2
25
271
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/623/8892/APayneTP160204.1.mp3
929461b85b05517b492df549d0a2c272
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Payne, Thomas Peter
T P Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Payne, TP
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Peter Payne (b. 1925, 1398674, 199071 Royal Air Force)auto biographies and his log book. He flew as a pilot with 90 and 15 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-04
2016-07-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and I’m in Hemel Hempstead and it’s the 4th of February 2016 and I’ve come to talk to Thomas Payne about his experiences in the family and his time in the air force and afterwards. So Tom start us with the earliest days you could remember please.
TP: Well I was born in the centre, almost centre of Hemel Hempstead, Marlowes, in December 1925. I had two older brothers and a sister. My oldest brother was a bus driver by that time. He was born before the First World War. First earliest recollection is the Wagon and Horses Public House which was at the end of our row of cottages. I vaguely remember it being built in the — behind the cottages, part behind the row of cottages with a drive in and drive out section. They had some swing chains across the front and I was skipping over those one day when I fell on them and had one dig in my knee. So I can recall that. But apparently The Wagon before that was the end cottage of the row and how it became, how it was a pub with no electricity or gas inside. We only had paraffin lamps and candles. One cold water tap in the scullery and a toilet up the garden which you shared with a neighbour. I believe in those early days that the bucket was emptied every night but we were, when The Wagon was built that was put on sewerage so we were put on sewerage. No refrigerators so food had to be bought fresh every day. How mum managed to feed us all I’ll never know. She was a wonderful lady. She lived to be nearly a hundred and one anyway so, but my schooldays were at Bury Mill End School which I started before I was five and I stayed there until I was eleven. And that year in 1936 I passed the examination for Two Waters Central School as did two of my mates who went to the school as well. The transfer was quite smooth. It was a lovely school — the Central School. We had a grand time. There was only four classes. Forty each. Twenty boys. Twenty girls. Made some good friends then but sadly after two years or whether it was the third year secondary modern education started and they’d built a new school in Crabtree Lane which was the top floor was boys, the bottom floor was girls and our headmaster was appointed headmaster of the new school. So of course they closed the Central School and us pupils from the Central School formed the A streams of the hundreds of students that were at the new school. The war started and life changed completely. The windows were all covered with glued on mesh safety netting. Air raid shelters were built in the back of the playgrounds. The land opposite was commandeered and used for gardening by the school. I didn’t get involved in that. That was hard work. It was planned that I was going to join the air force. I’d thought of going to Halton and the school was getting papers ready and then of course with the advent of war everything was altered. We went to evening classes to help but some of the teachers got called up and we were reliant on part timers which I don’t think was very successful. Excuse me.
CB: We’re stopping just for a mo.
TP: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Thomas Peter Payne. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-04
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APayneTP160204
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:05:16 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas was born in Hemel Hempstead in 1925, one of four children and lived in a row of terraced houses with very basic sanitation. The end property was a public house with no gas or electricity, with only paraffin lamps and candles. His first recollection was the construction of a new public house to replace the old one, with improved drainage for the adjacent houses.
He recalls that he had a wonderful mother who kept them well fed with fresh food as there were no refrigeration systems in those days, His mother died at the age of 101.
Thomas started school at the age of five and in 1936, aged eleven, passed the required exams to attend a higher education school but, with the introduction of secondary modern education, moved to another school. At the commencement of the war he remembers mesh being fitted to the windows, air raid shelters being dug and land being requisitioned for a school vegetable garden.
Thomas planned to join the RAF as a Halton apprentice but the war changed his plans.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hertfordshire
England--Hemel Hempstead
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Holmes
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/640/8910/ASmithBM170118.1.mp3
80a4542cbc4605b7e4b258e8665a4cee
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Barry
Barry Michael Smith
B M Smith
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, BM
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Barry Smith (b.1929, 582398 Royal Air Force). He was an aprentice at RAF Halton and served as a fitter. Also includes service memoir and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Barry Smith and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 18th of January 2017 and I’m in Bierton with Barry Smith who went to Halton and then served a long time in the RAF. So what are your first recollections of life Barry?
BM: Um, Stotfold in Oxford — in Bedfordshire, um, which was where my father and mother moved to when my father was posted to RAF Henlow, um, which I think was about twelve months — um, sorry.
CB: That’s OK.
BM: That was silly.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo [interview stopped at 0:00:57 and restarted 0:01:00]. OK Barry, so what are your earliest recollections then of life really?
BM: In Coppice Mead in Stotfold, which was a row of houses that were built by a Mr Turby Gentle [?], twenty four houses and we occupied those in round about 1935. My father was at — posted, stationed Henlow, at RAF Henlow, and was an airframe fitter and, er, we stayed there until 1940 when he’d moved to RAF Brize Norton, um, on 30— 6MU and we moved subsequently to Witney in Oxfordshire, er, into a set of new houses that had been built especially for the Ministry of Defence called Springfield Oval. My record — my recollections of that include my mother calling me out of bed one night into — to look out of the window of the bathroom across Witney to see some — a big fire in the middle of Witney. A stray German bomber had dropped a stick of three bombs in Witney and, er, they’d set alight a row of army trucks that were on the church green and, er, my mother was really quite worried that the Germans were there. It didn’t bother me at all of course because I was unaware of the risks involved in bombs dropping. Pause. [interview stopped at 02.55.9 and restarted at 03:02:1]
CB: Before you went to Brize you were in Stotfold. So what are your experiences there?
BM: Um, well I recall starting school and walking to school with a little girl who lived down the road and she used to come and call for me, a lady, young lady named Pat Trafford, and we used to walk to St Mary’s Infants School and they moved to Cardington, um, near Bedford, and I continued going to school on my own and then we moved, age of seven, I moved up to the boys school in Stotfold, Stotfold County Boys School, it was called I think. And I used to walk there called Glen Wogan, who was my — our next door neighbour and we were usually late, late back from lunch because, er, we used to pick conkers and chestnuts and walnuts and things on the way back to school after lunch. So we invariably got the cane for being late back to school, um, and Mr Thomas who was the — was our teacher at that time used to wield an inch thick mixing stick that he used to mix the Horlicks with and that hurt, um, and we used to get three of those on each hand if we were late and thought noth— thought nothing seriously of it. And then we moved to — as I say we moved to —from Stotfold subsequently we moved to Witney. Hold it. [interview stopped at 0:04:51:0 and restarted at 0:55:7:00]
CB: So you lived in Witney. What, what were the houses?
BS: There were fifty houses that were built, semi-detached houses, built in Springfield Oval for the Ministry of Defence. We lived in number three so my dad got off the mark fairly early apparently but most of the people round there actually worked — the men worked at Brize Norton.
CB: For the RAF.
BS: For the RAF and — but they were all civilians and, er, I remember Mr Glaister walking to the bus in the middle of winter in his Home, um, Home Guard uniform, he was a lieutenant I think in the Home Guard. And he subsequently died as a result of his chilblains, um, going up —
CB: Because of being on duty in the cold weather.
BS: Insisting on wearing his boots and, and gaiters and so on and so forth and he had, as I say, chilblains and they got the better of his legs and he subsequently died as a result. My dad never joined the Home Guard a. He was too short and b. I think he felt that they were toy soldiers which was naughty really but he was [emphasis] the air raid warden so we housed all the spare stirrup pumps and buckets and, um, all that memorabilia for fighting fires. So we learned how to handle incendiary bombs if they fell. I don’t know where they were going to fall but we didn’t get any. As I say, the only three bombs we got were dropped in the centre of Witney which was a mile and a half a mile away across the valley. [background noise]
CB: Your father was originally in the RAF but he was on a —
BS: A seven and five year engagement.
CB: Which meant what?
BS: Seven years and five years, seven years in the colours and five years on the reserve.
CB: OK.
BS: And his seven years would have ended in 1935, um, and he and Mr Trafford that I spoke of earlier were employed as civilians at RAF Cardington by then and subsequently was — he was posted from Cardington to RAF Brize Norton, um, but as far as I know Mr Trafford carried on working at Cardington, as far — you know.
CB: And what did your father do at Brize Norton?
BS: He was a civilian air raid — airframe fitter.
CB: Oh, he was. Right. So, how long did he work there?
BS: Oh, until he, he retired in — at sixty I think and got — or was made redundant around about aged sixty and got a job as a postman and delivered the, the mail around Witney for a few years.
CB: When the war, when the war came was he not recalled to the RAF?
BS: Because he’d got a reserved occupation at Brize Norton.
CB: He was in the reserves but he had a reserved occupation?
BS: Had reserved occupation so he wasn’t called up.
CB: How extraordinary.
BS: So he was really rather fortunate.
CB: Yes. OK.
BS: And during that time he used to bring home for me bullets and bits and pieces that he’d picked up on the airfield and I used to strip them down and used the contents to make fireworks which was a little bit naughty but, er, we did, and I learned while I was at school in Witney, um, how to make gunpowder. And that was rather convenient because the chemist would always sell us, um, potassium perm— potassium nitrate because you could use potassium nitrate for curing rabbit pelts, um, which was why we bought the potassium nitrate but, of course, we made our own charcoal by burning willow twigs in a chocolate, a cocoa tin, and we got our sulphur from Early’s Mills because Earlys used to use — they’d got big wooden sheds that they used to hang the blankets in to bleach them and they bleached them by burning raw sulphur and, of course, there was always a lot of odd bits of sulphur sticks hanging around and we used to get our sulphur from that. So the combinations we had to work out of sulphur and charcoal and potassium nitrate, we had to work out what the thing was to make a sensible bang, which we succeeded in doing.
CB: To what extent did your teacher know about these activities?
BS: He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t even tell us the combination of the — um, making the gunpowder. We had to work that out ourselves but I did take an interest in chemistry while I was at, um, that central school in Witney. And my gardening master, Mr Goldsmith, er, was a German Jew refugee, who taught us gardening and he was superb. He roused my interest in chemistry and biological, um, chemistry and that sort of thing and roused, as I say, roused my whole concept of chemistry, especially biological chemistry, which I never followed up. But um —
CB: So how long were you at this school for?
BS: Until I was fourteen, until I was — and then my — I had an extension. I was the only one — there were two of us, um, had homework for a number of years and two of us managed to stay on or were invited to stay on for an extra year, so I was fifteen by the time I actually left, but there was only two of us in school who stayed on ‘till fifteen. [cough] And my mum then got me a job with Mr Mallard who was an optical manufacturer or a — and I was employed as an optical lens maker.
BT: Grinding up.
BS. Grinding lenses, um, for prescriptions for glasses and I worked there. I’d taken the exams to join the Royal Air Force which was my father’s oranis— organisation, um, he had guided my studies at school and guided the fact that I had homework and nobody else did, um, and made arrangements for me to sit the Halton apprentice entrance examination which I think had he not been in the service I wouldn’t have got through to the, um, invitation stage because I’m sure I didn’t pass the exam and, er, I got to Halton, as I said, in February 1945.
CB: OK. [background noise]
BS: The day war broke out —
CB: Yes?
BT: [laugh]
BS: It was a lovely summer’s day and I came — it was a Sunday and I came in from the garden, having been digging an air raid shelter, to find my mother in tears.
BT: In tears.
BS: And I wondered why she was crying and she said told me, she said, ‘Because we’re at war.’
CB: And then what? What happened then?
BS: Well she stopped crying eventually and, er, we carried on building or digging this air raid shelter and putting some, um, corrugated iron over the top to put a lid on it, um, but it wasn’t a very good air raid shelter and we didn’t follow it up to —.
CB: Did you ever use it?
BS: No. No.
CB: Right.
BS: There was no evidence of the war in Stotfold while we were there and we went to — as I say we moved to Witney in Oxfordshire in 1940 anyway, late 1940, and I think that when those three bombs dropped in Witney it was an aircraft returning from Coventry, um, and didn’t want to go home with his bombs so he just ditched them so he could get home quicker, which you can’t blame him for I suppose.
CB: Right, so you were close to Brize Norton airfield which still operational —
BS: Five miles away.
CB: Yep. And so were — how were you aware of what was going on? Did it become busy and did it get bombed? Or what happened?
BS: No. I — we became aware of it getting busy at Brize Norton when they starting practising towing gliders, um, Hamilcars and —
CB: Horsas.
BS: Horsas, yeah, and Hectors, but the little small ones that they, they practiced with, and, er, they were towing those with Albemarle aircraft and, and we were aware of them training with those gliders. No concept of what they were for, of course, um, but that was the only evidence really we saw. I do remember going to boy scouts. We used to go to boy scouts on a Monday night and I remember that during one of the winters but I can’t remember which it would have been, ‘42 perhaps, ’4—, can’t remember but I remember standing outside autumn-ish, so it was a cold dark night and standing outside the scout hut and my patrol leader saying, ‘Ah, they’re Jerries you know.’ We heard the drone of these aircraft flying overhead but we didn’t see anything but I’m fairly confident they were on their way. We would have been on the route to Coventry and it might well have been one of the raids in that direction that we were aware of but no idea of what it was all about. But that was the only connection really. During the war we got, er, evidence of, um, Americans in the town, stationed, and they were stationed on the church green I remember and we used to scrounge chewing gum off of them and, um, that sort of thing but they, they didn’t stay there all that long but I remember there was an air raid shelter in Witney, um, hard by the church green I remember and we were rather concerned that if a bomb dropped near that it might well not be man enough to hold up and, er, I remember hearing around about that time of a, an air raid shelter that I imagined to be very similar actually being hit by a bomb and I don’t quite — that would have come in the news but I can remember picturing the event and what would have happened if the bomb had hit that particular air raid shelter, um, which was — yeah, eye opening, but that was the only concern.
CB: At, um, school to what extent did the pupils discuss the war?
BS: Not very much. No, very, very little. We were very only slightly concerned. We used to dig for victory of course. We had one half day a week at the allotment that the school ran, um, and my father I know was keen on cultivating food in our garden and he also took a, an allotment on, fairly close to where we lived and, of course, rationing was of some consequence. I don’t remember ever being hungry, um, and I do remember later on going down on my dad’s bike to do the shopping on a Saturday morning and going from shop to shop to find out what they’d got under the counter, um, like chocolate and sweets and so on and so forth and I used to go down on a Saturday morning to buy exotic, as far as I was concerned, exotic cakes, cream cakes and jam sponges and things and I used to buy a quantity of these for the neighbours and cycle home with this half a dozen or so cakes but they were only available in this one particular bakers which was rather fascinating. [background noise] [laugh]
CB: So being a commercial minded sort of chap did you have a little business running on this sort of thing?
BS: No. What I, I did do, I used to go down to the River Windrush and catch crayfish and my mum used to cook them, drop them into a big boil— boiling vat, a saucepan of boiling water, and cook these crayfish and I’d go round these fifty houses and I used to sell them at a penny each. So yes I did, yeah.
CB: And what was rationing like?
BS: I was never really aware. I, you know, I wouldn’t know what an ounce of butter looked like anyway, you know. I don’t ever remember going short. If I wanted a slice of bread I had one. If I wanted — you know. Alright we used to get a bit of dripping here and there and — to go on the bread but you lived as it came, didn’t you? You know, you lived as — I, as I say I don’t ever remember going hungry. And we had rabbit of course and, and we used to — we bred our own rabbits, or at least my dad did, so we used to have a rabbit fairly frequently.
CB: Did you go out catching them as well?
BS: No. I think we may have — my mum may have bought a rabbit from time to time but I, I’m not really very — much aware of that.
CB: So you were due to leave school at fourteen.
BS: Stayed on.
CB: But you had an extension until you were fifteen but you had an extension to fifteen —
BS: Yes.
CB: What was the purpose of that?
BS: Um, the essence was that I was qualifying or training, if you like, to be able to pass this exam, this entrance exam for the RAF and, um, I could take the entrance exam when I was fifteen and a half, um, and my dad wanted to be sure that I was capable of passing it. So yes, I stayed on to train for the examination I suppose for the entrance exam for the RAF.
CB: And what happened when you took the exam?
BS: [slight laugh] I wish I could remember. As I say, I was called forward in the February of ’45 to come to Halton for interview and attestation, if that was to be, selection if you like and attestation, um, and we were all marched into the — what is now the Trenchard Museum which was the Henderson Grove Gymnasium at the time, for sorting out and, um, allocation of trades, and I had applied to be a radio technician and by the time they got down to me they’d got all the radio technicians they wanted and they said, ‘No. There isn’t a vacancy for you. Would you like to be an electrician?’ So I said, ‘Yes please.’ But it wasn’t my first choice but I think I was rather lucky to get that.
CB: So then when you’d got that how did that work? They had, er, an initial interviewing and kitting out and then what?
BS: Well, well initially of course we had to get kitted, kitted out. We were put, we were into groups which they’d labelled A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I ,J, K, parties of about sixteen, a roomful of about sixteen chaps who had been given their trades, and then we were moved into — we got our kits and so on and had to stamp them all up with our service numbers and, er, and then we were allocated rooms according to trade and, er, most of my electrician mates went into two rooms but there wasn’t room for myself and my mate John Rouchier [?]. We were in another block and then subsequently [emphasis] moved, fairly quickly actually, but moved down to another room full of engine [emphasis] fitters so we were the only two electricians in a room of elec— of engine fitters, er, which was in some ways disappointing but it didn’t really matter. We still got matey with the people who were in the room and you know —
CB: How many people in the room?
BS: Sixteen.
CB: And this is in a block?
BS: Of six rooms.
CB: Of six rooms, OK.
BS: And with an inside bunk and an outside bunk which was occupied by a senior apprentice NCO apprentice. Normally you had a sergeant apprentice in the inside bunk and then, um, a leading apprentice was in charge of the room outside, in one of the — in the first bed by the bunk, if you like, but then the sergeant apprentice who was in charge of the block would be in one of the outside bunks.
CB: And, and this was part of the process with a senior person to keep control?
BS: Oh yes. A, a senior entry of course, um, which made sense. They were almost like schoolboy monitors I suppose.
CB: So there were several barrack blocks, um, with this?
BS: We occupied two barrack blocks.
CB: OK. So how many people in total? This is your entry, number —
BS: Fifty at entry.
CB: Number fifty entry, yeah.
BS: Well about two hundred and — I can’t recall now. About two hundred and fifty of us stayed at Halton. About fifty more actually went to Cranwell as the RAF — as the radio and radar fitters. The precise numbers of course I’ve got recorded there.
CB: In your book. Yeah. So here you are —
BS: Go on. OK.
CB: Yes, so here you are allocated accommodation. What did, what did you do? You, you were conducted into the RAF in a sequence so how did that work?
BS: Oh the attestation sequence you’re referring to. We were taken up in groups, essentially room groups, into the upstairs of the NAAFI, um, and sat at a desk on which there was our attestation papers which we had to read and sign and we were obliged to, to do the oath of, um, allegiance to the Crown and we were allocated at that point our service numbers of course. [background noise]
CB: Uniform?
BS: Oh, we were in uniform by that time, er, that was before we were issued with our uniforms, yes of course, yeah.
CB: So then you had to get your uniforms and how distinctive were those? OK.
BS: I need time. [background noise]
CB: The reason I asked you about the clothing because it’s distinctive within the trades in some ways and within the speciality of being an apprentice. So how did that go?
BS: The significant thing about uniforms initially was that the only distinction we had that we were apprentices, other than any other kind of member of the Royal Air Force, was that we were issued with the four-bladed propeller wheel badge which we was to sew onto our left arm, um, of our tunics. We were issued with two tunics and when we got our kit wheel badges to go on the great coat and our two tunics and cap badges, of course, to go on our forage cap and our service dress cap, the peaked service dress cap. We were also issued with a coloured band to go round our service dress cap and one to go round our forage cap which determined which squadron we belonged to and we became D Squadron of 1 Wing with a brown, um, a chocolate brown band, which was fairly soon changed because of objections to, um, a chocolate brown and orange checked band and that was then changed to a pale blue one when we became A Squadron of 2 Wing. Then we moved to 3 Wing and got an orange band and a red disk behind the cap badge to indicate that we were A Squadron of now 3 Wing. So from being a squadron identification the band became a wing identification at that particular time. [pause] [background noise]
CB: So we’ve talked about your uniform, er, and the variations of it but in practical terms here you are in a. In a training establishment and b. In a technical training establishment which tends to be dirty. So how did they deal with that?
BS: Well we were issued with a pair of overalls we called them. I believe you called them —
CB: Overalls is fine. Yeah.
BS: And they were changed if they got dirty but essentially once a week, collectively, and when they came back from the laundry, um, you tried to pick out a pair that a. Fitted you and b. Weren’t too torn but, yeah, it was, um, pot luck what you got so, you know, so occasionally you finished up with a rough old pair of overalls that had got no buttons or method of fixing but those we wore at workshops, when we went to where we did the practical. When we went to schools, of course, where we did the academic side of the training we just wore ordinary uniform, er, even when we went into the laboratories in schools but of course we weren’t doing anything particularly grubby in schools and —
CB: When you say in schools it’s because there are departments of technical training that you call the school?
BS: The school was where the academic subjects were handled which were maths and science, um, mechanics. Science tended to deal with, um, your trade topics and the — we had a general studies which did the history of the RAF and the history of flying and general topics, um, including little bits of Shakespeare and, as I say, they were called general studies and one of our major tasks during the two years that we did of schools — ‘cause although the apprenticeship was three years only two years was spent doing academic subjects, and we qualified, those of us who were good enough, qualified for the First Ordinary National Certificate. But the task, as far as I was concerned, the main task we had to do in the academic line was to assemble an essay of, I don’t know, I don’t remember, five thousand words or something, fairly extensive essay we had to dream up and to those of us who hadn’t then or even now hadn’t a good command of the English language that was a bit of a challenge but there you go, I did one, and managed to pass. But as I say the school’s activity, academic activity went on for two years when we sat the First National Certificate which included at that [emphasis] time, um, maths and science essentially and, er, general studies wasn’t included, I don’t think but, er, as I say that, that was just two years, um, what was it? I can’t — [background noise]
CB: And we’ve talked about academic stuff and we’ve talked about practical but, to put it into context, there were lots of other things you had to do, like PT and marching and so on, so just take us through would you? A typical day. You wake up and what did you do?
BS: Well I think some of it can be put into context by a little rhyme that was actually printed in a 1939 issue of the “Haltonian” magazine, which starts off with, “In the dwellings of the birdmen and the barrack blocks behind them grew up the handsome air apprentice 5620 Hiawatha. Every morning at the sunrise baring, blaring bugles broke his slumbers, roused him from his iron bedstead, bestead hard and bedstead cruel, air apprentice for the use of. Next would find him, um, eating flesh, round the fleshpots.” No, no. “Bitterly —” I’ve ruined it. [laugh] [unclear]
CB: So you’d wake up in the morning and what would happen?
BS: With the, the reveille.
CB: Yep. Which is on the tannoy and the tannoy is a loudspeaker?
BS: No, it was a proper, proper —
CB: Bugle?
BS: Trumpet, proper trumpet, and you’d go and get washed and dressed and shaved, if you had to, and you’d go with your mug and irons (your knife, fork and spoon and cup), walk up to the mess (we had our own mess hall) for breakfast, and you’d queue up for your porridge and cornflakes or whatever and egg and bacon. We were very well fed actually, um, and normally [emphasis] they were issued — they were handed out by a mess cook, who was someone from the room who was given the duty of picking up a tray of eggs and bacon or whatever from the servery, and bringing it to the table to distribute to, to his own room at that table. After breakfast, um, we’d almost certainly be called out for parade, to form up to march down to schools or to workshops, most frequently behind either the pipe band or the brass band. We’d be carrying our books if we were going to school in our satchel, in our side pack, or if we were going to workshops we’d carry our overalls in our side pack, um, sometimes we would wear a cape as a — in bandolier fashion round in case it was going to rain. If the forecast was good then we’d just parade with nothing but we’d carry a cape if it was suggested it was going to rain, um, in bandolier fashion as I said, round our shoulder and, of course, if it was actually raining the cape would be open and we would be wearing it as you see it on the war memorial in Green Park. And we marched down to either schools or to workshop, schools which are now in a building called, now called Kermode Hall. Group Captain, Air Commodore Kermode was very responsible, very much responsible, for the development of the education of apprentices at Halton and very highly regarded too and, as I said, we were split into smaller classes because the classes were smaller anyway. We were split into classes of about thirteen. In my entry there were thirty, thirty-two, thirty-three electricians and we were split into three classes a, b and c, and we would all go, we would all go to school together and the days we were going to workshops we would all do the training but in, as I say, in the separate classes in workshops. [background noise]
CB: So after you return from breakfast and you’ve got everything you need for the day then what did you do?
BS: We would either dress to by paraded to go for — down to workshops or schools, in which case we paraded outside at trumpet call, um, we would be inspected to check that our buttons and boots had been cleaned and that we hadn’t — didn’t need a haircut or if we did we were informed that we would need to get one. And then, as I say, we would march down behind to — onto the square to march down to workshops or — behind the pipe or brass band. On the days that we were going to do PT, which would be probably two or three times a week, we would parade outside in PT kit and separately [emphasis] and then just be marched off to a venue, maybe on the square, maybe in the gymnasium, to do a series of, um, conventional exercises. On other occasions we would stay behind to do marching drill on the square with rifles and bayonets. We had eighteen inch bayonets at that time we were issued with, which again was a piece of equipment we had to keep clean, and we had the SMLE rifles which were kept in a room in a rifle rack with a Horsa [?] select — secured with a padlock by the leading apprentice and as I say we would go onto the square and do marching drill and practice and, of course, and initially there were several members of the entry who found it difficult to coordinate their left and right arms with their left and right legs but most of them overcame that difficulty. I suspect those that didn’t departed because occasionally there’d be an empty bed space which would be a bit of a puzzle and I remember that we occupied, John Rouchier [?] and I, occupied two bed spaces in the engine apprentices room 4:2, Block 4 Room 2 that is, and we occupied two bed spaces that had suddenly become vacant and it was many years afterwards I discovered that the two people who had occupied those spaces had actually had an early discharge from the Royal Air force and I know not the reason for that and neither did anyone else in the room. There were just two empty bed spaces and we, John Rouchier [?] and I, were moved out of one block into this block, into these two empty bed spaces, just to make up the numbers but nobody spoke about where the two lads had gone. Now that occurred to, I think, half a dozen or so people in the entry.
CB: Out of thirty-two?
BS: No, out of two hundred and fifty or whatever that I know of.
CB: Of the entry, OK.
BS: That I’m aware of, yeah, and when I was doing the research for the entry I identified those people who’d been, um, discharged very early on and realised that the empty bed spaces I became aware of had been occupied by these people because they were in the trade groups where the empty bed spaces appeared which was rather strange and I still l haven’t got to the bottom of that mystery.
CB: Just one question on that. We talked about after breakfast [clears throat] —
BS: Yes.
CB: You go back to the room. At what point did you make the bed and how?
BS: Oh we made that before we went to breakfast.
CB: Right, and how did you do it?
BS: Well the beds that we had were McDonalds which were cast iron frames with strip, wrought iron slats, across and three so-called biscuits which were, er, coir filled paillasse type things which, um, covered —
CB: As a mattress.
BS: As a mattress. A, a three-part mattress if you like.
BT: Come on everybody, I’ll have those. [sound of crockery]
CB: Yep, yep.
BS: And we used to match, marry one of them, wrap it up in a blanket as a seat and two of them married, the other two married up in a blanket as a backdrop and behind the backdrop would be the, the two folded sheets and a pillow and a pilaster which we had so the bed was made up armchair fashion, um, because the McDonald bed actually had four wheels on the front part and the half at the front pushed under the rear part and that made, with the two, with the three mattress biscuits, an armchair and, of course, your locker overhead, locker, your steel locker was occupied by your — one pair of your PT pants and a PT vest or singlet and a cap comforter and — I can’t recall what the other item was but there were four items that had to be laid out in pristine form, biscuit form almost, in your locker and your mug and irons delicately displayed beside it and nothing else on the shelves. You had a box, we had a box at the end of our bed, that stayed under the bed during the day of course, but the box at the end of our bed that contained the rest of our kit, um, which comprised of what? A couple of shirts and six collars and bits and pieces but that was kept in a trunk, if you like, a wooden trunk, at the end of the bed. Not, um, a particularly comfortable situation.
CB: No. So the, the idea of the bed folding the way it did was so that you really had a chair to sit on.
BS: I’m not sure if that was the idea but that’s what it became and of course what it did do was to reveal the rest of the lino, linoleum, which was highly polished.
CB: Right. So that’s the next question I was going to put. What was the means by which the barrack room was cleaned?
BS: Well, there was a list at the end of the room where each occupant was allocated a task, um, two or three people were allocated deck centre, which meant that the people who lived in the room were responsible for their own piece of bed space but the centre deck which was the part beyond the end of your half of the bed when it was folded was the centre deck and they were, two or three people were responsible for polishing that, putting down the polish and buffing it up, so you could almost see your face in it. But of course with dark brown lino, linoleum you couldn’t actually see your face in it. And the toilets were allocated to individuals. The wash hand basins was a separate job. Brasses was a separate job, that was door knobs and taps and that sort of thing, were a separate task and, as far as I know, the people who did brasses actually provided — or did they? Some of them provided their own metal polish. There was metal polish occasionally available. The same as there was always floor polish available in adequate quantities. And then of course we normally walked on the centre deck with floor pads, pieces of torn up blanket, so that you skidded over the floor on pieces of blanket to keep the polish on the floor. So yeah, one chap was allocated, for instance, to clean a bath and another chap — because there were two baths in the toilet block in the centre of the building, or centre of the floor. Two rooms shared a toilet facility, three toilets, two stand-up, er, urinals, I think two baths, um, with six wash basins I think, and a drying room, which was always heated of course, or usually heated, um, where you could hang your smalls if you happened to have enough soap to wash them.
CB: And then how was the polishes shininess maintained? What was the process?
BS: With the floor — essentially with the floor pads. I mean we did have a big bumper that was initially used, which was a big piece of cast iron on a stick, bristle stick, a short stiff bristle brush, which was dragged or pushed over the floor to rub the polish in initially but once the initial polish was there we tended to maintain it with using floor pads which we walked about or skated about on.
CB: And how was the level of cleanliness maintained and checked?
BS: Well it was inspected by the sergeant apprentice on that floor, um, and initially of course by the, by the leading apprentice of your room, who checked your individual tasks but, as I say, the sergeant apprentice for the block would inspect the three lots within the block on three floors and he would inspect the cleanliness of the whole of the block, essentially. I mean once in a while, I don’t know whether it would have been once a month, I don’t remember the frequency, but of course we’d get a squadron commander’s inspection but he didn’t inspect every day but the sergeant apprentice was responsible for the block and he would make sure that it was clean.
CB: So were these tasks to do and the ablutions were the less popular but was there a rota for people so everybody did it in the end? Or how did it work?
BS: Generally speaking they were voluntarily selected, yeah, generally speaking they — there were people who volunteered to do the urinals and there were people who volunteered to do the hand basins so generally it wasn’t difficult. Yes there were several that seemed more attractive than the others. There were several I avoided, um, without difficulty.
CB: So you were in an avoidance mode —
BS: Absolutely.
CB: So were there some people who pulled their weight better than others and how did the system work?
BS: You didn’t — yes of course there were but you didn’t really notice it because there were usually enough volunteers to do those jobs that seemed more distasteful to you, you know.
CB: So if you — were there occasions when you failed inspections or were they always successful?
BS: Oh there were rare occasions when something which would to the inspectors seem serious and you were invited to do it again so you would have a second “bull night” as they were referred to but, er, they didn’t occur very often.
CB: So just to clarify would you? What age are you or —
BS: Well we were allowed to join between fifteen and a half and seventeen and a half to become apprentices so when I joined at fifteen and three quarters I was one of the younger ones in the entry. Many of the other people in my entry were seventeen plus, up to seventeen and a half, and of course had been to grammar school and they’d got their school certificates and so on and were, educationally, streets ahead of me but I didn’t think I noticed at the time. Only subsequently it become obvious that I was less well educated than they were.
CB: Right we’ll pause there. [interview stopped at 0:50:57:1 and restarted 0:50:59.1 ] What about a bit of marching. You had to do a bit of marching in parades. How did that work?
BS: Well, initially it was tricky because at first for a hundred, or a hundred and fifty blokes, or whatever to coordinate and do everything on time without shouting out one pause, two pause, three, whatever, took a time to develop and I think most of us entered into it with a reasonable willingness, er, to try and coordinate it and I remember how proud I [emphasis] felt when we were actually at the Albert Hall and we performed the wheel of remembrance, or something, and we actually marched, the apprentices, for Lady Propeller[?] and we actually marched around in the centre of the Albert Hall, and I remember how proud I was to be part of that. And yeah, it was — I’d like to think, and nobody I think has actually said it, but I’m fairly confident that the origin of the Queen’s Colour Squadron was developed from the order-less, um, drill that we [emphasis] did at Halton, um, rifle drill and so on. We did practice for one of the events at the Albert Hall, command-less drill, rifle drill, and that was before the Queen’s Colour Squadron was formed. Now of course they do it expertly ‘cause they practice it every day.
CB: Yeah. Just to clarify, that the Queens Colour Squadron is the, um, parading —
BS: Royal Air Force Regiment’s —
CB: Go on.
BS: Representatives for celebrations —
CB: Special occasions.
BS: Ceremonial occasions.
CB: Yeah, and tend to be the people who receive dignitaries on airfields?
BS: Yes. Well that’s what they have done. And yeah, of course when they were stationed at Uxbridge with the Royal Central — with the RAF Central Band, um, and the RAF Central Band greeted all the dignitaries who visited this county anyway.
CB: Yeah, yeah.
BS: And, er, I think the Queens Colour Squadron, um, was probably more associated with the RAF Central Band than it was with the RAF Regiment which of course they were part of.
CB: So we’ve talked about your time at Halton. How long were you there?
BS: Three years.
CB: So that’s from February 1945 —
BS: Until March ’48.
CB: Right, and when you got to the end of the three years what was the culmination of that training?
BS: We thought that was the end of our training but we were actually posted, most of us, posted to RAF St Athan, 32 MU, where we were, supposedly, doing further training, continuation training, under supervision or guidance but we were actually doing our trade tasks. Initially I was servicing a flight simulator called a Link Trainer and initially I was responsible for the, er, vacuum motors that drove those machines and they were completely overhauled and serviced at St Athan. I subsequently moved to the Aircraft Electrical Servicing Squadron and I was then servicing the UKX generators, we were completely overhauling UKX generators, which were fitted to the Lancasters. They were the DC and AC, alternating current and direct current generators, that supplied the power for the Lancasters and we were completely overhauling those. And I was at the stripping down and scraping end and my mate was at the far end actually packing them up in greaseproof paper, um, ready to be taken back to stores to be reissued as new generators. But we also started to service E5A generators which were fitted to the North American Harvard which was used for air crew training, pilot training, at places like Cranwell and my boss required me to support that when we started to do them by producing a, a breakdown display of the E5A generators. So the first one we got I had to strip down and make the tools to strip it down with because, of course, it was an American machine so we hadn’t got the necessary spanners and tools to do it. And I mounted that on a display board to show everybody what all the parts were and then we started to service those generators and, er, we also serviced the control panels for the Lancaster, um, electrical control panels that is. That was a very pleasant time, yeah. My boss was a warrant officer, Lockheart, Tubby Lockheart. He was football crazy and I didn’t play football and the only thing that he and I had in common was that when he walked passed by my desk he’d say —, my bench, he’d say, ‘Have you got your — get your hair cut Smith.’ Which was something that plagued me for all my service career and has followed me through life, um, everyone I see tends to suggest, if they don’t actually verbalise it, they tend to suggest I need a haircut, which I think usually do.
BT: You do.
CB: So how long were you at St Athan?
BS: Just the twelve months before I was posted to RAF Cranwell, where again we were servicing KX generators, which were fitted to the Prentice aircraft, which were twin seats flying training aircraft, Percival Prentice, um, but that’s odd because we were servicing those generators but we weren’t servicing the E5As which were fitted to the Harvards, which they were also flying as trainers, advanced trainers. But in our workshop at Cranwell, as I say, we were servicing the KX generator which was the one fitted to the Prentice. And I was promoted to corporal. Took my LAC exam and passed that while I was at Cranwell. And then when they introduced the new trades’ structure I’d been promoted to corporal and my immediate boss was a flight sergeant, who had been a balloon operator, and had just come off course to be an electrician. So when I applied to become a corporal technician he was responsible for taking the trade test and he said, ‘I’ll take your trade test but will you bring your books along? And you can — I’ll ask you the questions and if you can’t answer them we’ll look them up in your book.’ Which we did but that was a very interesting interview we had and, yeah, I passed. He couldn’t really fail me, could he? He’d only just got you LAC himself.
CB: So when did you get the next promotion?
BS: Oh [slight laugh] not until I came back from Malta in ’54. I came back from Malta in ’54, um, I’d been turned down for my third in Malta. My immediate boss said, ‘First of all you’re never here and second you always want a haircut.’ My immediate boss, my proper boss, said, ‘I’m sorry about your promotion corporal.’ He said, ‘Had I realised you were in that zone for promotion you would have had a better assessment than I gave you.’ So my promotion didn’t come through while I was in Malta. It came through while I was at Honington, in Bomber Command and, er, and my boss turned that down but he didn’t give me a reason.
BT: Because your hair was too long.
BS: [laugh] In the meantime — probably because my hair was too long, um, but subsequently it came through again and, in the meantime I’d got my senior tech, which gave me more pay than I got as a sergeant anyway. And he said to me, ‘Your promotion to sergeant has come through. Would you like to take it?’ So I said, ‘Oh, I need time to think about it Sir.’ I went back later on and said, ‘Yes please.’ Because I thought well if at last you think I’m worthy of it I’ll have it so I reconverted from senior tech back to sergeant which was —
CB: In practical terms —
BS: An admin rank.
CB: Right.
BS: Essentially an admin rank.
CB: Yeah, so they’re both the same status.
BS: Yeah but one had more admin responsibilities than the other.
CB: This is still at Honington?
BS: At Honington.
CB: OK. So what were you actually doing at Honington?
BS: Well I was by then essentially a ground electrician, um, although I had been trained as an electrician to do aircraft electrics, when the new trade structure came in and I applied for my corporal technician board, they said to me, ‘What do you want to be, air or ground?’ And I said, ‘Well was trained as both so I’d like to stay both.’ ‘You can’t do that.’ Well the corporal tech pay was bigger than, higher than the corporals, so I said, ‘Well, what’s my choice?’ ‘Well you can be either, air or ground, but one or the other.’ So I said, ‘Alright, I’ll be ground. I don’t need the responsibility of signing Form 700 for aircraft and put my life on the line.’ So I backed out [background noise] and became a ground electrician, which essentially was looking after aircraft dead batteries anyway. So yeah but I didn’t have the responsibility of signing the serviceability rolls for aircraft which I wasn’t too sad about.
CB: What were the aircraft at Honington?
BS: Initially Canberras, er, being in Bomber Command, they had the front line bomber at that time which was the Canberra. Before I moved away from there in ‘56, ‘57, ‘57 I think, they were starting to have the, um, Vickers Valiant, the first of the V, V bomber force, yeah? I didn’t see the Vulcans or the Valiants come into service —
CB: You mean Vulcans or Victors. You saw the Valiant come into service.
BS: The Valiant come into service —
CB: But you didn’t see the Victors or —
BS: The Victors or the Vu— or the Vulcan.
CB: Vulcan.
BS: Yeah.
CB: Right. So when you finished, when did you move from Honington?
BS: Um, well I realised my service, my service was coming to an end and I thought I ought to sign on. I applied to sign on and they wouldn’t have me, presumably because my hair needed cutting [slight laugh], so I thought, ‘Oh dear what am I going to do at the end of my twelve years’ service. What am I going to do?’ So I saw an advert in our routine orders asking for people to volunteer for service with flight simulators, which I did, I applied for, and they said, ‘Well you haven’t got long enough to do.’ So I said, ‘How long do I need?’ ‘Well you need at least three years Chief.’ Sergeant, senior tech as I was then. ‘Oh well alright.’ So I applied sign on for three years and they took me. So I went down then to Redifon in Crawley and I was on detachment down in civvy digs for three, for twelve months. It was a three month course. It lasted six months. And then I stayed there almost on my own because the other people got simulators and moved on. My simulator got cancelled so I stayed in civvy digs in Crawley for twelve months, um, which was great, going to work at Redifon, virtually my own boss, and then one day I got a — somebody called, ‘Phone call from Fighter Command, somebody wants to speak to you.’ So I went to the telephone, ‘Good heavens.’ Said Brian Caplan, ‘Are you still there?’ So I said, ‘Yes Sir’. He said, ‘Well you can’t stay there. You’ll have to go back to your parent unit.’ Which was Coltishall at that time so I’d been posted when I moved onto simulators to Coltishall. I said, ‘Well, I don’t need to go to Coltishall. There’s nothing for me there, Sir.’ I said, ‘My family, I’ve moved my family down to Aylesbury, and I know nothing of Fighter Command or whatever.’ He said, ‘Well, where do you want to go?’ So I said, ‘Halton would be nice.’ And he said, ‘I can’t post you to Halton.’ He said, ‘It’s not in the Command.’ I’m now on the back foot. I said, ‘Well, surely Sir you can find me a little corner at Fighter Command?’ ‘Oh, that’s an idea.’ He said, ‘I’ll ring you back.’ He rang me back ten minutes later and said, ‘Pack your bags. You’re posted to Fighter Command with effect from Monday.’ So I went to Fighter Command at Bentley Priory and spent twelve — spent two years there on detachment in Fighter Command’s, um, aeronautical, er, aircraft engineering set up, Command Head Quarters, with some quite serious responsibilities which I thoroughly enjoyed.
CB: We’ll have a break there for a mo?
BS: Yeah, please. Wait a minute don’t, don’t switch the thing off. [background noise]
CB: You’ve done really well. Now when you went to Bentley Priory of course you had a different role altogether, so what was that.
BS: Absolutely. Well I was essentially the coffee boy for two warrant officers, a flight lieutenant and a squadron leader, who were responsible for the instrument and electrical activities within Fighter Command or all Fighter Command RAF stations. Warrant Officer Lendy [?] was the electrician expert and had come up from, er, previously come up from a Hawker Hunter squadron and had a lot of expertise with Hawker Hunters and in the map drawer in the office he had diagrams, electrical diagrams, for all the Hunters in Fighter Command with all the modifications that they’d had on the relevant diagrams drawn, up to date, with all the terminations marked so that he could actually see the, the modification state of all our Hunters in the Fighter — in the Command. He was pretty good. I know at one time we’d had problems from one station, um, about double power failure warning lights that generate a failure warning light, both of them coming on, and the squadron responsible had been checking for that, um, repeated failure and we kept getting defect reports in the Fighter Command and Doug Lendy [?], this latest one we had, he said, ‘This is ridiculous.’ He took home the diagram relevant to that aircraft. He came back to the office the following morning and he said to me, ‘Do you know about this?’ So I said, ‘Yes Sir.’ He said, ‘Well, read that report again.’ So I read the report. He said, ‘Right now point to the problem.’ I thought, ‘Good Heavens.’ So I looked at the diagram. ‘Well there’. ‘Of course it bloody is.’ He says. It was the earth bolt that took the two power failure warning lights’ negative leads to earth. That was the only point that they’d got in common so they could only both fail —
CB: Because of that.
BS: At that point. Checked up, rang, rang the flight sergeant on the squadron and he said, ‘Yes, of course we’ve checked the earth bolt.’ He said, ‘Well go and check it yourself.’ So he did and came back and reported, ‘Yes, it’s the problem.’ They’d stripped the earth bolt down which contained lots of other earth wires as well in a stack and progressively, as this fault had occurred, the electrician had gone out and tightened down the nut, cured the problem, tightened down the nut, cured the problem but of course each time he tightened it down on the corrosion, the burning and corrosion, and each time it was burning through. So he’d solved it at Bentley Priory several miles away. He’d solved the problem that they’d been struggling with for months.
CB: Because they didn’t do the job right.
BS: Because they didn’t do the job right. But they replaced all the — all the terminations on the cables and cleaned up the earth bolt properly and put it all back and tightened it down properly. Problem gone. So that was Doug Lendy [?]. A man I kind of admired, um, and then as I say —
CB: So your role was quite broad though.
BS: Absolutely broad, yeah, and one could argue it was outside my pay scale.
CB: OK.
BS: I had responsibilities way above my station [slight laugh] which —
CB: So you had to go on sorties to stations sometimes. What were they?
BS: Well, we started to develop electronic, um, combined electronic centres on the Fighter Command stations. Bomber Command had already done it for their, their stations. They had, Bomber Command, um, electronic servicing centres which did all the electrics and radio and radar and they started to develop one for Fighter — especially for Fighter Command and my boss was responsible, of course, for the layout of the power supplies and air supplies, electrical supplies, all of that sort of thing within the electronic servicing centre and where things were serviced and how power was taken to each bench, control panels and so on and so forth. And I remember making him little paper lozenges so he could lay them out on this map to decide how these pieces of equipment were going to be laid out in the electronic centre. And then he started sending me out to where these centres were being built, in particular one at Leconfield, and I remember at one stage I went up to inspect this situation at Leconfield and, looking at the electrical layout, I said to the foreman who was there, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘There’s supposed to be a hole in this wall. There’s supposed to be window in this wall.’ ‘Not on my diagram.’ He said. So I said, ‘Well there’s supposed to be a window. It’s supposed to be this size and whatever, and it’s supposed to be double glazed for heat — for sound control and so on.’ Because the hydraulic generators were being tested in that room and this was where the test bench was observed, was observing it, but the hydraulic generators were noisy. They were to be powering the blue steel, um, equipment.
CB: The stand-off bomb.
BS: Yeah and — but why was that in Fighter Command? Anyway, never mind, um, that was, that was what was, it was the noise abatement thing — and, ‘Well,’ He said, ‘If there’s got to be a window if you draw it and sign it it’ll go in.’ So I drew it in. This was a Ministry of Defence document, plan, for this multimillion pound building and I’m drawing this, drawing this window in and signing it. ‘OK’. He said and it was done and it was incorporated in the other Fighter Command Control Centres. It was cheap tech. I didn’t have that authority but I gave the instruction and he was quite happy to take my signature.
CB: It was needed and you did it.
BS: It was needed and it was done. Nobody ever said anything.
CB: Then another thing you said you did was to do AOC pre- inspections?
BS: Yes, er, I did two or three of those and I’d be greeted at the guard room by a very, um, dutiful policeman. He’d say, ‘Oh good afternoon Chief and I’ll take across to the tech adj.’ Who would be a flight lieutenant and I’d go across to the tech adj with him and knock on the door and we’d, I’d walk into the tech adj’s office. ‘Come in chief. Sit down.’ We’d have a cup of tea, we’d have a cup of coffee. I thought this is not the kind of treatment I’d expect as a chief tech. Oh yes, I’d just come down from Fighter Command but it was just another posting to me but, yeah, I was treated like a man from out of space I suppose. It was really rather rewarding in a way.
CB: Sure. Job satisfaction is important.
BS: Absolutely.
CB: How long did that posting last?
BS: Well it wasn’t really a posting, it was only a detachment.
BS: Right.
BS: But I was there for two years so I stretched that out a bit but when that was coming towards the end I thought, ‘Well I don’t know what, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ And an Air Commodore Avery or Avis, was the chief technical officer in Fighter Command and he came to visit our office one day and he sat down on the only available chair, in the middle of the office, with the two warrant officers, and squadron leader, and flight lieutenant and he sat with is front to the back of the chair and just talked to me and said well you know, ‘Tell me about your career chief or whatever.’ I said, ‘Well it’s coming to an end Sir.’ I said. ‘Well why don’t you sign on?’ So I said, ‘I applied to sign on but they wouldn’t have me.’ He said, ‘Well, why don’t you apply again?’ So the upshot of that was that I applied to sign on and of course as he was the supporting officer it got signed so I was accepted to sign on until I was fifty-five years old, um, so I didn’t really look back but then of course, um, I knew that detachment was going to come to an end and I thought I ought to be trying to guide my career somehow and the opportunity to — they were looking for volunteers to join the Education Branch. They were short of education officers but they needed the Higher National Certificate. I hadn’t got that but I thought, ‘Never mind, I’ll apply anyway.’ And rather to my surprise they accepted me and I went on a three month education course at Uxbridge, to the School of Education at Uxbridge. Wonderful course, um, three months, taught me the psychology of learning and, um, educational techniques and so on and so forth, um, and spent two years in the Education Branch, initially at RAF Melksham, which was another fascinating experience because my boss came to me at one point. He said, ‘Oh, I’ve got something different for you to do Chief.’ So I says, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Well, we’ve got, we’ve got a class of people coming in to study inertial navigation systems.’ So I says, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Well there’s a film on in the cinema.’ He said, ‘Go and watch it.’ He said, ‘That will show you what, what it’s all about.’ OK, so I went and watched this which was run by a by Mr L C Agger who wrote a book on electrics which was used for training at Halton for many years and Mr Agger put this film on for me and it was an American major describing this whole process of inertial navigation. I came out of there ‘cause he was talking with a broad American accent. Don’t ask me which State he came from but a broad American accent that I had great difficulty with. I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t understand anything of that.’ So I actually mentioned it to Agger and he said, ‘Come and watch it again.’ And a lot more made sense this time and inertial navigation, in case don’t know it’s all about, it all depends on three gyroscopes, rate gyroscopes, which detect where you are and if there’s any movement at all in any direction the rate gyroscope detect it and tells you where to and how much by so you programme into this complex where you are and if you move it knows where you’ve gone and that was the principal, basic principle, of inertial navigation. It didn’t last for long because we use satellite navigation, yeah? GPS. So that’s what that was all about and I took two classes of Vulcan aircrew because they carried the blue steel bomb, not the blue streak, the blue steel bomb, stand-off bomb, and that was fitted with inertial navigation, um, so yeah, I took two classes of those and when my — when towards the end of that tour they were moving the education system from Melksham, training system at Melksham, up to, um, somewhere in Norfolk, I can’t think, the name won’t come to me at the moment, but they were moving the training out and the education officer said to me, ‘Well, we‘re not taking the substitute education officers (which is what I was) you’re reverting back to your trade.’ So I said, ‘Well I’d rather not Sir. I’d rather finish my tour with the Education Branch ‘cause I’m enjoying it.’ And he said, ‘Well, what can you suggest?’ And I said, ‘Well do you think they need anybody at Halton?’ ‘Oh that’s an idea.’ He said. ‘Come and see me in ten minutes.’ I went back to see him. He said, ‘Pack your bags you’re posted to Halton with effect from Monday.’ Same resp— so I came back to Halton as a lecturer, teaching electrics and electrical mechanics, to apprentices and, um, when that was coming to an end I went to see Squadron Leader Abraham who was my boss. And he said, ‘They’ll be looking for somebody over the road because they’re going to train ground electrician apprentices. They’ll want somebody.’ He said, ‘Go and see Squadron Leader Blot.’ Who was in charge of the Electrical Squadron, so I went to see Squadron Leader Blot and sat down and he started going through my career. ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Where were you during this period?’ I said, ‘Oh, I was at Fighter Command.’ ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘What were you doing at Fighter Command?’ So I told him what I’ve already related. I said, ‘But I was also seconded as the Deputy to Squadron Leader Goldsmith, same name, who was in charge of the new Lightning squadron we just started when we were taking up Lightnings and I became his second dickie, or his telephone operator, if you like.’ And, er, he said, ‘Oh, you know John Goldsmith do you?’ So I said ‘Well, yeah.’ ‘How did you get on with him?’ ‘Well, alright.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ He said. He picked up the sheaf of notes he’d been writing about my career, tore it up and threw it in the waste paper basket. He said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘You start, start next week.’ [laugh] So I started setting up the original basic training for the first ground electrician apprentices at Halton. End, end of episode.
CB: How long were you at Halton?
BS: [sound of shuffling papers] I need to look at my notes. Until the end of my career. No, not ‘till end of my career ‘cause I went up to, went up to Brampton after that. [background noise]
CB: You did actually do an unaccompanied tour.
BS: In Muharraq in, er, Bahrain.
CB: Where was that? When was that?
BS: In 1969 to ’70.
CB: And what were you doing there?
BS: That was basically just on ground equipment. I was in charge essentially of the battery charging rooms. I had two, I had two, um, Bahraini technicians working in that room and two RAF airman working in the battery charging room.
CB: It was a RAF station was it?
BS: The RAF, the RAF station yeah.
CB: Right.
BS: One of the RAF Hunter fighter squadrons was on that station at the time.
CB: Oh was it?
BS: But it was the airfield for Muharraq, um, so it was a fairly significant, um, middle-eastern destination.
CB: Right.
BS: And yes, as I say, I spent twelve months there.
CB: So fast forward to Halton. So you finished at Halton?
BS: Yeah and I came —
CB: After you did the ground electrical servicing course?
BS: Yes, at Halton, did the Muharraq trip and then, when I came back from, from Muharraq, I was posted to RAF Benson.
CB: Oh yes.
BS: On 90 group, um, Tactical Communications Wing, and spent about twelve months there I think and, er, didn’t quite know where my career as going from there, um, and decided to do something about it and there was, er, a request for people to join the Trade Testing, Trade Standards and Testing Board, which I applied for and was accepted and, and was posted back to Halton where the Trade Standards testing organisation had been established.
CB: Right.
BS: So I worked there for Trade Standard and Testing for a while, um, setting up well trade tests for electricians, essentially ground electricians.
CB: Right.
BS: And then they moved the Trade Standard and Testing thing to Bram— RAF Brampton, near Huntingdon and, of course, I moved up with them and, er, carried on the same kind of work with, um, various ranks of ground electrician training and then they wanted me to join, or asked me to join, the team, a team of technicians writing skill and knowledge specifications which were, um, oh, qualifications couched in behavioural terms, um, for all the trades in the Air Force and although I wrote some for ground electricians I also wrote some for musicians and for marine engineers, or helped to write them for those people, but yeah, all of them started off with a trained man can [?] and then went on to describe how you tested the activities that these people had to do, which was an interesting exercise, and that took me up to 1975 when I left the Royal Air Force.
CB: So you didn’t go to fifty five?
BS: I did not and the reason I didn’t go, of course, was because, um, I felt sure at the age of fifty-five I wouldn’t be able to get a job outside anyway and I wasn’t going to get promoted beyond Chief Technician anyway, probably because I needed a haircut.
BT: No doubt at all.
CB: You never learned the lesson then.
BT: No, no. He doesn’t know what the inside of a hair dressers looks like.
CB: Right, so what happened then?
BS: Well —
CB: So 1975 comes —
BS: Well, 1974-ish they had been looking for people to volunteer for early retirement, for redundancies in certain groups and trade groups and age categories and ranks and I was looking for one of these so I could get out before I was fifty-five so I could get employment outside and in 1974, my birthday, my trade and rank came up as being eligible so I applied to leave and they let me go, um, so I got a reasonable redundancy return and left, as I say, in 1975.
CB: OK.
BS: Right.
CB: Then what did you do?
BS: Went — I was on the dole for six months on, er, previous age related unemployment benefit, um, doing odd jobs, odd little bits for people, bit of decorating here and bit of electrics there and applying for jobs around Aylesbury, in particular. I went, um, for one job was a training consultant with the Ministry — which branch of the Ministry I can’t tell you at this stage, um, but I didn’t get that job. I went for a job at — over at Haddenham, on the airfield there, and I was too well qualified for one job that they’d got and under qualified for another job they’d got so they hadn’t got anything to offer me. So I’m scratching around a bit ‘cos I was coming to the end of my six months and I had applied to go back to Halton as an instructor and I got eventually an interview and I went back to Halton for the interview and I got the job as a civilian instructor at Halton, and I went back actually teaching apprentices, whose a course I’d previously helped to organise, and, er, went back as I say training ground electricians as a civilian, yeah, and then they were going to move that training, the ground electricians, to RAF St Athan. I thought I don’t need to go there and they said, ‘Well, alright you can stay here but you’ll have to train, train aircraft electricians.’ I thought I don’t really want to go down that learning curve because there was some very complicated equipment on aeroplanes by that time and I thought, ‘Well, no I don’t want to go to St Athan.’ So I was struggling a bit and I spoke to my friend Mr Ken Hewer [?] and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you apply for a job at Southall Technical College.’ Where he worked. So I did and after an interview, which I spent a fair time talking about myself, I was invited to accept the job at Southall, and I worked there until I was made redundant from their aircraft department at Southall Tech and then retired and lived in the lap of luxury ever since.
CB: How old were you when you retired, aged sixty-five?
BS: No, I was only fifty— only fifty-five, fifty-six? Let me think. When did I actually retire? I don’t know whether I’ve got that down here. [sound of shuffling papers] [pause]
CB: You reckon you finished early, did you?
BS: ’85, ‘85 so I’d have been fifty-six? Yeah?
CB: You were at Southall you were teaching?
BS: Aircraft technicians from British Airways.
CB: Oh right.
BS: And some of Colonel Gadhafi’s Air Force and civilian airline personnel too.
CB: Right. So retired in ‘85.
BS: A little bit more meat on the bones in there.
CB: Just one final thing. What was the most memorable thing about your experience in the RAF would you think?
BS: ‘Struth. In some respects I think my tour of Malta from ‘52 to ‘54 but then that two years at Fighter Command Headquarters was an eye opener and a wonderful experience, you know, so looking back for favourites is really rather difficult because I had a thoroughly enjoyable thirty years really. Very few grey or black spots.
CB: Ok. Good. Well I really think we ought to stop it there.
BS: Well, I think we ought to.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Barry Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-18
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithBM170118
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:32:59 audio recording
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Bahrain--Muḥarraq
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--London
Bahrain
Bahrain--Muḥarraq
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-02
1948
1975
Description
An account of the resource
Barry passed the RAF’s apprentice entrance examination in February 1945, aged 15, and went to RAF Halton to become an electrician. He discusses the three training which resulted in the First Ordinary National Certificate.
In 1948, Barry was posted to RAF St Athan No. 32 Maintenance Unit. He initially serviced a flight simulator, then moved to the Aircraft Electrical Servicing Squadron. After a year, he was posted to RAF Cranwell, servicing generators and was promoted to corporal. He passed his leading aircraftman examination. He spent two years in Malta before being posted to RAF Honington, where he became a sergeant.
Barry wanted to service flight simulators, did a course and was posted for two years to Fighter Command at Bentley Priory. He had a broad role in aircraft engineering at Command Headquarters.
Barry moved to become an education officer and did a course at the School of Education at RAF Uxbridge. He spent two years in the education branch, initially at RAF Melksham. He was then posted to RAF Halton to teach electrics and electrical mechanics before setting up the basic training for the first ground electrician apprenticeships.
