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The War Years — Arthur Nicholls

My father left school, Huntman’s Gardens School, at the age of 14. He became an office boy for various works in the east end of Sheffield, but on his own admission never rose higher than that of general ‘dogsbody’. At the age of 21 he went on the dole.

At the age of 18 (1931), I tried to join the army, but I failed the eyesight standard. A year later I joined the part time Territorial Army 49th (White Rose) Divisional Engineers at Somme Barracks, Sheffield, and served 4 years plus 1 year in reserves. In 1936 I was reconsidered for promotion to Lance Sergeant but when I would not renew my service for a further 4 years, the promotion never materialised.

After a short period working as a land surveyor for the builders and developers, Henry Boot Ltd, on 31st August 1937, my father started working for Sheffield Corporation, City Engineer’s Department in the (then) infant role of Town Planning.

The war years were not the most important part of my life. They were, however, very eventful and momentous years. Unforgettable too. In 1939 I was a draughtsman in the City Engineer’s Department, Sheffield. When war was declared, our Department took on the role of Rescue Brigade from the Fire Brigade. Air raids would result in the need to rescue or recover people trapped under collapsed buildings, in cellars, in shelters etc. The Fire Brigade would be fully stretched dealing with fires. Our Dept had 200 technical staff, a workforce of 2000 used to heavy manual labour, hundreds of vehicles and scores of bulldozers, diggers, dumpers, mobile cranes, pumps etc and more than a dozen depots within the City. The Dept had been organising for the job for a year and had established War Gas decontamination facilities at our main depots. All had been in training mode for several months. The day Chamberlain had returned from Munich, most of the Town Hall staff had spent the night assembling civilian gas masks from a great heap of parts. After Munich our Dept had organised the Air Raid Shelter Programme. I was involved in updating Ordnance Survey sheets, plotting new developments. Two Royal Engineers draughtsmen from Ordnance Survey came and copied the information for their records. Possible sites for anti-aircraft gun positions were mentioned.

On 3rd September 1939, we were, hopefully, ready.

Most of our engineers, planners, building surveyors and draughtsmen were assigned to the divisional Police stations or to the offices at our depots on a continuously manned 24 hours 7 day week basis organised as ‘3 shifts’. As a draughtsman, a considerable part of my work was outside survey work. I was very familiar with the southern part of the city. Between us we knew the city ‘inside-out’ and we knew the principal men at the depots.

Town Hall staff of the Dept with jobs involving outside work and a knowledge of the city were formed into a Communications Group. I was included. About half of this group were based at the 5 Divisional Police stations in the city. The other half were based at the Dept’s depots. Training sessions were held and a manual of grim procedures was produced and distributed to all involved with the Rescue Brigade. Our uniform was a black helmet with a white ‘R’ on it.

Staff assigned to police stations would check on resources available at depots each shift and collect information from ARP reports coming into the police station. In the event of an air raid the Rescue rep would vet all ARP incident reports and if rescue services were required, would contact the nearest depot and arrange for the resources needed to be sent to the incident site. Their prime duty was to ensure that calls for rescue were given urgent attention by the depots. If resources ran short or all depots were fully engaged, the rep could call for help from depots in other parts of the city or from the authorities in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. The City Engineer and his deputies kept an overview of the situation from a bunker at Whirlow House. As a secondary role, reps also gathered information on damage to highways, bridges over or under highways, main sewers, tram tracks, dangerous structures etc. Repairs to these items were the responsibility of our Dept.

