Interview with Norman Rutherford. One

Interview with Norman Rutherford. One

Norman Rutherford was born in Cleethorpes in 1931 and remembers as an eight year old child discussing with his cousin as to whether there would be a war. Norman recalls the sound of the air raid sirens and learning his multiplication tables in the school shelter. He describes butterfly bombs and an incident where his house was damaged by shrapnel from a nearby bombing and having to walk to school along the road which had been bombed and being unable to recognise it because of the rubble. His family had both an indoor Morrison and an outside Anderson shelter and he recollects that the Anderson shelter had to be emptied of water each day.

2024-08-29

00:25:21 Audio Recording

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ARutherfordN240829, PRutherfordN2401

AH: This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Archive. The interviewee is Norman Rutherford. The interviewer is Anna Hoyles. The interview is taking place on the 29th of August 2024 in Louth, Lincolnshire. What year and where were you born Norman?
NR: I was born in 1931 and I was born in Cleethorpes where I lived most, well quite, most of my life anyway. When I say most of my life it’s about half [laughs] now I think. Yeah. I moved to Kirmington about forty years ago so it’s about half my life nearly. Yeah.
AH: And when the war started where were you living then?
NR: I was living in Cleethorpes. Yes.
AH: And how old were you then?
NR: How old am I now, I’m ninety, oh sorry yes I am. Ninety-three. I will be. I’m in my ninety- fourth year anyway but I’m ninety-three.
AH: And when the war started how old were you?
NR: I was eight when the war started because ’31, ‘1939 so I had turned eight in the May. Yeah.
AH: And whereabouts in Cleethorpes were you living then?
NR: Well, I was living in a place called Goring Place believe it or not when we think about the Germans. But it wasn’t spelled the same as Goering who was well known in Germany but Goring Place in Cleethorpes didn’t have the e. it was just G O R I N G as opposed to the other one that had an e in it.
AH: And who were you living with? Were you living with your parents?
NR: I was living with my parents. Yeah. Yeah. I had a twin sister who died when she was five and so I was reared if that’s the right term as an, you know as an individual child really and, yeah. Was there anything else you wanted me to say at this point?
AH: And do you remember, do you remember the build up to the war? Did you notice it?
NR: Yes. I didn’t know an awful lot of it but my cousin Marcia who was a year or two older than me she would be about three years older than me and we used to play in, at her house and we discussed the war and that sort of thing even as an eight year old child but I can remember my cousin saying to me there will not be a war. But she was always an optimist anyway. I’ve known her, obviously she’s died now but she was always an optimist so that’s to be on the subject. I didn’t have, I didn’t know much about anything about the build-up at all. I’ve only known about the build-up since. You know. Like history. That sort of thing.
AH: And do you remember when it was declared?
NR: Yes. I do remember it but I only remember it as a fact of when I say do I remember it I think I only remember it through the fact of history. Knowing that it was, it was the 3rd of September. But to say whether I actually remember it at the time, no I don’t think I did.
[pause]
AH: Did anything, do you remember anything changing at school to start with?
NR: Yes. I’ve got a few things to say if that’s alright to say from there. Regarding school of course we, well I’ve got the, I’ve got the war to thank really from a school point of view because when the sirens went we had to go into the shelters. Of course we were a little bit late starting school because it was sort of September time so we had to wait until the air raid shelters had been built and once they were built then we were fitted out with gas masks and that sort of thing. But as soon as the air raid siren went we had air raid drill and that sort of thing and so we joined the Senior School and the Infant School and we all went into the shelter. And when I say I’ve got the war to thank it was once we got into the air raid shelter nothing, no education was wasted because we did our times tables. So my times tables I consider myself fairly good at times tables because of that. So I very often see people with calculators and by the time they’ve got it put in the calculator but so, so it was very good for that. We had, shall I go a little bit from this time? We had the anti-personnel bombs. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of these but they were called butterfly bombs. Yeah. And we had a lot of butterfly bombs and they, well they were often found later. Later on. My father in actual fact was on the, he was an ARP which is an Air Raid Precaution Warden and he used to travel around in a van and that sort of thing because he was a skipper during the war. Well, he was a skipper before the war but when he came ashore. My mother said, ‘Well, you know you don’t have a gun on a trawler so I’d sooner you’d be ashore.’ So he came ashore and so he, one of his jobs during the war was this travelling around. He was the ARP warden and he did in actual fact when I say run over one he was in the sort of ambulance section and he did run over but not personally, there was something in the road that he’d never seen before and they they just managed to steer either side of the bomb. So the bomb was underneath. It wasn’t until later on that he found out that had he have hit that bomb you know. But it’s, it’s amazing really because part of his job as well, being ashore he wanted obviously to find work and he opened a shoe repairing shop because he’d done shoe repairing before he became a skipper. Can you stop it a minute?