Barry undertook an unaccompanied 12-month tour to RAF Muharraq (Bahrain) and was in charge of the battery charging room. A further twelve months were spent at RAF Benson on 90 Group Tactical Communication Wing before returning to RAF Halton to join the Trade Standards and Testing Board. This moved to RAF Brompton where he wrote skills and knowledge specifications for RAF trades. Barry left the RAF in 1975 and continued in teaching and training roles.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
childhood in wartime
displaced person
ground personnel
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Honington
RAF St Athan
shelter
training
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chaplin, Sheila Reid
S R Chaplin
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Shelia Reid Chaplin (b. 1930). She was a school girl during the war and experienced the bombing of Liverpool.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chaplin, SR-2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Sheila Reid Chaplin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AChaplinSR161115
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Sheila Chaplin grew up in Liverpool where her mother was the matron and her father the secretary of a hospital. Sheila and her parents listened to the radio as declaration of war was announced and Sheila recalls her parents reacted to the news with a sense of foreboding. Sheila’s first experience of the sight of war was seeing injured survivors of Narvik lined up on bunks in the hospital awaiting medical attention. Once the family were bombed out of their cellar shelter and transferred to the Anderson shelter in the garden. It was then she saw Liverpool ablaze. When undergoing her training to become a lawyer after the war she saw the still bombed sites of London.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:32:36 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Liverpool
England--Lancashire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/737/10739/AChapmanR170215.1.mp3
741e1432377c8f20e42b12d1c7b6da70
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapman, Rita
R Chapman
Rita Pritchard
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Rita Chapman (b. 1935). She experienced the bombing of London and trained as a nurse.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chapman, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 15th of February 2017 and this is the second in the series, “And We Were There Too.” And we’re talking to Rita Chapman who lived in London at the time. So, Rita what are you earliest recollections of life?
RC: Oh, standing in our back garden in Lettsom Street which was Camberwell SE5 and seeing the docks on fire. That’s the first recollection I’ve got. I can’t think —
CB: So, where were you living?
RC: Oh, Lettsom Street. Camberwell SE5. And I was looking forward to going to school and then I was being moved up to East Dulwich. And I went to school at Lindholme Private School. I stayed there until I was fifteen. When I left school I went to the United Friendly Insurance Company in their ordinary branch department. And I stayed with them seven years and took my insurance exams. And then after that I always wanted to do my nursing training which my father was against. But I was getting older by then and didn’t need his permission. And I went to Kings College Hospital. Once again back to Denmark Hill or Camberwell SE5 and did my training. When I got married I went in to the pub trade. My, although my father was in the pub trade I didn’t have a great deal of dealings with it until I was married. And then I finished my training and went in the pub trade. And I’ve done that for thirty three years.
CB: And your father had a, was in the pub trade. Did he have a pub or what was it?
RC: Oh yes.
CB: Or did he work for the brewery?
RC: In those days you didn’t really have managers in pubs. You went to a training and you had to put down a substantial amount of money and like become, can’t say owner. I can’t think of the actual term. But you had to, you didn’t manage it it was yours and you either sank or you swam. One or the other. But would you like me to go back talking more about the war now?
CB: Yes. What age were you when the war started?
RC: Yes. I was living in Camberwell when the war started. When we got bombed out the first time we had an Anderson shelter in the back garden and we’d been [laughs] we’d been around to the local pub and come back and got in the shelter. And they started to dig us out and told us to sing. That is, I can always remember that. That they told us to sing. It always struck me as funny. And after that they repaired the house and we went back to live there. Then we got an incendiary bomb through the roof. Once again we got thrown out. And other things I can remember is going shopping with my mother and she would say, we’d just shopping or lining up for this, lining up for that and the planes would come over and they would machine gun us. And people used to shout out, ‘Lay that child down in the gutter.’ I spent many hours in the gutter [laughs] But really I can remember the street shelters where we used to be out and you had to run into the shelter, and at night oh then we had another hit on the house in Lettsom Street and then we were transferred up to a block of council flats at Peckham Rye. SE15. And one of the things you remember about that more than anything it was a flat that had been reinforced and you used, the parents used to put children to bed at night. Off you went to bed about 8 o’clock all laughing your heads off because it was altogether, you know. All roughly the same age. Kids, six and seven. That sort of age. I can’t remember. I can’t really remember a great deal. A great deal more about it. Apart from the fact that they used to drop a flare before they dropped a bomb and us kids used to watch for the flares when it was dark at night. ‘Ah, there’s going to be another bomb,’ Not realising how serious everything was. And really to us it was like a big party. Especially if we could rush down and see where the bomb had fell.
Other: Was it, was it a land mine?
RC: It’s true. Yeah. I really can’t think of much else you’d like to know.
CB: Well, who else, who do you know was hurt in the bombing?
RC: Pardon?
CB: How many people do you know, did you know, who were hurt?
RC: Oh. Really a great deal of people. I can’t give you a number on that because some were severely hurt and you never see them again.
CB: Right.
RC: And oh, another thing I can remember the men used to get badly burned. Especially on their faces. And they used to put this blue stuff all over their face. And you could see. If you saw a man come towards with all like blue paint, it wasn’t a paint, of course not, but like a blue paint on them you knew that they’d been involved in a fire. So that’s another thing we used to see.
CB: What sort of tasks would they have been doing?
RC: What sort of —
CB: To get. What sort of things would they have been doing to get —?
RC: Like firemen, you know.
CB: Right.
RC: And that sort of thing. Or just rushing in to help and not thinking about it. And that’s how they got burned and of course they were scarred for life then in those days. I know you wouldn’t be quite so much now but in those days you were.
CB: So, with the fire, the damage to your house, was it on fire at any time or was it simply — ?
RC: Oh yes. Yes. Of course. I mean incendiary bomb automatically puts it on fire.
CB: Right.
RC: But when you get the direct hit you, it’s just that all the rubble comes down and usually there’s something left up there like the, up in one of the bedrooms you would see the fireplace still there or something. That’s the sort of thing that used to happen. And as I say they used to keep saying ‘Please keep, please keep singing.’ And I could never think why I was singing.
Other: So they could hear you.
RC: I don’t know really whether it had any significance or not. But that’s what they used to say.
CB: Right. Ok. And in these circumstances where were you when you were doing the singing? You talked about the Anderson shelter.
RC: Oh, the Anderson shelter. Well, we’d get, we got buried. We were buried three times over all. But I suppose really it couldn’t have been very very deep. Although it did feel it at the time you know. You think. ‘Oh, am I going to get out of here?’
CB: Well, as a child of course you’re quite small aren’t you?
RC: Yes.
CB: In that.
Other: That’s why they were singing.
RC: Well, as I say I think the first time we got bombed out I was about coming up six, I think.
CB: Right.
RC: And of course I was ten, ten and a half when the war finished.
CB: Yeah. So we’re talking about the Blitz.
RC: Yeah, the —
CB: Rather than the Battle of Britain, aren’t we?
RC: Oh well. You never knew when the sirens were going to go. You never knew, if you went out shopping whether you were going to come home or not. My father was in the First World War therefore he didn’t, he was injured so therefore he never went in the Second World War. But when he went to work you never knew whether he was coming home or not. That’s just things that you used to think about, you know. Of course and I was always with adults and you become quite old fashioned really.
CB: That’s interesting. You say you were with adults because —
RC: Well, there was no other children about. They’d all been evacuated apart from one girl that lived in the block of flats where I did. But my father would not let me go. I know it’s a wrong attitude to have but he used to say, ‘If we’re going to get killed we’ll all be killed together.’
CB: Right.
RC: Which, of course is entirely wrong but —
CB: And this, this other girl. What happened to her in the end?
RC: Well, Thelma. Her name was Thelma. She was with us all during the war but then when we all sort of split up after the war, went our various ways and living in different places I never see her again. But really she was only, her parents and her were only neighbours. And why, why she never went to be evacuated I really don’t know.
CB: So, there were a number of families with children who’d been evacuated.
RC: Everybody in the flats. All the children went. There was forty eight flats in our block. You had to have children to have one of the flats. And there was only me and this girl left. All the other children got evacuated. Oh, and everywhere we went we had to carry our gasmasks.
CB: Did you wear it much?
RC: Well, only to try it on and to play about with it and play games. But yes, we used to like wearing our gas masks. But it wasn’t official, you know.
CB: No.
RC: We didn’t have to use it in an official capacity.
Other: [unclear]
RC: But we always carried our gasmasks.
CB: It was a good game.
RC: Well. Of course. Kids like. But as I say I was lucky. I went to a private school and they had all the things done. That was in a house, and, a very big one I might add and they had a place reinforced for us. So basically I never what you’d call missed any, well a very minor amount of schooling.
CB: And was the school fairly well attended or was it —
RC: Oh yes. I can’t remember the exact number but there would be about fifty of us I suppose. It was attached to a school that was in Camberwell and it was called the Mary Datchelor. And this was our private wing away from it. Of course, everybody that went there was paid for. All our parents had to pay for us. And even to a pencil or even pen or pencil or exercise book. Our parents had to buy it all and pay for, pay a fee for us to be there. And if you wanted to carry on schooling after fifteen you got transferred, I didn’t go but to the Mary Datchelor and then you could stay on. I believe it was ‘til you were eighteen and then of course university if you wanted to go.
CB: So, this was a private wing of that school.
RC: Yes. The Datchelor.
CB: What — back in, back in your own street what was the approach of other families to you and Thelma?
RC: Well —
CB: Because their children weren’t there so —
RC: They were a bit against our parents in a way about keeping us there but it never, we never, we weren’t made to feel awkward or anything. But I can, I know that they spoke to my parents about it and all that but of course couldn’t do anything about it.
CB: I wondered if they gave you some attention that they, simply because their children weren’t there.
RC: Well, sometimes we got if we were lucky I might have got a few sweets. But that’s about it all. A few extra sweets. But no. Of course you’ve got to remember at that time there was a lot of black market went on and my father, I might add was well into it and we really didn’t — I’ve thought of this since I’ve been older. We really didn’t go short of anything. Not what you’d call short anyway.
CB: Because the docks were still operating presumably.
RC: A doctor.
Other: Yes.
CB: The docks.
Other: Yes.
RC: Oh, the docks.
CB: The docks were still operating.
RC: Oh yeah. The docks were still operating. Yes. I mean they never shut, shut them right down but that was, I believe it was about the 4th of September the first time the docks got hit.
CB: 1940.
RC: Yes. And I can remember from our back garden then in Lettsom Street, number 49 we could see the docks. And of course you can see the fire. All very exciting for us children.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. At what stage did the evacuation of children take place? Before then was it?
RC: I believe it was before. Before the, it all started. I think they went the end of ’39.
CB: Yeah.
RC: I might be wrong on that but I know you could see them all in their line and all their —
Other: [unclear]
RC: Tickets on them with their names and where they were going and all that.
Other: It was the same day after day.
RC: And of course I could only just stand and watch.
Other: Yeah.
CB: And when you, when they were, they were going on trains.
RC: Oh yes. On trains and —
CB: What was their parents —
RC: They had to go into like a, like the station platforms and that and people come forward and took what they wanted. A boy or a girl. Or two boys or two girls. Lots of brothers and sisters got split up.
CB: Did they? At the other end.
RC: Yeah. Yeah. But even so, you know and some of them were really only little. They didn’t sort of say oh because they’re four and a half or three they can’t go. They went. And of course that was, that was it.
CB: And where were they going because this is East London?
RC: All different seaside places.
CB: The seaside.
RC: Or up the north. Or away from where there was any bombing. I think some even come down to Aylesbury didn’t they? Because they didn’t get exactly bombing here. Here in Aylesbury you didn’t.
Other: It didn’t start —
RC: Well, I didn’t live here then but I mean I have been told you got the odd bomb dropped, didn’t you?
Other: It didn’t start for a while.
RC: Oh.
CB: What —
Other: Anywhere.
CB: What did you know about what was being dropped by the Germans?
RC: Nothing much.
CB: The bombs.
RC: I just, I just knew that the, if you saw the flare or a star you knew there was going to be a bomb so get out of it. What bombs they were I can’t tell you. I can’t remember. But they were certainly powerful whatever they were.
CB: Because one of the things they dropped was a landmine.
RC: Oh yes. That’s right.
CB: So that came down.
RC: I remember land mines because you could tread on those couldn’t you?
CB: Well, the land mine was pretty big but there were smaller.
Other: Came down —
RC: Yeah. I forgot land mines.
CB: Yeah. What about —
RC: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Butterfly bombs? The butterfly bombs.
Other: Came down.
CB: Floated. Floated down.
RC: That’s right. There used to be land mines. Yeah. But I, I oh and the gunfire and the barrage balloons. If you saw the barrage balloons go up you knew you was in trouble.
CB: So, when there wasn’t a raid.
RC: Just carry on as normal.
CB: Were the barrage balloons down near the ground?
RC: Yeah. On the ground.
CB: On the ground.
RC: On the ground.
CB: Right.
RC: Yes. Yes.
CB: And who were they operated by?
RC: I don’t know what you called. There was men operated them.
CB: There were.
RC: To put them up and take them down.
CB: Right.
Other: RAF.
RC: And you’d be surprised how quickly they were put up.
CB: They could get them up.
RC: You could go to places where they were down. Where they kept them. And you’d be there and they’d have to go up so up they’d go.
CB: Yes. And the anti-aircraft guns. Were there any?
RC: Yes. You’d get that.
CB: Any firing near you? Were they situated near you?
RC: Yes. Yes. There was some guns. Some guns quite near us.
CB: Where would they be? What sort of place?
RC: Peckham Rye Park.
CB: Right.
RC: Which is, is partly a park and partly a big Common.
CB: Yeah.
RC: And it’s still the same today.
CB: And were they manned by men or women?
RC: Men. Most of the women went on to the land. On to the, that’s right. The land. You know. Land girls. You didn’t see many girls in uniform. Oh, you did see nurses. Nurses in uniform. But you didn’t see many like. Sometimes you saw ATS. ATS girls. Oh, and in the flats you had [pause] oh God what did you call them? Wardens. And they —
CB: Air raid wardens.
RC: Air raid wardens. Yes. And they used to have to see that all the blackout was pulled over and you could count, you know. They knew the number of the flats by adding them up. Like I lived at 29 so you counted up six I think it was and that was the flat, the flat above. And he said, ‘Put that light out.’
CB: Apart from the bombs dropping what else was dropping?
RC: I don’t —
CB: Because the anti-aircraft guns were busy.
RC: Yeah.
CB: So, to what extent did you get the shrapnel?
RC: Oh, we got loads and loads of shrapnel. We used to collect it.
CB: Was it dangerous to walk in the street?
RC: Yes.
CB: With that dropping.
RC: Yes. It would be really but of course you don’t think of this.
CB: No.
RC: You just go.
CB: But —
RC: I’m not saying the adults hadn’t thought about it. Of course they did. But us kids we’d just go. We didn’t — we, we weren’t old enough to realise how bad it really was. Which perhaps was a good thing.
CB: And what, how did the parents brief you about the shrapnel coming from the anti-aircraft guns?
RC: Oh, I was only ever told, ‘Please be careful with the shrapnel coming down,’ and, you know. ‘Do tell us if you get hit by any,’ and all that sort of thing and, but as I say we used to collect it.
CB: Yeah. Did you do that later the next day?
RC: Oh, the next day. There was always shrapnel about. You didn’t have to be, think, ‘Oh I must take that. It won’t be there tomorrow.’ That piece may not be there but there was plenty of the others. Oh, and there was a lot of looting went on when the houses got knocked down. Obviously there was furniture wasn’t there? All about and that, you know. Albeit it might be broken. But you used to get these people going over the rubble to see what they could find. It’s true.
Other: You don’t think about that.
CB: No.
RC: You used to always get like rag and bone men.
CB: Yeah.
RC: And all that.
CB: And what did the police do about that?
RC: Nothing much. We never saw a policeman very often.
CB: They were pretty short of police were they? Or they didn’t bother?
RC: Didn’t see them very often at all.
Other: They’d all joined up.
RC: And they used to close their eyes to lots of things.
CB: Yeah. They didn’t have the resources.
RC: No. But as I say I make it all sound like a party and I suppose in a way it was to us children.
CB: Would you say that it was exciting for children?
RC: Sorry?
CB: Was it exciting?
RC: Yes.
CB: For children. Or boring?
RC: Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. You did used to get a bit excited about it, you know. And I think our parents were pleased that we were like that and not morbid. Which you so easily could have been. But the worst part was like, you never knew if dad was coming home from work. That was one of the things I did remember. I always, if he was a bit late because of traffic, trams. We had trams and buses and they got held up. You used to say, ‘Oh he’s late. I wonder what’s happened to him.’ That’s the sort of thing. That did used to happen.
CB: And what about food? That was part of this black market operation.
RC: Oh yes. There was never much food. I can’t remember the quantity in our ration books what we were given but it was something like this. Two ounces of cheese a week. Two ounces of butter. One egg. And about four ounces of meat or something like that. That’s, that’s how it was. And of course fish wasn’t on rations so if you got fish you was in a queue. And also you could get horse meat. And people used to pass it off as steak. And used to get whale meat and they’d pass that off as steak but of course you’ve got to remember that there’s oil in that so when you bit into it you got a mouth full of oil. So I didn’t like whale meat [laughs] Oh, that was horrible. And the potatoes and greens if there was any. But you was always in a queue and quite often you’d get there and they was, you would think oh I’m not too far back today but it would all be gone. And apples of course. If they were in season you lived on apples. You got apple pie. Apple this. Apple that. Everything looked like an apple. But there wasn’t things like bananas or anything. Oh, and sweets were on ration and I think we were [pause] I think it was about a half a pound we got in a week, I think. Something like that. Or six ounces. I’m not quite sure.
Other: Clothing coupons.
[pause]
RC: I wasn’t really involved with the rationing. I mean I just I was lucky if I got something naturally.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. What about drinks? Did they give you lemonades or was it plain water?
RC: No. There, there was some lemonade you could get. There was things like that. Oh and you used to go into a restaurant. The restaurants used to have a quota and you got to know which restaurant was going to serve a lunch. A hot lunch. Like a roast dinner or something or a steak and kidney pie that day. So you got in the queue to go there.
CB: How often were you disappointed in queuing?
RC: Oh, you very often got disappointed. It was just the way of life that you never got there. But at school I used to get a half a day every Wednesday and I used to — we had a departmental store in Rye Lane called Jones and Higgins, I was taken there for lunch every Wednesday. And you never knew what you were going to get but I always got there every Wednesday to lunch.
CB: So there was a shortage of children on the street as it were but in other areas were there more children? Or had most of them been evacuated elsewhere also?
RC: Most of the areas a lot of the children had gone so I couldn’t really tell you in in numbers but everywhere children were evacuated. And of course cinemas and that. They were open but nine time times out of ten they’d, they’d shut, you know. Oh, we’ve had so and so happen or, ‘We’ve had a bomb come through the roof.’ So you could just get disappointed. I did get to a couple of pantomimes but more by luck than judgement. There you go. That’s what happened.
CB: And as the war progressed then it got quieter.
RC: No. It got worse didn’t it? Because we used to have —
Other: Buzz bombs.
RC: V-2s or —
CB: V-1 and V-2.
RC: V-1s. And they used to cut out didn’t they?
CB: The V-2, V-1s. Yes.
RC: And you could be sitting indoors or perhaps in the shelter because the shelter was open all the time. You didn’t have to shut it. And you’d sit there, you’d think, oh, oh that engine’s cut out. It did sound as if it was over the top of us. I’m not saying it was but it used to sound like that and of course it just dropped, didn’t it, after that? And I believe the V-2s were a bit different weren’t they?
CB: Well, you couldn’t see those coming.
RC: Oh. I knew there was something different about them. But luckily we didn’t get hit with a V-1 or a V-2. And the shelters and the flats that I lived in, in the council flats, they never got hit either. So we were alright.
CB: Yes.
RC: Very lucky if you like to put it and we used to have air raid wardens out all, at the night, all long, you know. Helping us and all that. People used to club together more didn’t they? And all, and it you shared more things. Oh, I’ve got so and so, you know. So, I’ve got some extra butter or some extra fats if you like and I liked cheese so we’d do a swap. I know that used to go on.
CB: So, this is all based on the ration but how did the black market work? What sort of things were on the black market?
RC: Everything really.
CB: Food as well?
RC: Everything. I don’t say you could get much clothes or anything like that but food which is really all I was interested in was the food. What I was going to get to eat. Like my father used to go to a special sweet shop every week. Every Saturday on his way home from work and he’d always come home and give me whatever they’d given him. And I used to think oh, Mars bar. Bar of chocolate. And that happened every week. What he paid for it I can’t tell you because it was costly for the time obviously. And oh, one thing we used to have. Oh, my mother used to be, the butcher’s she went to she used to wash their little white coats for them. And of course she’d collect the dirties and give the clean and in the pockets was always enough steak for two adults and a child. I don’t mean a fantastic amount but a lot for the day. And every Saturday and to this day I don’t do it but every Saturday we had steak, proper steak, gravy, mashed potatoes and whatever greens or peas or whatever she could buy. And I always, and I don’t do it to this day. I never cook it unless somebody wants it. I’ve never had, I’ve never had steak and mashed potatoes again. I had it every Saturday for years [laughs] And we used to get a little joint on a Sunday and I realise it was a little joint. Oh, and sometimes you could get a chicken. But not everybody was as lucky as that.
CB: Right.
RC: But you’d got to have the money to do it.
CB: Yeah.
RC: You can’t do it without money whatever happens [pause] My father had a pension from the First World War. It was a good pension for the time and he got that pension right up to the day he died. And he died a week after I got married so that shows you how long he had it for. Quite a long time.
CB: How did you meet your husband?
RC: My husband. He was a British Legion man. And in those days — oh and I used to help out with the British Red Cross. In other words I’d give my time free go in to the place like the Palladium and doing the first — standing there, see the show. Go in uniform and do any first aid that was needed. Well, and when it got to Poppy Day, November the 11th but it’s as you know that’s run by the British Legion. They used to, the British Legion that Jim belonged to they used to detail a man off who had a car which he had and he looked after so many sellers. By that I stood, always stood outside the Co-op in Rye Lane. And that manager used to come out and give me very thick cardboard to stand on and I always got coffee and cakes all the time. And the people from the Legion, Jim he used to come and pick me up and take me back to the Legion headquarters in the area for a lunch. That was alright. And he said to me, ‘Oh, I’ll run you home. Don’t worry. What time are you finishing?’ I said, ‘About five.’ And I said, ‘And I’m working tonight at the Palladium.’ Oh, we could stand and sell our poppies in nursing uniform. You can’t do it now but you could. You could then. So naturally that got you money to stand as, in your nursing uniform. And I never thought but on your tin you had to put your name and address and your phone number and he wrote to me the following week and asked me to go out. And I don’t know how he got it. Oh, I think my phone number must have been on the tin because he phoned home and I wasn’t there. And my mother answered and she said , ‘Oh yes. But let me ask you a question. Have you got a car?’ He said, ‘Yes. I have.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘You’ll be alright then because she won’t go out with anybody without a car.’ [laughs] I thought, ‘Thank you very much, mother.’ But never mind. That’s what we done. That’s how I met him and we were married for forty three years.
CB: Fantastic. We’ll break there for a mo.
[recording paused]
RC: Yes. I think they —
CB: So the two —
RC: Allocated that they could go every now and again. Every couple of months or something.
CB: This is the parents of the children who had been evacuated.
RC: Yeah. The children that were evacuated. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
RC: Yes. That’s right. I’m sure. I forgot all about that. Yeah. I’m afraid I used to think mostly of myself.
CB: That’s ok because that’s what we want but in the background you’ve got people missing their children.
RC: Yes, that’s right. And there were always lots of tears when they got home. I can remember that. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And people who lived in the countryside you didn’t have much to do with.
RC: I never went to the country.
CB: Because you were in the town.
RC: No.
CB: No.
RC: No.
CB: Have you lived most of your life in the London area or did you come —
RC: Yes. I came, I came down here in 1962.
CB: Right. Just for a visit or did you move here?
RC: No. The house that I have on Bedgrove was got through the London Transport.
CB: Oh.
RC: And, I’ve got to think. Yes. That’s right. Got through the London Transport and I’ve got a three bedroom semi-detached house and it cost two thousand pound.
CB: Did it really?
RC: Don’t sound possible does it?
CB: Amazing. No garage in those days.
RC: Not in those days.
CB: Yeah.
RC: We’ve got one now and of course there was no central heating. We’ve had, we had all that put in. But —
CB: What made you come to Aylesbury?
RC: Well, although my husband was always running pubs he kept his job with the London Transport. And when, the houses originally on Bedgrove were built, were built by H C James. And James gave the Transport sixteen plots of land for the men to have a house built and they put the, my husband then was on the clock, you know.
CB: Clocking in and clocking out. Yeah.
RC: Clocking in.
CB: Yeah.
RC: Clocking in. And they put their number of their clock number in a hat and I don’t know who they got to pick them, and their numbers were picked out and we got number sixteen. Yeah. And we had to put a hundred pound down as a deposit.
CB: So, was your husband and you were you both buying the whole thing or just part of it with, with London Transport?
RC: Buying the whole thing with London Transport.
CB: You were. Right. Ok. Good. Stop there again.
[recording paused]
CB: Right. You just said you never saw children when you were out.
RC: Not as such. You might see the odd one but you never saw children and all that sort of thing.
CB: So, the parents went out to the countryside to visit the children but not —
RC: Yes. They did. I can’t remember if they could go whenever they could or whether they used to get help because you’ve got to remember a lot of people couldn’t afford the fare. I know money wasn’t very high was it, in those days?
CB: No. No.
RC: If you lived comfortably or if you were comfortably off you were lucky. But you don’t realise it. You, you just accept it.
CB: Yeah. So, at what stage did the children return to London from being evacuated?
RC: Oh, some came back before the actual war finished. And the majority came back when it, what would it be? We were back before. Was it VJ Day or something we went to? Or something like that because I went didn’t I? With Barry and you. No. You didn’t come did you?
Other: No. It was VE Day.
RC: Yeah.
Other: And then there was VJ Day.
RC: They were back and there were street parties and everything. Flags and goodness knows what.
CB: Ok. So, describe the street parties if you would. Please.
RC: Oh well. There used to be long trestle tables and paper covers on them, you know [unclear] the condition. And all the mum’s used to club together with what they could because things were still on ration and, you know put their currants and their fats. Oh, you had jellies blancmanges, cakes, sandwiches. Horrible paste sandwiches. Salmon and shrimp paste.
CB: Any spam?
RC: Oh God. Yes. Of course. Well, not much because they saved that for their dinners. Because you used to have to have spam fritters. In other words a light batter and fry them. Oh, I don’t like things like that I don’t. Because they think now it’s fashionable now, don’t they? To eat spam. Oh, another thing that wasn’t rationed and if you were lucky enough to know it was the fish and chip shop. So, most people had fish and chips once a week.
Other: Friday night.
RC: Because you could go up there and get that.
CB: So, why was fish and chips not rationed?
RC: Oh, I can’t answer it for you. I don’t know. It wasn’t rationed.
CB: Could it be that it was relatively easy to get because of the fishing?
RC: Well —
CB: And it’s near the coast.
RC: But the registered fish and chips shops were allocated so much and if you were lucky enough to get some. If not you went to another one because Fridays was always fish and chip day wasn’t it?
Other: Oh yeah.
RC: I don’t say they opened every day of the week, or opened lunchtimes as well. But you’d see a long queue for fish and chips.
CB: What was the fish mainly?
RC: Cod. You never had any fancy stuff like.
Other: Conga.
RC: Eh?
Other: Conga.
RC: Oh and —
CB: Conga?
RC: Never had things like scampi.
CB: Right. No.
Other: Conga was conger eel.
CB: Oh, it’s an eel is it? Right.
RC: Well, I think there was rock salmon because you’re not allowed to say that now. Rock salmon it used to be some times.
Other: Would you like a cup of tea?
CB: We’re going to stop again while we —
RC: Had to serve fish and chips.
CB: Oh right, just —
[recording paused]
RC: Oh dear.
CB: So, you actually worked in a chip, a fish and chip shop.
RC: I have worked in a fish and chip shop.
CB: So what’s the technique and how do you serve it?
RC: Well, I’ve worked in three fish and chip shops here in Aylesbury.
CB: Right.
RC: And the one that I worked in last on Bedgrove, at one stage they had every fish and chip shop in Aylesbury and they offered money to the husbands to set all of us up in a fish shop. My husband didn’t want it. He — no. But when you went in they’d always say to you, ‘Now, you can eat as many chips as you like.’ And of course you think that’s great when you first get there and of course once you begin to work there you cannot smell the fish and chips. You know, like you walk along and say, ‘Fish and chip shop.’ If you work in a fish and chip shop you can’t smell it. And usually they give you, if you do a lunchtime shift they either give you something to bring home or you sit down in there and you can eat whatever you like. Whatever’s going. Whatever’s left over if you like. The first thing you learn apart from putting chips in as it was, it’s not now, in a bag. You know, put enough, you pick a scoop of chips up, put in there that’s alright. The first thing you learn is how to pick up a piece of fish and not break it. Because if you break it officially they can’t sell it.
CB: Oh.
RC: And another thing is in those days I mean I’m going back a few years now you could have, you could buy cold fish. In other words what was left over at lunchtime you could put and sell it for half price in the evenings. You’re not allowed to do that now.
Other: Do you want a drink of water? Do you want a drink of water?
RC: But I absolutely enjoy working in a fish shop. It’s lovely.
CB: What is it you like most about that?
RC: I don’t know. I just like serving like I like serving in a pub. But I liked, I love picking up that fish and knowing I can do it. I can fry as well.
CB: Right. So, to what extent is it the people coming in? The variety of people.
RC: Oh, some people. Of course it has altered a lot and it’s got very sophisticated to what it was.
CB: Right.
RC: But people are generally speaking if you’re nice to them they’re generally nice to you. That’s what you’ve got to think about because —
CB: Tea or coffee?
RC: Coffee please. I don’t —
CB: Tea.
RC: But I’ve had, I’ve served in, in lots of places and all like that in lots of fish shops and everything. Because I like being with the public. I mean when I retired from nursing I went back as a volunteer at the hospital. They put me on outpatients. And it was at Stoke Mandeville. Well, outpatients used to run alongside A&E so as you came in you went down here to A&E and I was in the front desk. I used to look after sixteen doctors. And what happened, you had a, above you had all the names of the doctors that were working that day and where they were. You knew from experience where they were but it was up there. And people like yourself would come towards me with a letter to show me where they were going or they would know where they were going and they’d tell me because they could never find their way about. And you would direct them, you know. Because it was next to A&E you used to get quite a lot of people have a go at you and also at the particular time I was there they were building up at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and therefore you had a great deal of trouble to park. And they used to come in moaning about that. And I’ve had, well I had this man walk in. One man walks in with his hands like this. And I couldn’t think what was wrong. Whatever had he got in his hand? I couldn’t see. and he got up to me. He threw the tablets at me. He said, ‘He’s in the car. What are you going to do about it?’ So, I said, ‘Nothing. Go to A&E.’ You see, he’d got a druggie in his car.
CB: Yeah.
RC: And would I go and help him? Another time I was there and a man’s coming towards me which I thought at the time must be his son. It worked out it was but that’s how I thought of it. And this boy was covered from head to foot in blood. And I thought, Oh God whatever’s happened here? You know. And he just came up to me and said, ‘Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to clean him up for me and see what’s wrong with him?’ I said, ‘No. I’m not,’ I said, ‘You go down to A&E.’ ‘You’ve got too much,’ he said to me, ‘old chat,’ and of course you don’t answer back and it’s very hard not to.
CB: Yeah.
RC: But I stayed there three and a half years and then they computerised the A&E department. The bit behind me. They computerised the outpatients. Where you come. And they said I was taking a paid person’s job. I used to do them two days a week and an odd day if they were short.
[pause]
CB: I think we’ll stop for a bit.
[recording paused]
CB: Let me just do this. So, you mentioned earlier that the fish and chip shops were allocated.
RC: Well, that’s the way I see it.
CB: Yes.
RC: Because, yeah.
CB: So —
RC: Thank you.
CB: Did you get to the stage where actually they ran out of fish and chips because it didn’t meet the demands?
RC: Oh yes. Yes. But you knew you’d more coming in but you’d got to be shut for a couple of days. I see —
CB: Right.
RC: What you mean. I hadn’t quite thought of it like that, you know. But it wasn’t like that when I worked on Bedgrove. It was all, all full steam ahead.
CB: Yeah. Organised. Yeah.
RC: But the reason I learned to fry — the people up on Bedgrove that was a family and the son that run the Bedgrove shop had been involved in a very serious accident. He’d lost an eye, got one leg and his father had bought the Bedgrove shop so he’d got a shop of his own. You know.
CB: Yeah.
RC: Well, this particular night I’m up there working with him because you’re not as busy every night of the week. Like Monday you’re not going to be so busy as you are Friday. And he fell over. Because out the back we had a place where you could, you know get the fish ready and of course it was wet out there and he fell over. So we got him, put him up. He got himself up really. And I set him down. I said, ‘You can’t work. I’ll have to get your dad.’ And I phoned his dad. He came up and he said, ‘Rita, can you run this shop? I’ll come back at closing time.’ I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll run the shop for you.’
CB: Right.
RC: Thank you. But be a devil.
CB: I’ll come back to that in a minute. Yeah.
RC: But —
CB: So, you ran the shop.
RC: I said, ‘Yes. I can run the shop’. He said, ‘You can put extra chips on can’t you? But listen here. You are not to serve any plaice and you tell them we haven’t got any tonight,’ he said, ‘Because,’ he said, ‘If you —’ he’d not, he was saving his, you know looking after himself because he said, ‘If you break any and you’ve got the whole responsibility of the shop I’m going to lose a lot of money.’ So, I hadn’t run out but I had, just said I haven’t got any. I wasn’t doing any that night. But it was lovely. I loved all that.
CB: Right.
Other: I don’t think I’ve lived.
CB: You’re right there.
RC: I don’t like fish and chips that much. I don’t eat it very often. Only here.
CB: So, we’re talking, we’re talking about the supply of fish and chips but the pubs which your father was running what was the supply situation with beer there? Because there was a lot of damage to transport.
RC: The beer wasn’t too bad. But what was in very very short supply was bottled Guinness. You didn’t have draught Guinness in those days. Bottle Guinness was very very short and most of the women, like my mother for instance and that sort of age group like thirty five all drank a nice Guinness. They tried to get you to drink milk stout which, well milk stout is sweet. And I can always remember that you always had to put a few under the counter. You didn’t have lager in those days. I’m not saying you couldn’t get it in a posh hotel but you couldn’t get it in an everyday pub. And did you know that we used to have just beer houses? You know what? You know —
CB: Yes. Yes.
RC: Just a beer house.
CB: So, describe a beer house.
RC: It just sells beer. Nothing else. It’s doesn’t, I’m not saying it don’t sell lemonade but it does not sell spirits. Because one of the pubs my dad had was a beer, beer house. Horrible. But you don’t see them now.
CB: Who were most of the clientele?
RC: Sorry?
CB: Who were the main people? Who were the customers?
RC: Men.
CB: In his pubs.
RC: Men.
CB: Yeah. Doing what? What jobs?
RC: Drink as many pints as they could in as quick a time as they could,
CB: Yeah. But what, what jobs did they have?
RC: Mostly on the building. Roof tilers. Since I’ve lived down here I went to work in a club. It was by Hazel’s. It was called Aylesbury Social Club. Remember it? Trevor Ives run it, didn’t he? Oh, he did. And we used to get women in there. But we used to have all of these roof tilers come in. And they used to come in on a Friday night and hand over the bar just things wasn’t as dear as they are today. And they would, just say for arguments sake it was fifteen quid and they’d say, ‘When that’s gone we’ve got no more.’ Because you could get a lot of beer for fifteen quid in those days. I’d have them on the floor. So, I used to phone the police. They used to come and help me and we’d leave them on the floor. I’ve had —
[recording pauses]
CB: The off licence.
RC: Victoria Wine was in Cambridge Street. Not there now. It’s now a shop that does alterations on clothes. And the place used to notify you by ringing you up and telling you if there were drunks or anything who had been let out of prison. Because they were going to come in to you and demand a certain amount of stuff. But another thing you used to do in the old days if we were in a pub and we had several pubs but we put managers in and we went around them. And my husband saw a fight, as he thought, starting. Two men. Not women. He’d say, ‘Right. Go and stop that will you?’ You always sent the woman out and you wouldn’t have got knifed or anything but you would today. And the ruling is today if you manage a house you do not come from behind the counter.
CB: Why is that?
RC: Well, so, so you don’t get killed. Knifed.
Other: You’re safe behind the counter.
RC: And if I go in a pub today and I drink gin and tonic.
CB: Yeah.
RC: And I’m in there on my own I get, I think to myself I ought to go to the loo I pick up my gin and tonic and take it with me so they don’t spike it.
CB: Yes.
RC: Because years ago women never went in a pub on their own did they? I’ll tell you a story. Make you laugh. It’s not recent. But I like winkles and shrimps. And when I was a child we had winkles and shrimps every Sunday. Now, the first Sunday I lived down here I said, ‘Oh, I’m going into town to get some winkles and shrimps.’ And there used to be a bus in those days on a Sunday and it was down by the Duck. I don’t know if you know where the Duck used to be. Oh, Tring Road.
CB: Yes.
RC: Come down Bedgrove.
CB: Yeah.
RC: On the Tring Road. So, off I go, get the bus and I couldn’t find a winkle and shrimp stall anywhere. So, I saw a Jumper so I said, oh an Inspector. Better known as a Jumper. I said to him, ‘Next bus to Bedgrove?’ ‘Oh, there’s nothing, my love. About an hour and a half.’ Ok. So I said, ‘Ok. Alright.’ And there’s a pub at Kingsbury. It went up three steps. It’s still there but they’ve altered it a bit, haven’t they?
Other: Where?
RC: A pub at Kingsbury.
Other: That goes up some steps.
RC: I think it’s called Fevers now.
Other: I’m sorry. I don’t know.
RC: And you go up the three, up these three steps. Opening time 12 o’clock. Closed 2 o’clock. Twenty minutes drinking up time. It was [unclear] pub. No women in there. All men. You never got women in there. So, damn it I’m going in. So I opened the door and I go in and I walk up to the bar and you could have heard a pin drop. So, I thought hmmn I’ve got to scout this out haven’t I? So I asked for a gin and tonic. Got it. And I always, unless I’ve got people with me stand at the counter. And I stood there and I never bought another drink ‘til closing time. They all bought me a drink [laughs]
Other: You were feeling no pain when you left.
RC: You couldn’t do that today. It’s not the same.
Other: I would never go in today.
RC: Another day you couldn’t do years ago.
Other: Wouldn’t go in a pub.
RC: You couldn’t go into a pub. You could buy a glass of wine but you couldn’t buy a bottle of wine, open it and drink it on the premises.
Other: Oh yeah. Well —
RC: You see it takes more money by them selling it by the glass.
CB: Yes.
RC: But you can now.
CB: Yeah. Now you talked about Jumper. What’s the origin of that title for the Inspector?
RC: Well, an Inspector has to go on so many buses during their so many hours and check the tickets.
Other: Inspector.
RC: That’s what he does. He comes on with his board and sees you’ve paid the right money and all like that and they were always known as Jumpers.
CB: Because they were given —
RC: That was their job. They jump off one bus.
CB: They, they —
Other: On to another.
RC: And on. I mean they had the list of where, what they’d got to do. Like you got to get on the 63, then you got to get on the 12. But you know that’s his problem but you know, ‘Oh blooming hell. A Jumper.’
CB: I’m stopping again [pause] Or I was.
[recording paused]
RC: The car. And he’d say, ‘Rita, as you step out the car you talk differently.’
CB: When you went to see your mother in law.
RC: Yeah. Me and her didn’t hit it but that doesn’t matter. That’s another story. We had winkles and shrimps and a money lender.
RC: The money lender.
CB: Yeah.
CB: So, there were, how many of those were there around?
RC: I don’t, there used to be a lot but there isn’t many now I don’t think.
CB: What service were they giving?
RC: Well —
Other: [unclear]
RC: If you wanted to borrow some money and you knew a money lender you’d go and say, for arguments sake, ‘I want to borrow twenty five quid,’ because it wasn’t big amounts. And they’d tell you what percentage they were going to charge you for having it and how long you’d got before you’d got to pay it back. And she had a rag and bone stall. Not a stall. You know, a cart. And much to my parent’s disgust. And she had lots of sons. Well, I didn’t know them all because some of them had died but she had six boys that I knew. And she used to call my husband her posh son because he wouldn’t work on the stalls. And I used to go up to her, ‘Here Mary where’s the — is the stall down East Lane today?’ Well, she had East Lane. All the local markets. You must know East Lane, don’t you? Well it’s not East Lane is it? It’s only East Lane on a Sunday. But yeah, I said, ‘Can I go down? Do you think they need a hand? I’ll cart the horse for them.’
Other: I haven’t lived —
RC: I liked —
[recording paused]
CB: Now, during the war most of life continued as before even though it was difficult with bombing.
RC: Yes.
CB: And shortage of food. But how did the rag and bone system work in those days?
RC: Well, a lot of things they used to do. Although we’re saying rag and bone it didn’t always have to be rags. Where a place was bombed out and stuff used to be there that’s where your looting comes in.
CB: Go on.
RC: Yeah. I’m not saying she didn’t get some rag and bone. People used to do that. But she’d go over the bomb site wouldn’t she?
CB: Right. So, what was the role of the rag and bone merchant?
RC: Well, she used to go around and calling out rag and bone didn’t they?
CB: Oh, ra-bones.
RC: Yeah. And you used to get things for like a few coppers didn’t you?
CB: So, what was the origin of the rags and the bones? Where did they get them from?
RC: Well, she’d always done it. All her life.
CB: No. No. Where did she get the stuff from?
RC: I don’t really know.
CB: Right.
RC: But I know about the looting and all that.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
RC: But they, people used to like drop it off at the house and all that. That’s another thing that used to happen, you know.
CB: Right.
RC: They got some old rags they didn’t want. They’d dump them on her doorstep but I’ll tell you this —
Other: But she used to have to give them a penny or two though didn’t she?
RC: But if you looked at her street door it opened straight out on to the pavement. A knocker. A brass knocker. Her doorstep, it was beautifully white. Shine. You’d think what a lovely clean house. You’d hardly find her inside. If you couldn’t find her you went up the pub. If you couldn’t find her there you went in the betting shop. She could, she was not very well educated I’ll tell you that but she could add up and work out the bets.
CB: Yeah. So, why, why did people buy rags and bones from these people?
RC: Well, I think that they sort of spotted something on the cart that they wanted and would offer you so much.
CB: Right.
RC: I never actually done any of that side. It didn’t appeal to me but I just liked being with the cockles and the whelks and the jellied eels.
CB: So, what I’m getting at is although it’s called rag and bone what else was there on the cart?
Other: Well, it was her —
RC: Whatever people gave you.
Other: She was buying from people.
CB: It was everything.
RC: An old colander.
CB: Yeah.
RC: Or there would be a shovel or something out the garden. That sort of thing.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
Other: But she would buy them from [unclear] Oh I forgot.
CB: Right. So, the fact that there was looting going on just meant there were different things available.
RC: Yes. Oh course.
CB: Yeah.
RC: A lot of looting went on. A tremendous amount.
CB: Yeah. And was that simply because it couldn’t be controlled or partly because the people there had been killed in the bombing anyway.
RC: Well, I don’t say they’d all been killed. But if they’d have been dug out they’d have been taken on to a Rescue Centre wouldn’t they?
CB: Right. And at the Rescue Centre? What happened there?
RC: They had blankets and pillows to lots of [pause] wooden things to lay on and all that sort of thing.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
RC: It was where you spent the night if you got bombed out. Down the Rescue Centre. People used to come looking for people that they hadn’t been able to dig out or hadn’t. So and so was there so they should be under that rubble. Like you see it now only of course it’s much bigger now.
CB: So, when the digging out took place some people were killed. So what did they do with the bodies?
RC: Just lay them out and put them in white shrouds.
CB: And were they waiting for them to be identified or was that done somewhere else?
RC: Yes. Sometimes they weren’t identifiable.
CB: Right. In what way?
RC: They would, they used to have I forget what they used to call it. They had a nickname for it. And they had this big black cart used to come along and stack the bodies on top of one another. It’s like years ago in a hospital you used to do a lot of the Last Offices is the correct wording for it. If you’re doing Last Offices and you all have to do that they used to come along with this thing on wheels and they used to, they used to do most of the laying out procedure in the ward and they’d pick the body up and take it to the mortuary. And they all tried all of you, by locking you, not exactly locking you in but pretending. Put you in the mortuary to frighten you. It didn’t frighten me because my mother and I used to go out doing laying out. I know what it’s like, so —
CB: So, what did you have to do when you’re laying out?
RC: Laying out people.
CB: So the body is already cold.
RC: Well, first of all you’d go in and see what what’s happening and one of the things that happened to us was my mother used to really do it and I used to help. But I can do it proper now. I’m talking about as a kid. I’d go with her. They’ve got to be cold. But I went this day with her and we went in like you do and they said where it was. And when we got in there, there was a man in the bed. He was covered up. Right up here. All covered up beautifully. An eiderdown on him. And my mother said, ‘Well, we can’t touch him.’ ‘Well, he was so cold we thought we ought to keep him warm.’ Can’t touch him you see. Oh dear.
Other: What do you mean you couldn’t touch him?
RC: You can’t lay a person out if they’re hot.
Other: Oh, if they’re hot. Oh, I see.
CB: Because they’d warmed him up.
Other: Yeah.
CB: By covering him over.
RC: And I’ll tell you another thing they do.
Other: Even though he was dead he’d warm up.
RC: They thought he was so cold to the touch that they ought to keep him warm. Well, of course —
Other: Oh, you mean —
RC: You couldn’t keep a straight face could you?
CB: No.
RC: And another thing that happened and this happens a lot. You can, they got them laying out and all like that and you might sit them up for some reason and they’d pass wind or something. Frighten you out of your life if you’re not expecting it.
CB: And how did you identify them? Did they have something tagged on them or was it written on the shroud or what was it?
RC: Well, people on the ones that were recognisable and there was people from the same family they could always recognise them. Or they’d got a ring on that they knew and all that sort of thing, you know. But really, it’s really if their faces were shot away or really it was very hard. But I’ve been brought up to do this because my grandmother I didn’t do it with her because I — and my mother could all do it.
CB: What sort of injuries were there to see with these victims?
RC: I suppose really there was always arms and legs injuries but most of it was facial. That’s the way I see it. They were always facial. Always burned or their face was terribly disfigured. Yeah.
CB: Because of the rubble? Because of the rubble or because of the blast?
RC: Probably the blast. Glass mostly.
CB: Right.
RC: They would have glass embedded in their skins.
CB: Right.
RC: And you mustn’t pull it out.
CB: So, why would you not? While they were alive you wouldn’t pull it out but when they’re cold.
RC: Once they’re dead you can do what you like.
CB: Right.
RC: But of course unless you’ve got a doctor and that you can’t certify them dead. I mean, I’ve been, I mean I’ve worked on the accidents here for the Bucks Constabulary.
CB: Yeah.
RC: And I worked in the traffic division. And you used to have to go out sometimes if you — I don’t know it now but I worked for them for seven years and on average in the whole of the county there used to be thirty to thirty one fatalities a month.
CB: In Buckinghamshire.
RC: Of course even if they live and they only live three days it’s still classed as a fatality.
CB: Yeah.
RC: And sometimes you’d be asked to go out and have a look at the scene and I’d go because I was qualified to go in my own right. Nothing to do with the police. And you’d go out with a young copper and he’d try to protect you because you’re a woman, you know. ‘You don’t want to look at that,’ and ‘You don’t want to be —’ And he’d be on the floor [laughs]
CB: So, fast backwards to the war. You’re a child watching this going on. What was your feeling and reaction to these dead bodies?
RC: Well, I just accepted it because I’d been brought up with it. It didn’t take the war for me to see a dead body. The first dead body I see was my mother’s mother. She lived down the road from us then. She lived in Pembroke Road then. And we always went to tea on a Sunday afternoon. And she and my granddad lived up in a flat upstairs. And I used to go down. I had a key. I could let myself in and I walked in. I couldn’t find her anywhere. And on the table — she was a woman for making jam. There was three pots of blackcurrant jam and they were warm. So, I thought well where has she gone? Went in the bedroom. I knew granddad was working because he worked on the parks and he used to be a park attendant. So, wherever can she be? I couldn’t find her. Now what made me do what I’m going to tell you next I don’t know. I walked in and walked around the foot of the bed and there she was on the floor. And her leg was sticking up like this and the rest of her was laying down. Well, having listened to my mother I knew then oh she’s dead. So I went downstairs to the people downstairs and told them. I said, ‘But I think you’ll find she’s dead.’ You know. Miss know it all. So the man said, ‘I’ll come up and have a look.’ Which he did. And he said, ‘Alright. I’ll deal with this bit,’ and he must have phoned a doctor or something and he said, ‘You go home and get your,’ well I was only up the road, he said, ‘You go home and get your mum and dad.’ And I did. And I got questioned by the police because of that. But —
CB: And you’re aged what?
RC: It wasn’t bad. And my mother sat in with me while they did it.
CB: Yeah.
RC: Because I found her. How they thought I could have killed her I don’t know but —
CB: But what age were you then?
RC: Oh, I don’t know. Not very old. About six. Six and a half. And I mean I don’t know how they thought I could have killed her. But anyway, and my mother kept answering for me. This sergeant said to her, ‘Would you mind being quiet please.’ [laughs] She often repeated that as the years went by. That the course so, but I had seen bodies before.
CB: Yes.
RC: But the first real person.
CB: Yeah. Was your grandmother.
RC: That I, what you’d call dealt with was my grandmother. Then of course it didn’t worry me and they shut me in the mortuary up at Stoke. Everybody got it in those days.
CB: Yeah.
RC: I don’t care. You can shut me in.
CB: Yeah.
RC: I expect you know they come out, and they still do today, they come out on drawers. I expect you know that.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
RC: And they have the, I call it a luggage label around their big toe. Yeah. I said, ‘You can’t frighten me with this. Don’t try.’
CB: So, as a child in London with the bodies being laid out and then to the mortuary.
RC: Well, we never actually touched them or anything.
CB: No. But you saw them.
RC: Oh you saw them. Yeah.
CB: What was the reaction of the family when they came around to see?
RC: Well, I can’t tell you all but there was always a lot of crying and shouting and all that sort of thing. And proper hysteria. You’d see a man clout some woman around the face. Obviously to shut her up. That was one of the things you do. It will always shut somebody up. And you’d often, if you’ve somebody goes into hysteria and you don’t quite know what you’re doing that’s the first thing you can do. And you used to see that you know. We said, ‘We’ll have a go at that,’ [laughs] But it doesn’t, nothing in the blood and thunder as it’s known doesn’t worry me at all. No. Nothing upsets me like that. I can do it all.
CB: Well, Rita Chapman. Thank you very much for your reminiscences.
RC: Oh, I’m ever so sorry that I’ve gone on and on and on.
CB: That’s what we wanted.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Rita Chapman
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AChapmanR170215
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:10:15 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Description
An account of the resource
Rita Chapman lived in London during the Blitz. She witnessed the sight of the burning docks from her garden. Her family sheltered in their Anderson shelter but twice got buried and had to be dug out. The rescue crews asked them to keep singing until they could locate them and bring them out. Rationing and queuing were part of her everyday life. Every flat in her block had children living in them until they were all evacuated leaving Rita and one other girl in the block with their families. Rita also describes the anti-aircraft guns, barrage balloons and other sights that were common in wartime London.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
evacuation
home front
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1005/10746/AColbeckJC170524.1.mp3
523a16a235ce2e945b8a2efc683102c5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wenham, John
J Wenham
Description
An account of the resource
46 items. An oral history interview with Joy Colbeck (b. 1923) about her brother John Wenham (1925 - 1945, 1894709 Royal Air Force) documents and a family photograph album. He flew as an air gunner but was killed in a training accident 4 January 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joy Colbeck and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle. <br /><br />Additional information on John Wenham is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/124831/ ">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wenham, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name Is Chris Brockbank and today is the 24th of May 2017 and I am in Luton with Joy Colbeck and we’re going to talk about initially Joy’s experience in the war in the Royal Navy as a Wren but principally we’re talking about the experience of her younger brother who was killed on a training flight in the RAF and, in a crash near North Marston near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. So, Joy, what are your earliest recollections of early life?
JC: Well, I think it was recollections were moving house. I remember the house I was born in and my brother was born in. When we were about six or seven we moved to the next road to a slightly bigger house.
CB: In Maidstone.
JC: In Maidstone. All the time my father was a second in command in the grocery shop to Mr Henry Topley, his partner. And my father was, ran the business by his hard work. Mr Topley used to wear a top hat, stand outside and take the customers to the pay desk etcetera but, but my father was the one who drove the van, and he went to all the biggest houses in our part of Kent. Castles. Boarding schools. Had to pick, to pick up the orders from the cookhouse keepers, take them back to the shop, and a fortnight later my father would drive the van and deliver them back to the big houses before all, all mass buying. And so my brother, my brother never seemed to be part of this performance because he was always two years younger than me if you know what I mean. He, he took second, played second fiddle really. He [pause] I don’t remember him. He was a Boy Scout and all the way up and on, on the, we have a photograph here of his War Memorial, my brother’s death, in the Scout camp next to Guy Gibson who was a friend of Scout Master and practicing for the —
CB: The dam’s raid.
JC: The dams.
CB: Yes.
JC: On the Scout master’s lake. In his garden. But that’s beside the point but my brother was, he did it. He, my brother for some reason and we never know, we never got to the end he, he could not read. Now, we find this, I find this extremely difficult. He was [pause] I had left school and had been to secretarial college and was working at County Hall when my brother left school, because the school became a hospital and we were in a war zone. Whatever’s the word. Not war zone, is it? It was [pause] that we were in, it was, yeah, I suppose you’d say it was a war zone in England really, and was treated as such. My father was the chief air raid warden so he knew what was going on. And my brother just got on his bicycle and followed every Spitfire that was shot down and every German plane that was shot down. That was his whole interest in life that I remember. When I used to come home from work we used to say, ‘What have you got hold of today?’ And it was a bit of plastic or something which they all sat down, this little group of boys and made a little cottage out of the, out of the plastic windows. And he didn’t have a lot of friends and when, when his school closed my mother was so worried. He was in elementary school. He couldn’t pass any grammar school at all. And his reading and writing was extremely bad, but of course nobody took much notice of it and we wondered if he was dyslexic would he have been discovered by the RAF? How on earth did he become a bomber when he couldn’t read when he was thirteen?
CB: Extraordinary.
JC: I don’t know. Nobody ever mentions it. But he was, he was a nice boy. He was a lovely boy. People liked him but he, he didn’t shine. He didn’t shine at anything. So when he left school it would have been [pause] 1941 I suppose. I was seventeen in 1941. ’42, the school would have closed and my mother just had a tutor for him and my father got him a job in the brewery next to the shop, the grocery shop. Style and Winch’s brewery. And he worked in the lab washing bottles I suppose. But I don’t know. I’ve got a big gap because I wasn’t there.
CB: So, at seventeen what did you do?
JC: At seventeen I volunteered for the Wrens.
CB: Right.
JC: I left my job at County Hall and was supposed to go in the Wrens with my best friend who as soon as we got to London said she didn’t want to go and she became a Land Girl and I became a Wren. And they put me, I had no preliminary war training whatsoever. They sent me a letter saying, and a railway ticket to report to [pause] I was just going to say Paddington. It wasn’t Paddington. To the, to go to Lowestoft to report to HMS Minos as a writer to the captain. A writer meaning a shorthand typist but the rank is writer [pause] and I wasn’t welcomed. I was the first Wren and they didn’t want me because they were regular sailors. They weren’t service, there was no conscription in to the Navy at that time so they didn’t really want the Wrens but they got them. And so by the time I would get home on a weekend’s leave all the way by train across London and back by train down to Kent there wasn’t much left of a forty eight Wren’s pass getting there, and I didn’t see a lot of my brother. All I got was that he was working at Style and Winches. He was doing quite well in, in the brewery section and the next thing was that he had volunteered. He volunteered. He wasn’t conscripted. Volunteered for the RAF. And I think I only saw him two or three times after that. I, I’m trying to think how many times I saw him back. Not a lot.
[telephone ringing]
CB: I’ll just stop there.
[recording paused]
JC: And of course then we got, we got, I got shifted from up in Norfolk back down in to London to HMS Pembroke which is all the Wrens working in London. Whitehall. And I stayed there until I went to Westcliff on Sea which was a holding base for sailors waiting for Dunkirk, not Dunkirk, for D-Day. But I spent nearly two years in London.
CB: What were you doing in London?
[pause]
CB: What were you doing in London?
JC: Well, I just worked in in offices. Office job. And —
CB: Secretarial.
JC: I also, I did one interesting thing. I, because I had worked very hard on the setting up this, I’d been promoted to leading Wren and I was working very hard on the setting up of this holding camp and we had a lot of rather important people on the staff there. And we, the whole of Westcliff on Sea Promenade and the roads adjacent to the Promenade were requisitioned as a block and the civilians were moved off. It was mostly holidays. Small hotels. Private hotels. So it wasn’t difficult but the whole lot moved off and we moved, the Navy moved in and there were four thousand sailors and about four hundred Wrens.
Other: You had your choice ma.
JC: And then I worked very hard. Very, very hard because I worked for a wonderful woman called First Officer Bowen-Jones who was quite a high up ranking officer in the Wrens and she used to push, give me lots of difficult jobs to do. And one day she called me in and she said, ‘You’ve worked very hard. I want to send you on special duties.’ And she said, she’d got a lovely smile and she said, ‘You’re going to, maybe you’ll go with Churchill on one of his ventures abroad, to one of the conferences.’ She said, ‘Go and enjoy it. Report tomorrow to the Admiralty.’ When I got to the Admiralty it was a busy, busy, busy office full of American officers and British Naval officers from all over the world. And they were all [pause] well they would sort of shuffle up. We went on the back of a Land Rover from our billets in in [pause] oh, it was a long time ago. I’ll tell you in a minute. But we assembled at 6 o’clock in our billets. We were taken by Army car to the Admiralty. They had been working all day long deciding which way they’d go. Who’d go, who went and who didn’t. And as soon as we got there at 6 o’clock in the evening, it would be about seven we got there we started and we typed all that the, you know the ships and Naval officers had learned during the day. We typed it during the night on stencils on [reniers], and then we ran them off and we did that for six weeks and we had no time off. And then we were sent back to our posts and told to keep quiet. Not to say where we’d been. Not even to our officers. And we had done the invasion of Sicily and Italy, but in fact we didn’t know it was Sicily and Italy because we didn’t know and they didn’t tell us they were going to go to Italy. They just gave us a map reference along the, along the garden and up the stairs on the, on the grids. It was all done on the grid. And it’s all boring. There you are.
CB: Right. We’ll just take a break.
[recording paused]
JC: You mean one of the AGs ones.
CB: Now, we’re just going to recap quickly on yourself because you had two interesting experiences. One, Joy early on, one experience you had early on was in Lowestoft.
JC: That’s it.
CB: What happened there?
JC: What happened there? It was a Tuesday.
CB: Yeah.
