大象传媒

A schoolboy in Northallerton

Maurice Nils Dobson

Northallerton, North Yorkshire formerly North Riding of Yorkshire

When WW2 started in September 1939 I was a 7 陆 year old schoolboy attending the local Applegarth Council School (Primary).
I remember quite clearly Neville Chamberlain鈥檚 radio broadcast at 11 o鈥檆lock on a hot Sunday morning stating that a state of war now existed between Gt. Britain and Germany. At the time my grandfather, Isaac Dobson, told everyone who cared to listen 鈥渢hat it will be all over in a few weeks鈥�. How wrong could he be?

My home town of Northallerton, in the then North Riding of Yorkshire, was at that time a sleepy market town with a population of about 3500 people. There were no major industries, no buildings of strategic importance and apart from being on the main railway line form Edinburgh to London it was unlikely to be known to many 鈥� but this was all to change as the war progressed. As recruitment for the Army gathered pace the closeness of the main line railway line to Catterick Army Depot became important. The vast areas of flat land in the Vale of Mowbray became the location and development of major airfields at RAF Dishforth, Topcliffe, Leeming and Catterick all less than ten miles from the town. Extending the range to about twenty five miles saw airfields at Church Fenton, Linton-on-Ouse, Thornaby and Middleton St. George (now Tees-side Airport). Being located away from any major industrial areas the town was considered a 鈥榮afe area鈥� a number of evacuees (children) were brought into the town from possible target areas such as Teeside and Tyneside. As the 鈥榩honey鈥� war continued into 1940 most of the children returned to their homes and never returned despite later bombings.

Rationing of food and clothing, including footwear, was introduced in 1940 and 1941 respectively but this had little impact on a schoolboy. Whilst we were not a poor family, my father Lawrence Harry Dobson and my mother Lily, owned their own house which was purchased new in 1933 there was never a surplus of money for many luxuries. What we never had we never missed. He was employed as a shop assistant in a large, family owned, drapery, clothing and furniture store called Claphams on the High Street next to the Golden Lion Hotel. The later to feature in the film 鈥淭he Way to the Stars鈥� and which was to become an important social area for aircrew from the many surrounding airfields.
Despite more recent television programmes reporting the near starvation conditions for the population generally this was not the case for those living in many rural areas. Food was not available in abundance but there was always sufficient 鈥� we never went hungry. The choice was limited and exotic fruits were unheard of and only known from picture books. I never saw a banana until the war had finished! Most people converted their flower gardens and lawns into plots for growing vegetables and many households got hold of unused areas of ground which were converted into allotments. At one time we had three such allotments on which we grew the years鈥� supply of potatoes together with seasonal vegetables. At this age one was expected to take full part in cultivating and caring for the various allotments doing the weeding and picking the crops until such time as my father joined the Royal Air Force when this task was undertaken by my granddad, mother and myself. Whilst meat supplies were limited there was always the occasional chicken to be had, rabbits to be eaten, both wild and tame and woodpigeons were not to be looked down on. At one time I had 33 rabbits in various hutches scattered around the back garden. The meat was sold to the local butcher and eaten by ourselves and the skins were cured by my mother and made into fur gloves and mittens to be sold or used by ourselves.
The allocation of clothing coupons meant that a great deal of repairing of clothes took place with leather patches being placed on wear points, such as elbows on jackets and jumpers and on the knees of trousers. This was not considered odd as everyone took the same care to extend the lives of items of clothing. The passing on of clothes throughout a family was usual and exchanging with other families was commonplace. From memory the greatest difficulty was in getting new shoes of any sort. Wellingtons were a common item of footwear and was used at the slightest sign of wet weather. To a schoolboy this was no real hardship as exploration through the various 鈥榖ecks鈥� and ditches of the area could take place without getting a box on the ears for getting shoes wet!. Unfortunately as holes appeared in footwear they had to be patched either by the local cobbler, Denis & Parry, who had a thriving business or at home by one of the family. Snippets of discarded vehicle tyre inner tubes were used to repair Wellington boots and even stiff cardboard repaired holes in the soles of shoes. The latter being of little use in wet weather and but whatever the weather had to be replaced on a daily basis.
Fuel for heating, mainly coal, was also limited to a small amount per household and this required to be supplemented from other sources. A weekly task on a Saturday morning was to go along with a small handcart (bogie), made out of a wooden box with old pram wheels attached, down to the local wood yard and fill up with off-cuts of timber and sawn logs. One was allowed only one barrow-load so this was filled to the maximum capacity! Mid week word would go around that the local gas producing plant had coke for sale and again the bogie was brought into action immediately school had finished attempting to obtain an allocation. The logs had to be split up into burnable size for fire lighting or general burning and the large lumps of coke had to broken down to useable lumps. Again a task which children were expected to do and from 8 years old I became proficient at wielding an axe and heavy hammer. No severe accidents occurred but bruised fingers were commonplace.
Gas supplies to the house were maintained throughout the war but often at much reduced pressure however electricity supplies were much more erratic. Power cuts took place on a regular basis and all households had a good supply of candles. Paraffin lamps were also used but this form of fuel was limited. Battery torches were much in demand and they were essential to see outside at night time as all forms of street lighting had been switched off for the duration of the war.