[recording paused]
AH: So when did your dad come ashore?
NR: Well, he came ashore at the beginning of the war because my mother was very much aware that there were no guns on the trawlers and so she felt it would be safer for that. But the interesting thing was as well that one of his jobs because he did a lot of different jobs during the wartime one of his jobs was helping to lay the runway at Humberside Airport. It was Kirmington Airport I think it was called in those days for the 166 [pause] 166 Squadron Lancaster bombers. And while he was there I lived as I say in Goring Place which was off Brereton Avenue and and he was told while he was there that the whole of Brereton Avenue was down. Had been bombed. So he’d no idea what to expect when he got home and the only thing that had happened there had been, we had been, our house had been in the centre of what you might call a triangle of bombs because there were three bombs dropped and we were, they were equidistance between all of them. We were in the centre. So we got the shrapnel from the bottoms and, but of course when he came fortunately that, that morning it was about 8 o’clock in the morning. My mother said, ‘It’s about time you got up.’ Called me up around 8 o’clock. So I was having a few extra minutes when all of a sudden this bang had happened and we’d already had the siren. That’s why my mother wanted to get me out and the shrapnel came through the window as I bent down to pick my slippers up. The shrapnel hit the furthest wall. It then ricochetted on to the other wall and then fell on the bucket and it wasn’t until we were decorating the other room and had to move a wardrobe that we found the force of the shrapnel which had come over two roads had actually lodged a brick. One of the pieces of shrapnel. The other piece of shrapnel went into the other bedroom where nobody was there so, but just going back to where he was told that the whole of Brereton Avenue was down and he didn’t know what to expect and the only thing that had happened in our back room which was facing this furthest bomb the whole of the window frame in the kitchen and the living room had, had just, just blown out. Not, when I say blown out, the whole frame complete with the window. It wasn’t, the window wasn’t broken. The frame had broken and moved out with the blast of the bomb and we had an aerial coming down for the radio and this, this window fell onto the railing and my father came home, saw what had happened and just pushed it back. So but we did have shelters, we had the Anderson shelter and the Morrison shelter. Shall I explain what’s the difference between the [pause] yeah. The Anderson shelters were in the, in the ground and they had to be dug out. Enough to hold a family. They were quite deep and they did, they did have corrugated roofs and so you could put soil over the top and a lot of people grew plants on the top and that sort of thing. But the worst thing about that I remember was the fact that being eight years old and I was fast asleep again and I didn’t wake up. I was carried down into the shelter one particular night and I was carried back up without even waking up at all by my mother. But the thing about the Anderson shelter of course being in the ground it had what they called a sump which filled with water. Every day that had to be emptied and the thing that I can remember was the smell of the clay and I can still smell clay when I know what it is. So, but my grandmother lived with us and she was stone deaf. What they called stone deaf in those days.
[recording interrupted]
NR: We were allowed to have the Morrison shelter. Now, that was a, it was like an iron table in the room and we slept underneath the table and the side was like a lion’s cage. So we slept in there and my grandmother would not come in the shelter. She was a very religious, Methodist religious person and she said, ‘The Lord’s looked after me. He’s looked after me all my life. He’ll look after me now.’ Even when we were on the opposite side of the road we heard the Spitfires, not the Spitfires sorry but the enemy aircraft coming along and firing bullets across the, across the road. Now, we did have, we did have wooden shutters at the windows but fortunately our side of the road didn’t get any, anything at all. So I think —
[recording paused]
AH: When you said you almost got hit by shrapnel how did you feel?