JC: I had every Tuesday off. Worked the rest of the six days. In the mornings we did our washing and sewed on our buttons, etcetera. Well, about half past one the girls, we were, we were billeted in a private hotel in the attic. There were two rooms in the attic either side of the stairs and three of them were occupied over the stairs. They didn’t work, they worked in HMS Minos 2 which was a holding base. I worked in HMS 1, which was a minesweeper base, active service. So, they knocked on the door and said, ‘Are you coming down in to Yeovil, err into Lowestoft for a cup of tea at Waller’s Restaurant because they have cream buns. So I said, ‘Yes. I think so.’ So, they said, ‘Pick you up in half an hour.’ Half an hour later it was snowing. I said, ‘I think I’ve got a cold coming and it means walking both ways to Lowestoft in the snow. I’m not coming.’ And they said, ‘Ok. We’ll go without you.’ I’d been, I decided to have a bath. I was in the bath when the claxon went. We had no air raid warning. The claxon went. Out in the garden. Get in the shelters. Hit and run raids. So we, we just went. Ran down the stairs, out the back door, got in. We’d only just got in the air raid shelter when there was the most enormous explosion and about, we just didn’t know anything about it. About half an hour later the Wren officer on duty said, ‘Wren Wenham,’ that was me, ‘Back to duty.’ So I got dressed in to my uniform and walked in to Lowestoft and the whole of Lowestoft High Street was flattened. And I’ve got a picture. I, I don’t know.
[pause]
CB: Ok. Well, we’ll look at the pictures in a minute.
JC: No, we don’t. Here it is. Here’s my whatnot.
CB: Oh, report.
Other: Yes.
JC: There they are. Digging up twenty years later.
CB: Right.
JC: But, and I went into my office and the captain said that we had to stay on duty because the bomb had fallen on the main supply department and all, all my three, and it had fallen on Waller’s Restaurant next to the Naval supply because we were all in the High Street. So bang on Waller’s and every one, I think there were, seventy were killed. So, I lost my three friends. That was, that was number one.
CB: Right. Very hard.
JC: About three weeks later I was.
CB: This was 1941.
JC: About three weeks later I was machine gunned with two other Wrens walking to our quarters along the cliffs at Lowestoft. We just got down in the, in the whatnot. You had no warnings. So, that was two. I can’t think what the third one was.
CB: Right. So, if we go now towards the end of the war there were the V-1s and V-2s. So what experience did you have?
JC: Oh yes. That was dreadful.
CB: That’s in London.
JC: I, I was, I was at Westcliff. HMS Westcliff. After D-Day they began to get rid of, the numbers went down and the places were closed. We were just a closure. In August, in August 1944 I was promoted to chief, to Wren petty officer and it meant that I had to be moved because there was no, no requirement for a petty officer in there. So I was sent to the Royal Marines at Burnham on Crouch on a single posting as petty, just as what would be called secretary to the Marine’s officers because they had a big Court of Enquiry of, of, to do with the firing of an officer. And I had to go every day and take down in shorthand the doings of the court. I don’t know whether I made a very good job of it because nobody then was interested in, in talking slowly or [laughs] even knowing how to put questions. It was very difficult. And so there I was down in Burnham on Crouch, and every Sunday morning all the Royal Marines assembled outside of the Burnham Yacht Club for Sunday morning divisions. In the middle of the second, second hymn we got this colossal blowing, and we were all flattened on to the roads. Yeah. Onto the ground. Nobody was hit. The thing, the thing exploded up in the air, away up in the air and if it hadn’t exploded we wouldn’t probably have been here I suppose. But that was the third time that and after that I couldn’t sleep. And my posting came to an end and I went to the Royal Naval College at, hospital at Chatham and I was turned out. My husband came to tell me and [pause] I was still packing up my belongings when he came back again and told me that John had died. And —
CB: This is January 1944. Your brother John.
JC: Yes. And my father had phoned my husband who was on duty and he’d been to see the captain who gave him permission to come to Burnham because there was, it was the back of beyond to tell me and take me home. And I went home and, and it was awful really when I got home because my mother and [pause] when, when I was two and a half years old I had double pneumonia, and there was no hospital. I was just, my mother cared for me. My brother was eight months old and John went to stay with my father’s sister for [pause] I’ve no idea but he was certainly away from home for three months. So my mother couldn’t see him. There was, it was a real break and —
[doorbell]
JC: It was a real break. Not very nice I suppose. I don’t know how my mother would have coped to have her baby boy taken away from her. She had to look after me at home. I had pneumonia. Pneumonia for six weeks and my father took me out on my first walk and I cried so much that he kept on walking rather than take me home, and the next day I had pneumonia again. So that, so my brother still stayed with, with Auntie May and she features in this book. So he had a real break in his parenting. I don’t suppose it would have been a very quick cut off when I had pneumonia. I mean the doctor would have come. Our doctor, he came on a horse, on a horse, horseback. Privately. And, and my father took my brother in the van and off he went. So I don’t know what effect that would have had on my brother. It must have broken my mother’s heart I think. She was a wonderful mother wasn’t she?
Other: She was a lovely lady.
JC: Lovely woman.
CB: You said, you said your brother John had difficulty with reading.
JC: Yes.
CB: Did that get linked with that experience?
JC: I don’t know. Of course, he was only eight months old. I don’t [pause] that’s the only time. I know that it was snowing and there was no ambulances available. The doctor and the, and the vicar spent three nights at our house. Did their calls in between. He was very well looked after but —
CB: We’ll just stop there again.
[recording paused]
CB: These are all very important experiences to know in the background but returning to your brother John. Returning to your brother John. He joined the RAF on the 24th err the 28th of April 1943. Well, he attested then but he was only seventeen.
JC: Yes.
CB: He started, according to the records we’ve looked at, at Number 19 ITW on the 5th of February 1944 and shortly after that he was admitted to hospital and then he was temporarily discharged and put into hospital again. He then went to a different Initial Training Wing on the 24th of April 1944 and according to the records he then had been identified as an air gunner and you mentioned his difficulty with reading and so on and it may be that that had some bearing on the selection.
JC: Yes.
CB: Of his position in the aircraft.
JC: Yes.
CB: He then went to Number 1 Air Gunnery School on the 1st of July ’44 and from there in October, the 19th of October 1944 he went to 11 OTU, Operational Training Unit which was at Westcott. Which is the point of our story.
JC: Yes.
CB: And then he was killed in the crash on the 4th.
JC: Yes.
CB: Of January 1945.
JC: Yes.
CB: So my question there is that as you were in the Navy and busy and had little opportunity of finding out what was going on, what do you understand about what he was doing and what your parents knew? What did your —
JC: You mean while he was still training?
CB: While he was in the RAF.
JC: I don’t know. You see it was such a different life. Everybody’s son was in, in the Army, The Navy or the Air Force all of the way around him. If, if you weren’t, if you weren’t in the Forces there was something funny with you and I suppose you had to, I suppose you had to accept that your son or your daughter would go off into the Army. And, take my father, he’d spent four years of his, six years of his youth, of his young life not his youth because he married during his service but they’d all experienced Army life. So it was nothing different in a way. And I think they would have accepted what was going on. That he would join. He would join up but whether they would have ever accepted that he was going to be in the Air Force I don’t know.
CB: Why did he join the RAF?
JC: Why did he join the RAF?
CB: And not the Army or the Navy.
JC: I have no idea. I have no idea.
CB: And did you have any, you saw him rarely but did you have any conversations with him?
JC: No.
CB: About his service.
JC: No. No. I had no, you see I saw so little of him. I wouldn’t like to say how many times I saw him. Definitely not during the previous year to his death did I. I was going to. I told you, it’s in my husband’s diary we were going, I was going to take my husband home to meet my parents on a weekend leave because my husband had, we were already engaged but we were going to go home. Became engaged on my twenty first birthday and so [pause] I, when it came to, it’s just written in some, about the middle of October, November we were going to, my husband was coming to spend the weekend with, and would have slept in my brother’s bed and I was going to join them and I was hit by this bomb, V-2 bomber thing. So I was in [laughs] I couldn’t go to Maidstone. So my husband went by myself to meet my parents.
CB: For the first time.
JC: I think he’d met my mother because he came, he came to my mother at Southend on my twenty first birthday when I was in sick bay for a different reason, and they had given me [pause] He had produced my engagement ring while I was in bed covered in, I had a series of boils, awful things all the way around my neck and I’d had them for about a year, and they were trying to do what they could to get rid of it in the sickbay. But they couldn’t and I was swathed up in all these bandages and my mother came on the train to celebrate my birthday and she met Gerry there and he gave me my engagement ring. There it is. There we are.
CB: Very nice. Yes.
JC: And [pause] so it was, it was so natural in a way. It was happening all the way around him.
CB: And people didn’t talk about what they did in the Forces.
JC: They didn’t talk about it.
CB: They weren’t allowed to, and they didn’t want to.
JC: And they weren’t allowed to. They didn’t have the time. They were so worn out. My father was head of the ARP and they met, we were about the only people who got an air raid, a decent air raid shelter, and we had it because our next door neighbour’s brother built the new County Hall. He was a big builder, and while he was building the big County Hall he dug the hole with his digger of our, of our air raid shelter and he built us a double deck, double brick air raid shelter in our, half in their garden, half in ours. Two doors. We were very posh. We had radio and we had electricity and, but my father came home from work he, we were, we were down there. We, we put our pyjamas on as soon as we came home from work and we went straight down and we had our tea down in the air raid shelter. My mother, of course women didn’t work so my mother, my mother looked after my father and all the people who worked for him. And as soon as my father had had his tea he became the air raid warden. So I mean he didn’t talk about, we didn’t talk about family.
Other: I think the horrors were so bad as well.
JC: Yes.
Other: People didn’t want to dwell on them.
JC: They didn’t want to. They used to say —
Other: They wanted a change in their lives.
JC: My, my brother’s friends, four boys came to Maidstone in 1939 when his father built the A20. Not the M20. The A20 over, over the hill, down into the Weald of Kent and he bought these, his four sons all at school. And my father saw the for sale notice on the house and investigated who was moving in. Met them and said, ‘I’ll be your grocer. I’ll take your cards from you.’
CB: Ration cards.
JC: The [Riccomini] family. I’d love to know what happened to the [Riccomini] boys because as far as I know only the eldest one, who had a cleft palate survived and I think my brother was, was very friendly with the second boy called Geoffrey. And I don’t know what the other two were and I wouldn’t have met them anyway but Geoffrey used to come and play in our garden, and was the same age as my brother. And to think that they could, my father knew the mother and parents. To think that he knew that there was a family losing three and his was one. It was—
Other: I see what you’re saying.
JC: I’m sorry.
CB: Very difficult.
JC: We’re getting off, aren’t we?
CB: Well, it doesn’t matter because the point in the background there is Maidstone is in the front line.
JC: Yes.
CB: Effectively closest almost —
JC: It was.
CB: To the continent.
Other: Well, it’s about —
CB: So to what extent did you suffer air raids there?
Other: [laughs] She was hit by one.
JC: Well, we didn’t really suffer any real damage but we did have an unexploded bomb come through the roof of our detached house and my mother ran. Obviously, it was in the middle of the afternoon. There were no men. My mother, when the men came home from work ran to the ARP post, and said that there was a hole in the roof and they sent, they sent a man, an ARP man to investigate and he went up inside the house on a ladder and he got stuck in the hole. In the, in the, he was a big fat man and he got stuck.
CB: In the loft hatch.
JC: And [laughs] he became [laughs] didn’t he? All our children remembered the second world war was the man who got stuck in the hole. We had, we had behind our house was a place called Vinters Park which was a big private place and was used as a war, as a hospital in the war and their guns came over in to our garden at the back. So we were very close to the, we had every night we slept when we were there. Even when I came home on leave we slept down in the, we had six bunks in our —
CB: In your air raid shelter.
JC: Mr and Mrs Shaw didn’t have any children so there was my mother and brother. We mostly played cards and sent the money to the Red Cross. But we don’t, I don’t remember that we talked about people who’d died that day.
CB: What about these, these were anti-aircraft guns.
JC: The?
CB: Anti-aircraft guns you are talking about are you?
JC: We didn’t meet them.
CB: No. You had anti-aircraft guns next to you.
JC: They were over the field.
CB: Right.
JC: In Vinters Park, and they came over. The men didn’t come into our garden but in 19 — before I joined the Wrens, that was July ’41 Detling Aerodrome which was a mile from our house was bombed by the RAF and obliterated.
CB: By the Germans.
JC: And my father was on duty that night at the top of the road called the Chiltern Hundreds, the public house and he, he had the road closed and they wouldn’t allow anybody to come over the road. Well, about 11 o’clock that night he, my father brought two men to our house. They were soldiers. They were men from the Royal Air Force Defence Regiment. It wasn’t a very, it wasn’t an active, it was [pause] then anyway, they’d come back from a day, they’d come back from holiday leave to find they’d no air, no, no air base left. Not allowed up on the road. My father brought them home and they slept upstairs in my father’s bed that night, and the next morning they went back on duty. And the following night they came and knocked, morning they came and knocked on the door and said, ‘Can we, can we please come and sleep again because we’re frightened.’ And my father said they looked it. And they came for about three weeks and my father said, ‘Yes. You can come and you can sleep in a bedroom in the house in the daytime and you’re to help the men dig the hole and finish off the air raid shelter.’ So these men built our air raid shelter. And that was the only contact we had with, with soldiers.
CB: Yeah.
JC: But they were all the way around us. So my brother must, my brother was down in that air raid shelter every night. Had to be. And they weren’t allowed, boys they weren’t allowed to go off to the cinema in the evening. I mean, you didn’t go out. You went in to the air raid shelter. And what he did I don’t know, apart from the fact that after I left probably somebody else came and borrowed a bed for the night. Any vacant bed was taken up and it was, it was busy. It was really, really busy.
CB: We’ll take a break there.
[recording paused]
JC: My husband.
Other: Just one second.
CB: Right. So where did you meet your husband?
JC: At the Royal Palace Ballroom, Southend on Sea. And it was, I’d been in the Navy then for, I met him on the 28th of April 1944, Saturday night. And it was only the second dance I had been to in the whole of the war and the whole of my service. We seemed to spend all our time working. And so I met my husband at the dance and he asked me for a dance, and I met him then. And he was, he had just arrived at HMS Westcliff. I had been there already since, I think the 4th of September 1942. So I had been there nearly two years. My husband was a year younger than me.
CB: And what did he do? What was he?
JC: He was, he was, he was a sub lieutenant in the Naval Coastal Forces. He tried to be in the RAF VR but he failed one of his. I don’t know which one it was, but he failed one of his tests.
CB: And when were you married?
JC: 31st of March 1945.
CB: Right.
JC: And that was arranged before my brother died and we hadn’t told my brother. That would all have been, I don’t know if, well I suppose of course my husband would have told his future brother in law that wouldn’t he? So my brother must have known, but we didn’t send many letters. I can honestly, I can’t remember sending many letters.
CB: So —
JC: We didn’t send many. Didn’t send many [laughs] we sent food parcels to each other [laughs] but we didn’t send much else.
CB: We’ve talked about the fact that what your brother John was doing that your parents didn’t seem to know about it.
JC: Yes.
CB: And you certainly didn’t know.
JC: No. I didn’t know.
CB: So, how was it that you learned about your brother John’s death?
[pause]
JC: But what I learned, I arrived home with my husband on the 6th. Let’s see. Yes. It took, it took twenty four hours for the news to get through to my husband so that would have been the 5th of January. And we travelled back. There was no over, no trains out of Burnham on Crouch in the evening so it was morning of January the 6th that we got the train to Maidstone. And my mother was sitting there with her sister in law, Auntie May who’d brought John up as a baby, and they were just sitting there on the settee next to each other. They didn’t, they didn’t even seem to talk. It was absolutely unbelief on their, on their face that this could really have happened.
CB: Then what?
JC: Hmm?
CB: So you got there and saw mother and aunt.
JC: Saw mother and aunt and then all the, all the family and friends came up. I had to, my husband had to go back the next day. They wouldn’t give him any more leave. I had. I was given seven days, because by this time I was already on, I’d already been shifted to the Royal Naval Hospital at Chatham for despatch. And it was the old Naval physical standard.
CB: So, when your parents knew about your brother’s death, Joy —
JC: Pardon?
CB: When your parents knew about your brother’s death.
JC: Yes.
CB: What happened next?
JC: Well, we heard that, my father got on the phone to the, to the vicar in Buckinghamshire and asked him to find out some news. This young curate, eighteen, nineteen, no he would be about twenty. Twenty years old. He went to Westcott and requested an interview and was told, they said they wanted a letter. Well, actually my parents were very happy when they got this letter which is dated the 9th of January. But what they didn’t know was that every one of that, every one of the aircrew got the same letter. I mean actually lettered the same letter. I mean this must have been the standard letter one or two because we’ve seen it mentioned in the New Zealand papers. So, my father, all the other members of the crew, the five members were buried at Westcott.
CB: At Botley.
JC: Nearby. My father arranged, my father was church warden of our church and he arranged that my brother would have [pause] my brother would be buried at, from the funeral in his own church. My parents were Christian. Church of England. I’d say fairly strict Christian people but were very good people. Very, very good people. They, all the way through the war they entertained next to the church. Our family church was the Kent Royal Regiment’s Headquarters at Sandy Lane, Maidstone and every Sunday we entertained soldiers. And these soldiers were collected at church. I think the word got around, ‘Go to church on Sunday morning and Mr and Mrs Wenham will invite you to lunch,’ because we had a procession of soldiers and my father would write letters for them, because lots of soldiers were illiterate. My father would write letters. My mother mended them their socks, knitted their things for them. So they, they were very good people. They weren’t [pause] how do you put it? I don’t think they showed their grief apart, my mother became very quiet. She, she must have talked to my father about it. She must have told to him she didn’t want to stay. And as soon as we’d married within a year they’d sold the business which was due to be, my father had always hoped that John would follow in his business but that was no longer possible. And they, they sold everything up and moved to Hastings. Although my father at that stage was only borderline retirement and he went on to work for a further twenty years, but he really didn’t know what else to do with himself.
CB: So after the, after the funeral.
JC: Yes.
CB: The funeral was in the church at Maidstone.
JC: No. No. The funeral in the church was absolutely full of people. There was standing at the back. We all went and there were six airmen who carried the hearse, and we all went by transport of some sort to the Maidstone Cemetery. The military cemetery attached to Maidstone Cemetery and we had another service at the graveside and we had the Last Post and it’s the one bit of music I cannot abide. But it was snowing. Snowing again. Afterwards we went back to my parent’s home and his close relations were there and our neighbours and people from the church and we all had afternoon tea provided by my mother. Two of the airmen came up to, to my father and said that it made life easier to know that people could be so sensible over the loss of family they, they just thought that the fact that my mother had baked all these cakes for them eased the problem. It didn’t, did it? But so they all came back and then the men, we’d no idea they, I seem to remember I didn’t speak to them an awful lot but I seem to remember that, that they weren’t close members of [pause] they weren’t colleagues. They didn’t actually know my brother. Perhaps they had a special job, ‘Your turn’s come up,’ you know.
CB: They were representing the RAF.
JC: RAF. Yeah. Representatives of the RAF.
CB: Were, were they ground crew or aircrew? Do you remember whether they were —
JC: The men? I’ve no idea. No. No idea at all. But they spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening with us. And we didn’t know. We had no idea. I think that my father must have known that the New Zealanders were involved, but apart from that I don’t think my mother and father knew anything about these airmen.
CB: The other five were buried at the —
JC: Hmm?
CB: The other five were buried at the Military Cemetery at Botley.
JC: Yes. Yes, and there are pictures.
CB: Oxford.
JC: In it. In Sue Chaplain’s book.
CB: So when did you find out details of the crash?
JC: Oh, well that was when I belonged, I joined the U3A in Luton about ten years ago, I suppose. And I joined the family history group because I’d got an awful lot of pictures and things of Maidstone and that’s my that’s —
CB: Did you —
JC: That’s Maidstone. London Road, Maidstone. Sharp’s Toffee Factory Headquarters. That was the Sports Club.
Other: That was a Sports Club.
JC: And that house was built by my great grandfather.
Other: That’s right.
CB: Now —
JC: There he is.
CB: Just —
JC: And there she is.
Other: Listen. Listen, Chris is saying something.
JC: Hmmn?
CB: Just quickly, just —
JC: Yes. So, that —
CB: You didn’t know from the end of the war, well January ’45, until ten years ago are you saying you did not know how the crash had occurred?
JC: No. No. No, it wasn’t —
CB: And —
JC: It wasn’t mentioned. And I, I believe I’m positive that my father and mother, or my father never knew that. How the plane had crashed. I think he would have talked to us, don’t you?
CB: Did, where, when your own children were born did that cause your parents to wonder how their son, your brother had died?
JC: I don’t somehow think it did. We weren’t [pause] we weren’t actually living close to them. But Christopher the oldest was born when my husband was in Germany and my husband didn’t see Chris until he was nearly eight weeks old.
CB: Right.
JC: Graham was born, and his father had just had a heart attack so myself and Christopher and baby Graham we couldn’t go back. We were, we were living with my father in law. We couldn’t go back there. We had to catch a train and go to Maidstone where my mother took over.
CB: But your parents weren’t prompted to recall.
JC: No.
CB: The death.
JC: No.
CB: Do you think they had —
JC: No.
CB: Accepted that they would never find out or they were pushing it to the back of their minds?
JC: I don’t know. I can’t think. I really can’t think what —
CB: I think we’ll have a pause there.
[recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your perception of your parent’s attitude and the fact that they didn’t really talk about it but when your parents moved up here to the Luton area and settled here they had pictures, family pictures in the house did they? And how did they explain that?
JC: My parents.
CB: Yes.
Other: Yeah. They didn’t.
JC: My parents never lived in Luton.
Other: Luton.
CB: Oh, they didn’t.
Other: No. We lived together.
CB: No.
Other: We lived together after my parents, my grandparents moved to Hastings. My father my mother and us moved to Somerset to his parents and we were born and brought up in Somerset. So they never lived, we lived together.
CB: Ok.
Other: In Somerset. My grandparents then moved to Somerset so the whole family were in Somerset.
CB: Ok. So, I’m trying to focus on the pictures that your, your parents, Joy had in their house.
JC: Well, they had —
CB: They had pictures of your brother.
JC: My mother’s, my mother’s brother in law, her eldest sister’s husband was a photographer. A private. Made his own, hung his own things across the —
CB: For drying them.
Other: Plates.
JC: The negatives. And developed his own, and this was my mother’s and she had another one and she was very proud of the fact that they were always taking photographs and putting them in this book.
CB: But what I meant was in the house.
JC: In the house.
CB: Did they have pictures and how did they explain?
JC: Yes. Inside the house you mean.
CB: Yes. And what, how did they explain the picture of your brother?
JC: I don’t, I don’t think they needed to explain because —
CB: If they were asked.
JC: Because my brother was so much a part of, of the tight little family that there was then in Maidstone.
CB: Yes.
JC: That we all attended all the family dos. My father wasn’t very happy about it because they would drink, and they would have a singsong around the, around the, around the piano but my father wasn’t very keen on that and neither was my mother. But we all met together and I think my father was, you would describe him as the steady one of the family wouldn’t you? He was the one who, who worked hard and bought his own house.
CB: Yes.
JC: And he bought his sister a house because she was a complete invalid and any family trouble they went to my father, and my brother grew up in that. They didn’t have to talk about him because he was part of it.
CB: Yes. I’ve got that. What I was trying to get at was after the war.
JC: Yeah.
CB: After the war.
JC: After the war.
CB: There would be pictures in the house and your children —
JC: There was always a picture of my brother.
CB: Yes.
JC: Yes. There isn’t one in my house because I decided that that we’ve always got our poppy and we always talk about him but I, we’ve got three great grandsons. Nine, twelve and twelve. And although they came to, they were there at, at the parish meeting. You know. The church.
CB: In North Marston. Yes.
JC: They came to them all but I was, I was delighted. The two didn’t come up from Bath because it was a long way. No, but my, Sue’s daughter brought Woody who is now twelve. He came and he was a good boy. He enjoyed it and he, he, you know, took part. But apart from that I think on the whole that we, we don’t talk about it but they all have four of these books.
CB: Yes.
JC: This is the first book one. And then each one. We did it because in 1986 my husband had to leave the Civil Service because he was a driving examiner and he was injured in three work accidents.
CB: Right.
JC: And couldn’t, couldn’t undertake doing eight or nine emergency stops every, every day.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And he worked for Brian’s family and, but we, we, I was having to make the decision to carry on working.
CB: Yeah.
JC: Because otherwise we, you know we couldn’t manage to pay the mortgage etcetera and it was, it was [pause] oh, I don’t quite know how you would explain it but we felt a bit as if we were the bottom of the pile. All our children were successful. They were all running their own businesses except for Richard in Canada who worked in a furniture store. But all the rest were very successful and we felt that our grandchildren were growing up thinking of us as these were poor relations down the bottom. We didn’t have this and we didn’t have that, you know. We didn’t have lots of things. And so I sat down not thinking in, in 1986, three weeks before Christmas I wrote that book in my lunch hour at work.
CB: Right.
JC: Straight on to the typewriter. Straight on to the photocopier.
CB: Yeah.
JC: At the Post Office.
CB: Right.
JC: We had no other equipment. And it was to try and show them that we didn’t all have all these wonderful trips to America. One of them had been off in Concorde. That we didn’t live that way.
CB: No.
JC: Ours had been a wartime struggle.
CB: Indeed.
JC: And of course there’s that, part of my book was about telling them about my brother.
CB: Right.
JC: So we, we put it in to print for them.
CB: Yes.
JC: And they’ve still got that book.
CB: Right.
Other: Treasure it.
CB: A real treasure.
JC: Reduce them by half.
Other: It’s lovely. A lovely book to read.
CB: Yes. So the reason I asked the question was because so many people after the war, veterans didn’t talk.
JC: No.
CB: About their experiences.
JC: No. True.
CB: And what happens is that grandchildren, children of the children, children don’t, direct children often don’t get the information but the grandchildren sometimes —
JC: Yes.
CB: Elicit the story from their grandparents. So that’s why I was asking about the picture.
JC: Every one of our grandchildren has taken that book to school, haven’t they?
Other: Yeah.
JC: And it’s as I say it’s only half this size.
CB: Yes.
JC: It’s —
CB: It’s A5 size.
JC: A5.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And they still produce it and on occasions and they take, all of them all of them have taken them into school and we heard from the teachers how helpful it’s been.
Other: Helpful.
JC: And Woody’s family, when he was leaving junior, infants [pause] Junior School to go to a Senior Academy they did turning Luton into wartime as an event.
CB: Did they really?
JC: With an evacuee section.
CB: Amazing.
JC: And he used to, he took our book, and they wrote a book for me. His class. Telling me about —
CB: About Luton.
JC: About what they knew about. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. It was a catalyst for wider.
JC: It’s been a real. I wish everyone would do it.
CB: Yeah.
JC: And it did help me. It did help me through going through the U3A. We had a wonderful tutor and she told us, I told her that I had got in the back of my book here the obituaries of my great grandfather, Mr Joe. And my husband’s great grandfather who was a wool merchant. A scrimmage man. And we got them printed from the paper and I showed them to her and in my husband’s book it said that Mr Colbeck’s background were mostly public ministers in the Methodist Church, but one of his great grandfathers fought at Waterloo. So she said to me, ‘Send your money to the Waterloo Society. Three pounds.’ I waited nearly six months for an answer.
CB: Did you?
JC: And the Waterloo Society Man said, ‘We’ve had a reply. Somebody would like to meet you.’ So I said, ‘Well, can I have their number?’ ‘No.’ she said ‘But you, can we give her your number?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And so I met my husband’s cousin. No. Yes. My husband’s second cousin. A lady in Lancashire where the family came from. Or Yorkshire. And they invited me to meet the family and I was the only relative left and it was incredible.
CB: Extraordinary.
JC: I don’t know. I can’t see that we can be any interest. Any, we haven’t got anything to tell anyone have we?
CB: People are very curious about their history.
JC: Pardon?
CB: People are very curious.
JC: Do you think so?
CB: About their history. Well, that’s why some —
JC: They are?
CB: Well, on the television there are two programmes based on finding out your history.
JC: Yes.
CB: Anyway, I think we’ll stop there. Thank you very much indeed, Joy.
JC: Yes.
CB: For a most interesting interview.
JC: Yes.
CB: To do with —
JC: Yes
CB: The air crash of John Wenham.
JC: Yes.
CB: And the loss of his life.
JC: Yes.
CB: In North Marston.
JC: Yes.
CB: In January 1945.
JC: You’ve got all the rest. It’s wonderful.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Joy Colbeck
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AColbeckJC170524
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:17:58 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Description
An account of the resource
Joy Colbeck was born in Maidstone, Kent and served within the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the war. Her brother, John, joined the RAF on the 28 of April 1943, qualified at as an air gunner in April 1944, before being transferred to an Operational Training Unit in October 1944 at RAF Westcot. It was here that he, along with the rest of his crew, crashed during a training exercise in January 1945. Joy goes on to explain that she doesn’t believe this affected her family very much, although she does state that people do not recall the war often, likely as they want to forget the experiences they had during it. Joy recounts several experiences of her own during the war, being a typewriter operator after volunteering at age 17. She served on board the destroyers HMS Whitehall and HMS Whitecliff, and the minesweeper HMS 01. She tells a number of anecdotes of her time during the war, including three stories of near-misses with bombs and machine guns. Joy was promoted to a petty officer before joining the Royal Marines at Bermondsey. She recalls meeting her husband during a formal dance at her naval base, but also recalls being incredibly busy during the war, an example being her husband having to meet her parents for the first time by himself as she couldn’t get the time off. Following the war, she believes that people did not talk about their experiences because they didn’t want to dwell on them and would rather move on. Joy continues to take part in memorial services, both Navy and RAF. As part of this, her mother, father, herself and her husband have all written books outlining their experiences during the war and she takes pride in her grandchildren knowing her story.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Suffolk
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-08
1943-04-28
1944-02-05
1944-03
1944-10
1945-01-04
11 OTU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
crash
home front
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/766/10767/PDallDKM1601.2.jpg
b5df8b4400540f0c29cf975e92f689ee
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/766/10767/ADallDKM161122.1.mp3
c8a57d5afd9ee10d16615f0067dd4195
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dall, David Kenneth McKenzie
D K M Dall
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer David Kenneth McKenzie Dall (b. 1924, 1320652 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 101 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dall, DKM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the, Tuesday the 22nd.
DD: 22nd.
CB: Of November 2016. And we’re in West Hendred with David Dall who was a 101 Squadron man and talking about his life and times. So, what are the earliest things you remember about your life, David?
DD: Well, the first thing I remember was out in Nyasaland. Now Malawi. My father was a tea planter. He used to take me around the tea estate on the back of his motorcycle inspecting stuff. And from there I sort of grew, grew up a little bit more. God. This is very difficult.
CB: We can start again.
DD: Sorry.
CB: Don’t worry.
[recording paused]
DD: My earliest recollections was living on a tea estate in Nyasaland. Now Malawi. I used to go around — I used to go across to my father’s factory most days accompanied by my boy who looked after me. An African whose name was Kaios. That went on ‘til I was about five or six, I think. And I was sent then to the convent to start my education in Limbe. Just outside Blantyre. I stayed there until I was about eight and then came over to this country when my father and mother separated. I was then, I spent one year acclimatizing, being acclimatized to schooling in this country. I went to Streatham Grammar School. And from there I went on to a public school in Suffolk called Framlingham. And I was there until 19 — was it — ‘42. And then my grandmother, my grandmother who was my guardian decided because of air raids around Suffolk that I was to go back to her but she lived in London. And of course the bombings was on at that time 1941/42. Sorry. Not ’42. ’41. Eventually she decided that it wasn’t worth staying there and she managed to buy a house down at Redhill in Surrey. I went down there and although I didn’t do any schooling I stayed there until I was about what seventeen and a half. And because of contacts my grandmother had with the RFC people during the First World War I got to know all the stories about the RFC now the RAF. And it sort of, you know I wanted to join up as soon as possible. And in 1942 I volunteered but I was seventeen. Seventeen and three quarters then. I volunteered for the air force but they turned me down. So I sort of thought about it and eventually I decided to go up to another place and volunteer there. And I got in. That was Croydon. It was, you know it was so busy there you could flannel your way through. So I was accepted there although I was three months under age. I waited and eventually I got a communication from the RAF to go for my interviews in Oxford. The main, the main part of that was in the medical side which I passed. And they sent me back and said wait. And the next thing I knew I was in. I started off — I think it was at Cardington. Yeah. I went through the basics there and got my uniform and all that sort of business. And I had volunteered for aircrew which I, you know I passed in my medical. Wait a minute. Can you stop it a second?
[recording paused]
DD: Not yet.
CB: So we’re just doing an alteration now because it wasn’t Cardington.
DD: No. It was Padgate.
CB: So where did you go to the ITW?
DD: Yeah.
CB: At? Padgate was it?
DD: I didn’t, I have to, I hadn’t — can you switch it off again.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
DD: Cut that. It was from, where did I go? God, I can’t remember. It’s taxing my —
[recording paused]
CB: Back with Madley.
DD: At Madley, I started, I did my first part of the wireless course. And then when I completed that I was posted as, to sort of a holding place at Pengham and Tremorfa in South Wales. From there I went back to Madley to do my, to commence my flying on Proctors and Dominies. When I finished there I went to Manby and did the gunnery course where I got my sergeant stripes and felt very good [laughs] I then went to Millom in Cumberland to do my AFU. And from there when I passed out there to Whitchurch and then on to the satellite at [unclear] to fly on Whitleys and train there. After we finished there and crewed up we then were sent to a holding unit at Boston. And from there we received our engineer and rear gunner to complete the crew. We did a — and went to —
CB: That was at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
DD: The Heavy Conversion Unit. Yeah.
CB: Right.
DD: And once we passed out there we went to Ludford and there we did —
CB: Which squadron was that?
DD: 101 Squadron at Ludford.
CB: And what was special about 101 Squadron?
DD: It was an ABC Squadron.
CB: Airborne Cigar.
DD: Yeah. Cigar.
CB: What did that mean?
DD: Well, it meant that we had to have an extra member in the crew who understood and spoke German.
CB: Right.
DD: I’ve told you that.
CB: Ok. What happened when you arrived at Ludford?
DD: When we arrived at Ludford we had to do a little bit more training and eventually we were informed that we were going to carry an extra member of the crew who spoke German and understood. His job mainly was to jam up night fighter stations and ground stations. After, after, after we finished our initial training there we were then unfortunately set onto the worst trip of all. Berlin. We did two Berlins on the trot. And we had a break and we did our third Berlin. And then we did, gradually went through different bombing raids until one I most remember was Nuremberg where unfortunately we lost seven aircraft. Which meant we lost fifty six people. And from there on we had quite a good run with the trips until we reached our thirtieth mission. We thought we were finished but that was the night before the night of D-Day and we volunteered for one extra trip. But there’s one trip I do remember. When they first started using the blue searchlights. We were in the front coming after we had bombed, on the way back we were suddenly caught in this blue searchlight and the next thing we knew we were diving straight to the ground to try and miss all the searchlights coming up. The blue lights. We ended up about two or three hundred feet off the ground. Yeah. That was from the height of about seventeen thousand approximately. I know my rear gunner was blinded by the searchlights as we passed through them going down. He just couldn’t see anything. He’ll tell you that too. That was a rather a nasty trip but going back to our last trip, coming back it was a most amazing sight. Oh, we did two trips around Europe drawing fighters away from the coast. You know, for D-Day. For the landings. When we’d completed those and we were returning to England we saw the invasion forces coming in and it was the most marvellous sight I’ve ever seen in my life. The hundreds and hundreds of ships in the Channel. It was beyond belief to see what was going on down there. And eventually we landed back at Ludford and that was us finished. That’s it.
CB: When you were on the ops to draw the fighters away how did — was that daylight?
DD: No. Night.
CB: That was night.
DD: Night. Yes. All night trips.
CB: So what was the, were you bombing on that?
DD: We did a bombing raid. Yes. As far as I can remember. Yeah. We did. Yeah.
CB: And how effective was the drawing away?
DD: Well, apparently very few fighters and bombers hit the beaches, you know. The numbers were, mind you they were, they didn’t have a lot of fuel for the aircraft in those days. The Germans didn’t have the fuel and they were running down. So in a way we helped a bit but not a great deal I don’t think.
CB: So, when you went on the raids other squadrons would assemble and then get into the bomber stream.
DD: We were spaced out.
CB: How did your 101 fit in to the bomber stream?
DD: Well, 101 was fit, was spaced out in the bomber stream. From the beginning to the end.
CB: Right.
DD: I don’t know what distances apart they were but different heights and different levels. But the one thing I do remember on the night of Nuremberg all the aircraft that we did see shot down. But we were told afterwards that they were oil bombs that blew up in the sky to, you know to frighten us. I think there was something, something there you could look into actually. But we thought, we were told that all these big sort of bursts of flame were oil, ack-ack and things. And you know at the time it really worried us actually.
CB: Did it?
DD: Because we thought it was all the aircraft going down.
CB: How many did you see go down yourselves on that raid?
DD: I never, I didn’t count them but it went on and on all night. Going to the target and coming back. But we were very lucky. But we were lucky we had what was called Monica which picked up, you know it couldn’t really differentiate between a fighter and a bomber except that the bomber was a bigger blip on the screen to the fighter.
CB: So this was a rear looking radar detector.
DD: Yeah. And which, which I was monitoring all the time. As soon as I picked up one I’d inform the pilot what to do. You know, whether to turn port, dive port or, you know, climb or something like that. But they were very basic. It was a very basic thing but it did help. And —
CB: So when you saw all these planes exploding.
DD: We thought were planes.
CB: Yeah. How did you think — what did you think about that?
DD: Well we were a bit shattered.
CB: Were you?
DD: I think the morale in the crew went down a little bit.
CB: Did it?
DD: But — and we weren’t really told much about it when we got back to base.
CB: And did, when you got down to debriefing after a sortie what did you do?
DD: Well, we told them all about it. Of course they were interested in that because they didn’t realise how many aircraft had been lost actually at that time. But the morale on the squadron the next day was rather low.
CB: Was it?
DD: Yeah.
CB: Because they lost ninety.
DD: We’d lost seven. We lost seven aircraft.
CB: Ninety eight. Yeah. You’d lost seven. Yes.
DD: Yeah. On that.
CB: Yeah.
DD: That was fifty six people and the messes were empty. Well, not empty but you know really reduced and it affected us a little bit that.
CB: Now, your crew came from a variety of places. What, where, where —how many were Brits and how many were Canadian?
DD: Well, we had three Canadians.
CB: Who were they?
DD: The pilot, the navigator and the bomb aimer. And the rest were British.
CB: Right.
DD: Although I was allowed to wear the Rhodesian flash. I got permission for that from Rhodesia House.
CB: That was good.
DD: Yeah. Because you see it on one of the photographs.
CB: Yes.
DD: You see my Rhodesia up there.
CB: Right. And how many of the crew were commissioned?
DD: One.
CB: And —
DD: Just one.
CB: Who was he?
DD: The pilot.
CB: Right.
DD: The navigator was commissioned after the tour finished I think. Yes. He got his commission just after.
CB: And how many were decorated at the end of the tour?
DD: Oh. The Canadians were. We weren’t.
CB: Right. What did they get?
DD: DFCs.
CB: Right.
DD: Or DFCs and DFMs. But the English crew we got nothing.
CB: No.
DD: Nothing at all.
CB: Ok. How well did the crew gel?
DD: Very well indeed. We all, when we were doing our training and our sort of air tests and all that sort of business we each took each other’s jobs. We learned them that way.
CB: There was a purpose to that. So what was it?
DD: In case. In case we were, you know someone was killed or wounded or something like that. We could take over. Someone could take over the job. But we went through all of them. We didn’t have much to do with the engineer. At least I didn’t. But I sort of knew the navigator’s job and did a bit with the bomb aimer. And of course gunnery I knew. And that’s the way we sort of carried on. You know, we kept on learning about each other’s jobs and I think that’s the reason why we got through.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Because we, you know we knew our jobs so well. Plus the fact that we had a very very good pilot. He was good. There was no doubt about that.
CB: What age was he?
DD: He was the oldest in the crew. Twenty four I think.
CB: Oh really old then.
DD: Yeah [laughs] he was. We used to think of him as the old man.
CB: Yeah. Now, you were a wireless operator. So, what, what was your role? What were you actually doing on the sorties? On the operations.
DD: On the operations I was taking the wind speeds because as, the wireless operator used to do a lot of work with the navigator. We were getting wind speeds from back in the UK from Group. And not only that we were monitoring on this Monica so you know sort of one side the other one there. Doing that sort of business. We were trained in Gee. You know —
CB: Which was the plotting system.
DD: The plotting system.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Yeah. And I used to help the navigator with that as well when I had a quiet period. Giving him some readings as and when he wanted.
CB: Because that’s how he found on the lattice because it was a lattice system.
DD: Yeah. Aye.
CB: So that’s how you were following where — your location.
DD: Our location on the ground. Yes.
CB: And how far was that effective away from base?
DD: It was quite — initially it wasn’t very good. But it gradually got better and better more or less each trip we did because information was coming in all the time and someone was looking into that.
CB: And when you were — the Monica was designed to alert the crew to the appearance of night fighters.
DD: Mainly the pilot.
CB: Yeah.
DD: As soon as I saw anything that came up on the, on the screen I would tell the pilot to dive port or dive starboard depending on which area the aircraft was coming in and get him sort of aircraft port quarter.
CB: Right.
DD: Starboard or something like that. Whichever way it was the pilot would dive down and do his, you know — squiggle [laughs]
CB: Do a corkscrew.
DD: The corkscrew. Yeah.
CB: You had to hold on when he did the corkscrew.
DD: You certainly did. Yeah.
CB: Right.
DD: Straight. Ray, Ray was a very energetic pilot I would say.
CB: You had, as a signaller you had regular communication at a timed space. How did that work?
DD: Timed space. Every fifteen minutes I would have Group. And then we could listen out for any other information that was coming in.
CB: Which would be what?
DD: Well, mainly to do with, well the wind. The windspeed was the Group one. When we got far away, you know some distance away from England we just kept to the Group and listened out to them for any information.
CB: So —
DD: Because as I say normally it was every fifteen minutes but if anything special came up it would come in between.
CB: Now, you and the navigator were also yourselves were you measuring wind speed?
DD: Well, he was.
CB: How did he do that?
DD: I didn’t do the windspeeds. The navigator did all that. One of the things I used to do was to stand in the astrodome to check out, you know aircraft. You know, when I wasn’t looking on the Monica. If it was quiet I’d be looking around and see what was going on. Sometimes you know if we were flying a bit low from there you could pick out features on the ground. If, if there was any light down there. See what — from the astrodome I could see any ack-ack. You know. Where it was bursting. Where the searchlights were. That all came into it. You know, you were talking all the time either to the skipper or the navigator.
CB: And how often did you see other aircraft near you while you were on the op?
DD: Not, not a lot until you got to the bombing stage. When you were on the run in. Generally the aircraft were all coming closer and you’d see people up there, down there. In fact one night we just missed a load of bombs that came out of an aircraft above us.
CB: Did you make the call? Did you? To the pilot.
DD: No. WT silence.
CB: No. No. But I meant did you tell the pilot?
DD: Oh, yes. Yes.
CB: About the aircraft above.
DD: Well he saw. Everyone saw it.
CB: Oh right.
DD: Except the rear gunner. He was out of it [laughs]
CB: So, in that circumstance what does the pilot do? Does he, if it’s ahead does he throttle back or does he move? I mean, it’s —
DD: Well, as far as I remember he kept steady. Steady on that route.
CB: And just hope it didn’t hit you.
DD: Well, you could see them coming down. More or less by the time you got to that spot you know you were clear. You could go through. But it didn’t happen very often but it did happen occasionally.
CB: There’s a, there’s a famous picture somewhere of a Lancaster with no rear turret.
DD: Yes.
CB: Because it had been —
DD: Yeah. Hit it.
CB: Demolished from bombs from above.
DD: Yeah.
CB: So this was a constant.
DD: It was a worry.
CB: Yes.
DD: But not only that actually. The prospect of a collision over the target was very real.
CB: Right.
DD: You know. You know, if you’re flying slightly off course and coming in you could sort of hit each other.
CB: Yes. Did your pilot tend to fly slightly on the outside and then move in or was he always tried to be in the middle of the melee?
DD: He was generally in the middle. Once or twice we had to go around again. Which wasn’t very pleasant.
CB: You mean you didn’t drop the bombs. You went around.
DD: We didn’t drop the bombs. No.
CB: Or if you were too soon.
DD: The ack-ack was too strong and we had to move away.
CB: Right.
DD: And go around again.
CB: Right.
DD: And redo our bombing raid.
CB: So you were looking out for the flak. Were you looking for the flak boxes?
DD: What do you mean flak boxes?
CB: Where they had concentrations of flak in a particular height or a particular area.
DD: Oh yes. Yes. Well, at that stage you were looking forward. To see, you know any boxes as you say. If you saw it dead ahead which obviously the pilot could see as well you didn’t say anything. But if you saw it off to the side then you would inform him.
CB: Right.
DD: Or even if it was behind you.
CB: Because he couldn’t see it.
DD: Because over the bombing, the bombing run, my job was actually to be in the astrodome to see what was going on around and inform everyone.
CB: During the bombing run.
DD: During the bombing run. Until we actually got to the bombing run. Even then when you came out of the bombing run well Ray always used to make a swish down. Out of the way.
CB: Get to the —
DD: Get to below the bombing, bombing height. So we went down about two or three thousand feet to get out and then he’d start climbing up a bit. But it varied actually. He, he decided what he did then. We didn’t of course.
CB: But he would turn left or right after releasing the bombs?
DD: Not always. Sometimes he went —
CB: Just straight on.
DD: Straight on and down. You know. Gently going down. Watching out for other aircraft if they were lower. Especially when, if the Halifaxes were low, or the Stirlings. You couldn’t go down to their level of course. You only went down about two or three thousand feet.
CB: Still.
DD: It was a bit different to that flak level which, you know it helped us sometimes because we, sometimes the rear gunner would say flak was on our trail. You’d see it bombing you know. Getting there. Because there were so many guns around. Well especially Berlin. There was something like sixty thousand guns. We never liked that [laughs]
CB: No.
DD: That was one of our horror trips.
CB: How often did the aircraft get hit?
DD: We weren’t hit at all actually. We were lucky in that respect. As I say the fact we had such a good pilot. He knew what to do exactly. Get out of the way of things.
CB: And did you experience any night fighters behind you on any occasions?
DD: On Monica. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
DD: But when you gave the order for the pilot to do something he got away from them [pause]
CB: So you never got shot at by a pilot, by a fighter.
DD: We did one night. The attack was starting but we’d picked it up on Monica and we got out of the way. He lost us. As I say Ray was such a good pilot he knew where to go and get out of the way of everything.
CB: How did the crew respond to Monica? What did they think about it?
DD: They liked it. The gunners. The two gunners loved it. You know. We could tell them exactly where to look.
CB: Right.
DD: Because when you’re looking into the dark all the time you can’t see. Your eyes get a bit blurry. But if you know where to look, concentrate on that, it was a big help.
CB: Now, you’ve got the eighth man in the aircraft. To what extent did you link in with him? Because he was using electronic equipment.
DD: Yeah.
CB: And you were the radio man.
DD: Yeah. Well, I I if I could pick you know in a quiet run anywhere if I could pick up a night fighter station anywhere I would inform him. I didn’t have a lot to do with him. They were kept separate to us.
CB: Was he always the same man?
DD: No. No.
CB: Or did it vary?
DD: No. Different one. Although we had one bloke I think we flew about three or four times with. But that was rather unusual. But he liked our crew apparently. And as I say they were a thing on their own.
CB: What did you know about them?
DD: Nothing. We were kept separate from them.
CB: Did they speak to the crew in any way?
DD: Oh, when we were in the aircraft occasionally but not during a flight.
CB: Right.
DD: They were completely on their own.
CB: So where were they sitting? So —
DD: They were sitting just behind the main spar. They had, I think there were three transmitters and two receivers. And they sat there. Opposite the rest bed.
CB: And where was their aerial? What was it like? And where was it?
DD: Don’t know. We had nothing to do with it.
CB: No. But it was, it was sticking out of the aircraft.
DD: There was one sticking out, yeah.
CB: Yeah.
DD: But we, we knew nothing about it.
CB: That was the ABC. The airborne cigar. Wasn’t it?
DD: Yeah.
CB: Right.
DD: I think so.
CB: So on the ground then to what extent did you fraternise with any of the special ops people?
DD: We didn’t. We didn’t fraternise at all.
CB: Why was that?
DD: Well, they were kept separate from us completely.
CB: In, in what way?
DD: Well, we just didn’t meet them.
CB: They lived somewhere different did they?
DD: Probably. We didn’t know anything. Once we got back on the ground and we went for debriefing we didn’t see them again.
CB: Oh. Did they go into debriefing or were they —
DD: No.
CB: They were debriefed separately.
DD: I can’t remember seeing them.
CB: Right.
DD: Maybe one or two did. I don’t know. But they were a law unto themselves as far as we were concerned. We had nothing to do with them.
CB: So they were German speakers. How many of them did you think were not Brits anyway?
DD: Well, we didn’t know how many there were but we had a few that were Brits. When I say a few I think over the whole course we probably had about three or four. The rest were foreigners mostly.
CB: Native German speakers.
DD: Well, yeah. Well, there were a lot of Poles, Czechs. No, we didn’t have much to do with them.
CB: No. Going to your earlier time when you crewed up how did that work?
DD: Very well indeed.
CB: So what happened?
DD: Well, we were put into this room and all everyone was milling around and talking to people. A couple of people asked me, you know if I was, you know wanted me to join them. I wasn’t. Actually, I saw Ray. I liked the look of him.
CB: The pilot.
DD: Yeah. So eventually I made my way across to him and had a talk. He brought in the navigator and we got on well the three of us. And that was it. We crewed up.
CB: And then there was the third Canadian. I mean did they get together because they knew —
DD: The bomb aimer.
CB: They were Canadian or —
DD: Yeah. Probably.
CB: Just coincidence.
DD: Yeah. He, he joined in at the end I think. There was a bit of a mish mash of things but you know, you’re all milling around and —
CB: Yeah.
DD: If you liked the look of someone or thought you they might be a good, you know crew mate you got on to them. But it was a strange affair but it worked well really. Then we, we all gelled. Yeah.
HD: A good job you did.
CB: So that was at the OTU. But how many crew were there then? That wasn’t the full.
DD: No. We had the pilot, navigator, bomb aimer and one gunner.
CB: Yeah. And then you.
DD: And me.
CB: And you were a wireless operator/air gunner.
DD: Yeah.
CB: What was the brevet you were wearing at that stage?
DD: At that time it was the AG bridge.
CB: And you had a flash on your sleeve.
DD: Oh, you had a wireless.
CB: Showing you were a wireless operator.
DD: Yeah. Aye.
CB: Right.
DD: And then that changed did it? Later.
CB: Well no. Not until I came, after I came out.
DD: Right.
CB: And then you —
DD: They had the signals badge then.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
DD: I didn’t get that. I was a W/op AG. You see, I had the two jobs.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So —
DD: But the ones that came in afterwards. They all wore, the wireless people —
CB: Yeah.
DD: All wore Ss.
CB: So, were you pleased to keep the W/op AG?
DD: Yeah.
CB: Rather than a signaller.
DD: I was.
CB: Right. There was a better badge of respectability.
DD: [laughs] Well, I suppose it was in way. It meant you —
CB: Well, you’d done more hadn’t you?
DD: You were an older member.
CB: Yes. Established member.
DD: Aye.
CB: So, when you got to the HCU then the flight engineer came. So how did he and the rear gunner, how did they get selected?
DD: Oh the rear gunner was selected in the mish mash. We got him there.
CB: You were short of one. One gunner.
DD: Yeah. Mid-upper.
CB: Yeah. Mid-upper.
DD: Mid-upper.
CB: Ok. So how did you get him?
DD: He was sent to us.
CB: Sent to you.
DD: Sent. Yeah.
CB: Right. What about the engineer? How did he come into the —
DD: He was also sent to us.
CB: Oh right. No choice.
DD: No choice.
CB: Right.
DD: No.
CB: And how did that do? How did they gel with everybody else?
DD: Well, at first we weren’t very happy about it. The mid-upper gunner — it took a little bit longer to get to know him because he was a very strong Welsh chap. Very taciturn. We didn’t know quite what to make of him at first but eventually it turned out that he sort of relaxed a bit and he was, he was ok. You know, he gelled alright then.
CB: And the engineer?
DD: The engineer was a Cockney from London. Arthur Moore. He was, [laughs] he was a strange chap but we liked him.
CB: And then —
DD: But he wasn’t really part of the original crew.
CB: No. That’s what I meant. Yeah.
DD: It took a little while to get used to them both but eventually they did. They gelled in with us.
CB: And had he been trained as a flight engineer or had he originally been a flight mechanic? An air mechanic.
DD: No. He was trained as a, as a flight engineer.
CB: Right.
DD: Didn’t know a lot about him. He kept himself to himself. But I can’t — no. He was, yeah he was trained as a flight engineer. I’m pretty sure about that. Smithy can confirm that.
CB: Now, thinking about the social side. So how did, how did that gel?
DD: Well, we had a motorbike.
CB: Oh.
DD: And sidecar.
CB: For all seven of you. Yeah.
DD: There’s a photograph of it.
CB: Yes.
DD: We did one night get seven on it and got stopped by the police [laughs] It was a night out in Louth. Oh dear.
CB: It must have been a good one. Yes.
DD: It was a good one that.
CB: Yes.
DD: I can’t tell you. We were hanging out all over the place [laughs] But normally it was quite ok.
CB: Yeah.
DD: If we went into Louth to go in the cinema or something like that we used to get a taxi mainly. But this one night I don’t know why. I think, we didn’t go in on it. We came back on it, I think.
CB: Who did it belong to then?
DD: Pardon?
CB: The pilot? Did it —
DD: It belonged to, the navigator had some relations in Wolverhampton and they gave him the bike.
CB: With the sidecar.
DD: With the sidecar. And he brought it back to the squadron. Yeah. We had some good times there.
CB: What happened on the airfield? Did they have dances on the airfield? Or did you —
DD: Oh there were very few dances. Very very few. Normally when you had a stand down well you either stay in the station or went off into Louth or something like that.
CB: Market Rasen?
DD: Occasionally. Not so much. Mainly Louth we went into.
CB: Any other places that you would consider?
DD: Grimsby.
CB: Grimsby.
DD: Yeah. Cleethorpes.
CB: Have a fight with the sailors.
DD: No. Didn’t have any problems up there at all. Yeah. It sort of mixed quite well actually from what I remember.
CB: Well, places like North Coates were Coastal Command so did you link —
DD: No.
CB: In any way with them on a social?
DD: No. Not at all.
CB: Didn’t come across them.
DD: No. No. I can’t remember anything about that.
CB: No. So you got to the end of the tour. Thirty one ops. Is that right?
DD: Yeah.
CB: Because you did the extra.
DD: Thirty one there.
CB: Then what happened?
DD: Well, we just [pause] well for about a week after we finished and then we were all sort of posted off different places. We didn’t — mainly we, mainly we didn’t see each other again. I did meet up, when I was attached to a Canadian OTU I met up with the skipper then.
CB: Where was that?
DD: That was Gamston near Retford.
CB: So, when you were at the end where were you posted immediately after?
DD: Well, I was posted to Gamston.
CB: Oh you were. Yeah.
DD: There was a bit of a mish mash that happened from there on. We were sort of posted around. When the OTU closed we were sent off to Peplow. We were there for about a week and then oh we went all around different places for a about week or two weeks’ time ‘til eventually — where did we get to? Oh, I finished up at Gamston. Again.
CB: Again.
DD: Yeah. On ferry flight. We were ferrying the old Wimpies.
CB: Where did you —
DD: Down to Little Rissington.
CB: Oh yeah.
DD: There were hundreds down there.
CB: They were breaking them up.
DD: Breaking them up. Yeah.
CB: And what did they do? Take you back with an, in an Anson or something.
DD: No. Three aircraft used to go down.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Two were delivered. One brought us back.
CB: Right.
DD: It was alright until we had some bad weather and we landed at Cranwell and they didn’t want us there [laughs] We were all scruffy, you know. In our flying gear and everything. We had to go in to the mess like that and people’s faces were looking down at us. Oh God it was terrible. Oh dear. I shan’t forget. I was flying with, the pilot was a Flight Lieutenant Bristow. He was a Canadian and he and I really got [laughs] got on well. But the way they treated us. They couldn’t get rid of us quick enough. Although you know we’d landed on the grass airfield and this this Wimpy had sunk in. They didn’t like that. They didn’t like anything about us.
CB: So when is this? This is late ’44.
DD: This would be oh ’45.
CB: ’45.
DD: ’45. Anyway, we got out. We collected. We didn’t even stay the night there. We went off as soon as we could.
CB: Yeah. So —
DD: We were supposed to stay the night because of the weather but they, they pushed us off.
CB: Yeah. So, I meant to say late ’45 because the war had ended then. Had it?
DD: Yes. Because we were doing the ferrying and it had all finished.
CB: Yeah.
DD: And the Canadian OTU, they closed down and all the Canadians went back.
CB: Yeah.
DD: That’s where I met up with my skipper.
CB: Right.
DD: Because he came down there for three days. And —
CB: By coincidence was it? Or did he come to say hello?
DD: No. No. He was posted there because that was a holding unit before they went off.
CB: Oh right. Ok.
DD: To where ever they were going.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Yeah. I didn’t see him again until nineteen — no 2002.
CB: What happened then?
DD: Well, in between he’d, I was out in Africa. He was flying. He started off, he was in the, he joined the Canadian Air Force out there flying Sabres in Germany and then when he came out he joined a civilian — he became a civilian pilot. And whilst I was in Nyasaland and Rhodesia he was, he was coming to Zambia to try to catch each other. He tried many a time to get hold of me but we always seemed to miss each other. And in my second, in my second tour with the air force when I was out in Hong Kong he used to get a flight to Singapore. But I didn’t know that. Oh I just tried to get hold of him.
CB: So, fast backwards or where we were just with Gamston. That was where they were repatriating the Canadians.
DD: The Canadians. Yeah.
CB: What was your role there? Just delivering aircraft was it? For —
DD: Well no. I was only, only there was an OTU going on.
CB: It was still running.
DD: It was still running.
CB: Right.
DD: And we were getting English people in and I was an instructor there.
CB: Before you did the —
DD: No. The ferry flight came first and then we went back to the OTU.
CB: Right.
DD: That was it.
CB: And how long did that go on for?
DD: Not for very long because it closed down. And then —
CB: Then what?
DD: Eventually I was sent to Brize [pause] not Brize Norton. To Finningley. Bomber Command Instructor School.
CB: And you were training instructors were you?
DD: Well, yes. People who had finished their tours. This included pilots navigators and navigators. We had to teach them to be instructors. We had a few wireless people but not many. But their jobs were to go out then and teach others.
CB: And how long did you do that for?
DD: Oh, I was there for about a year. And then I, you know, the war had finished and it was getting a bit iffy so I decided, you know I’d come out and go back. My father wanted me out there.
CB: So when did you actually leave the RAF?
DD: The beginning of ’46.
CB: You were demobbed in the normal way.
DD: Well, not in the normal way. No. I got a class B discharge.
CB: Right.
DD: Which was an immediate. You know immediately coming out.
CB: Yeah.
DD: I had to wait three — I think it was three months until I got posted out to the Palestine Police stationed at Jenin.
CB: So you’d volunteered then.
DD: I volunteered for it. Yeah.
CB: As you were serving out your demob leave was it that you volunteered?
DD: No. No. I didn’t get any demob leave. I got a demob suit and all that sort of business but I had volunteered to transfer. That’s why I got a class B discharge.