Life in the town seemed to go on relatively unchanged except for the ever increasing volume of military traffic both on the ground and in the air. Tank traps in the form of thick concrete barriers were erected at each end of the High Street and large water tanks were built to supplement the water supply should they be necessary for fire fighting purposes. To us boys these became great play areas acting out what we imagined real soldiers would be doing and using the water tanks to sail homemade simple wooden boats. After several near drownings in the water tanks and falling off the six foot high concrete barriers these areas were banned and declared 鈥漮ff limits鈥� 鈥� unless no-one was looking!

My father and the next door neighbour, Lawrence Colley, knowing that they were both likely to be 鈥榗alled up鈥� for service decided they would try and protect their families left behind. Accordingly they obtained consent from the owner of an adjacent building depot (Smith鈥檚) to use an area of ground sufficient to allow them to dig a hole and construct a 鈥榖omb proof鈥� shelter which was partially underground. This had a concrete base, side walls made of vertical used wooden railway sleepers and capped with a concrete flat roof. The whole then covered with the excavated soil. It had no form of natural or artificial lighting, apart from paraffin lamp, candles or torchlight, and it had no toilet facility except for a bucket to be used in an emergency only! After heavy rain it flooded and the water had to be bailed out by use of a bucket or pumped out using a Stirrup pump. The latter issued to the neighbour as an active Air Raid Warden and for his use should he need to help put out a fire. After limited use the shelter became more of a 鈥榩lay den than鈥� a useful safety feature against enemy bombers. It also became a haven for illicit smoking by my neighbour鈥檚 son Brian and myself who raided his fathers store of cigarettes and cigars once he had been called up into the Army. After suffering sickness as a result this put me off smoking for the rest of my life. When asked if I ever smoked I usually reply that -鈥淚 gave it up when I was twelve years old!鈥�
In about 1941 houses were supplied with an Anderson shelter if they wished. This was a heavy metal shelter that could be erected inside the house and comprised a metal sheet for the roof supported by heavy metal uprights. The sides and floor were comprised of mesh, rather like reinforcement mesh used in the building industry with the whole structure being about the size of a double bed. This took up a substantial area of the 鈥榝ront room鈥� and the settee and one of the easy chairs spent the rest of the war years sitting on top of the shelter.

The biggest impact on the town was the decision to build a new hospital to cater for all the casualties generated by the various airfields and to this end the Base Hospital was established. It was a large collection of wooden huts sited at the north east side of the High Street behind what was the United company 鈥榖us depot. Over the years many thousands of airman passed through its gates and it continues as a major hospital for the area to this day although all the old wooden building have been gradually replaced by more substantial structures. For those patients who were able to walk they were allowed into town and they wore a special uniform light blue in colour with a white shirt and red tie. For those less able they were pushed into the High Street in wicker wheelchairs or trundled along the footpaths on bed-like wicker baskets assisted by their mates. I suppose in retrospect it must have been a sorry sight to see so many young men badly mutilated but to the locals and the schoolchildren of the time they were our local heroes. The airfields were mainly bomber stations operating with, at that time, large aircraft such as the Whitley, Wellington and Halifax bombers. As the war progressed and the range of aircraft increased a large number of aircraft would take off for bombing missions to France and Germany. In the early evening one would hear and see the aircraft taking off and circling in the sky to gain height slowly due to the heavy bomb and fuel load and then silence would be followed until early the next morning when hopefully they all returned 鈥� unfortunately some never did. The airfields were manned mainly by British airmen but there was a high proportion of aircrew from other nations including Poland but mainly from the former Empire (Commonwealth). My Aunt, Marjorie Kipling, married a New Zealand airman, Charles Sheppard, and subsequently returned home with him. There were no American airman stationed near Northallerton and the presence of any American either air or army was a very rare event.
One was more likely to see Italians in the town as a small prisoner of war camp was established on the 鈥榖ack road鈥� to Brompton (A684) about 2 miles out of town. As it was considered that they were unlikely to escape as they were reluctant participants in the war they were often given employment on various farms throughout the area. When in town, unguarded, they wore distinctive rough brown coloured uniforms with a large yellow circular patch on the back of their jackets.