I well remember the first night, 3 September 1939. I was assigned to the Southern Division Police station, Woodseats. The team comprised Police, Fire, Rescue, Ambulance and ARP Warden services. We each had a table, telephone and tally board of resources (men, vehicles & equipment). Nobody knew what to expect and prepared for the worst. The shift period was from 11 pm to 7 am. The sirens sounded the wailing Red Alert. All conversation ceased, we looked at each other. Someone needed the ‘smelling salts’. A hundred Special Constables left the station with gas masks in the ‘alert’ position, and several police cars left in a hurry. After some time, a radio announced that the liner Athenia had been torpedoed in the Atlantic off the coast of Ireland with great loss of life. Eventually the siren gave the continuous sound of the ALL CLEAR. The sigh of relief was unanimous and expressed all our fears. The ice had been broken and there was a more relaxed atmosphere afterwards. Nothing else happened but, at home, Hilda (AN’s wife) managed to lock herself out when dashing for her shelter. A kind neighbour took her in for the rest of the night until I got home at about 7 am.

For the first 9 months of the war, only small scale ‘hit and run’ air raids occurred and early in 1940 we reduced the daytime duties and made other adjustments so that some of us could go back to the Town Hall part time. We moved our HQ to 120 Chelsea Road, a huge house in grounds.

After the Dunkirk debacle, an enormous crowd of women, children and relatives came to see me (and others) leaving Sheffield (Sheffield Victoria probably) station on June 20th to join the Army. All were emotionally distressed by events. Whatever feelings we had were quickly dispersed as we left Sheffield behind and we all got talking.

I went into the Army (54 Air Defence Company) on 20 June 1940, at the No 6 Pioneer Corps Training Centre (ex YWCA Holiday Camp), Skegness (called ‘Durham Camp’). The training centre was a tented camp (2 to a tent) with permanent main buildings. My tent mate was Jack Nicol from Huddersfield. He was most friendly and with 2 from the tent next door we soon had a ‘Pontoon School’ going with halfpenny stakes. Our pay was 2 shillings a day.

By temperament I was a rather staid young man with a background of Sunday School, choir, young men’s class, Church etc. I was 27 married, and had never strayed far from my roots in Carbrook in the east end of Sheffield. The next 5 and a half years were to be very different. The army slogan of the time was ‘Join the Army and see the World’. I saw a good slice of it, land and sea. The wonder of it all, and the experiences generated are all unforgettable even 50 years on. For many, sadly, it was to be a one-way ticket.

This was shortly after the Dunkirk evacuation (May 27 to June 4) and after Italy had declared war on Great Britain (10 June). The Dutch and Belgian forces had capitulated, Denmark and Norway had been invaded and Paris had been captured. The French signed the armistice on 22 June.

At home, all was ‘doom and gloom’. The papers were full of probabilities of an invasion. The Germans occupied the Channel Islands on 1 July.

Within 2 days of my joining the army, I was included in a detachment sent down to the beach. We ‘dossed down’ in Violets Café under the pier. Canadian Ross rifles, in wooden boxes, and still caked in the grease they had lain in since 1918, were handed over with 50 rounds of ammunition per man. Before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’ we were instant soldiers. It took hundreds of gallons of boiling water before we got the grease out of the rifle barrels.

We began a 2 hours ON GUARD, 4 hours on ‘Stand-by’ routine and each morning before dawn all stood to arms behind the barbed wire for an hour or so and then reverted to the usual routine. We patrolled the beaches in the vicinity of the pier and occasionally visited other beaches further field. All thoughts of training were postponed.