CB: Yeah. To the police.
DD: Yeah.
CB: So the motive of applying for the Palestine Police was what?
DD: To get to Africa.
CB: Right. How was that going to work?
DD: Well, it was more or less although it was semi, it was more or less half. Half civilian and half [pause] not army but what do you call, what do you call it?
CB: What? Military police?
DD: Semi-military and half civilian. But you could, you know if you didn’t like it you could buy yourself out. That was the idea. Buy myself out and then I could get down to [unclear] and up to Nyasaland.
CB: So what role was yours in the Palestine police?
DD: I was only just a British constable. Just a basic.
CB: So they gave you training there or in Britain?
DD: Well, I didn’t have any training at all because I ended up in hospital.
CB: Why was that?
DD: I got Blackwater Fever?
CB: Oh. How did you get that?
DD: Well, the boats that used to come up from [unclear] had, you know sometimes they had mosquitoes in and they’d got a chap off the boat who was down with Blackwater Fever. Brought him to the hospital I was in. Probably the mosquito that had bitten him then bit me. I got it. So I was invalided out. And that was that.
CB: To where?
DD: I was invalided back to this country. And that was the end of that.
CB: So that was the opposite way from what —
DD: Yeah.
CB: You wanted to go.
DD: And that, it took me another three years before I could get a boat. As I told you. I got a job with the African, not the African Lace Corporation err what were they? They were tied up with the African lace. They used to send people out to do jobs in Africa. So I got a job with them because you know one of the people who, the person who wrote to me was a friend of my father’s. Had lived out in Nyasaland.
CB: Right.
DD: So he got me out there.
CB: But it took three years to do it.
DD: Yeah. It did.
CB: What were you actually doing in that time?
DD: Oh I got various little jobs you know. You know, I didn’t do very much. I joined actually a chap who did landscaping and a sort of a gardening job because I didn’t want to be inside. I got a job with him for a while.
CB: Where was that?
DD: That was Redhill.
CB: You were staying with your grandparents, were you?
DD: Yes. My grandmother.
CB: Right.
DD: It brought some money in. It wasn’t a well-paid job but I knew, you know eventually I was going to get back to Africa. So I couldn’t go for a decent job until after I’d been there a year. I did get a job with a garage.
CB: Doing?
DD: In Redhill.
CB: Doing what?
DD: Well, I was —
CB: The electrics was it?
DD: The electrics. Yeah. I was, I was looking after the batteries you know. The batteries and things like that. And then you know I got this. I kept an eye out for anything going in Africa and my father was trying to get me out there. But eventually I saw this advertisement in, “The Times.” Wrote off. Got the job.
CB: What was it?
DD: Oh, just a store keeper in a — working in a store. So it got me out there and —
CB: Where?
DD: Out to Nyasaland.
CB: Right.
DD: And I didn’t fancy that work at all. Obviously. So I repaid. I’d saved up money then and I repaid them and I bought myself out. And joined my father. That was it.
CB: And what was he doing then?
DD: He’d retired but he’d bought this place down in Rhodesia and no sooner than I did that —
CB: This was tobacco.
DD: Tobacco. Yeah. As soon as I did that I joined him. Got stuck in. Yeah.
CB: So how was that, how was that managed? Was there a professional manager?
DD: No, my father was looking after it.
CB: He was still doing it.
DD: Yeah.
CB: Right.
DD: He was doing it. But I gradually sort of started taking over the curing and sorting of the tobacco and selling it on the, in the auction houses. And after I’d been there a second year there we hit the highest price ever known because we managed to get some American tobacco seed which was called Hicks. And that produced a larger leaf and a brighter leaf which we, we managed to get an ounce of that. An ounce of seed. Grew that. And we were the first people to hit a hundred pence on the auction floor. At a hundred pence, you know, a pound. And then [pause] a little bit later that was, then my father passed on.
CB: Oh. So —
DD: I couldn’t afford, I hadn’t got the money because we were still paying. Paying out on the tractors and things. I couldn’t afford to, you know stay there.
CB: What? To keep it rolling.
DD: No. So I sold up and came back to this country.
CB: So when you sold up was it a ready market for other —
DD: Oh yeah. It was a good market.
CB: Right.
DD: Yeah. But actually you couldn’t get a lot of money back but we managed to just about break even. That was it.
CB: Because you’d — the tractors and equipment were on loans were they? So —
DD: Yeah. And all the fire equipment for the barns was expensive stuff.
CB: Right.
DD: Which you couldn’t buy outright. You had to buy, you know it was like a never never.
CB: Yeah. So, what are we talking about now? That’s — it took you three years to get out there.
DD: Aye.
CB: So, that was 1949.
DD: Yeah. ’49. And I was there ‘til ’54. Wasn’t it?
HD: Well, I met you in ’56.
DD: ’55.
HD: Was it ’55?
DD: ’55. Yeah. ’54 I came back to this country. Yeah.
CB: Ok. So what did you do then?
DD: Oh. Various jobs. I had a couple of jobs. One job I did or two jobs actually. One I lost the job because my son was born. I met Hilda and we married and had our first son and because I took a day off I lost the job.
CB: Oh.
DD: Yeah. Do you remember that?
HD: Was that when I had Jan?
DD: Yeah. When Jan was born.
HD: Yeah. You took a day off didn’t you?
DD: I was working at — what was it? Fields. And because I took a day off without telling them because Hilda started having Jan the night before. The Sunday night. And —
HD: You took the Monday off.
DD: I took the Monday off and I was sacked. Just like that.
CB: A bit severe.
DD: Yeah. It was severe. I thought —
HD: I wouldn’t happen today would that. Would it?
DD: Oh God no.
CB: So what did you do then?
DD: Well, I got a job. Where was it? As a salesman didn’t I? But I didn’t like that. Anyway, you know I could see there was no future in what I was doing so I decided you know the air force was. So, I went in and looked into that. They said they’d have me back.
CB: When was that?
DD: That was when?
HD: 1959 that was.
DD: No. ’58, wasn’t it? When I started. ’58. Because ’59 I went back in.
CB: And what did you do? So, you left the RAF as a warrant officer.
DD: Yeah.
CB: Originally. And with all the trappings of that. When you returned what did they do about your rank?
DD: My rank? It went down to corporal.
CB: Oh. And what were you doing?
DD: Well, I went, I didn’t have to do the basic training. I went straight in and went to Hullavington where I was on — was it — was it Parachute Servicing Unit.
CB: Parachute School.
DD: Yeah. I went there.
CB: And what were you doing there?
DD: Well, as a corporal I was a checker for the parachute packers.
CB: Checking the quality of what they’d done.
DD: Yeah. Yeah. I was there for about a year wasn’t it? About a year. Then I went to Watchfield.
CB: And you got a quarter did you? Because you were married. You got a quarter, did you?
DD: We got a quarter. Yeah.
CB: As a corporal.
DD: As a corporal. Yeah.
CB: What was that like?
DD: It wasn’t too bad. At Bicester. Was it?
HD: No. It was quite nice.
DD: Yeah.
CB: At Bicester?
DD: Well, we were at Bicester when it first — sorry.
CB: Hullavington.
DD: Hullavington. We went from Bicester, I went to Watchfield and then down to Hullavington didn’t I? That was it. And then I went back to Watchfield.
CB: Right. So, Watchfield. What was going on there? Because it used to be the Air Traffic School in the war.
DD: Yeah.
CB: So what had happened?
DD: They were dropping. Well, it was a training ground for dropping MSPs and also troops.
CB: What’s MSP stand for?
DD: What is it? Referring to parachutes MSP is a Medium Special Parachute.
CB: Right.
DD: The heavy duty ones.
CB: Right.
DD: Dropping Land Rovers and such like.
HD: From Watchfield —
DD: Yeah.
HD: We went to Netheravon.
DD: Oh that’s right. Netheravon. Oh God. Yeah. I’d forgotten about that.
HD: We didn’t go to, we didn’t go to Hullavington until after we had [unclear]
DD: That’s right. We went from —
HD: Watchfield. The first time.
DD: We went to Netheravon.
HD: Netheravon.
CB: And what happened there?
DD: I was running a parachute unit.
CB: And what rank were you by this time?
DD: I was sergeant.
CB: Right. So, were you a sergeant at Watchfield?
DD: Yes.
CB: Right.
HD: You got made up at Watchfield.
DD: Aye. I went to Netheravon. I was there for how long? About —
HD: About nine month.
DD: Nine months and then we went to Hong Kong.
CB: Ok. And you were still a sergeant or have you got promoted again?
DD: No. I stuck to sergeant.
HD: You did ask to get a commission though didn’t you?
DD: Yes.
HD: To go for a commission.
DD: Out in Hong Kong we had our own little parachute unit you know. To look after the aircraft coming in.
CB: Right.
DD: I had a small staff there. We were there for — what? Two and a half years. And then we came back to Hullavington. That’s it. Yeah.
CB: So the parachute section out in Hong Kong. Did that require more common re-packing of parachutes because of the climate?
DD: No. We didn’t. No. We didn’t. We kept emergency equipment for any aircraft coming in. That was the main job there.
HD: Yeah. It was very interesting out there because the Vietnam war on at that time wasn’t it?
DD: And we used to get all the Americans coming up from Vietnam.
CB: Vietnam.
DD: Yeah.
HD: And the bombs going all around the island.
DD: Oh yeah. Whilst we were there you know the Chinese started playing up a bit. And I was official machine gunner.
CB: Oh.
DD: One machine gun we had there [laughs]
CB: Where did you keep that?
DD: Well, I didn’t keep it. It was kept in the armoury. But I would have to go on the top of the roof and sit there with it. That was my job.
CB: What kind of gun was that?
DD: It was a Lewis gun.
CB: With a rotating drum.
DD: Yeah. That’s all. Oh it was, it was a funny place that.
CB: That was on the airfield.
DD: Not on the airfield. It was just on, it used to be the old seaplane unit.
CB: Oh.
DD: And, oh and then I took over the running of the cinema. It was, it was a glory job.
HD: But you had a lot to do with, I mean when that plane landed didn’t you?
DD: Oh yes. When we had the emergencies.
CB: What sort of things?
DD: Oh.
CB: With aircraft you mean?
DD: With aircraft. Yeah. They’d lost an aircraft out at sea and they thought it was shot down by the Chinese. And we had an Argosy out there that I had to go on it and be a sort of an observer.
CB: Out at the crash site.
DD: No. We couldn’t find it.
CB: No. But you went out as an observer.
DD: It was, yeah.
CB: To find the crash.
DD: To try and find it. See any wreckage or anything.
CB: Yeah.
DD: But we found nothing at all. I don’t know what happened there but it was something to do with some — we found out later it was something to do with some spies that had been on the plane. And that’s why they wanted to find the wreckage and find them I suppose.
CB: Yeah.
DD: I don’t know.
CB: What sort of a plane was it?
DD: An Argosy.
CB: Oh right.
DD: It was not stationed there but it had been there for a couple of weeks. It was due to go out the following week and they just asked for people to go on the plane to observe.
CB: Because they needed lots of eyes to see.
DD: Yeah.
CB: So, how long were you in Hong Kong?
DD: Two and a half years.
CB: What was the quarter like there?
DD: Well, we had, we started off in civilian flats actually in the town.
CB: Oh.
DD: And then eventually we got a bungalow on the airfield.
CB: Yeah. Air conditioned?
DD: No. Fans [laughs]
CB: So, two and a half years later you returned to the UK. Where did you go then?
DD: Hullavington.
CB: Right. And what’s your new role there?
DD: I took over the, I was in the office then recording stuff. Numbers of parachutes packed and all that sort of business.
CB: Because you were the specialist parachute person.
DD: Yeah.
CB: Right. How long did that last?
DD: I did a bit of time study there as well.
CB: Oh right. They sent you on a course did they?
DD: No. They knew I’d been on a course. When I, you know, when I was at Bradford I’d been on that course. Time study. I had it in my background so they got me doing that. Working out times for the packing of parachutes.
CB: Then what? So, you were there at Hullavington how long?
HD: Nine month. It was usually nine month everywhere we went really.
DD: And then we went to — where was it?
HD: Watchfield again.
DD: Watchfield. Oh yeah. Back doing the same job as before.
CB: Right.
HD: Then about nine month there and we went back to Hullavington.
DD: Yeah. And then got posted to Brize. Didn’t we?
HD: No. We were never posted to Brize. We went to —
DD: Not Brize.
HD: To Abingdon.
DD: Abingdon, yeah. To Abingdon, Sorry.
CB: Ok. And what happened at Abingdon?
HD: Oh we stayed there for —
CB: It was a transport base by then wasn’t it?
DD: Yeah. More or less the same. I was running, they were sending, I was attached to the parachutists. The parachutists again. We used to get the supplies up from Hullavington and then issue them out to troops. That was about it actually.
CB: So when did you retire from the RAF?
DD: ’81.
CB: Ok. And where did you retire from?
DD: From Brize.
CB: Ok. From Brize or Abingdon?
DD: Brize.
HD: Well, I I stayed in Abingdon.
CB: Yeah but you —
HD: Because I I didn’t want to move the boys.
DD: We had quarters in Abingdon but I was working at Brize.
CB: Yeah. After Abingdon. Ok. And so you’d done a total of how many years in the RAF?
DD: Was it four years during the war and twenty two?
CB: Afterwards.
DD: Second tour.
CB: So, they gave you an RAF pension for that.
DD: Yeah.
CB: Based on —
DD: That’s why, one of the reasons why I went in.
CB: Yeah. Based on which rank?
DD: Based on a sergeant. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
DD: They didn’t count the wartime because I was out longer. I was out too long. Although, when I was out I did join the Reserves and I was flying at Redhill. You know, just the little Ansons and Tiger Moths.
CB: Doing what?
DD: Nothing. I didn’t. I wasn’t, it wasn’t full time. I was part time.
CB: No. No. But what were you doing? You were flying the aeroplane, were you?
DD: Yeah.
CB: Piloting it.
DD: No. No. No. No.
CB: No.
DD: No. I did get to. I started learning to pilot. Yes. In fact, I flew from [pause] in a Tiger Moth from where was it now? Somewhere down, somewhere in Devon back to [pause] that was my only, not solo. I wasn’t solo. I had a pilot you know a chap who was with me.
CB: Yeah.
DD: He was teaching me though.
CB: How long were you in the Reserve? It was the RAF VR rather than VRT.
DD: Yeah. RAF VR.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Until I went out to Africa. And they wanted, actually they wanted me to come back.
CB: So, you left the RAF in ’81.
DD: Eighty. That was ’81 yeah.
CB: Yeah.
DD: And I didn’t have anything more to do with the air force then.
CB: No.
DD: That was the finish.
CB: Right. What did you do after then as a job?
DD: Oh. I got a job with a newspaper firm at Eynsham.
CB: Oh.
DD: That was it wasn’t it?
CB: What did you do then?
HD: Yeah.
DD: I was on security. Sort of — that’s all I did actually. There was two of us there.
CB: For how long?
DD: Was it — how many years?
HD: Not long. You weren’t there all that long. About three or four years.
DD: Oh, it was more than that.
HD: Was it?
DD: Yeah. It was about seven or eight years.
HD: Was it?
DD: Of course it was.
HD: I can’t remember.
DD: [unclear] went bankrupt and his brother took over. Went on there. Yeah. About eight years.
CB: And then?
DD: That was it. I retired.
CB: So, how was it that you went back up to Lincolnshire?
HD: Yeah. Well we bought the house from —
DD: We bought a house up there.
CB: You liked the air.
DD: Well, actually we got a council house in Abingdon.
HD: And we had this buy to, you know the buy —
Other: Right to buy.
HD: Yeah.
Others: Yeah.
DD: So I bought that one and with the proceeds of that I bought the house up in Mablethorpe. That was it until the family wanted us. Wanted us back here.
HD: You took ill didn’t you? And he couldn’t — I couldn’t, I had no support up there.
CB: No.
HD: So my family was still in Abingdon. So we came back down here didn’t we?
DD: Yeah.
HD: They wanted us back down here. So, although we got quite a bit, we did make some money from the house didn’t we?
DD: Quite a bit.
HD: But it wasn’t enough to buy down here so we had to go back into council again. I mean so we put the money in. We put the money away.
DD: If you wanted we could buy this one.
HD: Oh, we could now but we’re not going to bother.
DD: No.
HD: And so we’re quite reasonably off you know.
CB: Yeah.
HD: We’re not wealthy but —
CB: Comfortable.
HD: We’re comfortable.
CB: Comfortable.
HD: Yeah.
DD: At least we can leave the children something.
CB: Yes.
DD: See, if we’d bought another house it would have meant selling it again and all that sort of business.
HD: Yeah. We didn’t want to go through all that.
DD: Whereas we can leave them quite a good amount. So they’ll be set for life then.
HD: And they don’t have the bother of, you know with us.
CB: Yeah.
HD: They can hand it straight back. So that’s our life. Let’s hear yours now.
CB: Very interesting. Thank you.
[recording paused]
DD: Searchlight business.
CB: Yeah. Could you just go back to the blue searchlight? I’ll do it because of the, because of the searchlights they used blue lights. What was the significance of that?
DD: That was the master searchlight. That was going more or less all the time. Waving around but being controlled from the ground.
CB: By radar.
DD: By radar.
CB: Right.
DD: And when they picked up an aircraft.
CB: Yeah.
DD: That would show up somehow. You know. We didn’t know too much about it but then the searchlights around it they were, you know. I don’t know how many there were around it. It would come up the beam to catch that plane. But we were — my pilot was crafty. He would [unclear] he went through it.
CB: Straight down.
DD: Straight down. We never got caught again.
CB: So did he give a, make a call before he dived so deeply?
DD: No. He didn’t say a word. He just [unclear] Just like that. We were hitting the roof. Oh God. Peter will tell you that. He has a vivid remembrance of that.
CB: So this wasn’t designed as a joke. It was because he needed to take action quickly.
DD: No. It wasn’t. No joke. No. His reaction was amazing.
CB: So, what you’re saying are you is that when the blue light illuminated your aircraft it was necessary — how quickly did you need to respond to that?
DD: Well, you waited until the searchlight started coming up. They went up, you know. Shining through the blue light.
CB: Yeah.
DD: To try and catch you.
CB: Oh, I see.
DD: So if you went [unclear] you did that you could bypass it. That was at the beginning. I don’t know whether it worked later. But it was a standing joke in the squadron about that. I think other aircraft, other aircraft behind us, you know must have seen it and possibly they did the same. Some of them. I don’t know. But we were one of the first to hit the [laughs]
Other: What sort of angle of descent was it?
DD: Pardon?
Other: I mean you said [unclear] straight down.
DD: Well, as far as I know it was straight down.
Other: Oh really.
DD: And then he gradually brought it out of the dive and we ended up about two hundred feet from the ground.
Other: Oh.
CB: Oh you went as far as that.
DD: Oh yeah. Right down to the ground.
CB: Right.
DD: And then we skimmed all the way back to the coast.
CB: Oh. This is after dropping the bombs.
DD: After dropping. Yeah.
CB: Yes.
DD: After dropping the bombs. Yes.
CB: Did you get coned by a blue light before the target?
DD: No. No. We were once or twice in ordinary searchlights but we got out of them. But that blue. That was a nasty bit of work. It caught a lot of people.
CB: Now, when, just going back to the bombing run, the bombing run is a sequence of lining up then dropping the bombs. Bombs gone. But then a photograph had to be taken. So —
DD: Yeah.
CB: How did you feel about that delay? Before you —
DD: It was accepted.
CB: Yeah.
DD: We couldn’t do anything about it. You had to have proof.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Because if you didn’t have that proof they wouldn’t allow you to take it as an op.
CB: Right.
DD: It wouldn’t be counted. So everyone had to do that really.
CB: So what was the delay? Assuming you were flying at eighteen, twenty thousand. What was the delay?
DD: The delay was around about [pause] Oh I would say about, depending on the height actually it wasn’t long because a Cookie went down very quickly.
CB: That’s the four thousand pounder.
DD: Yeah. Four thousand pounder. To be quite honest I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell you. It’s under half a minute.
CB: Yeah.
DD: It wouldn’t be more. Around about that.
CB: So, the key is that you’re trying to capture the explosion of the bombs on impact.
DD: Once it went off then you were —
CB: Yeah.
DD: You could go. But it wasn’t — sometimes it was alright. Other times you know you were a little bit worried about it.
CB: The sequence was though was it that the bombs went.
DD: Bombs went.
CB: Then, then the flash went.
DD: Then the flash—
CB: Down.
DD: The flash went at the end of the bombs.
CB: Right.
DD: Bombs. And it took about a half a minute I suppose.
CB: Ok.
DD: Somewhere in that region. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t swear to it but it was somewhere in that region.
CB: In your time on operations or perhaps any other time but what was your most terrifying experience?
[pause]
DD: I think it was that blue. Blue light. Blue searchlight. Because that was really frightening. Where you just, you were sitting there, you know going along normally and the next thing you knew you were up there [laughs] and looking down. Looking down at people. And it was amazing. Well, Peter was the opposite way around. He was looking up. Didn’t know where he was.
CB: No.
DD: But I think that’s about the most frightening thing.
CB: What was the most pleasant memory that you had about being in the RAF?
DD: Most pleasant.
CB: Was it during the war? Or afterwards perhaps.
DD: It was after the war. Finningley held an airshow and of course the Lanc was a sort of a main thing there. There were other aircraft but the Lanc was a bit of the — but they did a four-engined over shoot. Three-engined. Two. And we were supposed to do a one-engined. Yeah. Mind you that’s alright and the Lanc would fly on one. You know, if you were high. Mind you were dropping all the time down.
CB: Dropping down all the time. Yeah.
DD: Yeah. But they were going to do this over the runway and I was in that with the wing commander. And when he said, ‘I’m not going to do the one,’ [laughs] that was the most pleasant. Because had you, I was worried about that.
CB: A sigh of relief.
DD: Aye. I think that was the thing that really stuck in my mind. We did, you know the two engine. That was alright. No problems. But when he said one. Do you know I was really chuffed.
CB: The final thing is we didn’t really talk about after the war and keeping in contact with the crew. Now, your rear gunner is the one, Peter Smith is the one you’ve kept in contact with.
DD: Yeah.
CB: What about the others? Did it fall away or did you never have?
DD: It faded away actually. I met my pilot in 2002 because he came over here. Oh it was great seeing him again. But the others —
HD: Peter.
DD: Oh Code. You know the warrant officer. Warren. Warren Code. He died. Passed on. And also the bomb aimer. So those three you [pause] those three you know we had no contact with but Peter went over to America, to an aircrew meeting of some sort. I can’t — he’ll tell you that anyway. He’ll give you all the info. He met up with most of the crew there.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Except the English ones. He met up with the two Canadians.
CB: Yeah. I meant that there was no link with the British side.
DD: No.
CB: Other than Peter.
DD: No. We lost track completely.
CB: Yeah.
DD: I think that happened a lot of cases actually.
CB: It did.
DD: In the end. I think in a way you were glad you were finished with the air force in a way.
CB: What was people’s attitude at the end?
DD: Oh. Not very good. Aircrew were looked down on.
CB: Were they?
DD: Yeah.
CB: By whom?
DD: The populace.
CB: What, what started that do you think?
DD: Well, it more or less started about the bombing of towns. That was mainly their idea. They didn’t like that idea. We shouldn’t have done that. It should have been military targets all the time. But that couldn’t happen in the war. But aircrew were looked down upon.
CB: Were they?
DD: Yeah. And some of them had quite a rough time.
CB: Did they really?
DD: Yeah. Churchill ignored us.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Bomber Harris was kicked out. Went to south Africa. Yeah. He felt it too.
CB: I’m going to stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: One thing we didn’t ask, David was you were trained as a wireless operator which was a real skill and after the war you might well have followed that up as a, in relevant areas. Why didn’t you use your new skill there?
DD: Well, there were too, there were too many things going on in my mind at that time. Going back to Africa and how to get there. I didn’t want to tie myself down. I had to be free to be able to go at a, you know, quickly.
CB: Yeah.
DD: That was the main reason. I wasn’t really keen on being a wireless operator actually. I would have preferred being a gunner. I would. Because that’s what I volunteered to do. But they said no. Wireless operator/air gunner. So that was that. I was really forced into that. As I say I wanted to be a gunner.
CB: Yes.
DD: I’d have enjoyed that more.
CB: You weren’t alone with that requirement but what, what was it that attracted you most to the thought of being an air gunner?
DD: I think it was my grandmother who did this actually. During the First World War she had a lot to do with RAF sea people. And in fact one of them, what was his name? Ball, I think. Used to be a visitor to my — he shot down one of the zepps. And she was always telling me stories, you know. They told her. And it as a youngster I grew up on that. And I always fancied the idea of flying anyway. So when the war came along you know that’s the first thing I thought of.
CB: You felt you wanted to give it to them directly.
DD: More or less. Yes. Yes. Because whilst I was in London we had a, I’ll have to tell you this. My grandmother owned a very old Victorian house. You know, one of these three storey high things but it was attached to the next part. You know. It was split into two houses. And one particular night the bombing raids were on and I was always shoved down under the stairs. You know, by the gas meter and always the smell of gas. Horrible. Anyway, there was a lull and I wanted to go to the toilet. So I went upstairs to the first floor. Went to the toilet. Whilst I was sitting there a aircraft came over and dropped a bomb which landed just the other side of the next house. Cracked the pan. I ended up on the floor [laughs] That’s what happened to me.
CB: A bit of a mess then?
DD: It was a bit of a mess [laughs] I hated the Germans after that.
CB: Of course. Who wouldn’t?
Other: Disturbing the dethronement seems to the height of ignorance.
DD: It was terrible that. I was frightened actually.
CB: So, in the bombing in general because you were there before you joined the RAF what was your feeling about what was going on?
DD: Well, I hadn’t really formed any thoughts but I thought then if they can do that to us we can do that to them. That was my idea really, I suppose. In a way. Knowing that people in you know in London had died as they had I suppose I wanted to retaliate. You know kids ideas are a bit different to what you think nowadays obviously. But I’ve never really thought about it but that’s, that’s I suppose that’s the way I thought.
CB: To what extent did you have contact with people who had been in the raids? On the receiving end.
DD: Well, in our street, or in my grandmother’s street there were about five or six houses that had been bombed. People we knew had died. I suppose that was in the back of my mind as well. You know a lot of things went on when you were a youngster. Especially in raids. Yeah.
CB: What was the general public attitude during the raids?
DD: People who were in houses, I think they were a bit frightened you know. Well obviously. But people who managed to get shelters, you know like the underground I think they didn’t think so much about it. But then there was that case of one shelter being bombed wasn’t there? That was terrible.
CB: Cannon street. Yes.
DD: Cannon street. Yeah.
CB: So, did you grandmother have a shelter in her garden?
DD: No. Not in the garden. No. She had one of these things that went under the table.
CB: Right.
DD: It was sort of a box about this high. You had to lie down to get in to it. But she had that. Because she was then about eighty something. She couldn’t have gone outside because most of them got water in them and no, she couldn’t have. She couldn’t have done that. But actually I put myself in. I went in there one night to try it. I didn’t like it. It was claustrophobic. Very claustrophobic. Because, you know it was so low really when you come to think of it. And you’d got all this wire. Wire netting around it and then the heavy iron on top and below you. They weren’t nice things.
CB: They were designed simply to avoid being crushed.
DD: Yes. More or less. Yeah. Or being caught in masonry.
CB: Yeah. That’s what I —
DD: At least it gave you some leeway. Give you some air.
CB: Yes.
DD: The idea was good. But I wouldn’t have fancied it. Staying in one. Even though there was the gas in that under stairs. I hate the smell of gas. Although gas in those days seemed to be much stronger than it is nowadays.
CB: Well, it’s a different type of gas isn’t it?
DD: Yeah. It was —
CB: One other point about aircrew is you were in the, of the, based on the time, well fed.
DD: Oh we were. Yes. Very well fed.
CB: So, what was the food generally?
DD: Well, it was more or less not, we didn’t have fancy food. It was straightforward nutritious food.
CB: Before an operation what did you get then?
DD: Oh eggs and bacon [laughs] and when we came back as well. In fact you got more or less egg bound the number of eggs you got. But everyone else only had, they would have one a week or something like that. I think my grandmother had one. One a week.
CB: The civilian population had one a week.
DD: One a week.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Something like that. I don’t think it was more than that. But we used to get cheese. And we used to get milk. Aircrew used to get a pint of milk a day and you used to go into the mess and go to the bar and say, ‘I’ll have my milk.’ You’d have that one then, one sort of lunchtime. One in the evening. Of course, when you went on trips, on ops rather, you would get your chocolate, Horlicks tablets, wakey wakey pills and some fruity sweets. Every time. And I never used to eat many of them at the time. I’d probably take them back and give it to people.
CB: And, right and what did you drink? Coffee or tea? Or what was it?
DD: It’s wasn’t a lot of, there was some coffee. You generally got that at the debriefing.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Coffee. It was generally tea you drank.
CB: In a flask was it? [pause] Because it was pretty cold up there.
DD: No. I didn’t get a flask. Do you know I can’t remember what we did there. We did have a drink but I can’t remember what it was now. It might have been coffee. To keep you awake. Because those wakey wakey pills you wouldn’t take them until you were getting near the actual target.
CB: Right.
DD: You’d take one then. And that would get you through the target and then one on the way back.
CB: Because the trips were how many hours?
DD: Oh it was varied. I think the longest we did was coming up to eleven hours. Ten and a half. Eleven. That was the longest.
CB: Where was that to?
DD: Now, where was that now? Oh God. Down the east. The east part of Germany. Where the hell was it now? Do you know I can’t, I can’t remember the name.
CB: But on the Baltic coast area.
DD: More or less up nearly up to there. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Stettin or — you didn’t do Peenemunde.
DD: No.
CB: It’s a pity your logbook was stolen isn’t it?
DD: I know.
CB: Because that’s an absolute travesty.
DD: I’ve been upset all my life over that because it was all written out nicely and signed by you know wing commanders, group captains. We had all sorts of people signing them. I’ve always regretted that. But you’ll be able to get an idea when, if you go and see Peter.
CB: Yes.
[recording paused]
DD: Well, one night when we bombed we didn’t lose the Cookie.
CB: It didn’t go.
DD: It didn’t go.
CB: So the Cookie was the big four thousand pounder.
DD: Yeah. The bomb. We were flying. Now, where was that? We were flying — not Nuremberg. Next one up there. Coming back from that district and we were flying north of Switzerland. The bomb aimer had to, you know come back.
CB: Stuttgart was it?
DD: It could have been Stuttgart. It think it might have been. Yeah. He had to release the bomb but when that bomb hit the ground there was the most massive explosion. We never knew what it was.
CB: It had hit something.
DD: It hit something.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Of course, there was no photoflash or anything but yeah it was interesting that. We never did find out what was, what it was.
CB: No. Now, did you ever return to Germany after the war?
DD: No. I didn’t go back.
CB: And did you go on any Cooks Tours that they ran after the war?
DD: No.
CB: To see the bombing.
DD: Oh, now on the, with the Lancs.
CB: Yeah.
DD: We took ground staff across to show them. Flew around France and Germany.
CB: From the —
DD: From the place up north [laughs – pause] I’ve forgotten the name again.
CB: But when you [pause] what Granston?
DD: No. No. No. Not Gamston.
CB: Gamston I meant to say.
DD: Finningley.
CB: Oh Finningley.
DD: From Finningley. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
DD: We took —
CB: In Lancasters.
DD: Two or three trips we did actually across there.
CB: So, what, who were the people you were taking on the trips?
DD: Ground staff.
CB: Your own crews.
DD: Well, no we didn’t have our own crews then.
CB: No.
DD: That was only on the —
CB: So, they were, what sort of people were they?
DD: Well, anyone.
CB: Anybody on the airfield who was interested.
DD: Anyone on the airfield who wanted to go.
CB: Yeah.
DD: Really. More or less.
CB: And when you got over you would fly at a higher level would you and then well you —
DD: Well, normally. Yes. Come down.
CB: And then ten thousand. Then come down.
DD: If we were flying over the Ruhr we’d come down fairly low and let them see.
CB: Yes.
DD: Especially Cologne.
CB: Yes. What height would you fly over there?
DD: Oh, a couple of thousand feet.
CB: Oh, I see.
DD: Right down.
CB: So people could see.
DD: Oh yeah.
CB: And what was their reaction to that?
DD: A bit aghast. You know, they wouldn’t say very much. Probably they did say something when they got back on the ground.
CB: Yes.
DD: But you couldn’t talk very much.
CB: No.
DD: When you were up there. But I think they were a little bit shocked.
Other: At the devastation.
DD: Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons why I think aircrew were looked down on after the war. Not looked down on but, you know, ‘You bombed civilians,’ and that sort of business. But I heard one person say that. Which wasn’t very nice.
CB: And of course the factories were in amongst the civilian population.
DD: Of course they were. Yeah.
CB: Because people didn’t commute.
DD: They didn’t realise that.
CB: No.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with David Kenneth McKenzie Dall
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADallDKM161122, PDallDKM1601
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:30:58 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
David Dall spent his early life in South Africa. He moved to the UK as a child to live with his grandmother and continue his education. He was enthralled by the stories his grandmother told him about the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and so when it came time to volunteer it was obvious where he would apply to the RAF. He had wanted to train as a gunner but was posted for training as a wireless operator/air gunner. He was posted to 101 Squadron at RAF Ludford Magna.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
101 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
fear
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Hullavington
RAF Ludford Magna
searchlight
shelter
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/796/10778/ADayMH171128.1.mp3
9ea556174e92adc2ad5ddbbaed1cf558
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Day, Margaret Helen
M H Day
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Margaret Day (b. 1924, 2015932Royal Air Force). She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Day, MH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 28th of November 2017, and with David Bray we are in the home of Margaret Day who was a WAAF in the war, and her husband Charles who’s already been interviewed. So, Margaret what are your earliest recollections of life?
MD: I think my earliest recollections are when I was three years old my father was in the Navy, and we went to Gibraltar. I had an older sister who stayed behind because she’d just started school. She stayed with grandparents. And a younger brother. And the Admiral at the time CNC, the Mediterranean was Admiral Townsend, and it was his daughter Helen that was my godmother. How I got my middle name. We had a small cottage on the, a stone cottage on the Rock. Admiralty House was halfway up the Rock, and I remember we had my brother and I had a donkey called [Burrabareeko]and we had a pannier each side. I was three and he was two I suppose and we used to go up and down on this donkey. And also the Admiral had two cows because everybody else on the Rock apart from the Governor had to drink goat’s milk. And they used to milk the cows and I remember being sent down with a jug when it was milking time to go back up the [laughs] back up the steps to take the milk home to my mother. And when I was four years old I started at an Army school which was, there was a lot of Army regiments there. I went to this Army school and we stayed there until I was five.
[pause]
CB: Ok.
MD: Then we came back to Portsmouth and my father was on the staff of Sir Roger Keyes as he was then.
CB: Admiral Sir Roger Keyes.
MD: Admiral Sir Roger Keyes.
CB: VC.
MD: He later became Lord Keyes.
CB: Yes.
MD: And my father was happy about that because he had served at Zeebrugge with Roger Keyes. I think, I think Sir Roger was on the large battleship or whatever it was. My father was in a small, a Mersey, Channel err cross Channel thing. A ferry called the Daffodil. And after the raid on Zeebrugge they renamed it the Royal Daffodil. And so because he had served with Sir Roger at the time they said that everybody deserved a VC. So they allocated three and the men were all asked to vote who should get them. And my father always said he voted for Sir Roger, and so he was very happy to be at Portsmouth with him. And strangely enough Sir Roger Keye’s eldest son Geoffrey that I knew because of being in the dockyard. He got a VC at Libya.
CB: Oh yeah.
MD: At some raid they did.
CB: On the Rommel raid. Yes.
MD: Yes. So, it was quite a unique family. So, I then went to school in Portsea until I was seven, and the commissions in those days were two years. If you were with the Mediterranean fleet it was two years. With the Atlantic fleet was three years. So of course all the sailors were hoping to get the Mediterranean fleet but, so my father was sent to Malta so we moved from inside the dockyard. My parents bought a house in Copnor, North Portsmouth, and he was, he was sent to Malta then. So, we, we just, but unfortunately when he’d been there a couple of years my mother had pneumonia and died. So he came back from Malta and the family was split up. And I then went back to Gibraltar with my father. My sister and brother stayed at home because they were settled. Apparently I didn’t settle very well, so he took me and I was fostered by the head gardener of the Rock. So I then lived in the grounds of Government House and I went to, then to another Army school. Came back when I was eleven [pause] My father then remarried a nursemaid. The Admiral in Gibraltar at that time was Austin, Sir Admiral Austin, and my father married the nursemaid that was, that he met there. And so we then moved to Gosport where he worked at, he was stationed at the St Vincent which was a training school for young boys. I think they were sixteen. And then the war came in 1939 when I was fifteen. I had to leave. I left school when I was fourteen and went to work across the harbour at Southsea to a large furnishing place. We did the soft furnishings for the royal yacht which was the Narlin in those days. And when the war, when the bombing started my father wanted me to come back to Gosport to work. So I went to work for Boots. And in 1940 one of the first daylight raids of, of the war was Portsmouth and Gosport, and a large bomb landed in our garden and I was trapped in an air raid shelter with my step mother and two neighbours which sort of went right up in the air and twisted. So we had, fortunately next door to us the Royal Air Force had taken over the balloon barrage thing and the airmen came out and managed to get us out of this air raid shelter. One of the people in it was taken to hospital so it was pretty scary. And my father was then sent to the Isle of Man because the St Vincent was evacuated there and the Isle of Man was full of internees. And there was no work there for, for me and my stepmother didn’t like it so we came back to Gosport and then I was, went to Overton to stay with friends. And since I was seventeen and a half I joined the WAAF. In those days you had to be eighteen to join the ATS or the Wrens and I was anxious. My sister was in the, in the WAAF and my brother had joined the Navy and my father was still in the Navy so I wanted to join up so as soon as I was seventeen and a half I joined. I applied to join the WAAF.
CB: Stop there for a mo.
MD: Yes.
[recording paused]
CB: Before we go on with your RAF career.
MD: Yes.
CB: I’d like to just dwell a little on the point of being on the receiving end of the air raids.
MD: Yes.
CB: So, because it was a Naval area there was obviously there was considerable attention.
MD: Yes.
CB: From the German bombers.
MD: Yes.
CB: The bomb landed how close to the Anderson shelter?
MD: Well, just a few, about fifty yards or so I should think.
CB: Right.
MD: Right. What would you say? It was very close. It was right in our garden.
BCD: Maybe twenty yards.
Yes, it looks to me as though it’s less than that. And so how, what was the, how did you feel the impact?
MD: Well, it was very strange. We, we always went. There were lots of air raid alarms, and we always went to the shelter. And as I say it was daytime and we had gone to the shelter and we could hear the, the guns. The anti-aircraft guns and the bombs. And all of a sudden there seemed to be a very [pause] a movement. I felt the earth moving and we sort of moved up slightly. Very gently. And but then of course all the earth started piling in which was rather frightening because we didn’t know how much earth was going to fall on us. But fortunately the balloon barrage people were next door and they came and dug us out. There was a Fort. Fort Brockhurst just across the road from us and a medical officer from there came out and had a look at us all. As I say one of the ladies had to go to hospital. But it was, it was terrifying.
CB: How many people were there in the Anderson shelter?
MD: About four. There were two, two ladies and I was a young girl and a younger child.
CB: And your stepmother.
MD: Yes, my stepmother. That’s four. Four altogether. Yes.
CB: Right. So you said that the explosion lifted the —
MD: Yes.
CB: Anderson shelter.
MD: Lifted us right up.
CB: Did it then land back where it was or did it move it away?
MD: It landed back where it was but —
CB: But you got covered in. Were you actually covered in the earth?
MD: Yes.
CB: Or just trapped by the earth?
MD: Well, my father had built this. When the Anderson shelters were built people were instructed how to make them safer and he had covered it all with a lot of earth. It was all covered over. And then of course the bottom. The earth came from the bottom and from the top and it was sort of piling in on us and that was, that was more frightening really because I began to get earth in my face and my mouth and I was afraid I was going to suffocate. But fortunately these men came out and they’d got crowbars and managed to open the thing up and pulled us out by our feet. Oh, that’s right, because my feet were above my head so I remember being dragged out by my feet.
CB: And how did they get the others out? The same way?
MD: The same way. Yes. But it was very difficult. I think my stepmother and I were on the top and for some reason the little girl and her mother were underneath so it was the lady that was underneath that was most seriously shaken up or damaged.
CB: And so it was like an earthquake in a way.
MD: Oh, it was. Yes.
CB: And this was daytime.
MD: Yes.
CB: So what were you dressed in at the time?
MD: Oh, ordinary clothes. Yes. I think it was about lunchtime.
CB: And you were in the shelter because there was an alarm. The alert.
MD: Because yes, there was an alert.
CB: How did that work then?
MD: Well, there was a, it’s a sort of a wailing siren that you can hear and as soon as you hear the siren you would go to the shelter and then the all clear was a flat note. So you knew when it was safe to come out.
CB: And how far away was the shelter from where you were? Where the house was.
MD: Well, it was it was quite close.
CB: Right next to it.
MD: I would say, I would say it’s closer to the house than the crater because these are pre-war built in the 1930s but they weren’t, they weren’t large gardens. They were —
CB: Was, was this a Navy house?
MD: No. My father had —
CB: The one he’d bought.
MD: He’d bought this house. Yes.
CB: Ok. Right. So, after that how did you feel? When you were pulled out?
MD: Well, yes I was very nervous after that whenever the sirens went off. So I was glad to be evacuated to Overton. To the rector and his wife who were friends of my step mother.
CB: Where’s Overton?
MD: Hampshire.
CB: Oh right.
MD: Near Basingstoke.
CB: And what happened to the shelter? Did they rebuild it or —
MD: Do you know I don’t know because we, we left.
CB: Because the house was wrecked as well was it?
MD: Well, it was half. Yes. It had to be boarded up and we had to move all our possessions.
CB: Did you?
MD: Into storage. And so I don’t really know what happened to that.
CB: Did your father sell the house later then?
MD: Yes.
CB: Or did you eventually go back there?
MD: No. He sold the house later on. Yeah.
CB: Right. Ok. We’ll pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Just on the Anderson shelter. Normally I think that they tended to dig out into the ground a bit.
MD: Yes.
CB: To make the top of the shelter lower. What was the situation with this one?
MD: To get the sides in.
CB: Right. In to the ground.
MD: Anchored. To anchor the thing. Yes.
CB: But with the bomb hitting the ground nearby.
MD: Yes.
CB: It shook the whole of the ground. Is that it?
MD: Yes. It lifted it up.
CB: Yes.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yes. So you decided to join the WAAFs.
MD: Yes.
CB: And the Army and the Navy you had to be older.
MD: You had to be six months older.
CB: Yes.
MD: I was very anxious to join up so –
CB: Yes. So, what did you think you’d do when you joined the RAF?
MD: I wanted to be a radio operator at sort of speaking to aircraft. But they hadn’t got any vacancies so they gave me a maths test and said that, ‘You can be a wireless operator.’ So, I said I was keen to join so I took that.
CB: And what did that involve?
MD: Well, first of all we went, I went to Gloucester where we were kitted out for about five days and after that we went to Morecambe in Lancashire to do the square bashing and stuff, and then I was sent to RAF Hutton Cranswick in Yorkshire, which was a fighter station at the time. But we were billeted at Leconfield because there were married quarters there, and that was bomber.
CB: How did you get between the two during the day?
MD: By, by transport, lorries, trucks.
CB: Open trucks were they?
MD: Yes. Yes. And —
CB: So when is this? What year are we talking about?
MD: Talking 1941 ‘42. I joined in ’41 and I think by ’42 I’d been posted.
CB: So, what was the training at Hutton Cranswick?
MD: Well, it was just, just general really because we were only there for two or three weeks. We were sent to the signals section, and they sort of gave us a little inside knowledge of what went on. But then we were posted to Lancashire, to Kirkham in Lancashire which was quite a large station and we used to go by train every day into Preston to the GPO where we were taught the Morse Code by civilians.
CB: How did you get on with that?
MD: Yes. I passed out. I passed the course and then went to Compton Bassett in Wiltshire for technical training. We had American radios and equipment there. So we had to, and learn all the procedure.
CB: How long did that take?
MD: That was six weeks. And then I was posted to RAF High Wycombe in 1942.
CB: So that was Bomber Command Headquarters.
MD: Bomber Command, yes. Bomber Harris was there at the time. He used to swoosh about in his car with someone driving him. Airmen scattering all the way. Very fast he used to drive on the roads. And originally I was what we call down the hole. It was underground and it was just communications between the various Groups. And after a while I was, came up from there to a monitoring section where we just monitored all the airwaves. And at one point I went to Beachy Head where they were tracking beacons and spurious beacons that the Germans were putting about and we had to —
CB: Navigation beacons.
MD: Navigation beacons for the aircraft, yeah.
CB: How did you do the monitoring then?
MD: Well, we sat with earphones on and tuned into the various frequencies, and wrote down whatever we got.
CB: Were you tracking where the beacon was situated and how did you do that?
MD: Well, it was —
CB: Because it wasn’t in Britain of course.
MD: No. No. But you could, you could pick up where the beacons crossed so —
CB: Do you know what they did with the information?
MD: No, I don’t. It was supposed to be top secret. We weren’t, we were very hush hush in that section. We were told not to speak to anybody.
CB: No.
MD: Yeah.
CB: How did you know what they were doing with the information?
MD: I, I didn’t know what they were doing.
CB: It was just you said the beacons crossed. The transmissions crossed.
MD: Yes. Well, that was when you could pick up the frequencies. You could get the frequencies of the beacons.
CB: How long did that last?
MD: That lasted until 1945. I was there for about three odd, three odd years.
CB: Based where?
MD: In High Wycombe.
CB: So that was only temporary at Beachy Head.
MD: Yes. That was just one off and then back again.
CB: And how did you like your job?
MD: I loved it. Yes. It was quite interesting. We always knew when there were raids on and basically what was going on.
CB: So, in your work at High Wycombe how would you describe what you were doing most of the time?
MD: Well, just receiving. When we were down the hole.
CB: Air signals or ground signals?
MD: Morse.
CB: All Morse.
MD: Morse Code.
CB: Yes.
MD: Yes.
CB: But was the origin of that transmission by radio or was it on the ground?
MD: It was from aircraft.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
CB: And you, using Morse you then wrote down. So what was the information that was coming?
MD: Well, it was usually in code so we would just write it all down and then in the hole they had a section where they could decode all the information.
CB: Right.
MD: There was some plain language but mostly it was code.
CB: So what was the origin of the, the transmissions from the aircraft? Where were they?
MD: Well, wherever they were flying.
CB: They were on raids.
MD: Yes.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
CB: And why would they be sending back signals?
MD: I don’t know. I suppose it, so it’s telling how they were getting on. I don’t know.
CB: I was just curious because —
MD: Yes.
CB: They had to maintain signal silence.
MD: Yes.
CB: Normally.
MD: Perhaps, perhaps when they were a certain distance they could communicate and say where they were.
CB: What I’m getting to is that you’re receiving it and putting in to plain language.
MD: Yes.
CB: It then goes to somebody else. But I wonder what, you receive it and write it down as a code.
MD: Yes.
CB: Is what I mean to say.
MD: Yes.
CB: Someone else decodes it.
MD: Decodes it.
CB: Did you find out very often what was actually in the signal?
MD: No. No.
CB: Was it, did you feel a need to know, or did you have a curiosity about it or did you just leave it?
MD: Yes. We were curious, but it was all very secret and the code section was mostly WAAF officers and you didn’t mix with any of the people that were doing the work.
CB: And what rank had you achieved by this time?
MD: I was a corporal.
CB: Right. How long did it, did you get corporal when you reached High Wycombe or what stage did you?
MD: No. At that, I became a corporal when I was overseas, sorry.
CB: Right. So when you were at High Wycombe.
MD: LACW.
CB: Yeah. Just to put that into context, you carried on in the RAF after the war, did you?
MD: Well, no.
CB: Or did you finish when the war finished?
MD: I finished more or less yes, when they started demobbing people.
CB: Ok.
MD: I was demobbed in 1946.
CB: Right. So we’re still back at High Wycombe.
MD: Yes.
CB: You’re feeding the code section. You started that in ’42 ’43 was it?
MD: Yes.
CB: When did you actually finish doing that job?
MD: Well, when I was posted overseas.
CB: And when was that?
MD: 1945.
CB: Ok. When the war in Europe had finished was it?
MD: It was, I think we were at, we were at sea coming along the Mediterranean when it was VE Day.
CB: Right. Where were you going? You’d been posted where?
MD: To Egypt.
CB: Right. And did you know what you were going to do when you were in Egypt?
MD: No. It was Telecommunications Middle East.
CB: Ah.
MD: And they were sort of the hub between the UK and the Far East and the Persian and Iraq force.
CB: So you got the information of VE day on the, when you were on the ship.
MD: Yes.
CB: What was the reaction of the people on the ship?
MD: Well, they were all delighted of course. It was a ship called the Georgic, and we left from Liverpool, and went out in to the Atlantic and picked up a convoy and came through the Straits because there were still submarines, U-boats lurking, and I think we were about halfway to Egypt when we heard the news.
CB: And what was people’s reaction in terms of —
MD: Very celebrating. Celebratory. Yes.
CB: Yes. And were you allowed to have lemonades on the ship?
MD: No. No, there was no —
CB: It was dry was it?
MD: Yes. Absolutely. Yes.
CB: So when you, when you got to Egypt what happened then?
MD: We got off at Port Said, and went to [pause] by lorries up to Almazah which was a sort of transit camp where we were in tents, and I remember there was a Camp Seymour where there was a sandstorm which was if you were in a tent it was was pretty horrific. But then I was posted to Telecommunications Middle East, TME where we were in concrete huts. Thirty girls to a hut and surrounded by a high wooden fence. They called it the WAAF compound.
CB: Why did they put the fence up I wonder?
MD: [laughs] Well —
BCD: She didn’t tell you she was on my Watch.
MD: Sorry?
BCD: Telecommunications Middle East when you were on my Watch. B Watch.
CB: Coming to that.
MD: It’s got nothing to do with him. Sorry.
CB: That’s Charles putting in a couple of comments. We’ll, come to Charles in a minute.
MD: Yes, don’t take any notice of him.
CB: Right. So there were thirty girls in a hut and you —
MD: Yes. A concrete hut.
CB: Oh, concrete.
MD: Yes.
CB: Crikey, right.
MD: Surrounded by a wooden, several huts surrounded by a big wooden fence. They called it the WAAF compound and they had guards on the thing. We didn’t have a, we had showers. But of course there was no air conditioning or anything so it was pretty hot, and chemical toilets. There was no running water.
CB: And is this place on the edge of a town or an airfield or in the desert?
MD: No. It was right out in the country at a place called [Kaf el Farouk?]
CB: Oh yes.
MD: It was several miles from Almazah. Right out in the desert.
CB: So in your time off what did you do?
MD: Went into Cairo because it was like fairy land, because there was no rationing, no blackout and there were troops of all nationalities. There were lots of Americans, lots of South Africans, all people congregating there so it was lively and, but of course I was only getting two pounds a fortnight or something so I couldn’t buy any of the clothes [laughs] but it was a, it was like, like going to fairyland after the UK.
CB: So when you got in to Cairo what did you actually do then? Window shopping?
MD: Yes. We used to go to the cafes and have ice creams and you meet up with various other people, airmen or people who were there and there were some places for troops. Canteens and stuff. Places that were —
CB: Actually in Cairo.
MD: In Cairo, yes.
CB: And you could have a drink there.
MD: Oh yes.
CB: Just stopping a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Start. Starting now.
MD: Yeah. Well, I was very fortunate because one of the girls that came with me from High Wycombe to Egypt was a widow. Her husband had been a major in the Indian Army and he was killed in Aden and she had joined the WAAF. But before that she had, her father was an Army officer and she had lived in Cairo and she had friends in Cairo who ran a [unclear] there. And so we could go there either to, on our sleeping out passes or just to visit and we could go to the various cafes and things. But she, this, this [unclear] was [pause] there were a lot of Army officers there who were being billeted there and so they were very kind. I remember one of them had a car and took us out to the pyramids which was wonderful because it, it was just the pyramids in those days. We’ve been back on a cruise ship and it’s all surrounded by bazaars. But you could, you could drive out in the moonlight and there’s the pyramids and it was just and I had always been interested in Egyptology since I was a child, and so I [pause] and also on leave we could, this girl and I we went to Cyprus once. We managed to get a lift on a Dakota. Another time we went to Jerusalem. And another time we went to Luxor. So it was, it was really very, very nice. Very enjoyable.
CB: So the aircrew were quite friendly about these sorts of things.
MD: Well, if there was a spare seat you could, you could get, but I remember that you sort of sat on a wooden bench either side of the Dakota and the air turbulence. There were no seat belts or anything, and we were hopping up and down with the turbulence. It was quite a hairy, and those old Dakotas rattled so and they made a dreadful noise. But it was, it was the visit to Cyprus which we stayed up. There was a place for troops up in the Troodos Mountains. So she and I stayed there for one of our leaves. So we managed to get around quite a lot.
CB: How did you manage to get back in time then as it was an ad hoc arrangement?
MD: Well, that’s, we couldn’t get back in time. We got there alright, but we couldn’t get a flight back for a day or so, so we were in a bit of trouble when we got back.
CB: When you got a bit of leave how long was that?
MD: I think we used to take seven days at a time so that we could spread it out and go to different places.
CB: What we haven’t talked about is the difference in the uniforms between being in Britain.
MD: Yes.
CB: And being out in Cairo.
MD: Yes.
CB: And Egypt and then going to Cyprus and so on.
MD: Yes.
CB: So what was it? What was the uniform like in Britain?
MD: Well, it was a tunic with a, and a skirt with a cap and a cap badge. Grey stockings and black brogue walking shoes which you weren’t allowed to wear anything but the regulation shoes so, and shirts with detachable collars which weren’t very nice and knickers they called blackouts which were huge voluminous garments. Of course, we didn’t have any coupons to buy anything else so —
CB: Oh, so you couldn’t but anything anyway.
MD: No. So, we you just had to make do with your uniform.
CB: And did you ever walk out in your free time in civilian clothes or were you always in uniform?
MD: No. Occasionally you could get a sleeping out pass with civilian clothes which —
CB: What, what would cause them to give you that?
MD: I, I don’t know really.
CB: Would it be a special event like a birthday or a wedding or something?
MD: Probably. Yes. Yes. It wasn’t, it wasn’t very often. Most of the time we had to be in uniform and carry our 1250s with us and —
CB: Carry your 1250s. Yes. Which is your ID.
MD: Yes.
CB: For people who don’t know. So was it the same uniform in the summer and in the winter in Britain?
MD: Yes. But when we got to Egypt it was the blues in the winter and we loved the summer uniform. We had sandals and socks and little short khaki skirts and blouses, and forage caps which was much nicer than the caps here.
CB: And the uniform was a lighter material. What was it made of?
MD: Sort of a heavy linen I suppose.
CB: But, but thinner than the UK uniform.
MD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So how did you feel from a heat point of view?
MD: Well, we were young and I suppose we didn’t really notice it so much. I was only twenty one and it was all so exciting to be in the Middle East.
CB: Right.
MD: No. The uniforms were very comfortable.
CB: And where you worked what was the, what were the facilities there? What sort of building was it?
MD: This, this was underground. A Centre underground so it was, it was, it was quite cool but there was no air conditioning. And I remember the first day I went down there I saw one of the airmen pick up one of these sort of folding chairs and bang it on the floor. And I said to him, ‘What are you doing with that chair?’ And he, he said, ‘I’m getting rid of the bugs.’ So every time I went on duty I had one of these chairs I had to bang it on the floor. They didn’t have proper fumigation or anything so —
CB: What did you do with the bugs? Did you tread on them or what?
MD: Yes.
CB: You liked the crunch did you?
MD: No [laughs] No, but they had a fierce bite these.
CB: Did they?
MD: Yes, they were so it, as I say there were, they had certain fans but it was really very warm.
CB: Underground.
MD: Yes. We had to walk there and it, but we had, we did shifts of course which were not very —
CB: What were the shifts?
MD: Eight to twelve. Twelve to six. Six to eleven. And eleven to eight the following morning.
CB: Was that hard going or fairly easy with that sequence?
MD: Well, it did mean that you got a, you had a sort of a stand-off in between, which meant we could go out. I think if you came off at eleven err at 8 o’clock in the morning and you weren’t on again until the following day it, it was quite, quite alright. It was a bit indigestible but —
CB: So, how did the sequence work? So you would be say on an eight till twelve. Then would you do that for a week or ten days?
MD: No.
CB: Or what would you do?
MD: No. It was, it was continuous rolling. The shifts just went on like that the whole time.
CB: Yes. But did you move between the shifts is what I meant. So —
MD: No. If you were on a certain Watch —
CB: Yes.
MD: Your watch did these particular hours.
CB: Yeah. You were always on that.
MD: And you always did the same hours.
CB: That’s what I meant. Yes. And after a month they didn’t change to a difference shift.
MD: No. No.
CB: Which one were you normally on? Well, were you on?
MD: Well, I was on B Watch as he says but —
CB: And B was which? Which was twelve to six was it?
MD: Yes. But then you would do the same. I think there were four different shifts.
BCD: Yeah. Four Watches.
MD: Four Watches.
BCD: And we used to go on at 8 o’clock in the morning.
MD: Yes.
BCD: Until mid-day.
MD: Yes.
BCD: And then mid-day until 8 o’clock at night.
MD: The following day.
BCD: 8 o’clock the following day.
CB: The following day. That’s what I’m getting at. Yeah.
MD: Yeah. I’m sorry.
CB: So it was a rolling shift system.
MD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So you would gradually get to working at night.
MD: Yes.
CB: And then you gradually get to work in the day.
MD: Every fourth night you would, you would be on duty all night.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
CB: And then when did you get a break? Was it seven days on and two days off, or how did it work?
MD: I I think it was —
BCD: We used to have the four Watch system but we used to have a week off in between.
CB: Oh right. So once you’d done four shifts rolling.
BCD: We did that for about three months or so. Or quite a, quite a lot of time and then we had a week off.
CB: Before you had time off. Yeah.
MD: Yeah.
BCD: That’s when we used to go together to Alexandria or somewhere like that.
CB: Ok.
BCD: I used to take Margaret —
CB: Ok. So, well let’s come back to that. So, I’m just going to stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, after you’d done the four shifts.
MD: Yeah.
CB: You end up at eight in morning.
MD: Yeah.
CB: And then you’re off for twenty four hours before you start again in the morning.
MD: Yes.
CB: How did you get, adjust to this constant change to your sleep time?
MD: Well, you just did it. I mean —
BCD: With difficulty.
MD: Yes. There was no [pause] the cookhouse was open all the time, so when we went on watch at 11 o’clock we could call in the cookhouse for some rations and then come, then come straight off and go to breakfast and then sleep. And then the following day start again one ‘til six.
CB: Right. So what was the food like?
MD: Oh.
CB: Because it’s hot weather. Was it a different menu from the one you would have in Britain?
MD: Yes. It was. It was slightly different but [pause] not a —
CB: So, what was the staple diet of your survival?