Despite the many military establishments around the town it was not well defended. There were a couple of searchlight establishments but I cannot recollect any gun sites of any significance. No doubt it was considered that the airfields had sufficient anti-aircraft defence systems of their own and that the main enemy bomber targets were likely to be the iron/steel and chemical works on Teeside and the ship building and armaments factories on Tyneside and Weirside. Air raid sirens did go of at frequent intervals but mainly due to bombing attacks on the Middlesbrough area 鈥� one could see the searchlights in the sky and the red glow from incendiary attacks on both houses and factories. Occasionally a lone bomber would unload un-dropped bombs in the area but these fell mainly in the fields and did little harm. If we knew where this had occurred we would cycle out to look at the hole and see if we could collect any bits of shrapnel 鈥� we rarely found anything. On one occasion a fighter aircraft let fly with a machine gun attack on the local railway station but apart from putting some small holes in the roof caused no other casualties. The closest to any danger from bombing occurred on the evening/early morning of 12/13th September 1942 when four high explosive bombs and a cluster of incendiary bombs were dropped about 100 yards from our house. At the time we had not gone into the outside shelter and the Anderson shelter had not yet been delivered and as a result we, my mother and self, were huddled under the stairs which was considered the strongest part of the house. In this raid one person died and a large dwelling known as the 鈥橶hite House鈥� on South Parade was severely damaged but the other bombs fell in various gardens. It wasn鈥檛 until the morning when I went to school that I realised just how close the bomb was and how near some of the bombs had been to the school. The house in South Parade had been occupied by the Army until just a few days before the bomb fell but at the time it was vacant. The house was repaired and still stands.
One was more likely to be hit by British aircraft falling out of the sky as they often returned from bombing missions so badly damaged that they couldn鈥檛 make it back to their home airfield. If we knew where aircraft had crashed we would ride out on our bikes to view the wreckage and pick up souvenirs. However by the time we arrived the RAF salvage crew had usually beaten us to it and all traces had been removed.
On one a occasion when out walking one Sunday morning with two 鈥榓unts鈥� we watched a fighter aircraft, either a Spitfire or Hurricane, doing acrobatics in the cloudless sky when to our horror one of the wings fell off. The plane dived straight into the ground and we subsequently found the hole in a field on the west side of the 鈥榖ack road鈥� A684 to Brompton. The pilot was killed instantly and a stone memorial was erected on the road verge adjacent to the scene of the accident.
On another occasion whilst having lessons in late afternoon at the Northallerton Grammar School a large bomber, Halifax(?), flew very low over the school roof trailing long plumes of black smoke. Several seconds later a loud explosion indicated that it had crashed. Within a very short time we discovered that it had fallen on top of and partly demolishing a bungalow on the west side of town on a road up to what we knew as Castle Hill. All the aircrew died as a result of that tragedy.

On a more personal level my father volunteered, much to my mothers concern, to join the Air Force in 1940 and was posted to RAF Cardington to be trained as a barrage balloon operator. He was LAC Lawrence Harry Dobson 1119767. He spent some time at a camp at Stockton 鈥攐n-Tees flying barrage balloons as well as being posted to Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow and somewhere near the Falls Road in Belfast. For a short period he was engaged on fitting small barrage balloons to trawlers and small naval vessels at Hartlepool docks and had the dubious distinction of being in the Air Force but acting under Navy rules and wearing an Army style khaki uniform with Air Force cloth badges. He finished his service times flying barrage balloons on the south coast of England in the Hastings/Eastbourne area to try and deflect German flying bombs. At one time he was sent to Blackpool to be kitted out for service overseas but his was cancelled just before embarkation. My mother and father worked out a code of words which he would use in any letter to indicate where he was to be sent to. This being necessary as all letters from the forces were censored to ensure any mention of troop movements were not likely to be made know to the enemy 鈥� 鈥淩emember careless talk costs lives鈥�. In practise this elaborate code was not needed.

To a schoolboy in a rural area in the north of England the war passed relatively uneventful. I suppose I was lucky in that my father whilst away in the forces was never in a particularly dangerous situation. My formative years were really as a result of hard work by my mother who no doubt had her fears for the safety of her husband which were disguised from me. She managed to feed and cloth me in a similar manner to all other children and I never felt that in any way I was any worse off than any other child. I remember quite clearly the broadcasts which took place when the invasion of France and Germany took place and the events of Arnhem, El Alamein and other major battles. When VE Day and VJ Day were announced there was great rejoicing even though the events were not entirely unexpected. I was most disappointed that street lights did not go on immediately, that endless supplies of exotic food was not appearing in the shops and that my father would not be home next day. In practise my father was not demobbed until late in 1946 and the last item of the food to be rationed, sweets, was not lifted until 1951 during my period of two years National Service in the Royal Air Force as a Fighter Plotter.

LAC Maurice Dobson 2471366. Conscripted May 1950 at RAF Padgate, basic training RAF Bridgnorth, Shropshire, trade training RAF Bawdsey, nr. Felixtowe. Posted to RAF Swinegate nr. Dover, mis-posted to RAF Leeming and final posting to RAF Watnall nr. Nottingham. Demobilised in May 1952.

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