we walked from the Portsmouth station down to the Harbour and caught the ferry across to Gosport. At that time I did not know that I was going to spend many happy days in that town in the future. There were many of us there and we were given a mattress and a wad of bedding and told to sleep on the floor of a large, cold hall. During the night the air raid sirens sounded and we heard the sound of aircraft and bombs dropping and lots of aircraft machine gun fire but the sergeant at arms told us all to stay where we were because there were not enough shelters for everyone. We were scared stiff, and hardly fit for the oral and medical exams the next day.
In the morning we were taken to the sick quarters to have a medical examination which I passed without any problem, except for my big toe which wrapped over my second toe. I said that
that shouldn't matter because I wanted to fly, not walk! I was not accepted, nor were any others who were there from north of the Wash and from State Grammar Schools!
On arriving back in Sheffield I went, the next day, to the recruiting office for the Royal Air Force. Off to another medical and then told to await a call to Cardington for attestation. Again a lone train journey to Bedford where there were many others at the station. We boarded a Royal Air Force bus and arrived at Cardington . On arrival the first thing we noticed were the two very large and high hangars which had housed the airships in past years. I well remembered that Sunday night, way back in October 1930, when we heard the news of the crashing of the R101 at Beauvais in France whilst en route from Cardington to a conference in India. That had been the end of the British commercial airship era.
We were sorted out into groups. Those who wanted to be wireless operators, those who wanted to be air-gunners and those who wanted to be pilots and navigators. At that time navigators were still referred to, from the first world war nomenclature, as observers. Needless to say almost everyone, myself included, wanted to be pilots; I don't think we really appreciated what the navigators had to do. During the morning we were called in by name; the A's first and so on. Just before lunch the L's were called and in I went. I recollect that there were 3 officers there, two with pilots wings and one with the observer single wing showing a large ''0'' with a wing attached. (Until, in later years, this gave way to an ''N', the ''O''s were often referred to as the Flying Arse 'oles!.) The interview got under way. ''Why does an aircraft fly and not fall to the ground', ''Why do we now have some aircraft with only one wing and not two'' and so on. Then the fatal question ''What is a triangle of velocities?'' I told them and they said '' you are the first applicant to give the correct answer today''. I felt quite proud for my High Storrs education until they said, ''Good, you will be a navigator''. I felt really deflated and came home somewhat disappointed, to say the least. This was, of course, all just after the Battle of Britain when everyone knew just how the ''Few'' had saved Britain from an invasion and Churchill had made his great speech that ''Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few''. And the ideal must be to be a pilot.

The next part of this story can be found at: a5388221

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