MD: I don’t know. I suppose it was [pause] there was, there was a lot of beef, which we couldn’t get in, you couldn’t get in the UK so but we soon got tired of it. I don’t know why they had so much but, and we used to get fruit from, the South Africans used to send fruit to the girls. They were very kind and on another occasion they sent us material so we could have dresses made. And on another occasion they sent nylons. So, the South Africans were very good.
CB: Of course being there it was easier to get meat.
MD: Yes.
CB: To you.
MD: It was.
CB: From South America and South Africa.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah. What about eggs?
MD: I don’t recall ever having eggs.
BCD: Pardon?
MD: We didn’t have eggs.
CB: No.
BCD: We had eggs Margaret for breakfast.
MD: In the officer’s mess.
CB: Right. And just as a comparison what would you eat in Britain?
MD: Yes.
CB: In those days. What was the menu like there?
MD: Well, that was very stodgy food. A lot of bread and margarine, and stews and sometimes rice pudding or something. It was, it, it was very unimaginative.
CB: But designed to keep you warm.
MD: Yes. Keep, keep you going.
CB: All by the RAF cookbook.
MD: Yes.
CB: Ok. So back to Egypt.
MD: Yes.
CB: Here you are on a shift system, a Watch system that runs continuously for a month.
MD: Yes.
CB: Before you get time off. Seven days off. In your time not on shift what could you do? Was there a NAAFI on site or what was there?
MD: Yes. There was a NAAFI. And also we had a swimming pool too so, and they used to have camel races and gymkhanas and things.
CB: How did you get on riding camels?
MD: With difficulty.
CB: But the gymkhanas were actually with horses were they?
MD: Donkeys, I think. Mules. Yeah.
CB: They were difficult to persuade?
MD: Yes [laughs] Had to give them a good kick, and [pause]
CB: Ok.
MD: But we had a lot of swimming which was very nice.
CB: Big pool.
MD: Yes. Quite a big pool. Not Olympic size but a fair size one.
CB: Was this in a compound where there was quite a bit of green because it was well —
MD: No. No. It was all sand.
CB: All sand.
MD: The only greenery was around the flagpole in the, in the, in the entrance as you came in. There was a flagpole with the RAF flag and the TME crest and they used to try and indent for a waggon load of Nile mud and if they could get this mud it was put around the flag post and there would be a very few flowers and outside the CO’s office there would be a few flowers but the rest was all sand. There was nothing else. No earth at all.
CB: You talked earlier about sandstorms.
MD: Yes.
CB: If you were in a tent with a sandstorm what precautions are you taking there? They’ve got sides on the tents. Are they able to bury those and does that work?
MD: Well, the ones at Almazah, there was a sort of a foot of brick work and then there was a gap and then the tent flap. So, so the sand just came in.
CB: Free of charge.
MD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So you had a job to clear that up.
MD: Yes.
CB: In fact, what do you do? Because of the wind and the sand do you all wear handkerchiefs or how do you deal with keeping it out of your —
MD: Well, just scarves really.
CB: Yeah.
MD: We had neckerchiefs and they —
CB: All the time.
MD: Yeah. But there weren’t, there was a lot of local labour, so they did the clearing. The shovelling out.
CB: The donkey work.
MD: Yes.
CB: What about things like laundry? How did that —
MD: We had, the girls could send their things to the laundry and that was quite good.
CB: So they, their aroma was fairly fresh but the blokes all were a bit smelly were they?
MD: I don’t know quite what the airmen did but we had, we had very nice laundry and our shirts, our khaki shirts came back very freshly laundered, the skirts.
CB: So, we talked earlier about when you were in Cairo.
MD: Yes.
CB: What things happened there that were good and not so good?
MD: Well, there’s a certain amount of rioting and one of our girls was caught up in somehow and got killed.
CB: How was she killed?
MD: Shot.
CB: What was the riot about?
MD: There was a lot of trouble about upper Egypt. Apparently, the British promised the Egyptians that they, they could have upper Egypt. As it seemed time went on and they didn’t. They didn’t ever get it, still haven’t. There was a lot of demonstrations and —
CB: And what did they do with the demonstrations? Were they quite violent or just shouting a lot?
MD: I think mostly shouting and waving sticks about because they didn’t have any guns or ammunition. Mostly the Fellahin. They were very poor and —
CB: What were they called?
MD: Fellahin.
CB: Fellahin.
MD: The Fellahin. Yeah.
CB: And how regular were these riots?
MD: Not, not very regular. Six monthly I suppose. I don’t know whether they —
CB: And the RAF had headquarters there. How did they protect that?
MD: Well, that was in, I don’t think, in Cairo they had —
BCD: Well, the headquarters was boarded up all around.
MD: Yes. They —
CB: Did you ever go there?
MD: No. There was, there was a Number 5 Hospital that I was put into once when I had a problem but that was all.
CB: So, the medical facilities were —
MD: Yes.
CB: Quite good were they?
MD: Yes, they were. And there was a WAAF medical officer at Heliopolis that you could go to if you didn’t like the MO.
CB: Didn’t like?
MD: The MO.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Sometimes they were a bit [pause] they weren’t very sympathetic to the girls, you know. They, they thought we were a lot of wilting violets and they, they weren’t very helpful. So if, I had rash on my face so I opted to go to the MO at Heliopolis and she sent me to the hospital in Cairo. I was there for a few days.
CB: So all in all how did you rate your stay in Egypt.
MD: I liked it very much. Very happy there.
CB: What was the most pleasant part of that?
MD: The travelling I think. I was able to go to Cyprus, Jerusalem, Luxor and later on when I met up with my husband we went to Alexandria.
CB: So how did you meet him?
MD: Well, he was the officer. One of the officers of the Watch. And I was the, I was in a department called snags which I liked.
CB: What was that?
MD: Well, we had a system called [Codnasti] which was a call sign operator’s number, NR number, directions, address, subject matter, time of origin, ending and if any of those went wrong the message would go to the wrong place or they would lose the subject matter or something. So when I went on Watch there would often be quite a stack of messages that had lost their way as it were. And I’ve always liked puzzles. I still do lots of puzzles and I had to sort out what had gone wrong and where they should have gone to and —
CB: And, and was there a lot of this in Morse that you were handling still?
MD: Yes.
CB: Or was it different?
MD: Some of it was morse and some was plain language.
CB: And you had to write this down having, because what rank were you here?
MD: I was a corporal.
CB: Right.
MD: And I had another girl who was an LACW when she was, we did it between us.
CB: Did you have more than one person reporting to you at any time, or always just one person was it?
MD: Just the one person yes, just the two of us working.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So how did this link with your husband to be start?
MD: Well, he was, he was one of the officers of the Watch. And you had to get things signed all the time. Keep going signing things and —
CB: Was he falling behind a bit and you had to chivvy him up?
MD: No. He was, he was always seemed to be walking around taking note of what was going on. So —
CB: You cracked —
MD: As he passed through I’d get him to sign something.
CB: He couldn’t escape.
MD: Quite.
CB: Management by walkabout.
MD: Yes.
CB: Worked quite well. So how long were you then in Egypt, and when did you come back?
MD: I went over in 1945, early in the year. I think April. I think. April or May and I came back July I think the following year. I would have liked to have stayed longer. It was so nice.
CB: Where did they post you to when you returned?
MD: No. I was immediately demobbed because I’d, I’d done five years and joined up when I was seventeen and a half and did five years so I had quite a high release number.
CB: Now, that was what it based on was it? The length of service.
MD: Yes, and, and your age.
CB: Yeah. Where were you demobbed?
MD: In Liverpool. Came back on the Mauritania and spent about five days being demobbed and debriefed and —
CB: What was the debriefing?
MD: Well, where, where you’d where you’d been and what you’d done, and —
CB: For the records or were they trying —
MD: Records.
CB: To find out if there was anything of importance that —
MD: No. I think it was just records. Yes.
CB: And the men had a set of clothes given to them when they were demobbed.
MD: Yes.
CB: What happened to the ladies?
MD: Well, we had, I think it was thirty coupons which was hardly enough to buy shoes and a coat. I had a few clothes left behind, but when I left home but — [pause]
CB: Did they give you any clothes?
MD: It was very, very difficult. We didn’t get any clothing. No.
CB: At all.
MD: No.
CB: Right. The men all got a suit.
MD: Yes. We just got clothing coupons.
CB: Right. So what did you actually do next then?
MD: I went to London where my father was now working in the House of Commons, in Black Rod’s department. And I, I was reinstated by Boots. You could apply for reinstatement and I went to a branch in, in London. And then I got married and it was back to the RAF again.
CB: When did you get married. And where?
MD: 1947.
CB: When?
MD: January 4th 1947. Chelsea Registry Office.
[pause]
CB: A good address then.
MD: What do you mean?
CB: Chelsea.
MD: Yes. Oh yes. I lived in Chelsea.
CB: Right. With your parents.
MD: Well, with my father.
CB: Yeah, with your father. Yeah.
MD: Yeah. He’d separated by then.
CB: From your step mother.
MD: From my step mother.
CB: Right.
MD: So he, he was living there. He was as I say he was, worked at the House Of Commons. A special badge messenger in Black Rod’s department. And —
CB: So when you were married where did you go and live?
MD: Well, for a short time in Haringey.
CB: Haringey.
MD: Yes. But, but that’s until we, my husband was posted to Marlow in Medmenham. Medmenham.
CB: Medmenham.
MD: And so we had lodgings in Marlow. Two rooms in a, well two rooms in a house. It was quite a big RAF station at Medmenham at that time and then from there we went to Pembroke Dock where we lived in a miner’s cottage with a tin bath on the wall. When the wind blew the bath used to swing to and fro.
CB: How did you fill the bath?
MD: Well, we had a, bought a huge pan from a gypsy and used to put it on the stove and fill it with hot water and we gradually filled the bath up. My daughter was born in a Nissen hut in Pembroke Dock.
CB: So you moved from the cottage to the Nissen hut did you? Or that was just the delivery room? The Nissen hut. Your daughter.
MD: The Nissen hut was the, was the RAF with the —
CB: Right. In medical, sick quarters.
MD: Yes. And then my husband was demobbed and we came to St Albans. And from there to Harpenden and here we are.
CB: Very interesting. We’ll just pause for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you’re in this miner’s cottage.
MD: Yes.
CB: What was the, at what time of year are we talking about here?
MD: Well, it must have been the winter because my daughter was born in February.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And —
BCD: We went down there in late autumn time.
MD: Yes.
BCD: To Pembroke Dock.
MD: Yes.
CB: So, how did you heat the cottage?
MD: It was coal fires.
CB: Supplied by the Air Force.
MD: No.
CB: The coal.
MD: No.
BCD: No.
MD: No. In, in those days if you, if the officer was under twenty five he didn’t get a marriage allowance so we were, we were pretty hard up actually. Had to buy coal and pay rent.
CB: Do you remember what the rent was?
MD: What was the rent in the, in the Pembroke Dock?
BCD: About two pounds a week.
MD: Something like that. Yes.
CB: Quite a bit of money then.
MD: It was. Yes.
CB: With the bath you’ve had to put a lot of effort into boiling the water.
MD: Yes.
CB: In the tin.
MD: Yes.
CB: So you fill the bath. How full would you fill it?
MD: Well, about a third I suppose really and you had to carry the water from the, there was a very tiny kitchen, and the bath had to go in the living room which was very, these cottages are very small and carry the water from there to there and gradually fill up.
CB: So after one had had a bath what happened?
MD: I think, I think my husband was able to bath on the station.
CB: Right.
MD: It was just me I think.
CB: Yeah.
BCD: I used to swim in the sea too. Get it off a Sunderland Flying Boat to just —
CB: Dive in.
BCD: Yeah, just dive in.
CB: So you had a salty bloke come back.
MD: [laughs] Yes.
CB: But in practical terms did you share the bath sometimes? That is to say one did it, and used it, and then the other?
MD: No. I don’t think so. You always had a bath or shower on the station didn’t you?
BCD: Yes, I did. But occasionally as a bit of fun I had a bath.
MD: After.
BCD: At the cottage.
MD: Yeah. After me. Yeah.
CB: And then you had to ladle the water out.
MD: Had to carry this huge thing out by the handles and tip it down the drain, and put it back on the wall.
CB: I had to do that at school.
MD: Did you?
CB: Yes. Anyway —
MD: Which school was that?
CB: I’ll tell you later [laughs] So then you, from, from Pembroke Dock then you came, then your husband was demobbed.
MD: Yes.
CB: Himself.
MD: Yes.
CB: So then you moved on to other things.
MD: Yes.
CB: And your, what about your son? Where was he born?
MD: He was born in St Albans.
CB: Right.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So what was the most memorable thing you would say happened to you in your service in the RAF?
MD: Well, I would think going overseas and being able to travel around the Middle East.
CB: Yeah.
MD: It was pretty dull at High Wycombe. Not much excitement.
CB: No. You were able to travel around a bit on public transport at High Wycombe were you or was that a bit restricted?
MD: Well, there was, there was a bus service so you had to pay to get on a bus and go in to High Wycombe. Sometimes we walked because it was, would save money.
CB: Down from Naphill.
MD: Yes. Down the hill.
CB: And then the hard drudge back up again.
MD: Yes. Yes. I’ve done that a few times. Yeah.
CB: But you were fit.
MD: Yes.
CB: Enabled you to have a good appetite to eat the quality RAF food.
MD: [laughs] Yes.
CB: Right. Well, we’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
MD: I remember seeing her on Pay Parade.
CB: So, I just want to go back to your initial training.
MD: Yes.
CB: Which you did at Morecambe.
MD: Yes.
CB: What exactly did you do there?
MD: Well, it was mainly marching and lectures.
CB: What were the lectures on?
MD: About the RAF and discipline and that sort of thing.
CB: And did they talk about the air war because we’re right in the war now?
MD: Yes. No.
CB: Did you do aircraft recognition or —
MD: No. It was very basic really. We were, we were billeted with civilians in, landladies.
CB: Yes.
MD: And the food was a bit scarce. I don’t know how much they were paid per person but they didn’t provide a great deal of food.
CB: What about the people who were on the course with you?
MD: Yes.
CB: What sort of people were they?
MD: Well, we were, we were all, all together really. We hadn’t separated out into our trades or where we were going. So it was just sort of you came from Gloucester, got your uniform, went up to Morecambe and we were just sort of settling into service life really.
CB: And, what I’m getting at is your father was in the Navy. What rank was he in the Navy at that time?
MD: He was a chief petty officer.
CB: Right. So, he was a fairly senior man at the time compared with some of the other [pause] so you came from a family of a senior NCO.
MD: Yes.
CB: But you would have got people from all sorts of walks of life.
MD: All sorts of walks of life.
CB: What sort of background were they?
MD: Yes.
CB: What sort of people were they?
MD: Well, basically very nice. There were some rather rough people as you might say, but basically your average citizen I would say. Working class people.
CB: And how did they adapt to, because you knew about service life.
MD: Yes.
CB: If only from the Navy but how did they adapt to this circumstance?
MD: I think some of them found it rather hard. The discipline and having to be on time and things like that.
CB: And all of them had had jobs before had they?
MD: Yes. Most of them had.
CB: Had any of them just left —
MD: Some of us were volunteers and some had been conscripted of course.
CB: Ah, ok. So how did the conscription work?
MD: Well, they called people up in batches. Rather like they did the men, I think. If you weren’t in a Reserved Occupation you had to go in one of the services or be directed in to something.
CB: And how did they feel about that? The ones conscripted.
MD: Well, they, they just had to put up with it. They didn’t have any choice really. They weren’t, they weren’t very happy to be where they were but —
CB: Did you form a lasting friendship with anybody at that stage?
MD: Not at that stage. I did when I was in the Middle East but the thing was when we got home we were all in different parts of England. We didn’t have telephones or mobiles or communication. We didn’t have cars. It was very difficult. Once you sort of went to your different areas. It was, it was just letter writing really. And I, I still keep in touch with some of the girls. One in particular that was [pause] joined up with me. But —
CB: What did she come on? What did she do eventually? When she took a trade what trade did she go to?
MD: Telephonist.
CB: As well.
MD: Yes. Not wireless telephonist.
CB: Oh no, telephonist. Right.
MD: Telephonist. Yes.
CB: And where would she have been posted in that case?
[pause]
MD: I think it was Leighton Buzzard.
CB: Right. Stanbridge.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And that was another thing you see. You were, often you were posted all in different directions so it was very difficult to keep in touch with people.
CB: Sure.
MD: In those days.
CB: Because you wouldn’t know where they were.
MD: No.
CB: Because the security —
MD: Yes.
CB: Was such that you weren’t allowed to say where you were stationed, were you?
MD: Exactly. Somewhere in England you had to put. Somewhere in England.
CB: Right.
MD: I remember when we were going on, on overseas and my brother was also, he was in the Navy and we, we worked out a code. If you said, “Give my love to all the people at number 6,” it meant that that was number six and that would be a place. So we’d try, we tried to get around it to let people know basically where we were.
CB: On a list.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Number 6 on the list.
MD: You put a list of all names of the places you thought you might be and if you say, “Give my love to all the people at number 3,” And then you would look on the list and that would tell you.
CB: Was this something to do with the fact that you were dealing with Morse Code as a code and so you followed the same concept yourselves.
MD: I think so yes. Probably. But we found ways of letting people know.
CB: Yes. Now of the people in other courses what famous person did you —
MD: Well, Sarah Churchill was in the intake above me.
CB: Oh right.
MD: So, and I remember seeing her on Post Parade. She was getting letters, and she’d, she’d married this American comedian Vic somebody or other but Randolph Churchill had rushed to America to stop her marrying him but arrived too late I think, so [pause] But anyway she was in the WAAF and then later she went to Medmenham as a photographic interpreter. And she had bright red hair.
CB: How did you know who she was?
MD: Well, because I, I knew her. I knew her by sight. She had this very bright red hair. And her picture had been in the paper a lot.
CB: Ah, that’s how you knew who she was, did you?
MD: Yes.
CB: Yes. So the security was a bit, was that from pre-war times or —
MD: No. That was.
CB: In the war.
CB: During the war. Yes.
MD: So variable security here identifying the prime minister’s daughter.
MD: Yes.
CB: In the paper.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Right. And of the people who you trained with —
MD: Yes.
CB: How many of those got to more exalted heights?
MD: I think some of them became sergeants but, or if, if they wanted to do physical training or anything like that they would reach the rank of warrant officer but basically we were erks or corporals. There wasn’t much promotion.
CB: Ok. Because the RAF was a, a meritocracy compared with the other forces they say.
MD: Really?
CB: And I just wondered how you had seen that in operation.
MD: I think there were sort of people from all walks of life and, but there wasn’t any huge differences. I, I remember the thing that surprised me most when I joined the RAF was that everybody used Christian names whereas before that where I was working it was always Miss somebody and Mr somebody and even your next door neighbours were Mr and Mrs and it seemed very nice and friendly when I joined the Service that everybody used Christian names.
CB: Right. Well, Margaret Day thank you very much indeed for a most interesting conversation.
[recording paused]
CB: Just going back to your time in —
MD: Yes.
CB: In Egypt. There were a lot of people there so there would be a hundred and twenty people or something on a shift.
MD: Yes.
CB: And largely WAAFs but there were also men as well. What was the mix of tasks? Were they the same or did the men have a different role?
MD: I think mainly the girls did the signals work and, and some of the other, some of the men were sort of in charge of departments. But basically they were being moved a lot at that time and it was being more or less taken over by, by the WAAF.
CB: Right.
BCD: The men were mainly the engineer section.
CB: Right.
BCD: Anything went wrong they — [pause]
MD: RAF Regiment and that sort of thing.
CB: What did the RAF Regiment do?
MD: Well, guard the airfield.
CB: Oh, guarding it.
MD: Yes.
CB: Yeah. And was there a barbed wire fence around the whole place then to protect it from marauding tribesman?
MD: No.
BCD: You could see very little above ground. Everything was covered in sand you see. Massive place underground.
CB: Yeah.
BCD: But nothing from the top. The other thing that, you talked about eggs.
CB: Yes.
BCD: On our night shift we had our own canteen there with staff running the canteen and I used to look forward, about 2 o’clock in the morning, the staff used to have a half an hour off during that to have my egg, chips and bacon. That was lovely. And — [pause]
CB: Was this because you were in charge of a section or because you were air crew?
BCD: Well, no. I, my function was because of my technical ability on telecommunications and anything connected with that.
CB: Right.
BCD: I must admit I took to the training for radar and telecommunications, and I really got down to it and did pretty well. That is why I used to lecture in the Middle East. They used to call me to lecture to various —
CB: Various people.
BCD: Various functions and things. I lectured to various squadrons and whatever.
CB: Right. Well, we’re stopping there.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Margaret Helen Day
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADayMH171128
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:15:16 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Description
An account of the resource
As her father was in the Royal Navy, Margaret attended school in Gibraltar, Portsmouth, and (after her mother’s death) Malta, before returning to Gosport in the UK when she was eleven. In 1939, she was fifteen and working for a company making soft furnishings for the Royal Yacht. Margaret recalls when the bombing started in 1940 with attacks on Portsmouth and Gosport. On one occasion, a bomb fell in their garden and trapped them in their Anderson shelter. Margaret remembers being terrified, being rescued by RAF personnel who pulled her out of the earth by her feet, and one lady requiring hospitalisation. At the age of seventeen, Margaret joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained as a wireless operator. Her brother had joined the Royal Navy and her sister the WAAF also. Following initial training, she trained as a wireless operator at RAF Hutton Cranswick, RAF Kirkham, where she learnt Morse code, and RAF Compton Basset. In 1942, she was posted to RAF High Wycombe, bomber command’s headquarters. Based underground, her roles included communicating between Groups, monitoring radio frequencies to locate enemy navigation beacons, and recording encrypted messages from aircraft sent in Morse code. In 1945, Margaret was posted overseas and was on a ship in the Mediterranean heading to Egypt when news of VE Day came through. She joined the Telecommunications Middle East facility in Egypt. She recalls living in tents during sandstorms and visiting Cairo, the Pyramids, Jerusalem, and Luxor. She also visited Cyprus on leave in a Dakota C-47. After five years' service, Margaret was demobilised in 1946.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Andy Shaw
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Great Britain
North Africa
England--Buckinghamshire
England--High Wycombe
England--Portsmouth
England--Wiltshire
Egypt--Cairo
England--Hampshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1945
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
aircrew
bombing
ground personnel
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Nissen hut
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF High Wycombe
RAF Kirkham
shelter
Victoria Cross
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/802/10782/ADickerV161015.1.mp3
79ea105bfcdbc67e9b8211ad11a3b1f1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dicker, Violet
V Dicker
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Violet Dicker (b. 1926). She served in the Land Army and is the widow of bomb aimer and navigator Flight Lieutenant Alan Henry George Dicker (1812199, 167748 Royal Air Force). The collection also contains his log book.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Violet Dicker and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dicker, AHG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and we are now in Abbots Langley near Watford and the date is the 15th of October 2016, and we’re talking to Violet Dicker. She’s going to be talking as a proxy for her late husband Alan Dicker. So, Violet what do you remember about the earliest days of Alan and what he did? How he came to join the RAF.
VD: Oh, well Alan was one of four children. Children born to, well Alan, his Henry, his father was Henry George Dicker and Florence Dicker. Two. Two girls and two boys. Alan was the elder of the two boys. He went to Leyton County High School after passing scholarship which you had to take in those days. And then [pause] but he was always mad keen on, on aeroplanes and he made models and things like that. And so when the ATC was formed he joined the ATC and, but when he was seventeen I think it was he volunteered for the air force. So, I think he actually went into the air force just before he was eighteen. He did his basic training at the usual places. I can’t — Blackpool or somewhere. I can’t remember that. He wanted, always wanted to be a pilot but at that time there was a shortage of navigators so he had no choice. While, whilst he was still in the ATC he took some examination and it gave him a scholarship to [pause] Janet — what’s the name of the college?
Other: Teddy Hall. St Edmund’s Hall at Oxford.
VD: St Edmund Hall where he did a short course on I think it was —
Other: Short course. Maths. But sort of to do with —
VD: Yeah.
Other: Required for flying.
VD: I can’t tell. Somewhere we’ve got a copy of his — I don’t know what we did with it. With his. When he was commissioned. He started, anyway he was obviously, he was obviously a pilot officer first of all. Then he became, what’s the next one up?
CB: Flying officer.
VD: Flying officer. And then he was a flight lieutenant.
CB: So, he joined at, he went to Blackpool.
VD: Yeah. Somewhere like that.
CB: But he joined first of all in London, did he?
VD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Did he go to Lords as the starting point? Do you remember?
VD: I think he did.
CB: ACRC.
VD: Yes. ACRC. Yes.
CB: At Lords. Then the Initial Training Wing.
VD: Yeah.
CB: At Blackpool.
VD: Yeah. Yes. We were, we were, at this point we weren’t what you’d call, used to call courting. We were just part of a big group of youngsters. Boys and girls. As I say I belonged to this organization called the Women’s Junior Air Corps and we did a lot of things together and training and that. Marching and that sort of thing. And that, and then he went from there he went straight across to America.
CB: America or Canada?
VD: Well, Canada. Prince Edward Island.
CB: And what was that for?
VD: Well, I don’t know.
Other: Training.
VD: That’s where they were training pilots weren’t, they?
CB: Well, navigators.
VD: Air crews I mean.
CB: Yes.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
VD: When he left there I think, as far as I can remember he, almost all, straight away was shipped out to the Far East.
CB: Oh.
VD: Yeah. Was, Janet was it on the Queen Mary? It was wasn’t it? And he, he stayed in the Far East ‘til 1947 I think it was. It was, he was, wasn’t —he was using [pause] he was flying Sunderland Flying Boats out there. And —
CB: But when he came back from Canada —
VD: Yeah.
CB: Then he flew in England.
VD: No.
CB: He didn’t at all.
VD: He didn’t. He automatic almost straightaway went out to the Far East.
CB: Right.
VD: I think.
CB: So he joined, what year did he join up? He joined in 19’ —
VD: Seventeen. He was seventeen. So what year would that be?
CB: That make him 1941.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
VD: Yeah.
CB: So ’42 was, end of ’41 was when the Japanese invaded.
VD: Yeah.
CB: The Far East.
VD: He was out there for the fall of Singapore. And because the Japs poisoned all the water —
CB: Oh.
VD: So that was always his excuse for drinking beer. Because they couldn’t drink the water [laughs]
CB: Right.
Other: He wasn’t a big drinker.
CB: Ok. So, he, he was out in the Far East. Do you know where? He was in Singapore.
VD: Koggala.
CB: Where?
VD: Koggala. It was Ceylon, wasn’t it?
CB: Oh, in Ceylon, was he?
VD: Yeah.
CB: Right. Ok. Yeah. And what was he doing there?
VD: Well, he was, he was on flying boats. And was also then at the end as I say he was a signals officer and he was always looking for signals to come through. Putting him back on flying. And I think, I’m not sure when he saw a certain signal that they wanted someone somewhere he put his name straight forward for it.
CB: Right. And so he was in Ceylon for how long?
VD: Oh dear. I really couldn’t honestly tell you with any accuracy.
Other: You got married in ’50.
VD: Pardon?
Other: You got married in ’50.
VD: We got married in 1950. Yeah. But he’d been, by that time he’d been, he’d come home and he’d gone to St Eval.
CB: Yes.
VD: In Cornwall. And they did air, flying to the weather ships and dropping mail to the lighthouses and weather ships and things like that.
CB: It, it looks —
VD: St Eval.
CB: It looks as though before that he was at the Air Navigation School at Charlottetown.
VD: Yes. That’s right. He was at Charlottetown.
CB: From August ‘44 to January ‘45.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
VD: That’ll probably tell you more than I. You know.
Other: That was on Prince Edward Island wasn’t it?
CB: So that is as a pilot officer then.
VD: Yes.
CB: So that was good. And then he went Nassau.
VD: Yes. He did go to Nassau for a while. And I think it was from Nassau he went out to the Far East.
CB: Right. Ok. And so when he was out there flying the Flying Boats then do you know what he was doing at that time?
VD: Well, I think they were searching for Jap submarines and that sort of thing.
CB: Yes. It’s 205 Squadron.
VD: That’s right.
CB: At Koggala.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Got that. Right. Ok. So, it looks as though he did quite a bit of time there. Until 1947. From ’45 to ’47.
VD: Yes. He probably was. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok. And then after that —
VD: He was down at St Eval.
CB: He went to St Eval. In Cornwall.
VD: Yes.
CB: As you said. No. He went to Changi, Singapore for a bit.
VD: That’s right. He did.
CB: And then he went to St Eval. And St Eval was 1948.
VD: That’s right.
CB: January ’48. Right. And so he was there for a while.
VD: Yeah.
CB: On 203 Squadron. And where were you in those days?
VD: I was working as a secretary at Dr Barnardo’s Homes in the East End of London.
CB: Right. So what contact did you keep with him?
VD: Oh occasional letters really. That was all to start with. Just —
CB: Because these were as friends.
VD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Rather than anything more serious you said.
VD: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok. And after St Eval he’s been there, he’s there actually for quite a long time isn’t he?
VD: Yes.
CB: ’48.
VD: And then he went to a Flying Boat station.
CB: At Calshot.
VD: Calshot.
Other: Calshot.
VD: Yeah. He was. I think we were married when he was at Calshot.
CB: So, when you were, you were in London how did you get to the stage where you were courting and —
VD: Well, no. We only wrote letters. And he used to get home about once a month.
CB: Yes.
VD: He had a motorbike and he used to come home on that.
CB: Crikey.
VD: And then early, well in, I can’t remember the exact date but sort of earlier in the year of 19 —
Other: ’50 ’49 ’48.
VD: No. It must have been 1950s.
Other: You got married in October.
VD: Eh?
Other: You got married in October.
VD: He was, he was coming home on his motorbike and he was going to ask me to marry him.
CB: Yeah.
VD: And he was coming somewhere near the Heathrow region, somewhere, that part of London and an army lorry pulled out without stopping in front of — he was on his motorbike. And this army, learner army driver pulled out of the side turning. Because Alan went for a burton. He’d just picked up an airman to give him a lift and this airman — I mean I’m only telling what I was told.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Went right over Alan’s head.
CB: Yes.
VD: Landed on the verge, the grass verge and didn’t have a scratch. Alan, Alan was in hospital. He had a broken wrist but nothing too bad. But the people at the Matchless factory where the bike went back to be rebuilt said they’d never seen so much damage where the rider had survived.
CB: Really.
VD: So it was his lucky day. So, of course that put off his proposal a bit and then when he did eventually propose we were married quite soon after that. On the 14th of October 1950.
CB: Yes. And he was at Calshot.
VD: He was at Calshot.
CB: At that time.
VD: Yes.
CB: So, he carried on at Calshot until —
VD: And then did we go to Thornhill, Alan?
CB: Then Shawbury.
VD: Well, I didn’t go. It must have been a course at Shawbury.
CB: And then Thorney Island. Right.
VD: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So what was he flying at Thorney Island?
VD: Thorney Island. We were in quarters at Thorney Island.
CB: Yes.
VD: For about two and a half years.
CB: Were you? Oh right.
VD: It was, he was flying Valettas and Varsities there. They were rigged up as flying classrooms.
CB: Right. Because it’s a Navigation School.
VD: Navigation School. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Number 2 Navigation School.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Air Navigation School.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. I know it well. The Varsity and the Valetta.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Right.
VD: It was a lovely posting.
CB: Was it? Nice in the summer.
VD: Janet was born there.
CB: Right. And from there [pause — pages turning] this logbook runs out from there. Where did you go after that? I’m going to —
VD: Well, we must have come up did he come up to the Air Ministry?
Other: Yeah. It was at Ruislip
VD: Because we lived in the caravan at Bovingdon.
CB: In a caravan.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Your caravan or an air force one?
VD: Our own caravan. Yes.
CB: Yes.
VD: But it was a small site and they were nearly all air force people from various places around because quarters you know accommodation was hard to get. It was in Bovingdon.
CB: At Bovingdon.
VD: Yes. And Tim, my second child he was born while we were at Bovingdon. He was born at [pause] what’s the — what’s the —
Other: Halton. Halton.
VD: Halton.
CB: At Halton.
VD: At Halton. Yes.
CB: Yes. Ok. So, after that. So what was he doing in, he was going up on the train every day or what was he doing?
VD: What?
CB: When you were at Bovingdon.
Other: Was it?
VD: No. He drove the car. He was working at Ruislip.
CB: Oh Ruislip.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Oh right.
VD: He went by car.
CB: Yeah. To Ruislip. Do you know what he was doing there?
VD: I think it was route planning for VIPs and royalty and people like that.
CB: Right.
VD: It wasn’t flying.
CB: No. Ok. And then what?
VD: Well, I think he asked a bit to go back on and then we went to Bassingbourn. When they — what was the name of the new plane that came out? Before the V bombers.
CB: What? The Valiant?
VD: No.
CB: The Canberra.
VD: Canberra. That’s right. Yeah.
CB: So he was flying on the Canberra was he?
VD: Canberras. We were, we were at Bassinbourn for about two and half years as well.
CB: Yeah.
VD: That was a nice —
CB: What was that like? Did you get a quarter there?
VD: Yes. We had a lovely quarter. And we did at Thorney Island. And then from there he went to Cottesmore.
CB: Yeah.
VD: On V bombers. Victor.
[pause]
CB: How long were you there?
VD: Pardon?
CB: How long were you at Cottesmore?
VD: About two. Two and a bit years I think.
CB: Yeah.
VD: He went, from there he retired so —
CB: Oh did he?
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. What age did he retire then?
VD: Thirty eight. Because he’d done enough.
CB: Right. He was happy with that.
VD: That’s when he came to Handley Page.
CB: Yeah. So, how did the Handley Page job come up?
VD: Well, because there was quite a lot of liaison between people at Cottesmore.
CB: Yes.
VD: And Handley Page.
CB: Because of the Victor.
VD: And they were, they were short of a test, a test navigator at Handley Page. So I think, I think that was how it came about. He flew with a chap called Group Captain Johnny Allam.
CB: But he was a civilian then. Alan.
VD: Oh, they were civilian. All civilians.
CB: All civilian.
VD: By that time.
CB: Yeah. So where did you live then?
VD: We moved into the house in Bedmond.
CB: Oh right.
VD: In 1962.
CB: Right. That’s when he got the job was it?
VD: Yeah. He [pause] I can’t remember when he actually went to British Airways.
CB: Then he went to British Airways.
VD: I can’t remember whether —
Other: About ’70.
VD: It was after Handley Page went bankrupt.
CB: Went bust.
VD: Obviously.
CB: Yeah.
Other: It was ’68 ’69 or ’70.
CB: Yeah. He didn’t get a job at [pause]
Other: British Airways.
VD: British Airways straight away. He waited ‘til there was a vacancy I suppose.
CB: Did he do something in between? Or —
VD: No. No. Pottered.
Other: Sore point [laughs]
CB: Right.
VD: I went out to work for a while and he was pottering.
CB: Yeah. Having lost his job he lost his focus did he?
VD: Yeah. Well, he was a do it yourselfer who never quite finished anything.
CB: Right. Right. Ok.
VD: It’s sounds harsh to say that but it’s true.
CB: And at British Airways? What was he doing there?
VD: Well, it was just flight planning. They don’t use navigators so it was just a desk job. And you know they do all the flight planning for the pilots. Pilots. It’s all take when they go off everything is planned for them. You know.
CB: Yeah. They knew what they were going to do.
VD: And they don’t actually do it.
CB: No. And when did he, that was his last job was it?
VD: Yes.
CB: When did he retire from that?
VD: When he was sixty three.
CB: So that’s 1986. Is it? Oh. Well, he was born in 1924 so 1987. Yeah. ’87.
VD: ’87. I don’t know. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok. And that was retirement permanently.
VD: Yes.
CB: Right. Just going back to the early stages. So, in the war he couldn’t join ‘til he was, or try to join ‘til he was seventeen. So, you were both in London. What was it like being in London in those days?
VD: Well, it was a bit hairy wasn’t it? You know. We were in the shelters most nights. And he [pause] my family had an Anderson shelter in the garden. I don’t know what Alan’s family had. I don’t think they had one did they? Or they might have done like —
CB: Was it the next road or —
VD: Hmmn?
CB: Were they in the next road?
VD: No. A few roads away.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Quite near.
CB: Ok. So, how often, you had to go in to the Anderson shelter. In what circumstances were they?
VD: Well, once the sirens went you just automatically went to the shelter.
CB: Did everybody get in the shelter everywhere? Or —
VD: Well, I don’t know about anywhere else. My family, yeah. There was only my my mother and my sister and I ‘cause her husband was away in the Royal Artillery. So, there were only the three of us. So, it wasn’t too bad.
CB: So what was Alan doing at that time?
VD: Well, one of those things that —
CB: So, when, when he left school —
VD: Yes.
CB: What age did he leave school?
VD: I don’t, — he did his matric.
CB: Yeah. Was it sixteen he left or —
VD: I presume he left when he went into the air force. I’m not sure.
CB: Right. So, he went on essentially ‘til —
VD: Yeah.
CB: Seventeen. Eighteen.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Ok. And meanwhile you’re in London.
VD: Yeah.
CB: So, how did that change after the Battle of Britain? Or the bombing went on for a while in the Blitz. So, in 1941.
VD: Well, it went on ‘til the Battle of Britain really didn’t it?
CB: Yeah. Well, after the Battle of Britain then. The night bombing.
VD: Yes. Well, once the bombing stopped things sort of got back to normal more or less. As far as I can remember.
CB: And he —
VD: And then Alan, but Alan started writing to me when he was in the Far East. And we, we had just exchanged letters and then he turned up on a Boxing Day. He turned up on my doorstep. That’s right. I can’t remember which Boxing Day it was. And then it more or less went on from there, you know.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Because when he went to Canada then did he at that stage you said it wasn’t a serious —
VD: No.
CB: Relationship.
VD: No.
CB: So —
VD: No.
CB: It was just casual.
VD: We were just part of a crowd you know.
CB: Yes. So his, his navigation training is August 1944.
VD: What are you after? What are looking for?
[pause – pages turning]
CB: Right. I’m just going to pause for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: We’ve just paused to get some documentation. So, in practical terms we are talking about what Alan did but also what you were doing. So you left school at what age?
VD: Fifteen.
CB: Ok.
VD: Because —
CB: What did you —
VD: We weren’t getting any schooling in London. I was back in London. I had been evacuated but came home.
CB: Ah.
VD: And we were getting such that so one day a couple of us went out and got ourselves jobs at the Air Ministry in London.
CB: Oh.
VD: And I worked there for quite, in the communications department, for quite a long time until they wanted me to go on night duty and I really was too young to be doing that and wandering around London at night. So, I, I left and I got a job at Dr Barnardo’s Homes in Stepney.
CB: Was that building whole or had it been damaged?
VD: Pardon?
CB: Had that building been damaged?
VD: No. No. Not at that time.
CB: Right.
VD: And, and then when I was, I was —
CB: Because that’s —
VD: I wanted to go in the Land Army. And I could have gone in at seventeen when it, in February when it was my birthday but my best friend, we wanted to go together. She wasn’t seventeen ‘til December. So, I didn’t go. So we literally went at the beginning of nineteen —
CB: Forty.
VD: ’48 I suppose it was.
CB: ’42. Land Army. Was it?
VD: I was born in ’26.
CB: Yeah. So you were fifteen in ’41.
VD: So, it must have been ’43 mustn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Ok. And where, where did you operate in the Land Army?
VD: In, at a place called Woodham Ferrers near Chelmsford.
CB: Yeah. And how long were you there?
VD: Not, not so long. I was about two years. And I started getting trouble with my legs because the job I was in was dairy work. And —
CB: Yeah.
VD: Your legs in a wet cold environment for a long time. I came out and I went back to Dr Barnardo’s Homes. And I stayed there until I got married.
CB: They were always short of people.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Ok. In the Land Army what were you actually doing?
VD: Dairy work mostly. Some field work. But mostly dairy work.
CB: So actually in the dairy.
VD: Well, milking the cows.
CB: Milking the cows. Yeah.
VD: And seeing to the milk and cleaning up after them and all that sort of thing.
CB: So you sat on a stool, did you? While you were milking.
VD: No. You don’t.
CB: What did you do?
VD: That’s a little fairy tale.
CB: Is it?
VD: Well, no.. They do still use milking stools for some of the cows that won’t take to the machines but they were mostly milked by machinery.
CB: Oh. They had machines then.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok. And how did you, how was the milk delivered? Did you get involved in that?
VD: Oh, we put it in churns and left by the front gate and it was collected. I don’t know who. But somebody.
CB: Yeah. Ok. Now, what appreciate, what did you understand about what Alan was doing during the war?
VD: Well, I knew it was dangerous. Yeah.
CB: Did you know he was flying?
VD: Oh yes. I knew he was flying.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah.
CB: So, how did, did you know what he was doing?
VD: Not always. But sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did he talk much about it?
VD: No. Not a lot.
CB: Because he’d been told not to. And the same for you.
VD: I suppose. Yeah.
CB: Yes. And in the Land Army in Chelmsford. Woodham Ferrers. Did you have much appreciation of what was happening in the air force at the time?
VD: No. Not really. Because we didn’t have much. But I was still in the Land Army when the flying bomb, the flying bombs came over.
CB: Right.
VD: Because I remember I was out in the fields doing, I can’t remember what I was doing. I was on my own working away from the farm. And one of these things came over with it’s you know —
CB: The V-1.
VD: Yeah. The V-1.
CB: The doodlebug.
VD: With the tail coming out.
CB: Yeah.
VD: And it cut out.
CB: Yeah.
VD: And I just lay flat on the ground.
CB: Oh. Did you?
VD: I don’t know where it dropped but it didn’t drop on me.
CB: What sort of briefing had you got about how to behave when that was —
VD: No. None at all.
CB: Nothing.
VD: Nothing. No.
CB: Because you didn’t expect to get it in the countryside. So, did you know people who — well you did in London who were —
VD: Oh yes.
CB: On the receiving end. So what was their approach?
VD: Well my friend. The one I’d gone in the Land Army with. Her father was doing air warden duties one night and there was a woman who’d come to visit some relatives with a young child and she insisted, she came from East Ham or West Ham or somewhere and she insisted on going home. They wanted her to stay. Stay where she was. Yeah. She insisted on going home and so my friend’s father and another man took her and there was a land mine. They never found anything of them.
CB: Landed in the road.
VD: Yeah. Well they don’t, I can’t —
CB: At the house.
VD: It landed somewhere on their journey.
CB: Oh on the journey.
VD: Between Leyton and East Ham. Yeah.
CB: Oh right.
VD: West Ham I mean. Yeah. I don’t think, you know —
CB: This was a daytime.
VD: No. Evening.
CB: Oh right. In the —
VD: Evening. Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah. When are we talking about? What time? What date? Roughly. Are we talking about Blitz time? During the Blitz.
VD: Oh, the Blitz. Yes. Yeah.
CB: 1941 ’42.
VD: Yeah.
CB: ’40 ’41.
VD: Yeah.
CB: ’40 ’41.
VD: It was an awful period really.
CB: So Alan’s flying. How did you feel about him flying?
VD: Well, I mean I knew that he was flying and I knew that that was all he really wanted to do so you know you just accepted it really.
CB: And in later, after the end of hostilities. The war finished.
VD: Yeah.
CB: He was still flying. How did you feel about that?
VD: Well, it was what he wanted to do. It was up to him. It’s his life wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah. Yeah. And before the children came you were able to do a lot of things together anyway were you?
VD: Well, I [pause] do you know I can’t remember what we did before we had them [laughs]
Other: Practiced.
VD: Pardon?
Other: Practiced.
CB: Yeah. Because you married in 1950 so —
VD: ’50. And Janet was born in ’53.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah. I had a miscarriage in between. Between. When we living at Bovingdon.
CB: Right.
VD: I had a miscarriage.
CB: Caravans didn’t help.
VD: Hmmn?
CB: Caravans didn’t help.
VD: No. Oh no. I had a, the miscarriage was after Janet. Janet was only two and a bit because we had to ask that, he had to go and knock the people up in the next caravan and ask them if they would take Janet.
CB: Oh.
VD: Because it was quite a messy business in the caravan. The doctor came out and then I went to Halton. And then we stayed there and a couple of years later I had Tim at Halton.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah. So there were four years difference between —
CB: Yeah.
VD: Janet and Tim.
CB: Right. Now, fast forward to the situation where you’ve gone to Bassingbourn and then you’ve gone to Cottesmore. So Cottesmore.
VD: Yeah.
CB: We’re talking about V bombers. Cold War.
VD: Pardon?
CB: We’re talking about the Vulcan.
VD: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: The Victor in this case.
VD: Yes. Because there was the Cold War. They used to sometimes be on call and so he had to stay in the mess all over the weekend and they couldn’t come out. You know.
CB: QRA. Quick Reaction Alert.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah.
CB: So, how did you feel about him being in that circumstance? It was different from the war but on the other hand —
VD: Well, it was terrifying really but you know I think you were sort of conditioned if you were in a service. You were a service wife. You knew what you were going into didn’t you? You know. Really.
CB: Well, there were two aspects weren’t there? One was flying.
VD: Yeah.
CB: And the danger.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Of just plain flying. But if there had been a war situation to what extent did you discuss that? How it would work.
VD: I can’t remember that we did. No. I can’t really remember that we talked about it.
[pause]
CB: Because the perception was amongst the people, the aircrew.
VD: Yeah.
CB: That when the operation started they would be off to drop a bomb.
VD: That’s right.
CB: But the likelihood of coming back.
VD: That was —
CB: To anything.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Or actually getting back.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Was quite small.
VD: Yeah.
CB: But if they did the place would be devastated.
VD: Yes. That’s right.
CB: I just wondered to what extent that was a realisation that you had at the time.
VD: Well, I can’t remember sort of getting neurotic about it, you know. I do think service wives in a way were sort of I suppose you could say conditioned. They knew. They knew what they were letting themselves in for and you know life had got to go on and made the best of it.
CB: And at Cottesmore you had a married quarter.
VD: Yes.
CB: So, most of the married crews would have lived in married quarters.
VD: Yes.
CB: In those days.
VD: Oh yeah.
CB: The wives were pulled together. Not many of them worked did they?
VD: No. No. Because we were ten miles from Stamford.
CB: No.
VD: There wasn’t much opportunity to work.
CB: No. And people didn’t work.
VD: No.
CB: In those days so much.
VD: No.
CB: But the centre of the wives activity was the CO. The squadron — the station commander’s wife.
VD: Yeah.
CB: So, did, what did she do in terms of —
VD: Not a lot [laughs]
CB: Oh.
VD: That I can remember. There used to be the odd coffee morning and that sort of thing. But do you know I can’t really remember what we did. Of course then I had another baby while we were there.
CB: Yeah.
VD: At Cottesmore. He was born five years after Tim. And he was born in Oakham.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Oakham Cottage Hospital.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. What’s his name?
VD: Martyn.
CB: Oh Martyn. Right.
Other: With a Y.
VD: Hmmn?
Other: With a Y. With a Y.
CB: Martyn. Y. Yeah. Ok. And what about the social life around the officer’s mess?
VD: Well, they used to have the Summer Ball and that sort of thing. And lots of, lots of the people used to go in to the mess and especially Saturday evenings and just socialise and drink. But neither Alan or I were big drinkers so we didn’t go very often.
CB: And with young children on your hands.
VD: Yes.
Other: And a dog.
CB: And a dog.
VD: Pardon?
CB: And a dog.
VD: And a dog. Yeah.
CB: Yes. So you were a bit restricted there. How did you feel about your time at Cottesmore?
VD: Oh yes. I enjoyed it.
CB: And in the forces in peacetime friendships are developed more because of the married patch.
VD: Yes.
CB: How did that develop for you?
VD: Well, I kept in touch with a few wives for quite a, quite a long while but it gradually sort of [pause] I’m not in touch with anybody. Am I? Who?
Other: Esme.
VD: Oh yes.
Other: Esme.
VD: I am.
Other: Mrs Hoxey.
VD: I’ve got a great friend called Esme. Her husband was a pilot. She lives in Macclesfield now.
CB: Right.
VD: We became pregnant when we, I mean we became friends when we were both pregnant.
CB: Yes.
VD: And, and then we used to take it in turns to babysit for each other. One Saturday one would go shopping. Go to Chichester and go shopping. And that was nice.
Other: Mrs Bone. Mrs Hoxey. Mrs Bone. Mrs Hoxey.
VD: Who?
Other: Bone. Hoxey. Mrs Bone. Mrs Hoxey.
VD: Oh, the Bones. Yeah. I mean I’m still, exchange Christmas cards with a lot of these people but you know distance. The distance means that you can’t always visit and that sort of thing.
CB: Yes. It’s a close-knit community.
VD: Yes. It is.
CB: In that sort of situation.
VD: Yeah.
CB: So then, at the end of the service time and going to Handley Page how did the social life change then?
VD: Well, I was in, we were civilians by then you see.
CB: That’s what I meant. Yes.
VD: We came to live in Bedmond which is, you know a village. And I joined the WI and I did go out to work for a while when, whilst Alan was out of work for one period. For about eight or nine months. And I worked in Watford. But it was difficult because the buses didn’t fit, you know. So, I didn’t carry that on very long.
CB: Right.
VD: Some, of course we were members of the church. There’s a church in Bedmond.
CB: Yeah.
VD: And —
Other: Dad got involved with local politics.
VD: Pardon?
Other: Dad got involved with local politics.
VD: Oh yes. Alan became a local councillor.
CB: Oh right.
VD: Yeah. Yeah. He was a Three Rivers District Councillor.
CB: Yeah. How long did he do that for? Ten years.
Other: Several years.
VD: Hmmn?
Other: Several years. Several years.
VD: Several years. Yeah. I can’t tell you exactly.
CB: And during that time there was a change to BA. So what did that do as far as you were concerned? Was it a good salary hike and [pause] but of course he was working further away from where he was living. Did he get a good increase in salary for moving there?
VD: No. He didn’t get the job at British Airways until after he was living there.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah. He had to wait until there was a vacancy I suppose.
CB: Yeah.
Other: I don’t think it was.
VD: Hmmn?
Other: I don’t think it was. It was just a job he could get related to flying. At his age. And I don’t think the pay was very good.
VD: How could you know? You weren’t very old.
CB: So, it sounds as though, that it wasn’t a planned career move as such. It was just a—
VD: No. It was just a means to an end.
CB: Yes.
VD: Because the end of the time that we were being very good, in a very good position for [pause] well, cheap flights.
CB: Oh yeah.
VD: And eventually free flights. We got one free flight a year so we went as far as we could on it. We went to New Zealand. Several times.
CB: Did you? Yeah. Good move.
Other: Twenty five times.
CB: Twenty five. Twenty five times.
VD: No. Not twenty five. Twenty.
Other: No. Twenty five.
VD: Twenty. Twenty.
CB: That’s a lot of times.
VD: A lot of times. Yes. We’ve got lots —
CB: Did you have any relatives there?
VD: No. Just lots of friends though.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yes. We made lots of friends.
CB: And were any of those ones you’d met in the air force?
VD: No. No.
CB: Just coincidence.
VD: Yeah.
Other: But Violet you met in Dr Barnardo’s.
VD: Pardon?
Other: Violet, you met at Dr Barnardo’s.
VD: Sorry, Janet?
CB: Somebody you met at Dr Barnardo’s was there?
Other: Violet Smith.
VD: Hmmn?
Other: Violet Smith.
VD: Oh no. Yes. That’s right. She, yes she was the only contact we had wasn’t she? Yes
CB: Was she New Zealand?
VD: Hmmn?
CB: Was she a New Zealander.
VD: Oh yes. She and her husband went out on one of those hundred.
CB: Oh yeah. Pounds.
VD: Hundred.
Other: Ten pounds.
CB: Ten pound arrangement wasn’t it?
VD: Ten pound.
CB: Yes.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah.
CB: For —
VD: Yeah
CB: To encourage people to emigrate.
VD: She was our first contact.
CB: Yeah.
VD: Yeah.
CB: And she stayed there did she?
VD: Yeah. She died eventually and her husband died but I’m still in touch with some of her children. Yeah.
CB: What would you say Alan’s most memorable activity was? Event? In his time in the RAF.
VD: Well, they had a nasty incident whilst he was at Calshot. They were doing what were called circuits and bumps and flying at night and suddenly there was this almighty sort of crash and, but they didn’t, they didn’t crash as such but — and they had evidently hit a piece of high ground.
CB: Oh.
VD: With a hole. You know, the hole —
CB: Yes. And bounced off it.
VD: And so they had to fly around all night. They were plugging up holes in the fuselage with chewing gum and all sort of things. And when they eventually landed of course they’d, they’d radioed ahead to say, you know, what was happening so the boats, the boats were there because it was almost as soon as it landed it started to fill with water.
CB: Yeah.
VD: And, but they were all, they were all alright. Anyway, it was quite a nasty business because at first it was assumed it was Alan’s fault.
CB: Oh.
VD: But then the — what is it? Altimeter was found to be faulty.
CB: Oh.
VD: And they had — but the strange thing about it was that nobody ever reported finding, you know like a furrow suddenly appearing in a field or on a hillside. Or whatever it was. Yeah. That wasn’t, although of course I didn’t know it was happening. I just wondered why he was so late home.
CB: Oh.
VD: Yeah.
CB: And you were living —
VD: We were living in Fawley. In rented accommodation.
CB: Right.
Other: Was that, was that a Catalina or Sunderland?
VD: Hmmn?
Other: Was that a Catalina or Sunderland?
VD: A Sunderland.
CB: Ok.
VD: No. He didn’t fly Catalina’s. Weren’t they American?
CB: They were.
VD: Yeah.
CB: Only Sunderland. Yeah. Ok. Right. One other thing and that is when Alan was out in Ceylon did he, was he awarded any decoration?
VD: No. I don’t think so.
CB: No.
VD: No.
CB: Ok. Right. Stopping there.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Violet Dicker
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADickerV161015
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:43:03 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Violet discusses her late husband Alan Dicker. Alan went to Leighton County High School and at 16 he joined the Air Transport Command. At 17 he volunteered for the Air Force and became a navigator after doing his basic training at Blackpool. He went to America and Canada before being shipped out to the Far East where he stayed until 1947 as a Signal Officer. He also spent time in Singapore. Alan was then posted to Cornwall as a pilot officer where he dropped mail to the lighthouses and flew to the weather stations.
Violet remembered when Alan was knocked off his motorbike by an army lorry and suffered broken ribs. Soon after they were married. He was later posted to Coney Island. Later he worked for the Air Ministry at Ruislip, route planning for VIPs. He retired at Cottesmore and worked as a test navigator for Handley Page until they went into bankruptcy. When a vacancy arose at British Airways, he held a desk job until his retirement. Throughout Alan’s RAF career he worked with 205 and 203 Squadrons.
Violet gave a short account of her working life. She left school at 15 and got a job at the Air Ministry, and after that she worked at Dr Barnados homes. At 17 she joined the Land Army for two years and then went back to work for Dr Barnados.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
United States
Singapore
England--Cornwall (County)
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1947
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
205 Squadron
aircrew
home front
navigator
pilot
RAF Calshot
RAF Ruislip
RAF St Eval
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/876/11116/AHollowayPM171023.1.mp3
cb2e613ca5b2f8749e06e9759bba89f3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Holloway, Pauline
Pauline Mary Holloway
P M Holloway
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pauline Holloway (1927). She lived in London during the war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Holloway, PM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Tue- Monday the 23rd of October 2017, and I’m in a small village called Field Assarts near Witney, talking to Pauline Holloway about her recollections of the war as a minor, as an M-I-N-O-R. So, Pauline what are your earliest recollections of life?
PH: Of life? I suppose my father and mother, ‘cause my father was very stern but kind, he was a chartered accountant and worked in Oxford Street in London, and mother was very maternal, and I had a brother, who was nine years older than me. I used to be rather reserved, liked reading and animals but not people very much [chuckles]. I had one set of grandparents, the others had died, and again my grandfather was very strict [pauses]. I’m jumping now to when the war started.
CB: Ok.
PH: Because I remember the day, I remember Churchill speaking on the radio ‘cause Churchill became quite a, a pin-up for me, I thought he was wonderful. I’ve learnt about him since but I remember that on the radio and I remember the siren going off almost immediately, but nothing happened thank goodness although people were in a panic. I don’t know what my parents thought. I wasn’t personally very scared ‘cause I didn’t really know what was going on. My brother joined up almost immediately, and eventually he went into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders for some reason, he was persuading that we had Scottish ancestors. I remained at home, I was offered homes in New Zealand, America and South Africa from relations to the family, but I didn’t want to go, and my parents didn’t want to make me. I don’t know when it happened but father had a brick shelter built on the side of the back of the house, in which there were two bunks, where mother and I slept during the Blitz. He moved his office to Harrow from Oxford Street, and he had a big office in what we had as a morning room ‘cause we had quite a large corner house, and he used to sleep under the metal table, mother and I in the bunks and I was always worried ‘cause the little dog had to sleep under the kitchen table and was shut away from us, so I really was worried about that, but parents wouldn’t have dog in with us [pauses] I seemed to go on going to school, which was quite a way away. I’ve been trying to work out the distance but it took me about ten minutes, quarter of an hour to walk or I cycled, and I don’t seem to have be worried about what was going on in the air maybe, but perhaps that was because most of the raids were at night. We used to stand outside, first of all having heard the bombers (well they presumed they were the German bombers) come across and then we used to see this red in the sky, which went on for hours which was the, obviously the effect of the bombing on London. Again, I didn’t really appreciate what was going on, mother and dad must’ve done. I was more worried because I had a rabbit outside, and during one of the raids after having a litter, she ate them all. I think to protect them. School, we had a large hall which was sandbagged, I don’t think it really was much help with bombs but we went in there if there was a, a siren, and we did have a bomb once opposite and I can’t find out quite where it was ‘cause we were in the high street, Harrow, and the railway line was somewhere opposite but I think it was beyond that but the probably might’ve been dropping it on the railway line, or it was jettisoned I do not know ‘cause it was just one bomb. But what I very, very firmly remember is that the teacher went out first, instead of marshalling us together and we followed her out but she rushed out first, which I didn’t think much of. Then we had no more bombs near us but we could hear the doodlebugs go over, which I didn’t like at all, I was scared of those ‘cause you heard them cut out and you didn’t know where the, the next blast was going to be. I think quite a few went down into the South Harrow, Wealdstone area where there was a Kodak factory and I don’t think, I can’t remember what Kodak was doing in those days, but it was doing something obviously. [Pause] I remember we went up to stay with the grandparents early in the war, who lived in Birkdale, Southport, and we thought we’d have a peaceful time up there for a bit, and low and behold they came and bombed Liverpool that night so we heard the most horrific noises going on. We came down to Minster Lovell to stay during the war, I think it was after the main bombing was over, we used to come down for two weeks at a time to stay at the Swan at Minster Lovell, which consequently my father brought a plot of land after the war, had a cottage built there. [Pauses] I was trying to think back to the rationing, but we always seemed to eat well, mother was very clever, and we had a good greengrocer, and I think we must’ve had some extra from somewhere but I don’t think it was black market, and I remember crystalised fruits being sent over from South Africa by the relations over there, and also, I remember VE Day evening celebrations spent with girlfriends up on the hill at Harrow, which was all very jolly. But what amazed me was, after the war- Blitz was over, not the war, we had terrific thunderstorm and I was more frightened of that then the bombs, and that’s all I can really remember at the moment. About my brother he, he was damaged on training and hurt his back and consequently had a lame leg afterwards and he didn’t go abroad for fighting but he was busy down on the coast when D-Day occurred. He was doing some work down there. All that you saw of the war was when I went to the cinema and saw the trailers. It’s amazing what we hear now, what we didn’t hear then, which was a good job, I think. So that is really all I can remember.