NR: Well, I don’t think I, I mean as an eight year old child it was, it was just something that happened to a certain extent. I think I was more concerned about getting into trouble with my mother because I hadn’t got up in time. Yeah. Oh, one thing that probably might, might be of interest was the fact that during the war of course I used, my parents were Methodists, very strong Methodists and there was a Methodist church across the main road to Grimsby. Grimsby Road. And so they used to go there but some neighbours had two children, boys and they belonged to the Church of England Mission Church on the other side of the road. On this side of the road as it were and my parents decided that I should change religion [laughs] one of the, because they had a boys’ choir. So it was my, I was very fortunate. It’s one of the best things they did I think for me because a lot of my life stems from around this. They decided I should join the choir so I joined the church choir because my mother thought, well if the air raid siren went I’d got to get across the busy main road. Now, the busy road, the busy main road in 1939 wasn’t anything like it is now but you know I did have to get across the road because there were trams going across the road and she thought it would be safer and it would be quicker obviously as soon as the siren went. Well, I was coming back one night from choir practice it would be about seven, half past seven I should think at night and I saw what they, I understand that it was called a dogfight. But I think the dogfight was, it was between two planes and it was quite interesting to me because I didn’t know what was happening. I could see these two aircraft as I was going along the road firing at each other. It was quite exciting and when I got to tell my mother I don’t think she thought it was quite as exciting as I did [laughs]
AH: And did you recognise, were you able to recognise engine noises for different aircraft?
NR: Yes. Yes. This was the thing about my mother. While we were in the shelter, in the Morrison shelter we, we could hear the planes overhead and the one thing my mother used to say, ‘You’re alright. It’s one of ours.’ And we could tell the Lancaster bombers. We could tell the Spitfires and one of the aircraft that we, one of the German aircraft that we could tell were the, I think they were called the V-bombers. Known as Doodlebugs. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of those and of course if you heard those coming across you were very keen to make sure that the sound didn’t stop because once the sound stopped you knew that it was going to drop somewhere. So, I mean you’re just going back to the butterfly bombs. We learned afterwards I think it was that if Germany had known how successful those were they would have dropped a lot more. But apparently, I understand that it was to be made known that nobody spoke about these things and so, so they weren’t talked about you know. I don’t know if there was anything else.
AH: You said something about lamp posts.
NR: Oh yes. The, this particular bomb that I was talking about that had the shrapnel the day after I was walking down the avenue only just yards from where this bomb had dropped and the lamp post you could almost think it was like gorgonzola cheese. Made of gorgonzola cheese. It was just absolutely full. It was just full of holes where the shrapnel had gone through. That was exciting as far as I was concerned. Things, I think things were a little bit more exciting although I was afraid of the actual air raids. But anything like that was exciting. I mean, when I was, when I went because the war carried on until 1944 so I was in a secondary school and I had to walk along this avenue. The Brereton Avenue I was talking about and I do remember walking down there one night when the, not the bombs that I was talking about but some other bombs had dropped along this and of course it had demolished the houses on both sides of the road and the rubble was across, all across the road and I didn’t recognise the road that I was walking on. I knew, I knew the road but it just didn’t occur to me what road it was with all the, all the actual rubble.
AH: And how did you feel about that?
NR: I can’t say that I had any particular feelings. I mean the main feelings of the war were the fear when the actual things were taking place close at hand and the sadness because I can remember a friend of mine telling me that his parents, one of the neighbours came in one day and said, ‘Oh, we’ve had a telegram. Tom’s been killed.’ That was it. You know. And —
AH: Who was Tom?
NR: Well, it could have been anybody. Could be your neighbour. That was the sort of thing that happened. People, what happened, what they must have felt I just cannot imagine. What they must have felt like and it makes me upset when I think of the men that left their families. Off to war and the, they didn’t hear anything from them. Prisoners of war. I’ve just recently been reading a book from one of my neighbours. Well, a few months —
[recording interrupted]
NR: I heard about it but it was very vivid. I mean it just doesn’t bear thinking about. The way you were treated. You know, that was the, that’s the, that’s the main fear or the main sadness and you know it’s a question of and at that time I think there was also —
[recording interrupted]
NR: I was lying there in the Morrison shelter and I, opposite the shelter in the room was a fireplace and I used to think to myself I wonder if I shall see the fireplace in the morning, you know. So that —
[recording interrupted].