After a fortnight the guard duties were withdrawn and we were sent inland to Bradford. There we occupied Thornton Grammar School, a new school not yet completely finished (called ‘Hull Camp’). We never ‘settled-in’ nor did we do any serious training there. The Battle of Britain began on 10 July 1940 and all recruits were sent off to Topcliffe RAF station, near Thirsk. At Topcliffe, 6 Pioneer companies recently returned from France, were being organised for airfield defence. With about 80 other recruits I was allocated to No 54 Company. This Company had returned from Brittany where they had been laying an oil pipeline. The company comprised some 200 men drawn from all parts of Britain and mostly of ages in their forties. Many were ‘old sweats’ from the 1914-1918 war with medal ribbons. Some were long-serving reservists who had served in far-flung outposts of Empire and had been recalled to the Colours. Many men were from Eire, the neutral South of Ireland. There were also some ‘old lags’ from Strangeways and Walton jails on conditional Parole. All had wrinkled weather beaten faces, who would have passed for a part in ‘The Pirates of Penzance’. They all appeared to be hard bitten, hard drinking, hard swearing men. They were used to doing things ‘at the double’. They took a long look at the ‘do it tomorrow’ pallid office clerks, shop assistants, teachers and other trivia now joining them. We were soon mixed in with them and ‘knocked into shape’. We quickly picked up all the tips on scrounging or ‘swinging the lead’ for coping with Army life. Their life-style was a mix of easy-going tomfoolery and quick-fire repartee to meet every situation. It certainly helped to neutralise the monotonous parts and the discipline of Service life. They soon accepted us and were very helpful. Within 2 or 3 weeks we knew more about Machine Guns, other weapons and ‘soldiering’ than the Training Camp would ever have achieved.

There never seemed to be a dull moment. When the OC came to address the parade he introduced himself as Major Jones, a Welshman. He should have left it at that. He went onto say ‘and you know what Welshmen are !’ I don’t know whether anyone knew the answer but the entire back row hazarded a range of comments sotto voce.

54 Air Defence Company was disbanded on the formation of the RAF Regiment in mid 1941.

After this, my father was selected to become a Military Policeman and he went for 3 weeks to a former Army club at Stockton on Tees, where training was undertaken. During this time, he did guard duties at Middleton St George airfield (now Teeside Airport), and Sunderland airfield (now the site of the Nissan car factory). Whilst at Middleton St George, he was on guard duty one night and was approached by a group of drunken soldiers returning to the camp after a night out in Darlington. My father’s reaction to this was to throw his gun into the adjoining ditch. He was reprimanded for this, but not through a Courts Martial.

Reigate and Sevenoaks

My father’s next posting was to the Weybridge area where he took part in guarding the Vickers factory which at the time was producing Wellington bombers. There was also a balloon barrage site to be guarded. From there he went to Reigate Heath.

During the winter of 1941/42 I served on a guard in 392 Company on a massive food, petrol and army vehicle depot (a main supply depot with rail sidings) on the lonely Reigate Heath. We had the usual police gear, Oxford Blue top cap, truncheon, Lantern, whistle, plus rifle. We were also Special Constables to deal with civilians. I remember the frosts and deep snow (it was a hard winter) , thousands of rats, tramping around 3 miles of perimeter, and brushes with poachers of wildlife in the woods.

For much of this time, my father was part of a small communications group, which occupied a pillbox, and which controlled telephone connections).

I got myself an office job 6 months later with 393 Company. I went on an Army Pay course at Aldershot, and got top marks (99%) and became a pay corporal.

(next paragraph taken from a private letter)

I remember you (Greta Crowe — one of two women in the Pay Office) at 21 at Sevenoaks, 16 High Street (used as the CMP office), - pleasant end part of the town — the church nearly opposite, a nice cosy tea shop not very far away and Knole Park. Sunday afternoon tea on the ground floor at no 16 and a very peaceful park to stroll round. After seemingly endless Pioneer Corps duties from June 1940 in tents and concrete pillboxes including 9 months sleeping in an underground dugout, I really thought I had arrived in Shangri-La when I was transferred to Sevenoaks CMP (VP — Vulnerable Points) office.

During this time, my father was a Corporal in charge of the office staff at the small Pay Office based at Sevenoaks, some 7 people in total.

My father was then sent to India and Burma. At the start of the war, eyesight problems (my father wore glasses) and a systolic murmur prevented my father from serving with frontline forces. However, some time in 1942, his name came up for duties in the Far East. On being examined by an Army doctor, he was then passed as being in ‘A1’ condition, and the previous problems were — in his words — ‘crossed out’.

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