CB: You spoke about going to school down the road and a bomb went off nearby?
PH: No, I was at- We were in school?
CB: In school, yes. What, what was the reaction of the other pupils to that?
PH: I think we all just calmly went into the hall but it was this teacher rushing in front, save her own skin, which rather put me off.
CB: So, she vanished, did she?
PH: She wasn’t a very nice teacher anyway. She stayed there [chuckles]. No, all I can remember the war, it was jolly cold at school ‘cause we didn’t have much heating.
CB: So was it the same school throughout your-
PH: I went there from-
CB: -learning, or?
PH: Yes, about eleven to eighteen I think it was.
CB: And what, what were you specialising in, in particular yourself, of interest?
PH: Well, I was interested in being outdoors, so I ended up doing horticulture.
CB: And what age did you leave school then?
PH: At eighteen, and couldn’t go to the college until the year after war ended because it, it had been bombed down there, it was in Kent.
CB: What the horticultural college was in Kent? So, which one did you go to in the end?
PH: I went in the end to Wye college, the South-Eastern Agricultural college it was then, then its name was changed. ‘Cause I was going to Swanley and Swanley was bombed. So, we had a mix up of people going to university ‘cause of course we had people out of the forces, land girls, green people like me straight from school. It was a good mix up.
CB: And what tales did you get from the land girls and the people who’d been in the forces when you were all on the course together?
PH: I don’t think we asked much about it, my sister-in-law was a land girl actually, my brother’s wife. They got married during the war and I can’t remember what date.
CB: What made them get married in the war and not wait till the end, do you think?
PH: I don’t know, maybe because of his damage. Because he certainly wasn’t- I always think he was damaged by the war because he’d done this in battle training, this leaping about and hurt his back and of course in those days back operations weren’t like they are now.
CB: But he was able to continue service in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders?
PH: I think he went on in that for a bit, yes, ‘cause he was stationed out on the Shetland Island-
CB: Oh.
PH: -for some time, at Lerwick.
CB: And did he correspond with home regularly?
PH: Not very.
CB: What about coming home on leave, did he?
PH: Um, that I can’t remember, not a lot. He was glad to get away because he didn’t want to be a chartered accountant, which he was, he would’ve liked to of done what I did [chuckles] but, sadly it wasn’t to be.
CB: So, you made a career in horticulture.
Ph: Yes.
CB: Was your husband in the same type of business?
PH: No, he was a farmer.
CB: Right, and how did you meet him?
PH: Met him after the war, obviously, at a young farmers club dance. My mother met him first, she got chatting to him, she came with me, because I was just driving, I’d just passed the test and she came with me and met him.
CB: Gave a stamp of approval, did she?
PH: Pardon me?
CB: She gave a stamp of approval?
PH: Yes, I think so [chuckles].
CB: So that was local to here was it? Or where, where did you meet?
PH: It was Burford.
CB: Oh, in Burford, right, and what were you doing at that time.
PH: Well, I was starting up a nursery garden, cause my father was keen on me doing that, at this cottage that we’d had done, I mean this is quite a while after the war, and we started up what we called the stone wall nurseries, and I’m afraid he died, forty-nine, and I gave that up. So, I did jobbing gardening for a bit, and of course my mother had an acre of garden so I had to look after that.
CB: So, when did you parents buy the house, in the first place?
PH: Pardon me?
CB: When did your parents buy the house?
PH: Well, he had it- It was only a shell of the cottage and he had it restored which got, got the date up. Well there were two cottages and another piece, piece of cottage, which he didn’t use so they really- They weren’t- You weren’t allowed to spend more than a certain amount after the war on building.
CB: Oh.
PH: So otherwise, he was wanting a bungalow built up the top of this piece of land which would’ve made a lovely outlook. But it’s beautiful the cottage, well it, it’s basic but it’s lovely, and he was going to retire there, he managed to come down for bits of time and then he died, so mother came down with me and I couldn’t- hadn’t got the money to carry on with the nursery, so as I say I looked after the garden and did jobbing gardening.
CB: And they- This was the restriction of the town and country planning act?
PH: Yes, I think so.
CB: Yes, did, did they grow a lot of vegetables in the war as required by the?
PH: Oh, we were doing things in our garden in Harrow.
CB: Yes.
PH: Dad and I were growing a few potatoes and odd things like that.
CB: How big was the garden in Harrow?
PH: Well fairly big in a corner house but not enormous, we had a few fruit trees in the back and the summer house, and this shelter thing.
CB: The shelter was-
PH: I can’t remember when he had that built. Must’ve known before the war because it was up quite soon ‘cause I can’t even remember when the blitz started.
CB: In 1940.
PH: 1940, yes. Yes, ‘cause that's when we started. Oh, we went down to Southhampton at the beginning of 1940, or Christmas because my brother was down there so we went to visit him. ‘Cause I remember playing darts with an admiral I think it was. I hated going there ‘cause I hated going away, and didn’t like sleeping upstairs on my own [chuckles] I was a terribly nervy person. I think that’s the only time we went down there, then we kept coming to Minster Lovell. Through a clerk of my fathers who found the place, and said it was nice and peaceful, so we came there.
CB: But Southampton itself was on the receiving end of a good deal of bombing, so what did you experience?
PH: Well yes, I think that was afterward you see, we didn’t- It was early on then.
CB: Oh, this was 1939 you went there?
PH: It might’ve been, might’ve been 1940.
CB: Yeah, the early part of ‘40.
PH: Yes, yes.
CB: Right, Christmas ‘39. ‘40.
PH: No, it wouldn’t’ve been Christmas ‘39 I don’t think.
CB: Because the bombing had well and truly started in, in-
PH: Had it?
CB: -in 1940.
PH: Well, it probably was then, maybe.
CB: ‘Cause the Blitz went right on through the winter.
PH: Yes, yes cause he- If he joined up at the beginning, he would’ve been in, in there- Yep, I should think you’re right, yes.
CB: And what about relatives of yours who were around the country, did, did they experience bombing as well?
PH: Most of them were in Surrey, and some were at Sussex. I don’t, I don’t recollect you see. If things were going on you weren’t always told.
CB: No, right.
PH: You were sent out of the room when serious things-
CB: Oh, were they? Were you? Yes.
PH: I was a lot.
CB: What were they actually talking out do you think?
PH: I don’t know, some of the time.
CB: You weren’t at the door with a cup to get the better sound?
PH: No, I didn’t, I didn’t listen in.
CB: A glass, yeah. But they asked you to go out did they, or told you to go out when they were talking about certain things?
PH: Sometimes, yes.
CB: So, you mentioned doodlebugs earlier, so the bombing essentially was in two batches-
PH: Yes.
CB: -there was the Blitz-
PH: Then there was the-
CB: -and then in ‘44 the doodlebugs started, so.
PH: ‘44, and what was the other one afterwards?
CB: The V, V-2.
PH: Oh, they were horrible.
CB: So, what did you actually see of the effects of those?
PH: I didn’t see anything. I didn’t actually see anything until I probably- We probably went up to London after the war. So, all as I say I saw was on film.
CB: Did you go to London after the war particularly, specifically to look at the destruction caused by the bombing?
PH: No, I wouldn’t’ve done.
CB: Or were- Did you go for another reason?
PH: I must’ve gone for gone for something else.
CB: And during the Blitz, from Harrow, what did you do there ‘cause that’s 1940 so, by that time you’re fifteen.
PH: Well, I just remember keeping on going to school.
CB: But did you view these fires that you mentioned earlier?
PH: Well from the distance ‘cause it was quite a distance away from [unclear].
CB: Yes, would you go up the hill to view them-
PH: No
CB: -or could you see them perfectly well from-
PH: [unclear] from our back- Outside the house. No, I never went to view anything.
CB: And when you looked at this burning what did that- What went through your mind?
PH: I don’t remember. This is where I don’t seem to have registered. I mean they must’ve been horrified, my parents. But I suppose I felt secure where I was, I wasn’t frightened when we were sleeping in our bunks. I just didn’t like much sleeping in a bunk with mother underneath, and the dog shut in the kitchen. But we must’ve been there all through the Blitz.
CB: You mentioned the teacher who was first out, when the bomb landed nearby. When everything recovered, in other words, the school carried- went back to normal-
PH: I expect we did, yes.
CB: - what was the conversation amongst the students and the teachers about what had happened?
PH: I’m afraid I don’t remember.
CB: And was there, in the curriculum effectively, was there a running commentary of what was going on in the war?
PH: No, no I think we were just going on with our ordinary lessons.
CB: And did you have assemblies in the school?
PH: Yes.
CB: And was that an opportunity for the head to say something? Did- Were-
PH: She probably did, ‘cause she was a very sort of upright person in more ways than one. She had us all under her thumb.
CB: And what was your parents' attitude really to the war? That you perceived?
PH: See I’ve never asked them about it afterwards.
CB: But were you conscious in the war of them being more strict, more careful, more vocal?
PH: Oh, mother was more nervous cause she was that sort of person. I think they rather sheltered me. Well, she was nearly forty when she had me, you know, cause my brother was born was earlier.
CB: What about friends you had, did you have a circle of friends or a best friend at school?
PH: Yes.
CB: And what happened with them?
PH: Well, one of them lived down below me, on the way to school, I’m thinking down the road, and she- Her father had a nursery garden in Pinner, or near Pinner. They moved away to Loudwater but I think that was afterwards. He’d been in the merchant navy but I think it must’ve been, it can’t’ve been in the second world war ‘cause he used to walk me home and tell me about the stars sometimes, from her house.
CB: Oh right.
PH: No, it’s strange how I can’t remember what I thought, or what other people thought at all.
CB: So, Harrow is something over fifteen miles from the centre of London, and a bit more from the city. Are you saying that actually it was almost like being in a different world because it wasn’t happening with you?
PH: Not really, no. It did seem quite near, but I didn’t think of anyone suffering or any, what went on.
CB: ‘Cause people in the community will have- Some of the people in the community will have had loved ones lost or injured.
PH: Yes.
CB: To what extent was the population aware of that?
PH: There again, I don’t really know.
CB: One of the volunteer factors operated in the war was fire watching, which people with occupations like your fathers had to do. What did your father do?
PH: He didn’t do anything ‘cause he was quite old I think and he was very decrepit, he had gout and-
CB: Oh right.
PH: My husband was in the, Dad’s Army [chuckles].
CB: In the Home Guard?
PH: On the Home Guard.
CB: What was he doing then?
PH: ‘Cause he was out here in the country, they had the odd bomb. In fact, one was- I think one fell over Leafield but that was jettisoned.
CB: As the bomber was going home?
PH: Yep.
CB: Did you see any of the intruding planes in the daytime, or just aware at night?
PH: I might’ve done, I can’t remember. I just know the drone.
CB: Of course, near Harrow is Northolt.
PH: Yes
CB: As an airfield, RAF airfield in the war, so how much did you- How conscious were you of the flying that was going on there?
PH: Not at all, we didn’t seem to worry us. I mean I don’t know if we would’ve been in the flight path of bombers, I can’t work out, you know, coming from Germany.
CB: Well, Northolt was a fighter field but I’m just wondering whether you were conscious of the planes going up and perhaps challenging the bombers you see.
PH: No.
CB: Going back to your brother, what was your parent's reaction to your brother's injuries?
PH: Oh I think they were very distressed about it. We all were really because I was affected a bit by that.
CB: In what way?
PH: Well, I rather idolised my brother ‘cause he thought the world of me, his kid sister, and I was concerned about him but he always had a limp afterwards [pause] but he’s been dead quite a while, so.
CB: Yes, well he- Did you say nine years older than you?
PH: Yes.
CB: Yes
PH: He died in ‘86, father in ‘49 and mother in- I was only just about twenty-one or something when father died. Yeah, I think, it might’ve been the first time I went up to London. I went up to London ‘cause he wanted a grapefruit, he was so ill in a nursing home, he would go into a nursing home but he didn’t want my mother worried. He was in Harrow, and I went up to town to find a grapefruit ‘cause I know I was so upset, I was crying in the train [chuckles]. I did find a grapefruit, but you know we hadn’t had those during the war, nor oranges.
CB: No.
PH: Yet we kept very, very healthy on bread and potatoes didn’t you.
CB: You said you were never short of food so-
PH: No, we didn’t seem to be. Mother must’ve been very clever.
CB: Yes, was it a combination of careful cooking and the fact that-
PH: Yes, this greengrocer down the road who seemed to have everything. A good fishmonger somewhere.
CB: So, the rationing had less effect?
PH: I think it affected us, yes. I didn’t like the egg, dried egg mixture much.
Other: No, they were still using that up when I went to school [laughs] like in 1956. They had stocks and stocks of it, which they sold to schools as far as I can work out. Awful [chuckles].
CB: We’ll just take a pause there.
PH: We came down to live at Ramsden, just along-
Other: Oh, just down the road.
CB: What-
PH: I don’t know what he was-
CB: So, you’re- Why did your brother go in the army?
PH: I don’t know, haven’t any- Don’t know why he did.
CB: And then his great friend did what? What did his great friend do?
PH: The friend went in the RAF.
CB: Yes.
PH: And who went where first, I don’t remember that.
CB: Right, were they similar age?
PH: Probably.
CB: And how much did you keep in touch with them?
PH: I don’t know, the parents lived in Harrow so they were in touch with my mother and father-
CB: Yes.
PH: -and me, up to a point ‘cause they hadn’t got any other children.
CB: What about evacuees, because some people were evacuated-
PH: I know.
CB: -to outer parts of London, did you see any in Harrow?
PH: I don’t think- No and I don’t think any of my friends were evacuated.
CB: What about children coming from East London into Harrow, did you?
PH: They may have done but not-
CB: Not in your school?
PH: Not in- No.
CB: And were you aware then as a child about the evacuation system?
PH: Was I- I don’t know? See I’ve seen so much about it now, there’s films made of it.
CB: Yes, yes.
PH: I don’t probably think I did, ‘cause again we weren’t told. It wouldn’t be on the radio very much. We didn’t have the media, did we?
CB: No. Right, we’ll just stop there again. You spoke a bit earlier about family members abroad who effectively were offering evacuation, what, what was your parents' reaction to that?
PH: Well, I don’t think they, they didn’t ask me if I wanted to go and I don’t think they wanted me to go ‘cause they probably thought there was no need. I don’t know why the family offered it, but very kind of them, but two lots were the- There was the brother of my father in New Zealand and a brother in Massachusetts I think it was, and I can’t- Oh yes, a brother in New Zealand and a brother in Massachusetts or Canada, both his brothers went abroad.
CB: And you mentioned South Africa as well?
PH: That was cousins.
CB: Right. So, their motivation was similar presumably?
PH: They’ve probably- They thought it would be a good idea to offer because- Keep me safe.
CB: And if you’d had to option, which you said you didn’t, what would you have thought?
PH: Well, I was a terrible homebird, I wouldn’t’ve wanted to leave.
CB: And friends of yours were similar age, so they wouldn’t’ve been in the forces in the war.
PH: No, no.
CB: Did you, did you consider, and did any of them consider joining the forces after the war?
PH: I don’t know, I know one did. A woman who became quite high in the, in the WAAF, and I can’t- I can remember her name but I can’t remember what position she held. She obviously was keen, and did someone go in the land army? I can’t remember. No, I don’t think so. No. No one else wanted- I mean I would have wanted to go in the land army if I'd- If the war had still been on. I also thought about the na- the women’s navy but I don’t think I’d have been much good on boats. No, I think the land army would’ve been the thing.
CB: Right, let’s pause there for a moment.
PH: No, I can remember listening to Churchill, all his speeches, and being very hyped up with them. He really was a pin up.
CB: As a teenager, what did it make- Listening to him what it- What did it make you?
PH: Well, it almost made me feel that we were doing well and, how wonderful everyone was being.
CB: Did it give you the feeling that you’d like- If you were older, that you’d like to be involved?
PH: Not really, no, no.
CB: And what did you think about women joining the forces when they were old enough?
PH: Well, I should’ve been quite happy about it I expect, if they wanted to.
CB: I’ll just stop there then. What did you do when you were a younger child before the war started?
PH: I say, I suppose most of the time I spent up in my room reading [chuckles]. Dad and I did a bit of gardening, I mean I worshipped him. I loved him in away more than mother cause when he died, I transferred cause my mother needed support. But he was one of those that inspired you, you know, we used to- Well it’s when we came to Minster Lovell so this is after the war, we went for long walks and stopped at pubs and I had to sit outside with a shandy and he went in and had a beer and talked about gloving[?] to the person. But he was, he was an interesting man and he loved words. That’s why I’m on crosswords and things like that. I think he was more, more educated in his way than dear mother was. She’d come from a large family, they all had to fend for themselves because their father had died early, and mother had brought them up, but she was a lovely lady, really, everyone spoke very highly of her after she died. No, I think, like you said, I was a happy child in a way.
CB: Did you feel that there was any restriction on the availability of food?
PH: No that’s why I’m amazed to hear how difficult people found it since seeing clips about the war since.
CB: But fruit?
PH: Fruit of course, no I don’t think it worried me. Perhaps I wasn’t a fruit person then. We had apples. I mean we had things like tripe and stewed chic- stewed rabbit. Mother made some very good things with sauces but, didn’t like tripe [laughs]. Black pudding because my father came from Lancashire so,
Other: Black pudding’s alright.
CB: What had brought him down here in the first place?
PH: I don’t know. He trained to be a chartered accountant up there and then he came and set up an office, he was quite clever, and then eventually the company merged with another company. Well, that was after- No that was before he died, after he’d moved from Oxford Street.
CB: Did he change from one company to another?
PH: No, the other company- Somebody joined him.
CB: And then when he came to retire what did he do?
PH: Well, he didn’t retire, he was still working.
CB: Oh, he was.
PH: Then he became ill and all sorts of things go wrong with him and went into a nursing home and eventually died, and he wouldn’t have- Mother and I weren’t allowed to go to the funeral, he was that sort of person, you know.
CB: Gosh.
PH: Only my brother went to the, well I think it was a cremation. I suppose that’s typical Victorian. I realise that now, that I had some partly Victorian upbringing, you see. If you look back.
Other: So, was it his own business, did he start the business that was in- Was it his own business?
PH: Yes.
Other: And so, when he shut down his office in Oxford Street and moved to your Morning room-
PH: Well, he had one in Harrow as well.
Other Oh, he had one in Harrow as well.
PH: Where the clerks work yes.
Other: So, did that, did that effect his business, did he find that he got more business or less business?
PH: I don’t know, he had business all over the place ‘cause he had these people up in Aberdeen who asked me for a hol- I went for a holiday there with a friend after school. Was that in the war? No, I don’t think so, it must have been after war had ended.
Other: Did he travel a lot and did he drive?
PH: He used to go up to- He didn’t drive himself he always had a chauffeur, but my brother and he used to go up to the Lake District and fish.
Other: Oh right
PH: He was a fisherman and a golfer.
Other: So how did he get into work here in Morning before he moved the office?
PH: I think he used- One time he walked home from the station but later on he had, had a car and someone to drive in.
Other: So, he didn’t go on the underground then?
PH: No.
Other: No, no.
PH: No.
Other: And can I carry on Chris like this? I’m intrigued by this shelter, he, he built in the garden
PH: I’m intrigued by it and I haven’t got a photograph of it
Other: And I mean-
PH: But it was brick.
Other: Yeah, and was it done inside- It was a lead to, to the house-
PH: Yes it was.
Other: - or was it underground?
PH: We had to get into it from the house.
Other: Ah right.
PH: The door was from the room that father had the office in.
Other: So he had to knock a whole in the wall?
PH: Yes they must’ve done that. I don’t even remember it being done.
Other: No, and was it a sloping roof like that?
PH: I think so yes.
Other: Yeah, so it’s just a normal add on really?
PH: Yes, yes it was, I suppose, you know, if the house collapsed, we’d be better off in a smaller place?
Other: Outside, yeah, yes.
PH: Don’t know if anyone else had any.
CB: Most people had Anderson shelters.
PH: Yes.
CB: But you didn’t have one of those as well
PH: No. I don’t know if there were any next door. Can’t remember seeing any.
CB: After the war, you said you’d seen all these films.
PH: Yes
CB: So what, what was your appreciation of what had actually been happening, from that?
PH: Well from that I realised what had happened and, my marvel at people’s resilience, ‘cause some people went through horrific times didn’t they?
CB: They did, yeah.
PH: You see- What I'm also thinking is bomber command, what- Were they the ones that were criticised for bombing Dresden?
CB: Yes.
PH: ‘Cause I always thought that was, that was a poor show because they shouldn’t’ve been after what we’d put up with.
Other: [Chuckles] Exactly. No, I think it was thought not to have been cricket really.
CB: And so when did you, when did you think that the criticisms of that emerged?
PH: Well recently when I, suppose during the last few years when I heard about it.
CB: These years, recently?
PH: Recently.
CB: Yes, yes, yeah.
PH: Yes, I thought about that war quite a lot the last few years because I watch and listen to these war- Well some war films and there’s been some quite good bits on Freeview yesterday about war.
CB: What was that about?
PH: Well about rationing and people not having much to eat, and not much coal to have any heat in their homes.
CB: Just stop there a mo. I think we’ve done really well, thank you, [unclear].
PH: Would you like a cup of tea?
CB: Oh, that’d be lovely thank you.
Other: That would be lovely.
PH: You like tea or?
Other: Yes, tea.
CB: Yes
Other: Did you, did you-
CB: We’ve exhausted that-
PH: If you need a cloakroom there’s one down here.
CB: Oh yes thank you. [Pause]
Other: She said that the V-2's were horrible, but she hasn’t actually said much more about that yet.
CB: No, we’ll cover that, yeah. That’s a really good point, thank you. We’ve covered evacuees. I wonder whether part of that is the-
PH: Did Roy live in Easten as well?
CB: Pardon?
PH: Did Roy live in Easten as well?
CB: No, he lived in south London.
PH: I thought he-
CB: I’m just trying to think where it was. Elton- Oh no he lived in Welling so he was originally in- Which is right next to Woolwich.
PH: Oh yes
CB: So, that’s where it was, yes.
PH: She probably told me but I-
CB: So, stuff was coming over? I tell you the bit (John’s just reminded me) about V-1's and V-2's going, ‘cause the kettle is on is it, you’re waiting for it? You mentioned earlier about V-1's and V-2's, what is it particularly that strikes you about those?
PH: I don’t know, it was just the noise of them ‘cause when you heard planes going over it’s different ‘cause they were higher, these things seemed to make a horrible noise and then-
CB: That’s the doodlebug, the V1, yes.
PH: And then I'm sure a lot were aimed down at Wealdstone where this Kodak factory was-
CB: Factory was, yes.
PH: -possibly manufacturing something else, during the war, I think it was, I can’t remember what. But I didn’t like those, I think I was realising more, I was older you see.
CB: Yes.
PH: That’s what I was a bit scared of, I think, when I went to school.
CB: Did you actually hear one come down somewhere, the explosion of a doodlebug?
PH: Yes
CB: In Harrow area?
PH: Somewhere in the area, yes.
CB: I’ll have to look it up. And what about the V-2, what, what perception did you have of that?
PH: I don’t know, I just thought they were horrific.
CB: Yeah.
PH: I didn’t like those.
CB: No I wondered how you formed that view, you see.
PH: I think I must’ve suddenly realised that there were dangerous things about ‘cause you didn’t know what was gonna happen. If there was a plane above you might expect a bomb, but They were so unknown weren’t they. Very before their time weren't they.
CB: Well, a number of people found V-2’s unnerving because they were unexpected and impossible to detect, even if you thought you might be able to.
PH: Realising then, what was going on. Do help yourself to another one.
Other: Thank you, very much.
CB: The school leaving age at your time of studies was fourteen, why did you continue school till you were eighteen?
PH: Partly cause my father wanted me to learn more, and I wanted to stay on, and my school was, being a private school, it, we did usually stay on but also, I had to retake my maths O levels again because they have been rather, my worst subject.
CB: You probably weren’t alone with that.
PH: [Chuckles] No, I've used them so much since.
CB: So, it was good to stay on?
PH: Yeah.
CB: Now, what about your contemporaries, because you left school just before the war finished- The war finished one month later after your eighteenth birthday.
PH: Well one particular friend went off to do Froebel[?] teaching.
CB: What was that?
PH: It’s a special form of teaching children. It was a Froebel[?] - It was a training course. I think it was Froebel[?], and one seems to have gone into the RAF, ‘cause she did very well. Another went, her father was one of the directors to Marks and Spencer's so she went into that, and other ones. One was a teacher, I can’t remember, I can’t remember what my friend down the road went to do, don’t think she did much. Oh, she was doing art. That’s right. I’d like to have done art but I didn’t.
CB: And the RAF one did you catch up with her again later or?
PH: I think I corresponded with her for one time and then it was someone else who told me what she’d, she’d become to this commander or something, I know it was quite a high office. Then I lost- I didn’t have her address so lost touch and I didn’t go to the school to have a reunion which I should’ve done.
CB: Ah right. What, what was your father's expectation of your career?
PH: Well, he was very happy that I ended up working outside, and he was very keen on this nursery with me, I think he was living a dream through me, which would’ve been fun but, I did sell a few flowers. We had masses of fruit to pick too.
CB: Could you get rid of the fruit fairly easily?
PH: Yes, yes. ‘Cause I think a local pub had some of them and my mother was a great bottler, she bottled.
Other: Kilner jars.
PH: Yes, that’s right. Yes, runner beans in Kilner jars, I didn’t like them.
CB: Which type of vegetable did you like most?
PH: I don’t know ‘cause we all- ‘Cause they were always in a season them, weren’t they? I think I liked them all at that time.
CB: It’s just some of them are more trouble to rear than others, but some of them the taste-
PH: I don’t like some cabbage, when it’s cooked too much, but cabbage can be a lovely vegetable.
CB: Stop there again.
PH: - could speak to them.
CB: Yes.
PH: You have more in common. Well, I’ve beaten them anyway, I was getting older than- My aunt lived to a hundred-and-five, I hope I won’t.
CB: That’s an interesting amount.
PH: She was wonderful.
CB: But extraordinary
PH: She was in Australia during the war
CB: Oh right. But what, extraordinary that your mother should have arthritis at twenty-one.
PH: Yes, she was in a wheelchair she said at twenty-one.
CB: Was she really? So somehow, they’d had successful treatment, had they?
PH: Yes, oh she went to have beestings and all sorts of things, and they went to these [unclear] which- I remember there was a great cupboard that’s what put me off pills I think for the rest of my life. Great cupboard full of notions and potions and tablets and things, at Harrow.
CB: So, as you were growing up to what extent were you aware of your mother's difficulty, even suffering?
PH: I was aware as I got older obviously, and then she had a massive operation. Actually, this is what I say it was a year, when we came up in ‘61 it was just fortuitous, and we came to live here because she was up in Minster Lovell in the cottage with an aunt, and I think it was another aunt not the one that was a hundred-and five, and she had a massive operation for bowel cancer, and my brother and I sort of spent hours in the hospital, supported her. Then she came home and she wasn’t too well for five years but she, she coped but I did a lot more for her then and I think I realised then what she was going through. So-
CB: And your father was supporting her all this time?
PH: No, he was dead you see, 1959 he had died.
CB: Oh, he was dead by then.
PH: He died about, aged 65 I think he was.
CB: Average age for that era.
PH: No mother was eighty-one, and the aunt- Well all the aunts, they’re all dead now. They were quite an age but this one was, was old. She said it was her drop of gin that kept her going. She signed the [unclear], came back to live with mother and of course they had a lot of gin. She had a budgerigar and she taught my mother’s budgerigar to say, ‘Have a drop of old dear’. [All laugh]
CB: You mentioned you-
PH: With an Australian accent.
CB: Oh right [laughs]. You mentioned your parents playing tennis, did you enjoy sport a lot at school?
PH: I wasn’t great, I played netball but we didn’t do much else. I did, I did play a bit of tennis but I was going to take it up again when I was adult and the children had gone to school, but I had a bad back which, which was through the gardening that I’d done. I think also a bit hereditary, my son’s got aches and pains and we think it’s through my parents, whereas Jane is ok.
CB: Is she, really?
Other: Well, your brother had- I mean he suffered with his back?
PH: Well, he did, yes, after this damage. He was alright before, it was a shame.
CB: Right, well Pauline Holloway thank you very much for a very interesting conversation.
PH: Well, it’s been, it’s been getting my brain working. I should probably find everything after you’ve gone.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Pauline Holloway
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHollowayPM171023
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:58:57 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Southampton
England--Hampshire
Description
An account of the resource
Pauline Holloway grew up in Harrow and turned eighteen one month before the end of the Second World War. She recollects listening to Churchill’s speeches on the radio, sheltering during air attacks in a purpose-built extension to her house, and hearing the distinctive noise of V-1 and V-2. When a bomb landed near her school, she remembers her teacher running ahead of the pupils to take cover. Holloway’s father moved his office from Oxford Street to their home, her brother joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and her mother ensured they never went hungry. As her only source of information was the cinema, she notes that she rarely felt scared and only came to appreciate people’s suffering after the war was over. Finally, she describes her post-war life and her opinions regarding the criticism against Bomber Command.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tilly Foster
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
perception of bombing war
shelter
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/940/11299/AMacklinJR180127.1.mp3
7f71b45dfc3126406d09ae8d23e302d4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Macklin, Joan Rosemary
J R Macklin
Joan Fellows
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. An oral history interview with Joan Macklin (b. 1918), two documents and 16 photographs. She worked in London during the war and was bombed out.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joan Macklin and catalogued by Jessica M J Neilson.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Macklin, JR
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Saturday the 27th of January 2018. We’re in Grendon Underwood and we’re with Joan Macklin to talk about her experiences during the war in London. Joan, you came from Hastings but what are your earliest recollections of life?
JM: I remember going to school. I was five when I went to school and I can remember all the teachers, and that was in an Infant’s School. Then I went on to a Junior School. And from there I went on in to a Senior School where I took the Eleven Plus and finished up at a Central School which don’t exist now at, and I stayed there until I was about sixteen and a half. I didn’t want to leave school because I loved school, but my headmistress got me a job as an apprentice as a, to a dress making to a rather posh shop in Hastings, and from there I carried on until the war broke out when everything seemed to close down. Nobody wanted any clothes or anything at the time. My husband, well he was my fiancé then, because we got engaged on my twenty first birthday. That’s the 3rd of October 1939, and he got his call up papers to go into the Royal Sussex on the 13th of October 1939. As I couldn’t get a job dressmaking I went to London to see if I could get a job in one of the big shops, and after writing round I wrote to Selfridges, Debenham and Freebody’s as it was then, Swan and Edgars, and I got an immediate answer from Debenhams to go for an interview. I went for an interview thinking I was going to do dressmaking and it finished up it was making army uniforms. And there I stayed until as I say I was bombed out, and that was that job finished. We when we were working at first they used to let us go down to the basement to shelter in the raids. But then raids got so frequent, often, they told us we’d got to work through the raids but we would get compensation if we [laughs] was injured or anything [laughs] which we didn’t think was very good. But anyway we, one weekend we gave up, and they asked for volunteers to go potato picking and that was to help the Poles, Poland. The money went to Poland that we would have earned. We used to go to the London Meal Service for our lunch. We used to get a good lunch for about two and six old money. We still carried on life as normal. We went dancing of a Saturday. We used to go to the Regent Polytec, Regent Street Polytec for dancing. I also used to go playing tennis. We went ice skating at the Queen’s. We just carried on. Well, you couldn’t do anything else, you know. I never knew what the raids were like in, in, at night because I used to go to bed in the cellar. Go to sleep and used to sleep through the raids, and in the morning I used to get a shock when I went to work, all the different places that had been bombed, and the buses weren’t on the same route and, and I used to travel mainly on the tube. I had one weekend with a friend at Bromley, and during the raids I was awake then. As the bombs came down the blast, you could hear the tiles on the roof rattle, and the next morning we had someone knocking at the door. They were looking, there was a, they said there was an unexploded bomb had landed in our garden and they were looking for it and I’d slept all through that [laughs] Another time, another time oh, weekends the girls I worked with, we used to go for a walk along the Thames from Putney to Kew. We used to take a little picnic with us and quite enjoyed that. We got out as much as we could. Oh, while I was staying at Bromley with a friend we were walking out down the fields there and a fighter, German fighter came over and we dodged into the hedge but he was machine gunning. We missed that. But as I say the Christmas 1945, was it the war ended? I went to Hastings for the weekend. My mother came with us because she was staying with my aunt and uncle, and we went down to keep my grandmother and grandfather company for Christmas, and we were getting ready to get the train Boxing morning, and a policeman came to the door and said we weren’t to go back. We’d got to stay where we were in Hastings. And my mother said, ‘Well, I expect it’s only windows broken. Let’s go back and see if we can salvage anything.’ And when we got back there was nothing there. There was just a hole in the, in the, it hit a crossroad, and it hit all around the crossroad. There was, the room that we would have been in when the bomb came down. We’d have gone down into the cellar where forty five people went and they were trapped. My uncle tried to get to them, but the wardens wouldn’t let him go down. He said he could get them out but they wouldn’t let him go down, and a fire broke out and they were burned to death. I stayed in, in Hastings then until [pause] well I was ordered to go back to London to work. Still on uniforms, but I got permission to stay and look after my grandmother who was eighty because I had nowhere to go, and there was no point in me going back to London. I’d only got the clothes I stood up in, and I stayed there. My husband in the meantime, he was taken prisoner in May. It would be 1940, wouldn’t it? The first year of the war. He was a stretcher bearer and they got a message for his Italian to go to a farmhouse where there was people injured, and he had to go because he was medical and while he was there it was a trap. The Germans took them, and he joined all the other prisoners. They had to march from France to Poland and when they got there, there was nothing there for them. They had to build their own huts to live in. And there he stayed for, until the end of the war. He came back about three weeks after, no. It must have been a week after the war finished and we got married on the 3rd of, err 2nd of June that year. We didn’t wait. We got married. We’d been engaged five and a half years and we thought [laughs] we might as well get married. We didn’t have anything, but we were, we were ok.
CB: Right. We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, just going back a bit Joan we talked about, you mentioned that with the beginning of the war the smart dressers didn’t want dresses, so you went to London but why did you go there and who did you stay with?
JM: Now, well, as I was out of work and there was nothing doing. Everything closed down in the town, so my aunt and uncle, they owned a pub in London and they said, ‘Come up and stay with us. You’ll find plenty of work when you get there.’ So my husband, as I said, he joined the Army on the 13th of October and the 14th I went up to London to stay. During, my aunt and uncle, my uncle had a cellar all shored up, and bunks put in so that the barman and his wife had one bunk. My mother had another bunk, and they had their own bed down in the cellar as well. So we all slept down in the cellar at night.
CB: And whereabouts was this in London?
JM: This was in, well I say Holloway but it comes under Islington. We lived at MacKenzie Road. The pub was called the Prince of Wales, and on the morning of the Boxing Day 1945. No. ’44 —
CB: ‘44. Yeah.
JM: That would be. At the lunchtime my uncle said he went through his tills to see how much he’d taken, and there was four hundred pounds in the till which was a lot of money then.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And when he eventually got out of the pub there on top of all the rubble was his tills and the drawers were empty. They’d taken it. And my aunt she was buried in the pub, but we had a dog. Sometime earlier someone had found a stray dog and my uncle took it in, and gave it a home and that dog dragged my aunt out of the rubble. We never found the dog. The dog ran away afterwards and my uncle put up a reward to find that dog, but we never did. So whether it ran away and died of shock I don’t know. Because we were bombed out, it was a V-2, I had to go too, and well I was in Hastings when it happened so I was fortunate. I didn’t experience the bombing of that.
CB: There was a lot of people killed, wasn’t there?
JM: Forty nine.
CB: Yes. And what was the, they demolished the pub but what did it look like, you said it landed in the crossroads.
JM: Yes. But the —
CB: Did it make a big hole or —
JM: Oh, I didn’t see the hole. We only got as, we came in the road and saw the space where the pub was, and someone told us that my aunt and uncle were at a Rest Centre. So we went and found them at the Rest Centre, and my aunt came up the stairs, I came down the stairs. I was going to look for something, or go and get something to eat I think and as I passed my aunt I didn’t recognise her. And I got by and I suddenly said, ‘Oh, is that you?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ She was still, got the rubble in her hair. She was in a terrible state. So I went and helped her wash her hair and tidy her up, you know. And then I said, ‘Well, I’ll have to go back to Hastings anyway,’ because I had a cousin. He was only three. Their son was only three and I’d left him with my grandmother, so I said, ‘I’ll go back and look after him while you get everything sorted out,’ you know for the war, for the damage and that you know. They eventually came down to Hastings to live themselves.
CB: Because they ended up with no job. No pub. No job.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Did they get a job down in Hastings?
JM: He owned the pub so he looked at other pubs, but he didn’t fancy any of them and he finished up being a sleeping partner in a, in a groceries shop and he also worked for an estate agent.
CB: When a building like that, particularly a pub where there was a lot of activity going on and they were earning money what compensation did they get, or if any from the state?
JM: I don’t know. I know there was a compensation of a hundred and something pound each person that was bombed out that owned things.
CB: Yeah.
JM: But I got ten pounds. And my, my aunt I thought she was going to throttle the people that was, they gave me two grey blankets and ten pound. That was my compensation. She said, and this person had made a whole new lot of underwear and all ready for my trousseau. I’d got an electric machine there, my bicycle. There was a cupboard in the cellar. I’d got all my twenty first birthday presents in it. All cut glass and that sort of thing, and he said, he went, as I say he went down the cellar but they wouldn’t let him go any further to rescue the people and that cupboard was on the floor. But when he went back as I say he saw the till and there was my cupboard smashed up on top of the rubble. So they’d had that as well.
CB: Were you conscious of the fact that there was a large criminal underworld operating in the areas of bomb damage?
JM: Sorry?
CB: Were you aware of the fact that there was a large group of people who were criminals?
JM: Well, you got it everywhere. People were looting, you know. You didn’t know who they were, but I mean between you and I there was a warden at Hastings. He had nothing at the beginning of the war, but after the war finished he’d got silver and goodness knows what, you know. So you knew what happened.
CB: Yeah.
JM: But you can’t prove these things.
CB: So, just going back to your work. From Holloway, Islington to the West End you travelled on the Underground.
JM: Yeah.
CB: How did you find that, because people were living in the Underground, were they?
JM: Yes. As a matter of fact my mother she used to work in a canteen in the tubes and take food around to the people that were sleeping in the Underground.
CB: Who supplied the food, did they have to buy it or was it supplied?
JM: I think the council.
CB: Right.
JM: They had to buy it but I think the council. It was the council’s job, you know.
CB: Because —
JM: Then after that she, she worked on munitions
CB: Oh, did she, whereabouts?
JM: I don’t know. She never used to talk about it.
CB: But there were munitions factories in London?
JM: Yes. I think like places like Enfield, or —
CB: Right.
JM: Somewhere, you know.
CB: Out of town. Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
CB: OK. So she would travel by train in the opposite direction.
JM: Yes. Yes.
CB: Right. Now, how long did it take you to travel to work normally?
JM: I’d say about half an hour, because I had, had to change from one line on to the next. I can’t remember what lines I went on. I know I went from Caledonian Road through, I think it was Piccadilly. And then from Piccadilly I went to Bond Street.
CB: Right, on the Northern Line.
JM: And Bond Street.
CB: Then the Bakerloo.
JM: Nearly opposite to where I worked.
CB: Was it, right. And was this five days a week or did you work more than five days in a week?
JM: Five and a —
CB: And Saturday mornings?
JM: I don’t think we did Saturday morning. No. I think it was five days a week.
CB: And what were the hours that you worked?
JM: That was, I think it was half past eight till six, or something. Half past eight to five. Yes. Because some days I had to walk from Oxford Street to home, because there was no buses. Well, the bus route didn’t come near me, and the tubes weren’t running at the time so I had to walk. And run a lot of the way.
CB: Did you?
JM: Because as soon as it got a bit dark then the air raids started.
CB: Right.
JM: We did an awful lot of walking.
CB: Yes. Obviously. Yes. And food was on ration, so how did you get on with that?
JM: Well, it didn’t affect me really. Being a pub I know it wasn’t really I suppose legal, but the men when they went for a drink instead of giving money perhaps they’d give some cheese or fruit because they worked in the Caledonian Market. We’d get a bit of fruit and everybody seemed to do bartering, you know, one for one like. You sort of helped one another and of course my aunt did the housekeeping, so I don’t really know how she managed but we never seemed short of anything.
CB: Right. So the Caledonian Market was the key issue there because you were near, very convenient.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And what did you get paid for doing your work, or was it piece work?
JM: No. I think it was about thirty five shillings.
CB: A week.
JM: Yeah.
CB: And overtime?
JM: No. We didn’t do any overtime.
CB: So what were you working on specifically in uniforms, did you make the whole uniform, parts of it?
JM: No. When I first went some were sewing on buttons on the uniforms. Some were doing something else. And then when they did for Norway they had these fur, like fur coats, and we had to use a needle which was triangular to pierce the material to sew buttons on that. And then some, the uniforms were made in pieces like one person would make sleeves, another would put pockets in and all that sort of thing. We all had different jobs, and I finished up making button holes working a button hole machine, and we were on American Red Cross and their uniforms and material was marvellous, you know, beautiful material. But their overcoats were very heavy and I had to get them into the machine to get the buttonholes in, you know. I button holed my thumb once.
CB: I was wondering what happened to your fingers doing all this hard intricate work.
JM: Yeah. Well, I put the material in and the machine started up and it clamped the material and it clamped my thumb in so it took the side of my thumb but it’s alright now. But I had a —
CB: It had a hole in it with a button on top.
JM: And that’s when I first, when they used, they called it A&B Powder but we realise now it was penicillin.
CB: Oh.
JM: To dry up the wounds. Yeah.
CB: So they had a first aid station.
JM: Yes.
CB: In the work.
JM: Yes.
CB: Station. Work point.
JM: Well, we was you see Debenham and Freebody’s, and Marshall and Snelgrove, two high class shops in those days they were really amalgamated so that’s how we had more facilities than perhaps other people, you know.
CB: So what sort of accommodation was there for making this, the uniforms? Was it the shop floor that had been —
JM: Well, it would be in the rooms where they used to do the dressmaking, you know.
CB: Were the shops open for business?
JM: Yes.
CB: And did they take some of the shop area —
JM: No.
CB: To work on, quite separate was it?
JM: No. No. No, work rooms were separate. We were down a lane off Oxford Street.
CB: And how many people would be working with you in a room?
JM: Oh at least fifty.
CB: So, was it all automated, or just some of it? Were machines used for everything or just for some tasks?
JM: There were divisions in I suppose where people used to work making the clothes where the machines were, and we were at the far end when we were sewing buttons on. We had one big long table sort of thing, and all worked around that. But the machines were in separate sort of cubicles doing the work.
CB: Did many people have an accident on their machines or was it quite rare?
JM: Not very many I don’t think. The person that operated a button hole machine before me she had the same accident, you know. It was one of those things that, you know you couldn’t avoid it.
CB: How did they train you to do the jobs?
JM: They didn’t. You watched other people doing it. I saw the girl doing the buttonhole machine and when she, as I say she came off when she hurt her finger. I asked if I could take over the job because it fascinated me and I got it. But no, you didn’t get any training. You just —
CB: Learned on the job.
JM: I suppose knowing you was dressmaking you knew how to use a machine, and that and that’s all there was, you know.
CB: So there wasn’t a lot of variety if you were just putting on buttons.
JM: No.
CB: How did you feel about that?
JM: I had a job where they made collars, and I had to iron them to shape them with the iron, but I had to come off that because I had nightmares. I used to think I was burning the sheets in my bed, you know and that sort of thing. So I had to come off that. I couldn’t stand that. I never like ironing anyway [laughs]
CB: So, did you see the whole garment completed?
JM: No. No. We had two supervisors, and they used to examine them and we never saw them go away. It was all, I suppose in the work. How they worked, you know.
CB: You talked about some being American ones but were they only, were they only Army uniforms or did you have Navy and Air Force as well?
JM: No. Only Army to begin with and then we went on the American uniforms.
CB: So why did the Americans ones come in, they could make them at home.
JM: I don’t know whether, because we were only a sort of a sub contract for a Jewish firm in the East End you know and we used to get these sub contracts, and I suppose they got more money for the Americans.
CB: Ok. We’ll pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: You were talking a bit earlier about the tasks you did, and they were various but they were a bit boring. So what about holidays?
JM: Yes. We used to get a fortnights holiday. I don’t remember going on a rota, but we must have done you know because we couldn’t all go at once, and I used to go down to Hastings. Being as I was born in Hastings I was allowed in. But I took a friend of mine, she was in the WAAFs. She used to work with me at Debenhams but then she volunteered to go in the Forces, and she was in the WAAFs and she was on leave and I was on holiday so I took her down to Hastings for a holiday and when we got to the station to where we were going the police were there. They let me through because I was born in Hastings, but they made her go back to London again. She wasn’t allowed through.
CB: Why was that?
JM: They didn’t allow anybody to go to the seaside. Well, to these areas because they were, I don’t know what you’d call them.
CB: Prohibited areas were they?
JM: Yeah.
CB: So what was special about Hastings?
JM: I don’t know. Only the bombing, that’s all I know.
CB: So, just talk —
JM: But the bombing wasn’t so bad then. There was a lull in between, you know.
CB: We’ve been talking mainly about London bombing but what happened to Hastings. Was that bombed?
JM: That was very bad. Very bad.
CB: So, we’ve got a book, we’ve got a booklet here called, “Hastings & St Leonards in the Front Line.” And it’s significant the amount, the huge amount of damage in Hastings.
JM: Yes.
CB: So anybody got —
JM: There was one church in St Leonards that was laid back from the Promenade and a Doodlebug, or buzz bomb or whatever you like to call it went straight up the front of the church and landed at the door and blew the church to pieces. And when they rebuilt it they built it in the shape of a [pause] would you call it the hull? The bottom of a ship, you know. In that shape.
CB: How strange.
JM: But there was a great hole where this Doodlebug went up in, but yeah they got no end of the Doodlebugs because one thing the airmen used to, our airmen used to go up and they found a way if they got near the Doodlebug they could tip it so they altered its direction. Of course, it didn’t always work, you know. But yes they’d got an awful lot there. Ones that I suppose didn’t come far enough for London. They dropped their, they also got the bombs from, if the Germans didn’t drop all their bombs they used to empty them before they went across the Channel, and they got all that as well. It was indiscriminate bombing.
CB: Of course it’s on the sea. It’s on the seaside, Hastings.
JM: Yes.
CB: What other type of attack did it experience from the air? You talked about earlier about the German fighter strafing.
JM: I don’t know. I’ve never read that.
CB: Right.
JM: I’ve only looked at the pictures.
CB: Yes.
JM: But —
CB: This can’t be all V bombers. V raids I mean.
JM: No, there was bombers.
CB: V-1s and V-2s this is.
JM: Yeah. I think most of those are bombing.
CB: It talks about tip and run raids and —
JM: Yeah.
CB: The Germans used fighter bombers to come and make nuisance raids.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Is that what happened here a good deal in, yeah? It says here, “The use of fast fighter bombers which swept in from the sea at a very low level or sneaked in from behind the town under the cover of cloud left coastal towns with no doubt that they were still very much in the front line, although other parts of the country that were bombed — ”
JM: I remember before the war broke out when it was a lovely moonlight night we used to lay in bed my mother and I and we could hear the German out taking pictures and that sort of thing.
CB: Oh, could you?
JM: You could hear. There’s a different throb to the German plane to our planes.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And you could hear that throb. Also, we had the, what was it, The Graf Zeppelin.
CB: Oh yeah.
JM: That went along the Channel. That was taking pictures. We were waving to it. I mean the war hadn’t broke out. No thought of war, you know. Yeah. They were going right along the coast taking pictures. We realised in the end you know.
CB: Because that was quite big was it, the Zeppelin.
JM: Yes. You could even hear the engine from the, you know when you walked along the Prom you could hear the engine as it went along. Quite close to the shore they were.
CB: Just outside the three mile limit.
JM: Pardon?
CB: Just outside the three mile limit.
JM: Yeah. I expect so.
CB: So, what was the general mood in Hastings with all this destruction that was going on?
JM: Well, as far as I know they lived life quite, you know as I say a lot of them used to go to the caves and sleep. You know, there was little alcoves where you could make your own little room sort of thing. I went down one night. Spent one night down there but I don’t like caves [laughs] But, and that was a good, good place because it was well ventilated, although they were caves because apparently Queen Victoria used to keep her wine there because it was ideal for that sort of thing. That’s years ago, before [laughs] before the war.
CB: Of course. Yeah. We’ll take another break there.
[recording paused]
JM: It did come down in Chiswick.
CB: It did. The first V-2 did. In Chiswick.
JM: Because they used to tell us it was one of these gasometers.
CB: Oh yes.
JM: Had exploded.
CB: Had blown up. Yeah.
JM: And I know I was walking down the road home from work and it was light so it must have been summertime when one came down, and I felt the blast hit me in the back. And the man, he had a couple of shops not far from our pub, he came out and he said, ‘Oh, is it another one of those gasometers burst?’ You know. Yeah.
CB: Well, just off Sutton Court Road which is where that V-2 came down, there is a plaque and we went to see it.
JM: Yeah.
CB: And took a picture. Yeah. Of the effect. Yes. Interesting.
JM: I’ve never been back so I don’t know. Someone told me there’s a block of flats where our pub was.
CB: Oh, is there?
JM: It used to be if the pub was there and the license was there they should have built a pub there, another pub there. But someone said there’s flats there. I don’t know. I’ve never been back. Although I lived in London nineteen years after the war
CB: Did you?
JM: I never went over that area at all.
CB: Gosh.
JM: So that —
CB: So, why was that? Did you not have a curiosity?
JM: No. It never, it never even dawned on me to go, you know. Whether it sort of, you put it to the back of your mind and forget it all, because when I came back that weekend to work to tell them what had happened I had to go to the police station, and there was a police station opposite because I’d been reported missing believed killed. So I had to go and tell them that I was alive [laughs]
CB: Yes.
JM: Yeah.
CB: You talked about the result of the pub being demolished meant you had nowhere to stay in Holloway in London.
JM: Yeah.
CB: You went back to Hastings. What was the process there because the war was still running? You wanted to stay down —
JM: That’s when I —
CB: To look after your grandmother.
JM: I was interviewed by these three ladies
CB: Who were they?
JM: They made me so cross, because there were all dressed up, you know and they’d got a radiator and they were hugging the radiator and I was cold and they’re telling me I’d got to go back to London. I mean, I think the bombing was still on and I said, ‘No. I’m not going back.’ As I say I got a certificate to look after my grandmother. She didn’t want looking after, but you had to find some way of beating the law.
CB: And how long did you stay in Hastings again?
JM: I stayed there until I was married.
CB: Right. Which was just after the war.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
CB: Yeah. My husband came back a week after the war finished and we got married a fortnight later.
CB: Now, when he was in the prison camp was he able to send any communications to you via the Red Cross?
JM: I got the occasional card from him, and I had two or three photographs of a group of the people in the Stalag.
CB: What Stalag was it? Do you know?
JM: Seven B.
CB: Right.
JM: At Posen, Poland.
CB: What sort of conditions did your husband-to-be experience there?
JM: Well, he had appendicitis while he was out there but if you’d seen the operation you couldn’t have had it done by anyone better, although It was a German doctor. You wouldn’t know, you couldn’t see where they’d done it. Yet I’ve seen people done in this country with real scars but he didn’t have a scar.
CB: Amazing.
JM: But he had a hole in his arm where he had an abscess through bad food and that. That never healed up. Well, it healed up but left a hole in his arm.
CB: And what was the origin of the abscess? Did he, was he wounded before he was captured?
JM: No. No.
CB: Did it come as a result of his work when he was in the prisoner of war camp? What did he do?
JM: He worked with horses.
CB: Right.
JM: He was in the salt mines.
CB: Doing what? What did he do in the salt mines?
JM: I suppose they were getting the salt out, you know.
CB: Digging it were they?
JM: He never talked about it. He never talked much about his life in the prison. All I know is that when he come home he couldn’t sleep in a bed. He slept on the floor. He couldn’t get used to getting in a bed and also if a plane went over he’d shake like a leaf, you know. He was thinking of the bombing, because they’d got the bombing all around them being in Poland, you know because they had the Russians as well. But when he got out, well they marched them from Poland in to Germany all through the winter. All through the ice and snow and that. And when he was free in Germany he met some [pause] Well, I think the Americans had something to do with them, and one of them said, ‘There’s a Mercedes along the road. We’ll fill it up with petrol. Go for a ride round for a week. No good going to line up for the planes to get home. You’d do better to wait a week and then you’ll get away quicker that way.’ So that’s what he did. Touring somebody’s Mercedes.
CB: So he was flown home was he?
JM: Yeah.
CB: Do you know where he went from and to?
JM: He landed at Wing.
CB: Oh, did he?
JM: Yeah.
CB: Just up the road here.
JM: Is that where it was, I don’t know. He said —
CB: Operational Conversion Unit. Yeah.
JM: It was Wing.
CB: Yeah.
JM: They wanted him to go to, straight to hospital but he wouldn’t go. He said no. He wanted to get home. We’d been, his mother and I had been to the Red Cross and asked them to make sure he didn’t go to London because we didn’t want him to see the damage there. For him to come straight down to Hastings. He didn’t. He went to London didn’t he and saw the damage and he went to the police and they told him, you know where we were and he came down.
CB: Do you think he had a lasting concern about his experiences in the war? Did he have nightmares, or did he just wake in the night?
JM: Not that I know of. No. No. Never seemed to. Only as I say if a plane went over he shook but he soon got, you know back to normal again. He was only eight stone when he came home.
CB: And what was his normal weight?
JM: Well, when he died he was eighteen stone.
CB: But in his younger days what would he have been?
JM: I would say about twelve because he was a big man. Well built.
CB: Yeah.
JM: Well, you see. There’s his photo there.
CB: Yes. What do you think was the reason why people who’d been, had experienced the war didn’t want to talk about it afterwards?
JM: Well, I think probably they’d had enough and like he’d got, managed to get back to normal. He didn’t want to remember the rest of it as I say. He never, never spoke about it much and I never, I never queried anything, you know. I think we was too busy getting on with our life. Existing after the war, you know. Because he had got no clothes and I’d got no clothes so [laughs] His mother had given away all his clothes when he was taken prisoner of war.
CB: Did she know what had happened to him?
JM: Well, she’d got the message to say he was a prisoner.
CB: Right.
JM: No. That he was missing. And my uncle asked her to send the telegram to him and when he saw it he said, ‘It says missing. It doesn’t say believed killed. So he must be a prisoner.’ As I say he was taken prisoner in May, and we didn’t hear till the August that he was a prisoner of war. The first we knew was I’d got a card from him and he was asking for all kinds of things, chocolate, condensed milk, oh all kinds that we couldn’t get anyway. We reckoned the Germans made him write this all out, you know. But at least we got a card, and we knew where he was.
CB: What about your grandchildren? Did they manage to enter any conversation with him about what he did?
JM: No. No. My granddaughters, my granddaughters were only four and two when he died.
CB: So they weren’t in a position to do much from that point of view.
JM: As I say well because he was in the prison service so —
CB: Oh, was he?
JM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
JM: That’s why we lived in London. We were at Wormwood Scrubs for nineteen years.
CB: Oh.
JM: And then he come up here on promotion. He was a principal officer here, and he put in for his chief and they invalided him out because he’d got heart trouble and so he never finished his service.
CB: What age did he retire then?
JM: You can retire at fifty five I think it is but he was fifty seven when he died.
CB: Right.
JM: Well, he went back to the prison. Not as a prison officer. He went on their switchboard for them.
CB: Right.
JM: They said he knew all the ins and outs of the prison so he was a good one to be on the switchboard, so they employed him part time on that.
CB: Yeah. In your own case we talked about your husband’s reaction to that and what he did but in your own case you said you didn’t return and never have to Holloway. What was your feeling at the end of the war after your experiences?
JM: Well, I’d got the pleasure of knowing my husband was coming back. Well, he wasn’t my husband then.
CB: No.
JM: But he was well and coming back to us and as I say within a fortnight we were getting married. We didn’t have time to think about anything but what we wanted, you know. I had a borrowed wedding dress. And my husband was a grocer before he was called up. He went back to see his boss and he gave him all the ingredients to make our wedding cake because they weren’t making wedding cakes then. And I think my grandmother made the wedding cake but we’d got a baker and he did the icing for us. So we had a proper wedding cake and people bought us different things to make sandwiches and that, you know. We had it at home. Just a few friends, and that was that and then we went to Bournemouth for a three weeks honeymoon because his aunt lived at Bournemouth and she said, ‘Come down to us.’ So we went down there. At the end of the three weeks we hadn’t got any money so we had to come home. She didn’t want us to come away but we came back to Hastings, and then we lived with my mother in law for about a fortnight, and then we managed to get a flat. Yes, it was a job to get anywhere to live then, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JM: Because everyone, all bombed out and that.
CB: Where was the flat?
JM: That was in Hastings.
CB: It was.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. It was two doors away from my mother in law [laughs] but I got on very well with her so —
CB: Ok. We’ll pause there a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you met a lot of people in the war, what friendships developed?
JM: Well, one friend, she that I worked with, she wanted to go in the Navy, the Wrens because her brother was in the Navy and you could only get in the Wrens if you had someone in the Navy. But when she went for her medical they wouldn’t pass her but they passed her for the Air Force. So she went and she was posted to Cornwall. Perranporth in Cornwall. She was a batwoman and I went down and had a fortnight’s holiday down with her. And on the way back I called in to my mother in law was then living at Camel’s Head, Plymouth and my mother had gone down to stay with them so I met up with my mother at my mother in law’s, and we had a weekend there and we had a tremendous, really bad air raid while we were there because Plymouth suffered terribly during the war.
CB: Yeah, of course. Yes.
JM: My sister in law’s two young girls they used to walk about with saucepans on their heads if they went out at night because of the shrapnel.
CB: Oh yeah. From the anti-aircraft guns.
JM: Yes. And as I say I had a friend that lived at Bromley. I went and had a weekend with her. And then another friend was one that I used to go dancing with. There we met two Naval chaps, one short and one tall. My friend was tall and so she had the tall one as a partner, and I had the short one and he was the chief petty officer in the Navy, and I used to meet him on a Saturday for a drink and dance and I went out a couple of times with him. He knew I was engaged and I knew he was married. He’d got a wife and two sons you know and he said to me, ‘I’m glad I met you because — ’ he said, ‘You kept me on the straight and narrow,’ he said. We were just friends and that was it, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And then one night when I was coming home from work well going to Bond Street to get the Tube he was stood outside. He said, ‘I’ve come to tell you that I’m going away.’ He’d been ordered to go to Scapa Flow.
CB: Oh right.
JM: And he said, ‘But before I go —’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll send your husband, well your boyfriend some long johns and a thick woolly vest.’ You know they were Navy issue. He said, ‘I’ll send them out to him for you.’ And I never heard another word. I reckon he went down at Scapa Flow.
CB: Really.
JM: Because the Navy didn’t do very well there.
CB: Well, they got bombed a lot.
JM: Yeah.
CB: It was the main —
JM: Yeah.
CB: Base for the Navy in the north.
JM: Yeah. And I never, my husband never mentioned that he ever received anything like that and he wouldn’t have known anyway, you know. And that friend that I used to go dancing with, not him, I can’t think of her name now, but anyway she married the other chap.
CB: Oh.
JM: She did get married.
CB: Right.
JM: And they lived in Lancashire somewhere. And she used to say to me, ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I wish they weren’t so clean.’ She said, ‘We have to take the stair carpet up every week and scrub the stairs and put the carpet back down,’ she said. And she had some lovely underwear she said, and her mother makes her boil it all. She said, ‘She’s ruined all my underwear.’ But I never heard any more from her. But my friend that went in the WAAFs when I got married she was my bridesmaid. She had a bride, a dress that she’d had for another wedding so we changed the, it had bows on it and we changed the colour of the bows and that so we had a proper wedding.
CB: Amazing. Yeah. What could you do about the reception after your wedding?
JM: We had it at —
CB: I mean there was still rationing.
JM: Yeah. We had it at home as I say. People brought us different things for sandwiches, and we got the cake made, and we had to have it at home because well, there wasn’t time. We didn’t give them time to arrange anything. We weren’t worried about a reception.
CB: How many people came?
JM: I should say about twenty five. My grandmother had a big sitting room, you know. There was just family and one or two of my friends there so —
CB: And after the reception how did you leave that to go on your honeymoon?
JM: We had to go up to London by train, and a couple of my friends that came from London travelled up with us but the guard came and locked the door to our carriage so nobody could get in with us [laughs] So we had the carriage all the way to London on our own. And then from there we stayed at my sister in law and brother in law. They had a flat in London so we stayed the night in their flat. They were back still in Hastings. But I didn’t sleep all night because the bed when we saw it, it was like that. The ends were like that and I thought they’d rigged the bed, you know so it would fall.
CB: [laughs] Yes.
JM: So, I didn’t sleep. Then the next morning we got up and we went down by train to Bournemouth.
CB: Right.
JM: That was the only way you could get to Bournemouth.
CB: Yeah.
JM: By going to London first.
CB: We’ll stop there for a bit.
[recording paused]
CB: They didn’t evacuate the mothers but only the children.
JM: No, only the children.
CB: Right.
JM: I’m just thinking how. Oh, my cousin would be about ten. Nine or ten.
Other: Right.
JM: And you had to give permission for your children to go.
Other: Right.
JM: They didn’t force them to go.
Other: Right.
JM: And he was evacuated to Bicester.
Other: Oh.
JM: I always remember my aunt going to the station and asking for a rail ticket to Bi-cester, but he didn’t stay there for very long. It wasn’t a very nice place, and she told all kinds of things about him. Said he was this and he was that.
Other: Oh dear. Yeah.
JM: And we knew different, you know.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: So my aunt went and fetched him back. A lot of the children didn’t stay very long. The parents went and got them. They weren’t happy, you know. But no. As a voluntary thing but all the children went. There were I think some grown-ups went but, you see it was getting billets for them anyway.
Other: Yes.
JM: You know.
Other: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: So these people took like foster parents, you know.
Other: Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, I went to this farm in High Wycombe through friends of my mother’s. They said they knew somebody that would take me.
JM: Yeah.
Other: And I mean, you know it was lovely. It was on a farm and I can remember when I could walk having a calf of my own with a rope around its neck —
JM: Oh. Yeah.
Other: Called Primrose. And I can remember sitting on the farmer’s lap on the tractor.
JM: Oh yes.
Other: And that sort of thing.
JM: Yeah.
Other: But yeah but it’s always puzzled me why, you know as a baby she could let me go.
JM: Yeah. But that’s why.
Other: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. There were two parts of evacuation really weren’t there? One was early part of the war.
JM: Yes.
CB: And then the phoney war made people think nothing was going to happen.
JM: Yes. They did.
CB: So they went back again.
JM: Another lot. Yes.
CB: So then when it got serious they started again. What was the impetus really for the second one?
JM: Well, also they also shipped a lot of children to Canada.
CB: Yes.
Other: Really?
CB: And America.
JM: Yeah.
CB: What affect do you think it had on the children when they were evacuated and afterwards?
JM: Well, I think a lot if they got a good billet they were quite happy, you know. Like, as you say if they were on a farm they enjoyed the life on the farm. But as I say my cousin didn’t, didn’t get on at all well and so my aunt got him back again. She said she wouldn’t let him go. But then in the end he went to Rotherhithe. A Naval school. And he was in the Merchant Navy. He used to go to Australia. He’d be gone nine months, and then he came back for three months. And while he was in Australia he had cancer and they operated, and he was very ill coming back on the boat but the chaps used to hide him in a, in the cabin because if the authorities knew he was on board ill they’d have put him off at the next port, you know. But he wanted to get home so he got home. He managed to get to his door and he collapsed on the doorstep and he was riddled with cancer and he was only thirty four. And while he was in hospital the, one of the shipping line that he was on told him they’d just bought a new ship and he was going to be the master of it and he was going to be the captain.
CB: Gosh.
JM: The youngest captain in the [pause] but he never lived to see it.
Other: That’s sad.
JM: But he was, he was in the Mediterranean at sixteen.
CB: Was he?
JM: With the Merchant Navy during the war. Yeah.
CB: What would you say was your most memorable experience in the war, Joan?
JM: I don’t know really [pause] I know I was in the tube once and it was a buzz bomb come over and the driver went into a sidings behind a very thick wall, and the buzz bomb dropped the other side of the wall. We were safe, but [pause]. I can’t, and as I say I was nearly machine gunned. And on the Tube at at Piccadilly there’s a bend on the tube where the trains used to be packed. Getting out in the crowd they pushed you off and I went between the train and the platform. I had my library under my arm and my handbag in the other hand, and I went down like that and arms came out and lifted me out and I hadn’t hurt myself. Hadn’t even laddered my nylons which would have been —
CB: A cardinal sin.
JM: Terrible in those days because we used to get word that Selfridges had got some nylons and we used to all go trooping up there to try and get our nylons. We had lots of fun during the war. I mean, once a month we used to go to the theatre. I think I’ve been to all the different shows. We used to get someone to put a chair out in the, and we used to queue to be up in the Gods for about one and three and we used to see all the shows. We used to take a flask of, a drink of some sort with us, and get a buttered bun at lunch time and take that with us to eat when we were there. We used to go straight from work and queue up to go to the shows.
CB: Fascinating, thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: So what did you do in the evenings during the war?
JM: For the evening I used to sit up either in the office behind the bar and listen to the radio. Listen to Vera Lynn. Or I’d be upstairs because my cousin was born in 1940 so I was more or less babysitting then and I’d be doing sewing and that sort of thing upstairs. And about 9 o’clock I used to go to bed as I say because of the air raids, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JM: So, I’d be asleep before it got too bad.
CB: Down in the basement. Yeah.
JM: But no, there was nothing you could do apart from that. I think I went to the pictures a couple of times but, because there was a picture house just at the top of the road, but no I wasn’t interested in doing that, you know. As I say, I looked after my cousin more than anything and took him when we went on holiday. Took him with us, you know. He was in the Air Force. But that was after the war.
CB: Now, all military people had identity cards. What did you have as a civilian to identify yourself?
JM: I had an identity card. I’ve found one but it’s since then.
CB: Yes.
JM: Since the war.
CB: Is it? Post war, right.
JM: Yeah.
CB: So why did you have one after the war?
JM: I don’t know. I thought we all had them.
CB: And this one is called National Registration Identity Card.
JM: EIAF.
CB: Yeah. And it’s stamped 12th of March 1948. I’m just curious. But you did have one of these during the war.
JM: But that was the same identity number as I had during the war.
CB: It sounds as though you lost yours. Yes.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
JM: I think my granddaughter may have it amongst all the things I gave her.
CB: Yes. What was your maiden name?
JM: Fellowes.
CB: So clearly you’d have had a different card for that. And this has got the address Du Cane Avenue, W12. That’s because your husband was working.
JM: That was the quarters. Prison quarters.
CB: Oh, it was a prison quarter was it?
JM: Yeah. They were bocks of flats in front of the prison.
CB: Right. So, what was it like living in a prison environment?
JM: Never took much notice of it really. Used to see the visitors come through. All nations, you know. And people used to say, ‘Well, aren’t you frightened that if a prisoner got out?’ You know. I said, ‘Well, if a prisoner got out he’s not going to stay around is he? He’s going to get off as quick as he can.’ You know. So I never worried about it.
CB: No.
JM: I went in the prison several times.
CB: Did you?
JM: Went in, because they had big shows in there. A lot of the show people were crooks really [laughs] I mean they all had double lives, you know but they used to bring the big shows to the prison.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And I know I went in once and I was the only woman in there amongst all the prisoners and they got an armchair for me to sit in. And when I sat in it, it collapsed didn’t it? Yeah.
CB: Gave them their brief moment of joy.
JM: Yeah [laughs] Yeah. I saw several shows in there and I used to go along if my husband was on night watch. I used to go along to the gate as they called it and he’d let me in to his office with him. I used to take his supper along to him.
CB: And then to get promotion your husband came out to Grendon Underwood in Buckinghamshire.
JM: Yeah.
CB: What prompted that?
JM: Pardon?
CB: What prompted him to do that?
JM: Well, he put in for his promotion, and got it but then you don’t get any choice of where you were going. We were told we were coming to Aylesbury and we thought oh nice. A nice little country town, you know. It would be nice. We landed up at Grendon. I didn’t like it one bit.
CB: Didn’t you?
JM: I didn’t. The first Saturday we were here we went into Bicester shopping, half past four in the afternoon and everything was closing. It was dead. I said, ‘What have we come to?’ I still used to go up to London to work.
CB: Did you?
JM: Every day. Yeah. Because I worked for the telephone side of the [pause] I don’t know what. I can’t think.
CB: Of the Prison Service.
JM: Not of the Prison Service. Civil Service it was.
CB: Oh yes. Right.
JM: I saw an application, you know. They were asking for people to join the Civil Service and I went and took the exam, and I landed at Bromyard Avenue, which was only around the corner from where we lived. It was supplying the telephone lines and the telephones and in those days there wasn’t the number of lines so people had to have what they called a party line.
CB: Oh yes.
JM: I expect you remember those.
CB: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: Yeah. And then we had a rep go out and see if the place was suitable for phones and that sort of thing. I was on the sales side. Selling the phones.
CB: Oh. How did you feel about that?
JM: I quite enjoyed that. I was there two and a half years. But after six months, the last six months travelling backwards and forwards I put in to go to Bicester but they wouldn’t transfer me although it was still Civil Service. They wouldn’t transfer me to the Army. I had to stop my service and go. Start again. But when I got there they accepted it, so it counted with my years in the civil service so I was back in Ambrosden.
CB: Oh right.
JM: Yeah. I worked for the REME to begin with. And then I was on signals another time, and then after that I was on uniforms again. People that were small, you know wanted special sized uniforms.
CB: Yeah.
JM: Or big, big uniforms. I was on that before I retired.
CB: Right. Any more?
Other: No.
[recording paused]
JM: I lived in London.
CB: So when you were in London you had an opportunity to do lots of jobs. What other things did you do?
JM: The first thing I did I worked at Hammersmith Hospital. I used to take a shop around to all the patients on a trolley. I did that for five and a half years.
CB: What sort of things?
JM: Then I left there.
CB: What sort of things could they buy from the trolley?
JM: Papers, cigarettes, sweets, drinks. Or they’d ask me if I could get them something or other that they wanted, and I used to take it in to them. And then from there I went to a tobacconist in Regent Street. Lewis I think their name was but I worked on the cosmetic and medical counter [laughs] I was telling people what to take for their illnesses. I used to ring it all up and tell them. Men would come in. They wanted perfume for a girlfriend or something, you know and I used to have to do the ordering for it as well. Then I went to Marks and Spencer’s for an interview and got that job and she said, ‘You’d start right away.’ I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m going on holiday for a fortnight.’ So I lost that job. But I saw the Co-op were advertising so I put in for the Co-op. They’d opened a big store in Oxford Street. On the Oxford Circus, you know. There’s four corners and they had one of the big corners. Used to be Peter Jones’ years ago. But they took that over and I went in there. I was selling fancy goods they called it. All bits and pieces. Then I saw the wool counter and I said, ‘Oh, I’d like to change to wool.’ So I went over to selling wool but that, this job was commission and you didn’t get a lot of commission because people would come in, they’d buy a fourpenny pattern. You’d tell them what to do and all the rest, and advise then what wool to buy but they’d walk out. They didn’t buy the wool so I didn’t get much there. Then there was a vacancy came on the corsetry department so I put in for that and when the supervisor left from the corsetry department I took that over. I went for my exams. I went to St Martin’s School in Charing Cross Road and passed my exams to be a fitter of corsetry. And I was there [pause] oh three or four years I was there and then I decided I’d like to go in an office for a change. So I went to an office. Telephone and cable company, and I was doing the accounts there but I wasn’t very happy because the, the chap that I worked for used he used to go out selling components for different things and when he came back and I was doing up the books I perhaps put down he’d sold a hundred capacitors, and he made me put down that he’d sold two hundred.
CB: Oh.
JM: Because he was working on commission and I was cooking the books for him all the time. Then I saw the advert for the Civil Service so I was talking to a cousin of mine. I said, ‘I’m too old for that.’ I was, I think I was about forty then. She said, ‘No, you’re not.’ She said, ‘You have a go.’ So as I say I had a go and got in. So that was all my variety of jobs since the war.
CB: Yeah. Amazing. What age did you retire then?
JM: Sixty, sixty two I think it was. Sixty two or, sixty three I was when I retired. I had to sign on year by year because you should retire at sixty but if you wanted to stay on and you was doing your job all right, you know you could sign on year by year. I was getting a bit fed up then, you know.
CB: What about the travel? Did that get a bit much?
JM: They used to put a coach on for us to go to Ambrosden.
CB: Oh.
JM: Used to pick us up at 7 o’clock and bring us back at. We used to pick the coach up about half past four. Be back about five.
CB: Very good. Well, Joan that’s really interesting. Thank you very much. There was one other question though which is this. School leaving age when you were young was fourteen.
JM: No. It went up to fifteen.
CB: Right.
JM: When we went to the school we had, my parents had to sign that you would stay to fifteen. A lot of them broke it but I stayed on. I didn’t want to leave school.
CB: No. You said.
JM: Yeah.
CB: You enjoyed it. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. In the end, as I say my head mistress got me a job [laughs] and I had to leave.
CB: Good.
JM: I think that’s why my daughter was a school teacher because, you know, from me. I liked school.
CB: Yeah. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JM: A very placid woman, and —
CB: We’re talking about your mother’s reaction to the war and being in London.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. She just, just got on with her job and that was it, you know.
CB: Yeah. One other thing also was you talked about the Doodlebugs and the V bombs. The V-1s were the Doodlebugs.
JM: V-1s and V-2s.
CB: The V-2s were the rockets. What was the general feeling about the arrival of those?
JM: Well, as I say if you saw the Doodlebugs and you saw them you knew you were safe because they were going.
CB: [unclear]
JM: As soon as their engines stopped then everybody used to dive for shelter, you know. But I know I did have an attack of nerves with the V-2s because you had no, no idea because you couldn’t, you didn’t hear them.
CB: No.
JM: And I know my uncle he was on guns and he said they couldn’t track them.
CB: No.
JM: They were so fast they couldn’t track them so they didn’t know, you know.
CB: Well, you got the sound of the arrival of the V-2 after the explosion of the warhead.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Because they were supersonic.
JM: Yeah.
CB: So what did your uncle do on the guns?
JM: I don’t know really much about —
CB: He was in the Army running the guns was he?
JM: He was in the Army. Yeah.
CB: Right.
JM: Because he finished up guarding the prisoners of war, the German prisoners or the Italian prisoners of war.
CB: Yes.
JM: So we seemed to have been mixed up with prison for a few years.
CB: Yes. Well, of course at Bicester you talked about earlier with people being evacuated.
JM: He was at Quorn. A place called Quorn.
CB: Oh.
JM: I don’t know where it was.
CB: No. We’ll look it up.
JM: And then he was, one time he was at Brecon Beacons.
CB: Oh yes. Middle of nowhere.
JM: Hmmn?
CB: Middle of nowhere that is.
JM: Yes.
[recording paused]
CB: Yes. What was the, what was the situation like when you were getting married of getting flowers?
JM: That was it. We went to the nursery.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And they did them for you.
CB: And you wanted —
JM: I wanted red roses.
CB: Yes.
JM: They said, ‘No. We don’t do red roses. Only red carnations.’
CB: Right. So that’s what you did.
[recording paused]
JM: Dunoon. We used to go to the dance band.
CB: Could you just say again how you first met him? You first met your husband.
JM: The first time I ever saw him.
CB: Yes.
JM: Was at a display of the Boys Brigade.
CB: Right. In Hastings.
JM: In Hastings, yes. And then I saw him again at these band parties because he was with a friend of a friend and then —
CB: On the pier.
JM: On the pier. Yeah. Not on the beer.
CB: That later.
JM: And then he went out with my friend but she didn’t cotton on. And then he asked me to go out and that’s, we went on from there, you know.
CB: Yes. When did you get engaged?
JM: On my twenty first birthday.
CB: Oh, you said earlier. Yes.
JM: Yeah.
CB: And you were resolved to wait until —
JM: Yeah.
CB: How long were you going to wait?
JM: Forever I suppose.
CB: Before you got married.
JM: Only a fortnight when he came back.
CB: Yes. So how did he seem? How did he seem to be when he came back? Was he different or the same?
JM: No. He was, still seemed the same. I did say to him that if he wanted to change his mind because I had waited you know. Oh no. He hadn’t changed his mind at all. So I gave him the chance, you know too. I hadn’t changed my mind.
CB: No. That was good. Yes.
[recording paused]
JM: The vicarage was bombed.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And next door to where my cousin, no my cousin, another cousin he lived in the house next to the bombing. There’s a picture of the shop, house where he lived.
CB: This is in Hastings.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Yes. And the house at the end of the road? What happened to that? You said, was there one at the end of the road that was demolished?
JM: There was. Yeah, there was a whole lot demolished. The end of the road I used to live in.
CB: Yes.
JM: Yeah. The school I went to that was bombed, that’s all in there.
CB: What was the casualty rate like?
JM: I don’t know. It probably tells you in there.
CB: Yes.
JM: I say you didn’t know a lot because people didn’t talk about —
Other: No.
JM: Well, you were told to keep mum weren’t you?
Other: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Joan Rosemary Macklin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMacklinJR180127
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:35:55 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
British Army
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--Hastings
England--London
France
Germany
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1939-10
1944-12-25
1940-05
Description
An account of the resource
Joan’s maiden name was Fellows. She speaks of her school days up to leaving at 16 and a half when she took up an apprenticeship with a dressmaking shop in Hastings. When war was declared the dressmaking business suffered, so she went to Islington to stay with relatives and got a job at Debenham & Freebody helping to make army uniforms. In her leisure time she went dancing, ice skating and playing tennis. She remembered staying with a friend in Bromley and diving into a hedge when a German bomber went over.
Joan got engaged on her 21st birthday in October 1939. Her finance got his call up papers to join the Royal Sussex some days later.
Joan and her mother went to Hastings for Christmas 1944 to stay with her grandparents. They returned home on boxing day to find that their house had been destroyed. The shelter which they would have used was burnt out and the occupants were all killed. She stayed in Hastings to look after her grandmother until she married. Her husband was a stretcher bearer and was taken prisoner in May 1940. The prisoners had to march from France to Poland where he was in Stalag 7B. During that time, he had appendicitis and was operated on by a German doctor. While a prisoner he worked with horses and in the salt mines. The prisoners were marched from Poland to Germany towards the end of the war before being released. When he returned home, they got married and he worked as a prison officer at Wormwood Scrubs. He retired at 55 and died at 57.
Joan had a variety of jobs since the end of the war and retired at the age of 63.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
bombing
home front
love and romance
prisoner of war
shelter
the long march
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1110/11600/PSaundersR-H1701.1.jpg
3f2122056cdcd59c14e49cf49611103d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1110/11600/ASaundersR171003.2.mp3
2b4acf576805f5e21b9e576b4973453d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Saunders, Roy and Honor
Roy Saunders
R Saunders
Honor Saunders
H Saunders
Description
An account of the resource
158 items. Oral history interviews with Roy Saunders (b. 1930) and Honor Saunders (b. 1931) and six albums of family photographs. Both experienced the London Blitz. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1638 ">Foreshaw and Carter Photos</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1639 ">Foreshaw Family</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1640">Roy and Honor Saunders</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1641">Saunders Family</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1642">Thorpe and Diver Family</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1643">Thorpe Family</a><br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roy and Honor Saunders and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Saunders, R-H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Tuesday the 3rd of October 2017 and I’m in Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire with Roy and Honor Saunders who were minors during the war, that is to say small and experienced both the bombing and, of the Luftwaffe and also the rocketing by V-1 and V-2. So Roy, starting with Roy what are your earliest recollections of life, Roy?
RS: I think the first thing that I can vaguely remember is the Jubilee of George the 5th and I, the only thing I remember is the school party. I think the next thing I remember is the school party again for the Coronation of George the 6th. It seemed to me that life was full of parties. The next thing I can remember just, is the Munich Crisis. I remember this for the reason that, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” was about to be released and it was said that if a war started, “Snow White,” would be abandoned. But as the crisis was averted the war didn’t start, “Snow White,” I did get to see, “Snow White.” But I can also remember that I heard a lot of adult conversation. My father was firmly convinced there was going to be a war and I think I’m sure in saying, him saying that there certainly would still be a war in spite of the, the piece of paper that bore Hitler’s signature. I think the next thing I remember is being evacuated two days before the war actually started the following year. I think the war started on a Sunday. I don’t think there would have been in any trains in Cambridgeshire on a Sunday in those days until, I think I was evacuated on the Friday and heard about the war being declared after the chapel service on Sunday morning. I was evacuated with the boy next door and my maternal grandparents. We went to live on a farm owned by my grandmother’s sister, my great Aunt Anne. She was a widow and lived in a farmhouse which was divided into four sections. One down, one up with a scullery lean to. My aunt lived in the end one. The tenant farmers lived at the other end of the building and there was one spare part in the middle which my grandparents lived in. The boy next door and I lived in the same bedroom as my aunt. The boy next door eventually became a brigadier so I have a thought that I’ve slept with a brigadier [laughs] At the age of eight. Well, nothing happened during the first stages of the war and it was called The Phoney War. We had no electricity. Light was provided by oil lamps and there was nothing to do in the evenings. I don’t remember meeting other people during the evenings. I, gas was actually being installed at the time that we arrived but my aunt wouldn’t have it. It was too new-fangled. I had two, I was related to half the village although my name gave nothing away because it was my maternal grandmother who was born in the village and she married out of the village and so my mother also of course married and my name has no relationship with the village. But I was in fact related to the Divers, who seemed every fifth or sixth person in the village seemed to be named Diver. The patriarch of the Divers was old Ebbie or Ebenezer. I had two cousins who lived around the corner. These were a generation ahead of me so I always called them auntie but they were actually second cousins. They had the gas and so I could, if I visited them I could see to read and they also took a newspaper. My aunt, my aunt didn’t approve of newspapers except for the Christian Herald but I got to read my cousin’s newspaper. One of the things I did was to try to follow the war through the newspaper. I specifically remember the Battle of the River Plate. That was about the only thing that did happen. Oh no [pause] the Russians attacked Finland and I remember that and I would always draw a map of wherever anything was going on so this my geography a great deal of good. I knew where the River Plate was and Montevideo and Buenos Aires and I knew the geography around Leningrad and Finland and Lake Ladoga. I don’t [pause] I don’t think I can, oh and I went to Baptist chapel on Sundays. Otherwise, I don’t think anything else happened. [pause] My parents came to see me at Christmas. The boy next door, he went back to live with his parents in London at Christmas. Oh, I’ve just remembered the other thing that happened was the bullying episode at school when we went to school that, it only lasted for about a fortnight when a Jewish school was billeted on the village and we were immediately counted as village boys the moment that happened so our bullying stopped. I think there were enough Jewish boys to stop any real bullying. There was friction but not to any high degree between the Jewish boys and the village boys. One thing that happened that was, seems very strange now, I heard my first swear words in this village. The village boys swore a lot. I didn’t even recognise that they were swear words to start with. Also, I became very friendly with one of the Jewish boys. I had much more in common with them than I did with the village boys. I can remember one boy called Wolf. I presume his real name was Wolfgang. He and I became very friendly. Oh, the other thing I remember was the preaching at the Baptist chapel. My aunt was a very devout Baptist and it was hellfire preaching. I can remember the minister waving his arms about very promptly and I can even remember one of his sermons was based on the word, ‘nevertheless.’ That seems an extraordinary word to base a sermon on. But that’s about all I can remember of the sermonising apart from the waving of arms. I remember they actually got two RAF people to come and preach and to my great surprise, well no, I don’t think I was surprised because I hadn’t thought about it previously but we all have seen films and heard about the drunken thing that RAF had in the local pubs and so on. But these two that came to preach were firmly against dancing and going to the cinema. These were evils to be avoided. The nearest cinema was seven and a half miles away so it didn’t actually matter very much. I saw my first pantomime at Newmarket at Christmas. I’d never seen a pantomime before.
[pause]
RS: Really nothing more happened I think until Easter when I went back to London just in time for the Blitzkrieg to start in France. And Dunkirk. But my memories of this are all through the radio which of course we had in London. There was no radio in Isleham.
[pause]
RS: Where we lived, I was born in Woolwich but I was brought up about five or six miles away in Kent. It was in, it’s the Borough of Bexley which in those days was in Kent. It’s now in London of course. And I just saw a fringe moment in the Battle of Britain I think. We lived only about twenty five miles from Biggin Hill and there was a small amount of activity. I saw once, I was in the High Street and I saw two aircraft wheeling around in the sky and a bomb came out of one of them. There was no way, I was in no danger of this bomb. It wasn’t pointing in my direction or anything and I didn’t hear it land. I think I must have dashed into a [pause] I must have taken cover in some form. Either going into a shop or an air raid shelter although I don’t remember an air raid shelter being available. I wonder. I wonder how I got myself in to that situation. I had been very firmly trained if the air raid warning went off to go straight home. But here I was in the High Street with another boy, and we certainly hadn’t heard an air raid siren. I can’t explain that. The next time I can remember and there must be a firm date for this, it was in the middle of September at the first large scale bombing raid on London in daylight. I spent most of the time in the air raid shelter. We had an Anderson air raid shelter which was dry, unlike some peoples. Ours was well drained. And when we came out of the air raid shelter I was staggered to see the amount of smoke coming from the direction of Woolwich. I later heard that it came from the docks across at the north of the river at Silvertown. Excuse me. I’ve become so dry.
HS: Shall I get you some water?
CB: Have a break for a moment.
[recording paused]
CB: So we talked about the smoke from the fires at Silvertown but when was this? Was it —
RS: I can well remember a Sunday Times photograph after the war showing an American, not an American, a German reconnaissance photograph taken which showed the view of this, the smoke from the docks and you could even see, I could pick out our, the road I was living in from it. You couldn’t see individual houses but you could see houses. I can’t, no this is nonsense isn’t it? I could see the road that I lived in and the smoke. Where the smoke was coming from. So it was a photograph that covered something like five miles.
CB: Yes.
RS: And the detail was such that I could see our road so it was very clear. I meant to keep this photograph but unfortunately I don’t know where it is now. But the date of this air raid was well known.
CB: Yeah.
RS: And all I, but all I can remember now it was around the middle of September.
CB: Ok.
RS: I think what must have happened is we went on holiday [laughs] which seems —
CB: Yes. You went on holiday to Oban didn’t you?
RS: Oban. My father worked on the railway so he got free tickets so he always used to choose one of the furthest parts away to get value. But the thing about Oban was a Sunderland Air Base there and I saw Sunderland Flying Boats moving around the outer harbour and occasionally one would take off, with great difficulty it seemed to me [laughs] I don’t, if you know Oban.
CB: I do.
RS: There’s a, there’s an island beginning with a K. I can’t remember. Kerrera? I don’t know. There’s an island which encloses an outer harbour. The inner harbour being a construction. But when they took off they moved out beyond the island and it’s the Firth of Lorne I think and you would see them taking off or coming in on occasion. We had a good view from our boarding house which was built far enough up the side of the hill to get a very good view of what was going on. Nothing dramatic happened of course but we were, on the radio we were hearing about the start of the night time Blitz in London so we missed that.
CB: How long were you in Oban?
RS: Oh [pause] I would think it was a week. It could have been a fortnight but I don’t really remember.
CB: So then you came back to London in the middle of the Blitz did you?
RS: Yes. The first night would have been an air raid. We lived far enough out of, away from the docks not to be a target but the odd bomb would certainly fall. Yes, and one of them fell into the, the next street and it was a direct hit on a house where one of my schoolmates was living and it killed him and his family. I think that must have been the closest encounter with a bomb. Coincidentally, well no it directly caused my father’s, my father worked on the railway. He was a, before the war he was a clerk in the Continental Department and must have left the Continental Department. And I don’t really know what he was doing in this period between the war starting and the bombing of London only his job was moved to Brighton and we had therefore moved to Three Bridges which is on the main line from London to Brighton and is a junction. So it’s a fairly important junction on the railway line. He worked in Brighton but that was only twenty miles away and the trains, the Brighton line trains were fairly quick so it didn’t take him long to get to work.
CB: Can we just go back to when you were still at your earlier house, southeast London. Then what was there in that locality because the city was defended by anti-aircraft guns.
RS: Oh yes.
CB: And barrage balloons. Did you have those near you?
RS: Yes. The ack ack guns were very close. I first went to school in 1935. Oh, I didn’t mention that in my recollections. I went to school, to a school that was no more than two hundred yards from my house. By going through various back gardens I could get to it. Local government reorganisation took place very shortly afterwards. Then I was within a year moved to another school which was further away from my house and meant crossing a road. The AA guns were built in the field, part of Danson Park in the field immediately adjacent to the school. So my house was two hundred yards from the school and the AA gun started immediately after the school so they were very close. My golly they made a noise too when they went off.
CB: How many of them were there?
RS: Four. It was a shattering noise. I think it must rank as one of the loudest noises I’ve ever heard when they went off and my chief memory of the Blitz to start with was, was the noise. I mean it wasn’t just the noise of the guns from the AA battery they even had, they had mobile guns and can I remember one night one of these was parked outside our front door and that made a pretty good noise. It was only a single gun but it nevertheless added to the orchestra.
CB: Do you know why some of them were mobile and some of them were in fixed positions?
[pause]
RS: Well, I presume that if the, if the ack ack guns were attacked by the Germans they had mobile ones which would be a lot more difficult to attack.
CB: As far as the family was concerned while all these guns were going off and the —
[telephone ringing]
CB: I’ll wait for that.
[pause]
CB: While the guns were being fired and the bombs were dropping where was the family?
RS: In the air raid shelter.
CB: And what was that?
RS: An Anderson.
CB: And who built it?
RS: My father.
CB: But it was, and you said it was dry.
RS: And it was dry. I’m saying this because I know Honor’s shelter was wet and you, you didn’t use it I think.
HS: No.
RS: But ours was perfectly all right. I remember I slept in it.
CB: What sort of size are we talking about?
RS: Well, we were a family of three so it was one of the smallest ones.
CB: And how was it constructed?
RS: There were, I think four sections of corrugated iron which came up and halfway across to meet up with the other ones and the other half. And I should think it was about shoulder, the depth was to our shoulders when standing up inside.
CB: Was it partly dug into the ground?
RS: Oh yes.
CB: So you stepped down.
RS: Yes.
CB: Into it.
RS: Yes.
CB: And then what was on top of the corrugated iron?
RS: Earth. In digging the shelter it, had we had a huge pile of, of clay and dirt and that was put back across the shelter.
CB: Did it have a door or something that would act as a plug to keep it warmer inside?
RS: We must have done. I don’t, yes there was something there. I think. I think that was a sheet of corrugated iron and there was plain sheets of corrugated iron at the further end so that it was surrounded. It was surrounded on all sides.
CB: So what time would you get in because there was, the sirens would go wouldn’t they?
RS: Yes.
CB: When there was an expected attack?
RS: Yes. I think we went in before. Before the sirens went off. Maybe. This didn’t last very long because my father was transferred to Brighton.
CB: Yes.
RS: And we moved fairly quickly. He rented a house in Three Bridges and we moved again with my grandparents. I’d no idea where the boy next door disappeared to at this stage. I can remember the journey across London from we were living in Welling to East Croydon. Normally if you were going to Brighton from London you go in to Central London and leave London and go to Brighton. But because of the daylight bombing was still going on as as well and we caught a bus to take us across, diagonally across the suburbs of London. And several air raids took place during this journey and it was a long journey because as you probably know London buses are not very good for travelling diagonally anywhere in London and I think it took pretty well the whole morning to get from Welling to East Croydon Station. And it was done in different, several different buses because every time the sirens sounded which they did several times the bus stopped and people got off and into a shelter.
CB: So were there shelters dotted around for general public use?
RS: Yes. I don’t have any clear memory of that but there must have been because we did get into a shelter I think each time the warning went off.
CB: Now, we spoke a bit earlier about barrage balloons. How did they work? And where were they?
RS: Well, they were on various spaces. The ack ack battery was in the park. It’s a fairly large park so in another part of the park there was a barrage balloon. It wasn’t very, it was far enough away from the AA guns not to stand much chance of being hit. And anyway, they weren’t at a very great height.
CB: So how did they, did they let them up and down regularly? What did they do?
RS: Yes. Yes. They were. They were. Yes, they weren’t permanently up but I don’t think they waited for a particular air raid. I think they were up a lot of the time. Oh dear. I’m so sorry.
CB: That’s alright.
RS: I need to be excused.
CB: That’s quite alright. I know they feeling myself.
RS: Yes, it happens to all of us.
[recording paused]
CB: Looks like an interesting book that one.
Other: Full of fascinating photographs and the text is brilliant.
CB: Is it?
Other: I just, you know I can’t read it all. It’s —
CB: Does it have a date on the back? What’s it actually called? I’d better write it down hadn’t I?
Other: “Doodlebugs and Rockets.”
CB: “Doodlebugs and Rockets.”
RS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
Other: By somebody called —
[recording paused]
RS: I think, about the, you asked me about the barrage balloons.
CB: Yes.
RS: I really don’t think I really know. I think they were up all the time.
CB: Were they? Right.
RS: But I’m, I’m hazy about that.
CB: Ok.
RS: I mean it was to stop low flying aircraft wasn’t it?
CB: Absolutely.
RS: The barrage balloon was incidental to the cable that went up.
CB: Yeah. So what about the anti-aircraft guns? What was the effect of them firing?
RS: It was a most shattering noise. A salvo of four guns and they were they were big ones. Not these things that you see sometimes on film popping. They were large guns.
CB: And what came down?
RS: Apart from the shrapnel?
CB: The shells exploded. Then what?
RS: The shrapnel came down. Is there anything else?
CB: Yes. So, the shrapnel was dangerous in itself wasn’t it?
RS: Oh, the shrapnel was certainly. That was, in fact I’d say that was the great, I was never in much danger and shrapnel was the only stuff I think I could conceivably have been injured by. Except I mean this friend of mine was killed. But that was really a random bomb.
CB: Yes. So what happened to the shrapnel?
RS: It got picked up by schoolboys is all that I can remember.
CB: And what did they do with it?
RS: Not much. Showed it to other people.
CB: There wasn’t a pecuniary advantage in doing it? So they couldn’t get money for handing in pieces of metal because that’s what was needed.
RS: Yes. I suppose so. No. I don’t recollect that.
CB: Some people reported a machine gunning of the streets. What do you know about that?
RS: Not in London. I did later on in Three Bridges encounter that. It wasn’t in the streets but I had a very close encounter, or my grandfather had a very close encounter with a machine gunning in Three Bridges but he wasn’t the target. The railway was the target. Diverting to Three Bridges. One morning I was just looking out of the window for no, any more reason anyone ever looks out of the window. I don’t remember whether there was, we were in an air raid or whether the sirens had gone off. I can’t remember that. But I was just looking out of the window and a Messerschmitt 110, now this time I was two or three years older and I was red hot on identification of aircraft an ME110 came across. I had a fairly narrow field of view. If it had only been there for a fraction of a second, not a full second I actually saw the occupants or their heads and it was gone. My grandfather was working on our allotment in what was the recreation ground but it was really just a field with allotments in it. But that during the war but railway, there was a railway line at the end of the field and there was beyond the branch line to Crawley there were engine sheds and marshalling yards and the Messerschmitt opened fire on those but my grandfather was immediately underneath on the allotment and they must have fired directly over his head. So he knew all about it. This was I think the most exciting thing that happened to him during the war but it was all over in a fraction of a second because people have said, ‘Well, were you frightened?’ I didn’t have time to be frightened. It was less than, much less than a second I think. But I think my grandfather must have been shaken to his roots because the, whatever the cannons or whatever he was firing must have gone over his head. The plane was no more than, I think fifty feet of the ground.
CB: Now you moved to Three Bridges as a family in 1940. How long did you stay there?
RS: Stayed there more than once. In the first instance [pause] it was, yes. 1940. It would have been I took the Scholarship Examination in ‘42 to go to Grammar School and I spent one term and one, no one year and one term at that, at the Grammar School by which time it would be 1943. Not much was happening in 1943 so I went back to London.
CB: To your old house was it?
RS: No. my parents had a mortgage on the house we were living in before the war.
CB: At Welling?
RS: Welling. Yes. But he, he let the house. The house would have otherwise been empty for the three years so he let it and I went to live with my maternal grandparents.
CB: Where was that?
RS: That was in Welling as well.
CB: Right.
RS: My mother, that’s funny. I don’t seem to remember my mother from those days. She must have been with me.
CB: Your father was still working in Brighton was he?
RS: Oh, no. He wasn’t. No. No. In 1941 he, he was called up in 1941 and, but meanwhile he had been offered this job in Nigeria and he never spoke to me about it but he spoke to Honor.
HS: He spoke to me.
RS: I think Honor would tell you about this. He was actually offered the King’s Shilling but he had to return it because the job in Nigeria took precedence over just being called up. He wasn’t, he wasn’t A1 fit though.
CB: So when did he go to Nigeria?
RS: November 1941. The African Campaign was in full swing at that time and he stayed there until 1944 when he got his first leave.
CB: To come back to the UK.
RS: He came back for six months. Yes.
CB: And you were living with your grandparents.
RS: I was living with my grandparents. Yes.
CB: Ok. So fast forward from there. What was the next major event?
RS: D-Day.
CB: Right.
RS: And then within a week or a fortnight of D-Day the V-1s started and I can remember, I think I can remember clearly. It’s one of those things with memory, memorising something you only memorised or memorising the real thing. I think I can remember the first night of the flying bombs. Didn’t know what they were of course. But all of a sudden, you can’t spend all of your time in the air raid shelter. You need food sometimes and so it was normally my parents and even more so my grandparents made sure that I spent most of my time in the air raid shelter. But it wasn’t always so. I have memories of seeing aeroplanes caught in searchlights and I can remember seeing ack ack shells exploding the enemy aircraft. I never saw one shot down but that was probably because I wasn’t given enough time to see one shot down. My parents or grandparents would have hauled me into the shelter very quickly.
CB: Just on that topic you’ve talked about the anti-aircraft guns. Was there a searchlight near the anti-aircraft guns?
RS: No. Not the one [pause] yes, I think there was one stationed.
CB: With the guns.
RS: With the guns. No, they would surely have been gone for part of the day because that would have made the guns a target.
CB: I think you would have remembered because it’s very bright light isn’t it?
RS: Yes. It is. Yes. I don’t have that memory.
CB: Just a curiosity. So fast forward again then to D-Day so you saw the first of the V-1s come over with the flying bomb. The doodlebug.
RS: Yes. My father had come back and was in London or in Welling for both D-Day and the V-1s. but one saw these things going overhead in the dark and there was a bright light associated with them. I thought this is curious they seem to have their cabin lights on. And the other thing was I mean obviously the difference between a gun firing and an aircraft crashing. The noise was quite different. And the thing was we got it seemed that planes were being shot down quite often.
CB: Doodlebugs.
RS: The doodlebugs. Yes.
CB: Yes.
RS: I think we all, interpreted this as shooting down enemy aircraft. We didn’t realise that they were meant to come down no more that they were actually bombs themselves. And the first time they came over they didn’t, the air raid only lasted two or three hours I recollect. It was about two days later that they bombardment started when they flooded over and this to me was one of the worst points of the war. It seemed that there were so many of them coming that if they continued to do so they would destroy London. It was only later that we heard that there was, some of them were stopped by aircraft tipping. Coming alongside tipping them over so they landed before they got to London but I think there were only one or two of those. There was one came down not far from where I lived but I didn’t see the remains to know myself. But it was said that it glided down and got stuck in a stile.
CB: Without exploding.
RS: And didn’t go off.
CB: Without exploding.
RS: Yes. I don’t know whether I really believed it but it was very widely reported. And then this only lasted a few days. Oh I remember being, because they were coming across all the time I think they stopped setting off the air raid sirens because it was, it had become continuous and you can’t spend all the time in an air raid shelter or even in a house. I remember being out not, not very far from my grandparent’s home but far enough not to be able to get, get back in time. I heard one of them stop and there was nothing to do but lie on the ground and and wait for the explosion.
CB: So what was your perception in those days of how they worked?
RS: We’d been told how they worked very quickly. I mean it’s ludicrous but I mean my first thoughts about it were ludicrous that they were aeroplanes with their cabin lights on. I think it was fairly quickly reported on the radio that they were a jet devices and I mean the other thing there were very quickly photographs taken of their take off ramps because D-Day had happened not that long before and they were beginning to be overrun. But before all this happened I was off to Isleham again. My second spell.
CB: When was that?
RS: Evacuated.
CB: Yes. When was that?
RS: Well it would have been during the flying bomb period.
CB: What? An early part of it.
RS: Sorry?
CB: An early part so we’re talking about June ’44 and July so far so would it be that time?
RS: Yes. I was, it was within a week of them actually starting.
CB: Oh right.
RS: I wasn’t exposed to them for very long but there were so many of them I think I thought one of them is eventually going to get me. It was the only, I mean I found the war time experience exciting. I didn’t think anything could happen. Even the noise of the Blitz you get used to in two or three days. It was the flying bombs that were I found unsettling.
CB: You mentioned earlier about when they stopped. What did you mean about that?
RS: Well, their engine stopped.
CB: Right. So what did that mean?
RS: Well, it was going to explode shortly.
CB: Right.
RS: Although I think some did glide so they took longer.
CB: Well, was there an official statement about the expectation of the aircraft dropping?
RS: There was an expectation of an explosion.
CB: Ok. Because in practical terms what was happening was the plane engine was running and the story I believe was put out that when the engine stopped you knew it was going to crash very shortly.
RS: Yes.
CB: Which was gliding in. It wasn’t supposed to do that. It was just time for the nose to go down at a point.
RS: Oh.
CB: Which cut off the fuel. It wasn’t supposed to but it did.
Other: A remarkable piece of work.
HS: Yes.
RS: I don’t think —
RS: John. John.
Other: Sorry.
CB: Sorry, go on.
RS: I don’t think I knew that.
CB: Right. So, so the message to people that went around was if the engine stopped it was about to crash.
RS: Yes. I remember that.
CB: Ok. So, at Isleham away from these
RS: Yes, it was still as I left it. Gas had been installed but my aunt still wouldn’t take it.
CB: Why was that?
RS: Oh, the radio. The radio was wrong. It upset the [unclear] She was in that mindset. She was a Victorian. A very religious Victorian. Anything that was new-fangled, I mean she might even have used the term new-fangled. I have to say I didn’t really like her but as an adult I can see exactly how she meant in having all these people come to live with her. It must have been a great shock to her.
CB: Well, were there other evacuees in the village?
RS: I don’t think there were any of the Jewish children there.
CB: They’d moved out had they?
RS: Yes. Like I did. I mean most evacuees I think apart from the ones that went to America most of them went home.
CB: Right. And then came back again when the V weapons started.
RS: Yes. In fact, our, my grandparents neighbour, not the boy who lived next door, when we first went away my grandparent’s neighbour had two children and her husband was in the Army. Yes. I think safely in, I can remember now he was based in Oswestry far away from any bombing but his wife and children were in Welling and they got my grandmother to arrange to go to Isleham and be billeted.
CB: What would you say was the reaction of the general population in Isleham to having evacuees? In the school for instance.
RS: Well, yes. It was, it was such a shock to them, I think. I think this village was ninety five percent non-conformist, five percent Church of England and no, nothing else. There was no Catholic church. I can’t think there was a Catholic church within ten or twenty miles. I have read elsewhere since that East Anglia is not noted for a broadness of religious faith but they were, had a very strong faith but they were Methodist or in my aunt’s case Baptists and Primitive Methodists as well. There wasn’t just one Methodist church. Not just one, not just one Baptist church. But there was only one Church of England. When my parents came to visit me earlier, at the Christmas earlier they took me to the Church of England and it seemed there were about four other people there and the vicar.
CB: Amazing.
RS: Whereas all the Baptist, all the non-conformist chapels were full to the brim.
CB: When you returned in June ’44 that was because of the V weapons.
RS: Yes.
CB: How long did you stay in Isleham this time?
RS: Until they stopped. About, about three months. I remember I lost a full term. A full term at school. And that was about all.
CB: So why did your parents get you back again?
RS: They came back with me. Well, it seemed that the invasion was going very well at that time. They were making great strides across France and Holland and Belgium and that seemed to spare us the —
CB: Well, effectively the Germans were running out of rockets, weren’t they? Not rockets. V-1s.
RS: V-1s. Well, I can imagine they were. Yes.
CB: Yes.
RS: But I mean they just stopped coming. They were, they tried releasing them from aircraft I think across the North Sea.
CB: Yeah.
RS: But I don’t think very many. We didn’t encounter anything.
HS: Carry on.
RS: We didn’t encounter anything at Isleham —
CB: No.
RS: With regard to that. But one thing I do remember about before we left Isleham, every evening, there was an airfield at Mildenhall. It was the, it was the airfield that Amy Johnson departed from when she took her flight to Australia but it was taken over of course by the Air Force. And I can remember, yes, I was doing a lot of homework. I was missing school so I was doing quite a lot of work at home under my father’s direction. But I can remember looking out of the window in the evening and seeing the Lancasters coming out of Mildenhall, flying around and it was clear they were flying around to get into formation before they were off and away. They came back during the night. I didn’t have any remembrance of them coming back. I only knew about the coming back when I spoke to this navigator who I worked with after the war. But he like most aircrew rarely spoke about it. I think he was, he’d undergone so many situations where he was scared stiff. He did, the things he did talk about were flying back over the North Sea on a wing and a prayer and that he on two occasions, he did twenty five missions, on two occasions he had to land in a field.
CB: Because the aircraft was damaged.
RS: Because it was so badly damaged. Yes.
CB: Now, we’re talking at this time of you being age thirteen.
RS: Yes.
CB: You said your aircraft recognition had been improving. Did you have aspirations to join the RAF and fly or —
RS: Oh yes. [laughs] Yes.
CB: What did you want to do?
RS: What do you mean?
CB: What did you want to do in the RAF?
RS: Well, fly.
CB: But fighters or bombers or what?
RS: I think fighters.
CB: Yeah.
RS: My last boss actually was a Spitfire pilot but he was only about four or five years older than me so he was right at the end of the war. I don’t think he had any combat experience.
CB: Right.
RS: But he did fly a Spitfire.
CB: Yes. You said after the V-1s abated then you returned to Welling. Then what?
RS: Then the V2s came.
CB: So we’re talking about the later part of ’44.
RS: Yes. I think they started in September didn’t they?
CB: Ok.
RS: I was back at, I kept changing schools. I went I went to six different schools. Three of them twice. And I think as an adult I came to realise that the war effect on my education was the, was the worst thing that happened to me. I didn’t take much notice at the time because I wasn’t alone. There were other children in similar positions and we just had to put up with it. But as I grew older I mean not all children in the country did have to put up. They weren’t all evacuees. I happened to go to school in —
[phone ringing]
RS: My secondary education took place in Kent and Sussex and before the war different counties had different policies on when you started school. You started [interview paused] I remember I started school in Kent and their policy was that you started school on your birthday in the year, in the calendar year that you were born in. So I’d been born in November. I went into a class where there was some people who had started in January and February. But when I went to East Sussex they operated a different policy. They, you started school in the academic year in which you were born and consequently I was always playing catch up. But then so were other people. It didn’t really bother me at the time but I think as an adult and especially as I spent the last part of my career teaching in Oxford I realised that this had had a bad effect.
CB: Lets go back to the V-1s. So the V-1s started September ’44. What was your impression of the V, sorry V-2s I meant to say. V-2s started in September ’44.
RS: Yes.
CB: They were the rockets so what was the reaction to that?
RS: I thought, I mean I did what my parents told me to do. I had the feeling they couldn’t bring themselves to go back to Isleham. We instead went back to Three Bridges in Sussex. And my father had finished his period of leave. I think he left for Nigeria before the rockets came. So it was my mother and I that went back to Three Bridges. My grandparents didn’t come so there was just the two of us and we were, really lived in digs. We made quite a lot of friends in the earlier period at Three Bridges and there was, didn’t seem to be any difficulty in having people who would put us up. But again I’m so sorry.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
RS: Alright.
CB: I think —
[recording paused]
RS: It was excitement rather than fear. I even heard a bomb falling [unclear] and there was only one thing to do. Get under the table or something but I remember when it was coming I convinced myself that you didn’t hear it if it hit you. I don’t think there’s anything in physics to support that. I was only about thirteen at the time.
CB: So what is the sound of a falling bomb.
RS: A whistle. I mean there are many shots of Stuka dive bombers diving and releasing a bomb, mines or whatever.
CB: Well, the Stuka has the siren but the bomb itself has a sound.
RS: I thought it did.
Other: It was a scream. A whistle scream in type wasn’t it?
RS: Yes. Oh yes. But anyway, I had time to think about it.
CB: Yes. Yes. Indeed.
RS: But indeed it makes a different noise.
CB: And when the bomb went off what was the effect of the bomb dropping?
RS: Well, it couldn’t, it wasn’t far away. They don’t just destroy the house that it hit. I don’t really know if they had a direct hit though. I mean these bombs weren’t direct hits.
[pause]
Other 2: I’m going to go because I’ve got to get ready for school.
RS: Right. Bye.
CB: Thank you very much.
RS: Bye.
CB: Bye. Yeah. So they destroyed to the house.
RS: I’m not sure that it did actually destroy it but it landed not terribly far away.
CB: Can you feel the explosion of the ground shaking or what happens?
RS: No.
CB: Just a matter of —
RS: I was never that close to where that would have happened. The most shattering things were the AA guns. I mean they were so close and they fired four or five together. It was really the only thing that came close to that we went to, when we took our grandsons to the cinema in Swindon for a Pokémon film and I think the noise of that Pokémon film [laughs] was the only thing that competed with the anti-aircraft guns.
CB: So the V-2s. Did you see the result of them coming down? The explosions? Or what did you see?
RS: I don’t think I did. I did see the damage of the V-1 and it did quite a lot of damage. I think it took three or four houses. Not just one. And as I said earlier V-2s didn’t really affect me as badly because it was a question if you heard the explosion it had missed. If you didn’t hear the explosion you may, you may be dead. I noticed it seemed to me that they fell in in a line. Now, if you lived on that line you must be very very worried. As far as I could tell we didn’t live on one of those lines. But I think you would expect that they were ballistic devices and I doubt whether any change was made to the aiming of them while they were firing them off so they all went off at the same angle and so it was depending how far, how much air resistance they met encountered as to what range was.
CB: The V-2s?
RS: Yes.
CB: Or the V-1s.
RS: No. The V-2s.
CB: Right.
RS: The V-2s were ballistic. The V-1s were jet propelled or, not jet propelled but —
CB: Yeah.
RS: Well, it was a ground jet was it?
CB: Fast jet.
RS: Yes.
CB: Fast jet, yes. Now what about friends of yours who were in the area at the time? What of their experiences with the V weapons?
RS: With the V weapons?
CB: So, the V-1 and V-2.
RS: Really I have to say that I was there when both weapons were first fired off but I didn’t stay very long. My parents whisked me off to Isleham within a day or two.
I was thinking of when the V-2s came. Then you were back.
RS: Yes. But again —
CB: Then down to Three Bridges.
RS: Yes. We went to Three Bridges. I welcomed this because I had a, Three Bridges for me was one of, was the best time of my schooldays. I liked everything about Three Bridges. People have said to me you came from Sussex. You said wherebouts.
CB: Yes.
RS: Whereabouts?
CB: Uckfield.
RS: Oh yeah.
CB: So we were evacuated to Yorkshire.
RS: Right. Oh yes. You said.
CB: So, in Three Bridges you completed your education. What did you end up with in qualifications? School qualifications.
RS: No, I didn’t finish.
CB: Oh.
RS: After the V, yes the V-2s didn’t go on for that long but I was in digs with my mother and we were staying with a newsagent to start with. And I learned something about delivering newspapers because whenever a postboy didn’t turn up his daughter and I went out and delivered them as a replacement. I was in the Boy Scouts in Three Bridges and that gave me opportunities. It’s right on the edge of forest and so all our [unclear] games were held in the forest.
CB: Yeah.
RS: Worth Forest and Tilgate and I enjoyed this vastly.
CB: Of course, the war finished when you were fifteen. Or fourteen and a half.
RS: Fourteen. Yes.
CB: Yes. So —
RS: But my mother decided that the war so nearly over by Christmas. Obviously, that’s not true in the sense of people involved especially the Russian front but as far as England was concerned the war was really over by Christmas of ’44. But she decided that it would be better for me to, I’d had many changes of school up to that date. It would be better if I finished the war in, I was at school in East Grinstead. I stayed on to go for the summer term and made my way back to Kent for the Michaelmas Term and I left school in 1949 when I was eighteen and I finished up with a Higher School Certificate. The forerunner of A levels. I think I was in the last cohort but one to take Higher School Certificate.
CB: Then what?
RS: Sorry?
CB: Then what did you do?
RS: I went to Woolwich Polytechnic
CB: Right.
RS: To read physics.
CB: So, when you left school had you decided what you were going to do in the future?
RS: No. That’s one of the things of my memories my father came home every other year for many years so he was home on the 1944, ‘46, ‘48, ‘50, ‘52 and every time he came home he asked me, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I never knew what I was going to do. And this was one of the effects of my interrupted schooling. I could go, I could never have taken an exam in history because I just didn’t do any history from the Romans to the Duke of Wellington’s political career. Absolutely nothing. So I couldn’t possibly have taken the exam. Chemistry wasn’t quite as bad but it was nearly as bad and the only reason I got anywhere in chemistry was because I took physics with chemistry and physics I was ok with. But I knew very little chemistry and I went to work for ICI. But I admitted [laughs] to them that I didn’t know any chemistry because I was frightened of the first answer. Or the first question. So I graduated in ’52.
CB: Yeah.
RS: Not very well. I got a lower second and I still think this was a consequence of what had gone on before.
CB: But to what extent did that have an effect on your career though? The fact that you got a lower second. I mean it hurt your pride but what did it do to your career?
RS: Well, not much. I got a job with GEC on airborne radar trying to shoot down Russian bombers. I don’t think my finger was anywhere near the trigger but I was on the design team of the aircraft radar. The idea was to lock on to a target, then let off a missile which also had radar. Not as, as good as the radar on the aircraft but good enough to do the last bit. But unfortunately, our aircraft didn’t fly high enough and you can’t attack a plane from underneath. So, the RAF abandoned that but the Fleet Air Arm didn’t so all our, once we’d written off the RAF version we switched to the Fleet Air Arm and then we were faced with a different set of problems. Certainly as far as maintenance was concerned. You can’t. You can’t —
CB: The sea air —
RS: Sorry?
CB: The sea air. The effect of the sea air was it?
RS: No. I don’t think so. It was the thing had to operate between minus forty and plus seventy.
CB: God.
RS: It was the plus seventy that was the most difficult and you had to assume that your aircraft carrier may be in the Tropics and so its surprising how much junk can grow on an electronic piece of equipment under tropical conditions of high humidity coupled with high temperature. This coupled with [pause] I’ve lost the word. Funghi.
CB: Oh yeah.
RS: Not funghi but that kind of stuff. I did that for four years and that, this is the reason I didn’t do National Service. But at the end of those four years I switched to, I applied for a job with ICI in Manchester with practically no back up in my chemical work but after ten years I described myself as a chemical physicist rather than just a physicist. I learned a good deal about organic chemistry. And it was my electronics. Yes, when you apply for a job you never exact reasons why they picture you but I quickly found that the boss that I was going to work for had fallen out with the electronic engineer [laughs] that I was replacing. I think it was purely temperamental. I can, the fact that the person was pretty well qualified I got on with him quite well and actually applied some of the work that he’d done. But the boss found he could manipulate me more easily than he could work with the other one. That was really the high point of my career. The first ten years with ICI. We were working on the edge of the subject and the boss although he had some, he was very curious person to work for. He was a near genius and by the time we’d finished he had been elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society and I’d been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics by which time it made no difference that my degree wasn’t very good.
CB: So, what were you actually working on in those ten years?
RS: Mass spectrometry if that means anything.
CB: It does. Yeah.
RS: Yeah. And organic analysis. We were the experts in the field in the 1960s. The 1960s was the decade of university expansion and every university started out by building a Chemistry Department and that Chemistry Department the first two things it had to have was a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer and a mass spectrometer and so everybody was beating a path to our doorstep. And of course, my boss had made a very significant advance in the technique and we published a book and about twenty papers in the literature.
CB: And your name was on it.
RS: Yes. And so was the navigator that I spoke of. There were three of us.
CB: So then what?
RS: With ICI.
CB: You carried on with ICI.
RS: Oh yes. Then I became an engineer didn’t I? Yes. I was promoted because I had electronic engineering experience. They put me into the engineering department. I was promoted to, it was good from that way but it wasn’t anything like as interesting as the earlier work and that was really trying to automate organic research laboratories. But really they only wanted to do quite easy things like control the temperatures of the PH of the reaction which had previously meant somebody, an assistant sitting at a bench twiddling a knob trying to hold the temperature constant. If the temperature goes up he reduces it and so on. I mean that’s a sheer waste of one person’s salary because it can be done automatically.
CB: Yeah.
RS: So it was things like that. Trying, yes and we weren’t very popular of course. We were doing people out of work.
CB: When did you meet Honor?
RS: Honor? At Teacher Training College in Bromley. Quite by chance. As I said I was at Woolwich Polytechnic and there were a number of women’s colleges around Southeast London. Hers being in Bromley was really too far away to contemplate going there then. I went to much nearer ones where I could within one bus ride. Bromley was two quite long bus rides but they advertised at Woolwich and other places their dances which were usually held once a fortnight so you could go to one college one week, a different college the next one and then back to the first or the third. But for some reason the only one that advertised one week was Honor’s college in Bromley and somebody that, when I went to one of these I’d usually go with somebody else and a friend said, ‘Let’s go to Bromley.’ And I thought Bromley is much to far away but at the last moment I decided I’d go. I met Honor and that was it.
CB: You never looked back.
RS: Hmmn?
CB: Never looked back.
RS: Well, if only for a detail the first dance that I danced with her was one of these dances where when the music stops you change partners. So I danced with Honor and I noticed that she backed away and didn’t dance again and I thought that’s very unsocial. I won’t ask her to dance again. But somehow I did dance with a girl, keeping track of her. I did dance with her again and I stayed with her the rest of the evening and the next week and the week after. And I did it because she just, it seemed to me she was the only intelligent girl that I met at these dances.
CB: Yeah. How many children have you got?
RS: Two.
CB: There’s Claire.
RS: Twin girls.
CB: Oh, they’re twins.
RS: Yes. One of them, the other one is called Mary.
CB: Right. Right. I can stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: What age did you retire then in the end?
RS: Well, you will be aware that ICI had commercial problems and doesn’t exist anymore.
CB: No.
RS: In fact, GEC doesn’t exist anymore.
CB: No.
RS: But the part that I worked for does still operate. Being a defence part of the world it’s now part of British Aerospace.
CB: Oh right.
RS: And the laboratories are still in Stanmore.
CB: Are they?
RS: Where I left them.
CB: Yeah.
RS: But yes, ICI split into two parts. A part called ICI and a part called Zeneca and my part of the company went to Zeneca. But I retired at the same, at that time. I didn’t retire. I was told that I was redundant. Or I was eligible for early retirement so I took early. It didn’t make much difference whether they made you redundant or you took early retirement but it sounds better I think to take early.
CB: To take retirement.
RS: And I, the terms were very good. I was on a fifteen month contract which helped considerably. And they offered to if you wanted to undertake retraining they would finance it. And this was an offer taken up by many people and some of the retraining was quite varied. I can remember one of my friends became a vicar. Another learned Mandarin because he thought the Chinese are coming and he was right. But I took a teacher’s training.
CB: Oh.
RS: Course. A Post Graduate Certificate of Education and I got a job in Nottingham at a Sixth Form College. I enjoyed that. But domestic problems were arising. My parents were getting pretty aged and then one week [pause] I was, we couldn’t sell our house easily in the Manchester area so we got, I was going to Nottingham for the week and coming back home to Rochdale. But one week I came home and found Honor had had a heart attack and was in hospital.
CB: Gosh.
RS: So that caused me to really think things and we decided to retire to Devon. We took my parents with us. We did that for about two years and I got jobs, I didn’t get a full time, I never got a full time job so I suppose from that point I was semi-retired. And it’s a complicated set up, domestic arrangements which caused us including the fact that Mary had got married and was living in [Manton] and Claire was living near Reading. We decided to come back so that we had backup with my parents. Came here.
CB: Brilliant.
RS: And I worked in Oxford at several of the tutorial colleges.
CB: Oh right. Well, Roy Saunders thank you very much for a very interesting conversation.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Roy Saunders
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASaundersR171003, PSaundersR-H1701
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:45:31 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Roy Saunders was a schoolboy in London when the war started. He witnessed the bombing of London and was amazed when he saw the smoke from the docks area when he emerged from a shelter. His school friend and family died in the bombing. Roy was evacuated to the countryside twice to stay with family. He also witnessed the V-1 and V-2 attacks on London. His education was interrupted because of the constant changes to his situation as he moved from one area to another. However, he went on to have an interesting career with ICI and GEC and was involved with the design of airborne radar.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
shelter
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1115/11605/PSchneiderT1702.2.jpg
253b1bb03df06456d9be85a27476c3c2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1115/11605/ASchneiderT170428.1.mp3
c9ea20470217553e23e0abf4cca50d9e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Schneider, Tim
Tony Schneider
T Schneider
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Tony Schneider (1931) his identity card and three photographs. He lived on the flightpath to RAF Westcott and witnessed a Lancaster crash.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim Schneider and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Schneider, T
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Wednesday the 28th of April 2017 and I’m in the village of Westcott with Tim Schneider, whose real name is Tony and he’s going to talk about his recollection of early days. So, Tim, what do you remember as your earliest days of life?
TS: My earliest days of life.
CB: What age were you?
TS: I can remember as a three, four year old, living in the house I was born in, in the Lodge Lane in Westcott, which was owned by Rothschild Estate, because that farm was with Waddesdon Estate, my father worked for Waddesdon Estates and he lived there as a rent-free employee. I remember my father being poorly paid with regards working, but he had a house rent-free so he had to dig an allotment outside the house to help [unclear] and he, to make ends meet, we had to live off the land so to speak and as soon as we was old enough we, as four, five years old, we was feeding the rabbits, to feed us sometimes the rabbit, we had rabbits as pets, my father also kept pigs which was a supplement to the household, I think once a year we killed one, and I can remember him going up there with his buckets to feed the pigs every day in the morning and as we got older, we had help come out but as my first four year old I can remember him taking his buckets up there. At five years old I went to school and walked almost a mile to the school up in the village and you started at five, you didn’t start at four years old, you started at five in those days, and you stayed at school until you were elven years old. You took your eleven plus, which [unclear] failed, and after you either failed your eleven plus or passed it, you moved on to Waddesdon School, as eleven-year-old. By that time you managed to scrame a bike or get a bike somewhere so you was out to peddle around the villages, as far as mum and dad would let you go in them days and I failed this eleven plus so I obviously went to Waddesdon School then, which was a secondary school, and you bored your mind a bit because you had some garden to do up there, they’d give you a garden plot and that brought you into your fathers regain that you’d gotta help with your family budget and help in the allotment, which you did, at fourteen years old, getting to go at the allotment to help feed the family, which not only that my family did but all the families in the village, was kept by allotments really. There was a greengrocer coming round, but he did very little trade whatsoever, it was a crime if any, the people in the village bought potatoes off them because they self-supporting the potatoes off their allotment. I was the youngest of a family of five so it had to be that we all had to muck in and do this gardening, which was probably forced up you when you might been kicking a football round but that had to come first, the garden come first and then you could go and have a game of football. At the age of fourteen I left school and the only, the only real reason for it was because mum and dad wanted you to contribute, you left school so you had to get a job, where you earned a few shillings, and the only employment round here apart from going to Aylesbury which mum and dad couldn’t afford to send me or I couldn’t afford to go, you took to the farming. And I worked on the farm, the field farm, I did that, I sat there working out. When I was fourteen, I left school, working for an uncle, who was a farmer and I did farm work right until I was about this, I was twenty-seven. I worked on a farm until I was twenty seven, and that time I had managed to go on a holiday and meet my wife and [unclear] this holiday when I was about twenty, eighteen, nineteen, we married when I was twenty-two. And [unclear] we went to a pub in holiday camp at Clacton I met my wife and only way of [unclear] married life to be able to support her, was down on the farm so if she came to Westcott with me and we set up home with my parents, we then moved to a little cottage down the road here and we just, I just worked on the farm, [unclear] just say I got security, which wasn’t a very profitable security at all, but it was a job that you could get, you could get your wife and then we had two children come along and I was happy to maintain our children and in 1969 the farmer who my uncle retired from the farm, so I had to change my occupation then, and I went down to the road then to just past the Westcott turn on the way to Kingswood there was a fertilizer depot down there, supplies for a loads of, to farms and I was [unclear] to go down there for eighteen years then, there again maintaining my children and brought them up and obviously as the years went on, they fled the nest so to speak. We moved from our little cottage, when we had the first children [unclear] which was a, went up one day with the [unclear] in the garden, after the first child was born, we was able to get the council estate across the road here, which was the only one [unclear] built in my lifetime in Westcott, because I worked on the farm, I was able to claim it, because I was a farm worker and I had it, and we lived there till our children fled the nest and we came across, the wife and I came across this old people’s bungalow some years ago, after the childrens fled, and but after, oh, after I’ve been down the fertilizer store for eighteen years, and I was just an ordinary stacker driver, I had got no trade so just a stacker driver truck and it brought a lot of heavy lifting and work and to make ends meet, I’ve always been a person that would do anything other than the job I was doing, I had many job during my life time, spare time. One was serving beer in the local pub and from that experience I was picked up the pub life which I enjoyed cause I was earning money and I was in a place where there was a bit enjoyment and I could increase my income of wage cause I was never a big earner at wages at all and I loved the pub trade and the one chance I took in my life was when the Westcott social club come up for a new club steward and I stood the one chance in my life and I took the Westcott social club on as a full time steward, going against my father’s advice a little bit which he’d always told me, never do anything that’s a risk, and I really didn’t do it till that time and I did take the Westcott club on and I worked there for, uhm, till five years ago. But I did resign when I was sixty-five from it after I had eight and a half years there and I must say that was the best job I ever had, thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it and I did do myself a little bit of by going heavy cause I worked long hours, very long hours, seventy hours a week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. When I was sixty-five, I had saved enough money to say, well, I think I can’t do seventy hours more, I’m gonna retire. And I did retire and then I went back normally cause things went a little bit downhill, and I went backwards and forwards a little bit, helping out but I finally retired five years ago. I lost my wife elven years ago with cancer and I lived here now so there was, the past eleven years on my own, here in this bungalow, in this flat on my own and survived and here I am as a retired man and still living in Westcott. I’ve got no, I’m not an enterprising man at all, you’re talking to a man who is eighty-six in about three weeks’ time who’s never owned a motor car, never had one. I think that sums me up [laughs]. Is that enough [laughs]?
CB: That’s really interesting, thank you. Now, the reason for talking to you is because we’re in Westcott at the side of what was RAF Westcott number 11 Operational Training Unit.
TS: Yes
CB: When the war started, you were eight, because you were born in 1931
TS: Yes,
CB: The airfield was built shortly afterwards, what do you remember about the beginning of the war? What was the first thing you remember about the war?
TS: I remember them forming a home guard, I think in Westcott. I remember the big diggers and navvies and who were I think [unclear] devises, were the main contractors, [unclear]
US:
TS: Sorry?
US: I got it down as Humfries
TS: Humfries, yes
US: [unclear]
TS: Yes, I think I’m wrong and you are right, yes, humfries. I remember all that coming in, the concrete being laid in the fields, much one or two of the farmers [unclear] being roughed up and concreted and I can remember the first aeroplanes coming in and going. I can remember the RAF, the fields, the billets where the aircraft, the airmen lived had to be away from the aeroplanes so they was dotted around in various locations away from the airfield in field, in billets, I got my rationing I was [unclear] in hindsight, I think there was tenth they called them, in numbers and the village was right past [unclear], we would [unclear], there was billets away from where the aircraft was on the site, remember that. I can also remember them building a WAAF site which was near the cricket field, I can remember that going on and I can remember it all taking place and lots of people, air, personnel of the air people around here, they just [unclear] by the village, hell of a lot and the aircraft started to fly and we assumed then that’s what it was, they was training aircrew, we was told that and obviously the blackout was here, everything was black tilled, and the house, the airfield I think had three runways if not four, three and one of them was coming in from, oh, east Sefton, Sefton North, East or something, it come by the house by the cricket pitch, which is where I lived, it come across that way, and went in and so [unclear]. And they’d come so close, that line was so close to our house that we could come our bedroom, plane come in, draw the curtains back and we could see the pilot by our bedroom window going in to land. It was that close when they come that line, that way because it depended on the way they landed, I believe, where the wind was. Sometimes they’d come in over the A41 and they’d come by [unclear], I can remember plainly seeing that pilot sitting in his cockpit [unclear] by my bedroom window [unclear]. And also the taking off, the same thing, when the wind ran the other way, take off you could see his pilot then, you could see the aeroplane landing cause it was only hedge high [unclear] or tree high, put it that way, coming in. The other things I can remember, which I don’t know whether you’re interested in that one or not, the air people around here obviously increased everything around here, and rationing was on, and even the pub in the village was rationed with beer but these airmen drunk the pub out in about three days and after they’d drunk the Westcott pub out, they rode their bicycles to God knows what, to Quainton, they’ve got five pubs and they drunk them out as well. So, a lot of the airmen in them days, went across to Quainton and obviously Quainton was a bigger village than Westcott, there was quite a lot of ladies around and then the airmen at Westcott called Quainton Hollywood, that was nicknamed Hollywood because of that. Is that making, is this interesting to you?
CB: Very good, very good. Keep going
TS: And that, that I can remember. I can also remember another thing, probably you’ve been told about the Lancaster going across the A41.
CB: What do you remember about that?
TS: Well, I remember they used to have various [unclear] going across there, and there was a Wellington bomber had gone across there and I’d been in the field and they hadn’t removed it but they were guarding it, this Wellington bomber, and then, soon after that, seven months after that, I don’t know how long it was, I can’t tell that, after that, I remained in the field on the A41 and across the A41 and they were guarding this plane over night before they removed it and seven nights went by, I think it was, and then, for some reason other there was a Lancaster bomber, due to arrive in Westcott with bombs on, why I don’t know, you probably do, I don’t and this, this was warned about, there was gonna be danger with this and this Lancaster bomber surely did land, went across the field near where this Wellington bomber was and the guard posting on duty at the time went along to the houses, along the A41 just away from the Westcott turn to tell the people they knew what was gonna happen to take their air raid shelters which we all had our Anderson air raid shelters because this was gonna be dangerous and he went to warn those people in those houses and coming back, that poor man caught the blast and he was killed. I’m sure you’ve heard of this. And you have to be [unclear] to [unclear] man and he was killed and there was a lot of damage done to the surrounding properties that night with these bombs going off. The aircrew was all killed, were New Zealanders and I think they will find someone up in the church yard now, there’s a New Zealand crew, they’re up in the church yard now I believe, you’ll find but this [unclear] gentleman was killed. There was an old lady in Westcott who every village had them and they still got them or of course gossip for the village know if you like to call it whoever it was, this old lady called Mrs Evans, wrote a letter to [unclear] to say she sorry, she wasn’t very of being killed one thing and another, at night the stained glass window in the church got blown out on that explosion and because of her writing out letter [unclear] it probably transpired from that perhaps, that stained glass window got replace by [unclear]. Her husband, Mrs [unclear] Evans husband, also they got one son called David, who is my age, every week before Christmas, almost sent a crate of cider to that man’s house every week, every, just before Christmas they received a crate of cider every week and died the son had it until he died as well from [unclear]. The house where the farmer lived, named Peter Cripps, there was a [unclear] called Victoria Cottage, that was a Victoria house I think called because it was his, Peter Cripps’s grandfather he lives there now, is his grandfather, Ernest Cripps, a lovely old gentleman, who we all respected, was smartly dressed like yourself is now, we always taught to respect people like that, and he was a respected man, Mr Crips, and he lived in a house with his wife and as I said, he got home guard round here, we also got ARP and I think it was their job to, if anything like this happened, to go and see if people were ok. This gentleman, Burt Saunders, tells a lovely story and that was a true story that he goes along to Victoria House halfway up where the farmers house is now to see if they were alright. The door would been blown off, open and he could hear murmur upstairs and he shouted up to, are you alright Ernest? To this gentleman, he couldn’t make nothing of it and he was worried, so he went up the stairs and this is a true story I’m telling you, he said, there was Ernest, crawling around the bottom of the bed, his poor old wife was laid in bed, with [unclear] past the ceiling, all round around the [unclear] bed, and he said, oh, he said, you’re alright but I can’t find my colour stand [laughs], he was looking for his colour stand [laughs]. He wasn’t got the ceiling round and he was worried about his colour stand [laughs] and that is true. Also, the house that took a fair bashing that night also was where on your bike is now, that was a wooden home built bungalow by Mr John Goss, he built his own bungalow up there and that was a wooden one and that was all damaged that [unclear]. The other, my other, going forward then is when the war finished, we had all the Germans prisoners, all the prisoners of war going back here and they came in Dakota aircraft and they’d done whatever all the various people, in fact my sister went across there in the hangars to manoeuvre repatriated back to, if you want a better word, delouse them and give them tea and coffee and everything else before they repatriate, and we used stand at the end of the road, waving to those boys in open back army lorries as they went to wherever they was going back home. The thing I suppose, [unclear] tell you some.
CB: You talked about the reception and local people helping out
TS: Yes
CB: So, what exactly did they do?
TS: First of all, they were there to, the WVS, so they were all voluntaries people, they, I think all their contact was, was to give them refreshments before they went but I think these boys was medically examined. The various things, I mean, people say the common word was their delousing, whether that was, I mean, that’s not a good description not I don’t know, yes, and I think and then, they made sure they was fit to go back to where home or wherever they took them, they distributed them from here to different places and then they went home, I think. Yes. That’s about
CB: So, after the war, the airfield was closed and then it changed to something else, what was that?
TS: Market research, yes, do you want me to carry on? Yes
CB: So, that brought in a different type of person.
TS: Certainly did, it certainly did, I mean, to add to that, if you like my sister married an aircraft man, he was stationed at the Westcott and she married one of the aircraft boys from Westcott, he came from High Wycombe, he was just, he fuelled the aircraft, that’s all he’d done, but after the war, yes, all this opened up and along came this massive industrial thing, rocket, making rockets as is so, am I right in saying that? I think I’m right in
CB: Rocket research
TS: Rocket research
CM: Yeah
TS: So, it brought lots and lots of people and it, it just went, well, went from the airfield [unclear] crazy almost, you know, you had troll fourteen busses coming in from Aylesbury, all various, all year round, to employ people, it employed a lot of people, and it opened up this rocket research [unclear] all these, concrete and things, they had big noises, we still get noises now but it was Chester rocket fuels and not lots of noises, there was a big important thing that was that made the village because it brought houses here, it doubled the size of the village, it’s not troubled, with houses and I’m right in saying that one in every, one in every three [unclear] was building houses in the time immediately after the war was commandeered by Westcott workers, you know? [unclear], I think he does. And so there was a lot of people coming from Aylesbury to work at Westcott. And they were Westcott workers and it developed the village immensely and we had the social club and everything not we were allowed into it but that would all come along at the time and it developed the village into something massive, yes, it did, it all caused, caused a bit of a storm, a stir because they brought American German scientists back here to work and that wasn’t very acceptable in them days to people in the village and there was one particular man who was called Doctor Basky, who was a German scientist, rocket scientist what they called him, and he helps at the neighbourhood by applying for a bungalows we built, the top end of the village [unclear] in Westcott, am I right on this? Have you heard this? You haven’t. There’s a bungalow built up there, he applied for a bungalow, but he hadn’t got access, and he got a go across Westcott Village Green, reckless he applied, to the Westcott village council if you like to call it in them days, to go across the Village Green where we’d played all our lives, and my dad had played his life a suppose, access, to this bungalow, there was uproar, a German in a bungalow in village green, yeah, have we not, not enough for this, [unclear] with the people, my father was one of them and there was a gentleman in the village called Mr Bricks, he was supposed to be a bit of a solicitor, come what, a lawyer or whatever you like, and he formed a [unclear] to stop this, they all paid thirty pounds and they went to London court and Mr Doctor Basky, because he was working for the government, he won the day on that, and he got his room, the bungalow was built. It went across Westcott Village Green and that bungalow is still there today and where Mr Clap lives, you know, that just sold me neighbours six hundred thousand pounds that bungalow and they still got the access through Westcott Village Green. The reason they won the day there was because they had, they came back with was, that it was common land, the Village Green [unclear] common land and the boss of the common land was the lord of the manor. Nobody could find the lord of the manor, whoever he was, but it turned out to be the priest. And he still is. Hence the bungalow went up. Against a lot of wishes. This caused a stir but [unclear] the rocket research, everything else, yes, it made this village, yeah, yeah, it’s still there, it’s still there, isn’t it?
CB: Just on that topic, are we talking about the church priest or the local chapel priest?
TS: The church priest.
CB: Right.
TS: Yeah.
CB: The Church of England man.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, what was the public reaction to his support for the German?
TS: Well, he didn’t have to say yes or no, they’d already decided, there is all the aftermath I’m talking about
CB: Right
TS: That was sold, there was no question that man wasn’t going to get our permission
CB: Right.
TS: No question
CB: He wasn’t involved
TS: No, no, no
CB: Going back to the war,
TS: Yes
CB: What was the, the two parts, one is the construction of the airfield
TS: Yes
CB: The next is its occupation by the RAF. In construction, where did the workers come from? Were some locals and others imported?
TS: [unclear] but they was, they was transported in from Aylesbury, they lived in hostels in Aylesbury, they wasn’t all local by any means and there’s too many to be local. They was in hostels in Aylesbury and they brought them in minibuses [unclear] I could see the coaches bringing them in, they just transported wherever they could lodge them and obviously there was [unclear] Aylesbury, a lot of them there
US: Did they build a camp to [unclear] them?
TS: Sorry?
US: Did they build any sheds for them at all?
TS: No, I didn’t think they did, did they? Can’t remember that.
CB: Were they, were they all British or were they other nationalities?
TS: There wasn’t [unclear] nationalities, a lot of them was Irish, yes, yes. Yes, lot of them was Irish. Yes.
CB: So, the airfield opened in 1941
TS: Yes
CB: And then the RAF people came, what effect did they have on the locality?
TS: They was welcomed, I mean, was happy to see them, I think everybody was pleased, yes, they was accepted without doubt, yeah, there was not, they was accepted as something, well, just Westcott, they’d never seen Westcott like it before, I mean, me father was, yes, they was all happy about that, all happy about that, yes, and they thought it was helping, it was helping, was it?
CB: And on the airfield, they would have had various social events, how much did they incorporate?
TS: [unclear] social events on that, no, no, they wouldn’t, they didn’t incorporate the village on that, no
CB: Right
TS: In fact this social club where I worked and had known so much about was the officer’s mess [unclear],
CB: Right
TS: That was the officer’s mess, yeah. [unclear]
CB: So, when they drank all the beer in the pubs, what was the local reaction to that?
TS: Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing nasty, no, nothing nasty at all, no, we, I would say, when they drank the beer it didn’t take long to drink it because it was only a small community and [unclear] joke but they did [unclear] what I got for a pint of [unclear], they’d drink it dry and we [unclear] next week and that was it, and when they finished, the pub didn’t open the next couple of three nights, so they, they got off to Quainton, yeah
CB: And in, locally in the pubs did, in the evenings, did you, you were still at school age, so you didn’t get out.
TS: No, my father, my father did, yeah.
CB: What about your brothers and sisters, what were they doing?
TS: My brother went to war, my sisters worked in, I don’t, the brother only a year older than me but I had two sisters older, they worked in, they lived in, with my mother, they worked in the factories in Aylesbury, they got a bus on the A41 to Aylesbury, yes, yes, they worked in various factories in Aylesbury.
CB: And your brother, older brother, what did he do, when he joined the forces?
TS: He was in the RAF. Yeah, yeah.
CB: What did he do?
TS: [unclear] say, say that, wasn’t [unclear] but he wasn’t
CB: Wasn’t round here
TS: No, no, he wasn’t round here, no. Where was he now? I think he went to Surrey, someway that somewhere, yeah. I honestly can’t tell, [unclear] that one
CB: So, your father was working on the farm, during the war
TS: Waddesdon estates
CB: Waddesdon estates
TS: The other bit about my father, now you’ve brought him up, the name being Schneider,
CB: Yeah
TS: I’m sure you wondered,
CB: I was just going to ask you, so thank you, go on
TS: My father was an American. He came to Waddesdon when he was three years old with his family from [unclear], German Jews they were, they came, Rothschild imported labour to build Waddesdon manor and he came with his father then as three years old worked at Waddesdon manor his father did and he was only three years old then when he came. It cost a lot of money to be naturalised and he never did it and when war broke out, my father was passed as an alien, he couldn’t vote, he was American, he was American till he died. He couldn’t vote and every month the policeman come for him to sign a paper to make sure he was still there, and he wasn’t spying or anything like that, he had to sign a paper every month. The policeman came to [unclear] him every month. My father signed that paper cause he was not naturalised, he [unclear].
CB: How did he feel about that?
TS: Beg your pardon?
CB: How did he feel about this approach?
TS: he didn’t worry, he didn’t worry, yeah, he didn’t mind, yeah. He couldn’t join the home guard, he couldn’t do anything.
CB: No. So, what was the reaction of the local population to him, with his name like that? Oh, Schneider?
TS: He, no, no, no reaction, whatsoever. No, no, he lived the village all his life. They knew him, was hard working people all those people in them days. No, he was accepted, he was not an outcast for any reason, [unclear], no, no, he just, he did things for the village [unclear] like I did.
CB: So, his father had come over
TS: He was [unclear], yes,
CB: Yeah. And with the Rothschilds, they of course looked after him anyway.
TS: Well, they’d give a house, that was [unclear] Rothschilds that was the little thing, you work for me and you can have a house for nothing. It’s all [unclear] in them days, what they call them nowadays
CB: Yeah, ok, and your mother was obviously busy looking after her children
TS: Yes
CB: But did she do an extra job as well?
TS: She, no [unclear]
CB: Right
TS: She didn’t do anything
CB: There was plenty to do anyway
TS: There wasn’t [unclear] and going back to, these, war, I mean, that school up there, they were inside overnight with evacuees from London, you know, when he was there and we just had to bring all chairs and tables in sitting where they wanted, we couldn’t have any of them because we were five in family, we haven’t got room. There was quite a lot of evacuees brought from London down to Westcott and that doubled the size of that school, you know, I’m talking about from twenty to forty overnight and those [unclear] very few children around here.
CB: So you, in your school you had these evacuees, how did you liaise with them?
TS: Very well, very well, very well. Yes.
CB: And they were used to being in a city and they were now in the country? What was their reaction to that?
TS: Well, for my recollection of that, the children was happy, their parents came to see them as often as they could, and the people who was looking after them was happy to accommodate them in somewhere other and I think it all worked out pretty well, it did, yeah.
CB: Did they stay throughout the war or did they return to London, some of them, after the Blitz?
TS: After the Blitz, they returned, yes
CB: All of them or just some of them?
TS: Some of them. Some of them still remained here and they made a life here, yes. Oh yeah, not many of them but they did, yeah. There was no mossy about that whatsoever, no, no whatsoever. No, as wartime it was accepted, wasn’t it? You know. Oh yes.
CB: Where would they be accommodated mainly? Would they be in the villages?
TS: In the village.
CB: In the village here.
TS: Yeah, if you got a spare bedroom
CB: Yeah
TS: You could have two.
CB: Right
TS: We hadn’t got any spare bedrooms there cause were’ five in the family so we couldn’t have any but
CB: And did the people who were putting them up get an allowance for looking after them?
TS: I can’t tell you that, sorry
CB: They would have had extra food ration of course but
TS: They got food ration, yes, I’m sure they would but I can’t tell you that. I don’t know what situation that was.
CB: Ok.
TS: Right.
CB: Now, at the school, which is on the edge of the airfield,
TS: Yes
CB: Everybody is conscious of the flying and the people there
TS: Yes
CB: How did the school handle explaining what was going on in the war?
TS: They just, I think they accepted it as something that’s got to happen and they just accepted that way. They welcomed it basically, say they welcomed it, they appreciated what was going on, but there was no objection whatsoever, none whatsoever.
CB: Did the RAF occasionally send somebody to talk to the schoolchildren, both the primary and secondary?
TS: No
CB: About what was going on?
TS: I can’t remember that, no, can’t remember that.
CB: And of course, secrecy was very important,
TS: Yeah
CB: But to what extent did people talk about what was going on at the airfield?
TS: Well, they said well, there’s night flying tonight and then daytime flying, training these aircrew, it was about all there was to talk about really. That was what it was for and that’s what people talked about. They said, oh, you know, I don’t know what number they had here a dozen of Wellington bombers, more?
CB: Oh, they had about twenty-six.
TS: Did they?
CB: Yeah, or more. Yeah, and the number of RAF personnel was two thousand two hundred.
TS: No, nobody, nobody ever complained about the thing at all in my [unclear], no
CB: You said, you said that your house was right beside one of the runways
TS [unclear], yeah
CB: So, uhm, the flight path, the planes going past were close. Did you get any sleep on those nights?
TS: Yes, because they, you know, I’m talking about when it getting dark at eight o’clock, probably finished at twelve o’clock. They didn’t go one night, no, they didn’t go one night, no.
CB: Except in the summer where they had to
TS: Well, yes, right, yes, yeah
CB: Fly later
TS: Yeah, you, we [unclear] of it, in fact we were happy [unclear] locally, quite honest
CB: Exciting for kids
TS: Well, it was, yeah, but my dad never complained, no. Everybody accepted it. No, everybody accepted it because this thing was got to be done and helping to win the war so to speak, I suppose in a way if you’re thinking about it.
US: There’s a question from me.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
TS: One thing, sorry
CB: Go on, go on.
TS: Well, another thing that I can remember too, looking at that window, was the night Coventry was built, bombed, they, some [unclear] rather thought that field there was Coventry
CB: This is November 1940
TS: Was it?
CB: Yeah, [unclear]
TS: They must have thought they got to Coventry one of those bombers, you could hear them going over, you could hear them [unclear] they called them, going across, within the flight path of Coventry put it that way. And all at once, that field was alight with incendiary bombs
CB: The airfield?
TS: No, the field
CB: Just the field, where you were
TS: Yes, yeah and we felt [unclear] cause that field [unclear] and we were looking out to the fireworks, lighting the [unclear] field up it did, it really did, no bombs to drop, we thought, we ran down and got [unclear] and everything but nothing, no bombs had dropped but there was a bit of a false alarm but they thought that won’t protect the bomber or whoever it was, thought it was at Coventry but it wasn’t. So, nothing was dropped
US: This is before the airfield was built.
TS: No, during the war. 1940.
CB: 1940
TS: Yeah
CB: They were building it then, weren’t they?
TS: Yeah, building it, yes, right.
CB: Yeah
TS: That, that was that, that was a lovely sight, I can assure you, me and my brother were looking at it incendiary bombs. When we went next morning there was like a big wood, metal stick, like a firework had gone off, you find a firework, bit of wood but that was metal, these things were metal, those bombs they seemed to us, and we picked them up, two or three of them.
CB: And these were, were these landmines that they’d sent?
TS: They were incendiary bombs
CB: Oh, they were incendiaries, right.
TS: [unclear] told they were incendiary bombs
CB: Yeah, the spike
TS: The, [laughs] the blame that for that went on a guy who made a living during the war, who worked on the farm [unclear] catching rabbits and he had a rabbit round on a Friday night, he came with carrying a bicycle [unclear] rabbits on a Friday night cause for rationing and we’d eat rabbits and he was making the money rabbits and he got the blame for that for flashing a [unclear] catching these [unclear] rabbits, he got the blame for that, whether it was true or not, I don’t know [laughs]. He used to do it, he used to flash his light [unclear]
US: Speaking of lights, referring back to your senior aircraft landing out your bedroom window?
TS: Yes
US: Were there any runway nights
TS: There was
US: Yeah? By your place?
TS: Yes, [unclear] across the field
US: Interesting [unclear]
TS: Sorry?
US: The [unclear] lighting system
TS: Yeah, there was poles
CB: Poles
TS: A lot of poles
US: Yeah?
TS: Every so many yards, back across those fields, towards Quainton, yes, there was, yeah
US: Was it in all the runways or just [unclear]
TS: That one, yes, yeah, cause that was on our field, one thing or two, there might be some, [unclear] I’m not sure about that
US: [unclear]
TS: Yeah. There were lights, yes, there was lights and lights, yeah.
US: And the other question I have on related, there was a dummy airfield down the road at
CB: Grendon Underwood,
US: Grendon Underwood
CB: By the A41
TS: Yes, I know what you mean [unclear]
US: Do you anything about that?
TS: No, I don’t. No. Wasn’t Oakley, brother and sisters at Westcott.
CB: Oakley was
TS: Oakley, Yes, yes
US: [unclear] Westcott
CB: This other airfield is a dummy airfield just beyond Kingswood, down on the A41.
TS: No, I’ve got no recollection of that. I’ve got visions of here and about it but no, I can’t [unclear]
CB: Did you, as youngsters you would walk a bit but you could a bike you could cycle around. Did you cycle around much as a youngster during the war?
TS: Yes, yes
CB: And where would you go?
TS: Kingswood, Kingswood. Yeah. Kingswood or Waddesdon. Yes, yeah.
CB: Just for something to do.
TS: Just something to do, yes. And then you got this thing on your portable lamp if you were out at night that shone down on the ground so [unclear] wouldn’t go up in the air. But not much, I mean, yeah, there was a bit security form my parents on that they wouldn’t, well, we did have air raids so [unclear] just said, we all had Anderson air raid shelter and if you, if the air raid siren went, you didn’t always go in it, I was there [unclear] if you wanted it, it was in our back house.
CB: Describe the Anderson shelter that you had in your garden.
US: [unclear]
CB: Four feet high.
TS: Four feet, it was [unclear] like that, very solid [unclear] and the net [unclear] it and a solid piece of metal on the top
CB: Right
TS: Yeah
CB: Then, what was on top of the metal?
TS: Nothing.
CB: Oh.
TS: So, the [unclear] was that, square, get six in it, laid on it, and the object, the story of that was we got a direct hit of a bomb [unclear] top of that table, you’d be safe under it
CB: So, where was this cited?
TS: In here
CB: In the house
TS: Oh yeah.
CB: Right. So, this was the inside Anderson shelter.
TS: That’s right.
CB: What about outside the house, what sort of arrangements were there?
TS: There was people dug, dug things in their garden, we didn’t but it was
CB: And what sort of shelters did they make?
TS: They made them with wood or concrete.
CB: On a dome shape.
TS: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
CB: And covered with what?
TS: Earth.
CB: And what, what did they have inside them?
TS: Oh, nothing, [unclear]
CB: Just a bench
TS: Yeah, yeah.
CB: Ok. How many people could get into those?
TS: They dug as many as [unclear] family, if it was five or if it was four, six, [unclear] family, a big family [unclear]
CB: And who paid for those?
TS: The people dug themselves, oh yeah.
CB: Was it with material that was supplied, or did they have to buy?
TS: They had to buy it, oh yeah
CB: Right.
TS: That’s what everybody [unclear], they gave you these air raid, these Anderson things
CB: In the house?
TS: Yes
CB: Yes
TS: Yeah. I think situation if there was children which we was
CB: Right. You talked about rationing but you, your diet was supplemented by what you grew
TS: Yeah
CB: And what you could catch
TS: Yeah
CB: Did you also get deer?
TS: No. No. No rabbit sort of thing, no
CB: Hares?
TS: No. Not very often anyway.
CB: What about pigeons and things like that?
TS: No, what, no, we didn’t.
CB: But you kept chicken I presume.
TS: Oh yeah, chicken, [unclear] pig, [unclear].
CB: So, how would you describe the family’s diet?
TS: Old-fashioned but good, eggs and bacon and meat, when Dad killed the pig hung up on the wall [unclear] load of bacon and you had two of them off the pig, you got two hams as well and every now and again Dad would get the cow and get it off the wall [unclear] cut a piece off and that would [unclear] bacon, we had that.
CB: And when a slaughter, when an animal was slaughtered, there was a lot of meat and you’d wanted to spin out, so how did you preserve or how did he preserve the carcass?
TS: You salted it, so pork became bacon.
CB: So, how was it salted? Was there a big trough or how did?
TS: Yes, you had a lead, lead thing like that, [unclear] they were done in leads, pure leads, you could done it yourself, you [unclear] the salt on it, yeah and that was for about six weeks. Then it came out of the salt and you hung it up and [unclear] three quarters of a year sometimes, yeah
CB: Because of the salt in it
TS: Yeah, I kept
CB: So, where did you keep?
TS: Bacon
CB: Yeah, where did you keep it in the house?
TS: Hung up on the wall. Yeah. There would be one hung up there on a hook and that was it.
CB: So it,
TS: It was salted
CB: It lasted a long time
TS: It did, yes, it did.
CB: Was there a larder in the house?
TS: Yeah, sometimes it was outside, yeah, there was a larder in our house. We was lucky with the house down there [unclear] the damage to the when my Dad, if you go down and look at the house now, that was made [unclear] brickwork, [unclear] loads of work if you look [unclear] anywhere
CB: Yeah
TS: Solidly built, my father said no [unclear], I won’t this bloody [unclear], me swearing but that was his words, and this bloody Einstein [unclear], you [unclear] going out [unclear] I’m not [unclear] and he was right against others that just as [unclear] brickwork, yeah, yeah.
CB: Just pause again. So, if we move now Tim, to post-war,
TS: Yes
CB: The rocket research establishment was set up here in 1946
TS: Yes
CB: And these people you talked about who came in were scientists. Who were they and what was the local reaction to them?
TS: Well, as I said, the local reaction to them was not very good. We fought the war, they come here and they give them [unclear] jobs, it wasn’t a very good reaction at all, so no, it wasn’t. Hence the man getting in trouble building his bungalow.
CB: Yeah
TS: It wasn’t a very good reaction and at the same time they said it was needed and, I mean, he was an exception, that man having his bungalow cause the rest of them made do with the old ex-Picket huts, buildings what the RAF had lived in, they lived in, they were squatters in not very good conditions, four or five of them, they was, probably eight, if I say eight I might be overdoing I think.
CB: These were men on their own, they didn’t have families with them?
TS: Oh, they’d got wives.
CB: Oh, they did?
TS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they squatted where, they [unclear], they [unclear], they wanted to be here but they wanted a job, I suppose, but, I mean, they lived in not very good conditions at all, this man made his money and he built this bungalow. Oh yeah, one of the family called Jessons, I mean, they had family here and they went to school with my children.
CB: Oh, did they?
TS: Oh yeah. Oh yes, oh yeah, yes. They were accepted in the long run.
CB: So, gradually they were accepted, were they?
TS: Oh yes, yes, yes,
CB: But immediately after the war, what was the public reaction? How did they express themselves?
TS: Well, they didn’t mind, the first reaction to getting these German scientists was, oh, they bloody German scientists here, they we fought against the war [unclear] and all that but they did get used to them but the bigger majority of the people in Westcott welcomed that place because [unclear] all at once everybody got a damn good job, everybody worked at Westcott. In fact they called it Holiday Camp, that was known as Holiday Camp that was, when Westcott, I mean, everybody went there to work, they wanted workers and everybody went there to work and it was easy work, and you know, I mean, if I think of these scientists wanted a piece of metal carried or some carried, there was an old [unclear] in the village, he got a damn good job carrying it to them and he’d never had a job in his life like that, before he worked round the farm or round about to Aylesbury, people used to [unclear] to Aylesbury, they used to work and now at once we got Westcott here, oh my God that was, you know, there was, you know, money was no object it seems and they got a better job with a pay and they, a lot of people accepted that and that wasn’t only at Westcott [unclear] I mean. My brother in law, who I said was an RAF man, he immediately got a job there, he was an MT driver on the site and he was going to Buckingham, when he was at Buckingham with a bus in the morning and picking up all the villagers on the way back from Buckingham, coming back with a busload of workers. Westcott was, well, wonderful to people that was, Westcott. It was well thought of. I didn’t work there because I wouldn’t take chances, I was [unclear] workwise but there’s a lot of people and not only that, they had the benefits of, I had an uncle, my mother’s uncle worked out there, he [unclear] course [unclear] say he was living in benefits, he was sort of man he was in them days put it that way and when Westcott came along, he got a job as a laborer [unclear] just in his element, not only that, when they had a sick pay scheme, they had a sick pay scheme and for thirteen weeks he’d go to the doctor and get a [unclear] in them days which he’s still doing now [unclear] if you go to the doctor and get a certificate, you sign out cause he’s not allowed to be [unclear] that was and he go and get a certificate and for thirteen weeks he should have a full pay, he was working for the government, he’d never had that [unclear] life and a lot of people round here, by God they made [unclear] out of that, and after thirteen weeks he went down on half pay so he turned his [unclear] you know, he did have some, [unclear] I tell you he did and there’s a lot more who did as well, not only him, and it was so easy for him, it was [unclear] paradise to Westcott when that opened up that place in Westcott. Oh God yes, there’s people round here now, went there half time, living on lovely, healthy pensions, believe me [laughs]
CB: Meanwhile,
TS: [unclear], you’re not saying anything [laughs]. No, no, it’s true what I was saying, I mean, it was paradise for Westcott when that rocket place started, yes. And the surrounding villages, I mean, people. So, as I say, it was queued, I’m not joking, from the A41 to where the pub was in Westcott, there was a queue of traffic, with busses to get out of Westcott to go home. I’m sure you’ve got photographs of that perhaps, yeah. You know, there’s a lot of people working in Westcott, I don’t know many, probably [unclear], but a lot of people,
US: [unclear] very few people worked at Westcott
TS: Sorry?
US: According to you, very few people worked at Westcott, there’s a Holiday Camp?
TS: That’s what they called it [laughs], that was known as [unclear] camp, down at Westcott, Holiday Camp.
US: [unclear]
TS: [unclear] Holiday Camp, yeah.
CB: Meanwhile you are working for the fertilizer depot. How did you enjoy that job?
TS: I enjoyed it cause I was, I enjoyed all my work because I provided for my family. I had a boy and a girl, I had a family to lead, I was a family man, and I wouldn’t take big chances [unclear], I never had a car, [unclear] luxury if I wanted one, and I couldn’t afford it and I wouldn’t have it and that’s been my life [unclear] and so against other people having the Holiday Camp or whatever you like to call it, I’d never interfered me, it was just, I was always a very cautious man as regards my family. And that’s how I live my life. And I was able to save a bit of money although I worked [unclear] hard and whatever say that, anybody [unclear] talk to you will tell you that. But I was able to save a bit of money and I, I don’t got no secrets, I [unclear] this house and I have four hundred and twenty five pound a week and [unclear] for my investments and my pension which I paid in for and I think I care [unclear] and that’s how I ended up and I’m happy, I’m not boasting when I say that, I’m pleased I’ve done it. But I was never ambitious, no. Westcott working, it didn’t appeal to me, no, because I was trying to [unclear] but I mean, yeah, I’m saying, these people, got good jobs there, they didn’t, they weren’t all scientists, they were only laborers but they’d got a damn good job if you needed one, you know. I mean, I can tell you the story of a man who used to live in Ashingham, you remember what we were talking about, it was there again, you get back to the benefits people today, he was one of them in them days, you see, pack out [unclear], doing the job [unclear], packing up, packing up, he got a job at Westcott, best thing he’d ever done, and he was just an ordinary laborer digging the waterworks, pipes and if there was any digging, trenchwise digging, [unclear] his name was, he would be the man to dig the hole, ok, he was the digger, well, he was nothing but [unclear] and they knew it and they would try to get rid of this man and this is a true story again and the foreman knew he [unclear] and the only way you’d get a sack at Westcott if you refused to do anything, they could dismiss you for that, but they set a trap for this guy, and he said, ok, [unclear] was the foreman, he said, ok, we’ve got no digging today, [unclear] he said, we want, can you paint? We’ve got to do some painting, they wanted him to say, no, I’m bloody ain’t gonna do it, but he didn’t, he went the opposite way, he said, [unclear], he said, he said, of course I can paint, anybody can, [unclear] can paint, [laughs] he [unclear] was [laughs], he’s [unclear] gonna sack me, he don’t know [unclear] him, [laughs] he wasn’t gonna say no, to get [unclear] that was [unclear] trying to explain really and nobody, they put a lot of people, they put a lot of people. Yeah, my sister worked there at the laboratories, although she was inspecting this, inspecting that, scientist, he wanted this, he wanted that, she ran that, [unclear]. Not done wrong with that rocket research, there was never wrong, [unclear], can’t see nothing wrong with it, but it did put in a lot of people, I suppose, I suppose it done its job as well [unclear] he ain’t [unclear]
CB: There is still research going on there.
TS: Yeah
CB: I’ll stop the tape now. Thank you very much indeed Tim. Fascinating.
TS: My pleasure. [unclear] three laborers. So, they were doing his work, so to speak and if he wanted another one, they employed somebody. So, he did get a job at Westcott as a laborer, if you hadn’t got anything up here, you could get a job.
US: But it was, it’s true because alter the war, you couldn’t get anything so the only way they could do any work was to make it themselves.
TS: Yeah.
US: So, they had to have a full range of people there,
TS: Yeah
US: To do everything,
TS: Yeah
US: [unclear]
TS: Yeah
US: So, that’s why you got any [unclear] skills there.
TS: Yeah
US: And
TS: Yeah
CB: The companies were the same
US: Yeah
CB: In, they, what they’re now called vertically integrated.
TS: We, after you know, I mean, I first took [unclear], that was still very much subsidized by Westcott and there was open [unclear] just store [unclear] and night, I used to cringe cause he come in, what have you done this morning? I ain’t done nothing, you know, [unclear], you remember him? [unclear] he was, typical one he was, I’ve done nothing this morning, you know, used to cringe,
US: [unclear] comes down to our meetings
TS: I know
US: [unclear]
TS: I liked him, I liked him, [unclear] yeah [unclear], I liked him, but it was easy job [unclear], you know, I’m not saying there’s no, was it wrong? I don’t know, they seemed to, get [unclear], you know, yes. Yeah, well, I mean, [unclear], say where you’ve been, you lied, you know, you got to, you had to find some, and I said dinnertime, this isn’t or I got tied up with the Morgan, he was the union man, Mr Morgan, he was the union man and everybody, he got tied up with him, you could get away from him, this [unclear], where you’ve been? I got, Morgan stopped me, Morgan, [unclear] for? He said, I did and he said, in a minute [laughs]. Yeah, that was the sort of thing that we’re on.
CB: It was the system.
TS: It was, yeah [laughs].
US: [unclear]
CB: This interview, this interview with Tim Schneider was part of the “We were there too” series of people who were in the war but not in the forces and in this case next to the airfield.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Tim Schneider
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASchneiderT170428, PSchneiderT1702
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:08:15 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
Description
An account of the resource
Tim Schneider lived at Westcott before, during and after the construction and occupation of RAF Westcott as 11 Operational Training Unit. He tells of feeding the rabbits when he was four years old; leaving school at fourteen to help working on the farm because, in a family of five, everyone had to help out; at the age of twenty seven, left the farm and went to work in a pub. Remembers when the airfield was built in 1941. The airplanes were landing so close to his house that when he drew back the curtains, he could see the pilot in the cockpit. Tells of food rationing and how they supplemented by raising and eating their own farm animals; incendiary bombs being dropped in a field the same day Coventry was bombed; beer rationing in the pubs and the aircrews drinking all of it; children being evacuated from London to Westcott and accommodated in a local school; Anderson air raid shelters in people’s gardens; a Lancaster crash. After the war Westcott became the sight of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment where both German and British scientists were employed. Remembers how the local people initially didn’t at all like the German scientists working there and tells of one of these scientists wanting to build a bungalow at Westcott and the legal dispute around it. Emphasises how the Rocket Propulsion Establishment boosted Westcott’s economy, creating lots of jobs for people from the local area.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
11 OTU
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
evacuation
home front
Operational Training Unit
RAF Westcott
shelter
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1180/11751/AWadmoreGVE171227.1.mp3
c0f1dd2ce3b3c721be669c6e7d1ffbc1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wadmore, Gwendolen
Gwendolen Violet Erica Wadmore
G V E Wadmore
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Gwedolen Wadmore (b.1922) documents, decorations and a photograph. She experienced the London Blitz.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Gwendolen Wadmore and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wadmore, GVE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 27th of December 2017 and we're in Norbury, London talking with Gwen Wadmore who actually lives in Gloucestershire and is staying with her daughter Carol Garrett and son-in-law Roger in London.
RG: Partner.
CG: Partner.
RG: Partner.
CB: So, Gwen, I’ll fix it later. Gwen, what are your, what do you remember first about your life?
GW: Being in the Girl's Life Brigade. I was about twelve. No. Eleven then.
CB: And what were you doing?
GW: The school.
CB: Yeah. In school. And when you were in the Brigade what did you do?
GW: I was the little one at the front. I was the mascot.
CB: The mascot.
GW: Yeah.
CB: Right.
GW: We used to walk down the street with the band behind me. I used to hold the flag.
CB: And where was that?
GW: In Battersea.
CB: Right. And what were the occasions when you would do that?
GW: Anything. On Sunday mostly. We just used to walk around the streets on parade. I can’t really —
CB: Was that all the people at school? With all your friends at school was it?
GW: Yes. They were all little ones. Please help me.
CB: And what did your parents do?
GW: My mum was an ordinary mum. And my dad [pause] I think he was in the catering business.
CB: Right. And what had he done in the First World War?
GW: He was a sergeant. He ended up being the sergeant.
CB: Right. And what decorations did he win in the First World War?
GW: I know he had a military medal twice.
CB: Yeah.
GW: I can’t read it, Carol.
CB: Yes. We've got a picture here. A board here with a picture of him and with his four medals. And, and the medals are the Military Medal and Bar, the ‘14/18, ‘14/15 Star, ‘14/18 Star that is. The General Service Medal and the Victory Medal. And then we have that he worked in the Fire Service later. So, what was that?
GW: In the Second World War.
CB: In the Second World War. Right.
GW: He was a fireman and he used to put the bombs out.
CB: And we’ll just stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
GW: He’s still like a soldier. He made — over his shoulder.
CB: Yeah.
GW: That's where he got the dum dum bullet. In his head and his arm.
CB: Where he was wounded?
GW: Yeah.
CB: Yes. And what type of bullet was it that hit him?
GW: A dum dum bullet.
CB: Right.
GW: I’ve never heard of it before but when he came, when I was old enough to understand he used to tell me about this.
CB: When did he tell you?
GW: When I was sitting on his lap when I was about five. Six. I mean, I wasn't born during the First World War.
CB: When were you born?
GW: When was I born?
CB: Yes.
GW: 1922. When the war was over.
CB: Yes. Yeah. And how —
GW: I had two. A brother and a sister. But they were born during the war or so.
CB: Right. So what age, so now you were born in 1922. Then you went to school in Battersea. Did you?
GW: Yeah. Lambeth.
CB: Lambeth.
GW: Latchmere Road.
CB: Latchmere Road. Right.
GW: And I left when I was fourteen.
CB: And what did you do when you left school?
GW: Into work. My mum got me a job as a tailoress in the West End. I learned. I learned how to in Conduit Street.
CB: So, was it in Conduit Street? Was it in a shop or was it above a shop or what was it?
GW: Above. Above. The shop used to be, used to cater for horse riding.
CB: Oh.
GW: And I used to, with the help of my governor I learned how to sew button holes and re-stitch the riding gear that the well to do people used to wear. And I left there after about two years. I made handbags with the gas masks. You know they used to have gas masks in the bottom of the handbag.
CB: What were the handbags made of?
GW: Oh, calf. You know, they weren't cheap things.
CB: So, was this before the war started or during the war?
GW: During the war because I used to come in to work tired where I used to sit. During the air raids we didn't go to sleep. We used to get on. I used to have to go up the West End to Hyde Park. We used to get on anywhere we'd like. We could. I used to go to work sometimes in a lorry. Sometimes I used to come out of my house in Clapham Road and they used to be bringing out the bodies in bits of carpet. Where the bombs had hit the building in Clapham Road. And then I used to sleep down Clapham North Tube Station [ pause] I know I spent my wedding night underneath my sister-in-law's bed.
[pause]
CB: When was that?
GW: Pardon?
CB: When was that? When were you married?
GW: Just before [pause] No. I was married two years before Carol was born. What time was that? I can't see. This is a terrible. I should have —
CB: That's all right.
[recording paused]
CG: Two years before me. I was born in ’43.
GW: What was it?
CG: Well, if it was two years before I was born.
GW: Yeah.
CG: It would have been in 1941.
GW: Right.
CG: Is that right?
CB: Yeah.
CG: Yeah. I was born in ’43.
RG: Yeah.
CG: Yeah.
GW: Sorry. I can't remember all of the —
CB: It’s alright. We’ll stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, from what I gather you, you were, you had to shelter from a bombing raid. Is that what happened? In the —
GW: We got married in a Registrar Office.
CB: Yeah. Where was that?
GW: In Clapham.
CB: Right.
GW: No. Brixton Road.
CB: Right.
GW: There was an air raid on at the time.
CB: Oh. During the wedding?
GW: Yeah.
CB: Gosh.
GW: It was fun. I wasn't frightened of, during the air raids because I got used to them, you know.
CG: You're doing good mummy.
GW: What?
CB: That's good.
CG: You're doing good.
GW: No. I can't remember the dates.
CB: So it was a bit uncomfortable under your sister-in-law's bed.
GW: Well, it wasn't very happy because I remember there was a bit of dirt underneath the bed.
CB: Came off in your hair did it?
GW: Pardon?
CB: Came off in your hair.
GW: Well, it wasn't very nice. Anyway, I was glad to have the bed to get underneath.
CB: Yeah.
GW: Because the bombs were dropping.
CB: What did your husband feel about it?
GW: Well, do I have to answer that?
CB: [laughs] No. But he wasn't out on fire drill was he?
GW: No. He was a musician at the time and we used to go where we couldn't hear the bombs coming down because the band was playing.
CB: Oh right [pause] So he was a professional musician at that time, was he?
GW: Eventually he was.
CB: Yes. What was his job when he was doing this? When you were married.
GW: He used to work in the munitions.
CB: Oh. In a munitions factory. Where was that?
GW: What? Where he used to work.
CB: Yes.
GW: Kings Avenue.
CB: Right.
GW: A big block of flats. Very posh. And they dropped a bomb opposite and it's now a Blind School or a school of some description. I remember my mum got bombed in Kings Avenue. My brother got covered in glass and the house opposite in Kings Avenue got a direct hit and we got the blast from it. Carol was only a baby then. She was in a big bassinet. I remember running up from my, I used to live, when I was married I used to live in the flat above. Right up to the top and I remember [pause] Have a drink for me.
CG: Do you want a drink mummy?
CB: We’ll stop there for a —
GW: No. I’m only joking, Carol.
CG: Do you want one? Have a little sip. Go on [pause] You lived in Rowena Crescent, didn't you? Yeah. Your first wages was fourteen shillings a week and your mum had all of it. Give you two and six. All right?
GW: I remember running out from Clapham North Tube Station when I heard the bombs had hit King's Avenue. And I remember treading over the firemen’s — they were putting the water in and hosing my Mum’s house all down. And they wouldn't let me go up and see her. If she was alright. Anyway, she was alright. She made the firemen a cup of tea. And I was, I don’t know.
CB: So, the bomb had hit their building opposite.
GW: Pardon?
CB: What did the blast do to your mother's house?
GW: It blew all the houses. All of the windows out and the roof come down.
CB: Oh, did it?
GW: She still made a cup of tea.
CB: Amazing.
GW: And the firemen, eventually they let me go past and see her. She was all right. My dad wasn't there. He was fire watching somewhere.
CB: What time of day was this?
GW: This was the morning. When I eventually seen my mother it was about 11, 12 o'clock and my dad was fire watching somewhere. He never used to talk about it a lot. And then Carol grew up a little bit and I moved to opposite the Common.
CG: Tooting Bec Common.
GW: What was the road?
CG: Emmanuel Road.
GW: Emmanuel Road. That was when we really had the bombs because they used to try and hit the railways. Well, my house was right opposite the railways. And I remember opposite my house there was a big RAF balloon manned by girls. WAAF girls. And we, sometimes we used to go down the air raid shelter that was built on the Common. Right, more or less right opposite the, the house. But it was horrible. Really horrible. And they used to have about twelve bunks. We used to stay down there but it was horrible.
CB: What was horrible about it?
GW: Well, it was dark and the bunks were horrible. And the people. I didn't like it a bit and I never used to sleep down there afterwards. About three or four times and that was it. And then they built an air raid shelter in the garden. One of these.
CB: An Anderson. Anderson shelter.
GW: Like an Anderson. And there used to be about ten of us in there. And I remember one fella. He had terrible sweaty feet. He used to stink. Oh, and then one night an air raid the bomb come down and my mum said, ‘That's our house.’ but in the morning we couldn't get out. Then we saw it was only the windows that had gone, come in. The house was still there which was a good thing. What do you want me to—
CB: What did it do to the roof?
GW: Pardon?
CB: What did it do to the roof. The bomb.
GW: What did it do to the roof?
CB: It blew in the windows. What happened to the roof?
GW: I don't know. Just we used to, we run around and see what damage was done. It was the windows and there was a hole in the roof. It was the blast. It wasn't the actual bomb. The actual bomb was just down the road. And they had a big landmine and it was alongside the railway track, you know. Bedford Road. Do you know the Bedford Road?
CG: Sorry?
CB: So when the landmine went up —
GW: Yeah.
CB: That caused a huge blast.
GW: That was terrible. They were big. I think I was at work then. I was at work.
CB: What hours did you work?
GW: Fourteen.
CG: That was your age.
CB: What, what time did you start and what time did you finish work?
GW: When we got there.
CB: Yeah.
GW: Some people didn't get there.
CB: Right.
GW: You know. And I can remember staying up all night and falling asleep when I got to work. I had my head down on my table. And I slept for about four or five hours.
CB: How would you normally get from the Clapham area to work? Did you take the Underground or did you take buses or what?
GW: The Underground. And we used to have to step on over the people that had been there all night. And they used to be about two or three feet from the railway line. They used to sleep where they could.
CB: Because they were using the platform area as an air aid shelter, weren't they?
GW: Pardon?
CB: They were using the platform as an air aid shelter.
GW: Yes. Loads of people. You used to get down there early and get a place. Please ask me some more questions.
CB: So at, when you when the you took the Underground where did that go to? Did it go to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square or did it go to —
GW: Victoria.
CB: Right. So, from Victoria how did you get to Conduit Street?
GW: We used to walk.
CB: Oh, did you?
GW: From Victoria. Opposite the Palace. Right up through Green Park.
CB: Through Green Park. Yes.
GW: Station.
CB: Yes.
GW: Green Park. I used to walk all the way.
CB: How long did that take? From Victoria to walk to Conduit Street?
GW: Sometimes I used to run because I was a bit late. I don't know. Half an hour.
CB: And was it easy to walk or was there a lot of rubble?
GW: No. It never used to have, there wasn't any bombs up there. I don't know why. I think I had them all in my house.
CB: Yes. Because of the railway lines. You talked about the barrage balloon. How many barrage balloons were there in Clapham Common?
GW: One big one opposite the house. And then as soon as there was an air raid coming they used to let them up. So we used to know that there was an air raid coming because we used to see the [pause] used to see the barrage balloons go up. And that was right underneath. More or less underneath the railway because they used to try and bomb all the railways.
CB: So they put the balloon close to the railway.
GW: Yeah.
CB: So, how did they raise and lower the balloon? What equipment did they have for that?
GW: Well, I don't know. We weren’t allowed to get too close. I could see them from my window. When they used to go up I used to say, ‘There’s an air raid on.’ And I remember I moved to Brixton and there was an air raid on. And I used to stand inside a cupboard. God knows what they used to do. I used to have Carol in my arms and we used to squeeze inside this cupboard. The gas meter was in there. And they hit the the Post Office in Brixton. You know, where the air raids, you know where the Brixton Town Hall.
CG: Yeah.
GW: They hit opposite there. And that was a doodlebug.
CG: By a doodlebug.
GW: They were horrible.
CB: What do you remember about doodlebugs?
GW: Well, we used to know all the way, all the time that we could hear them that we were safe. And when they stopped we didn't know where they were going to land.
CB: When the engine stopped.
GW: I think they were the worst.
CB: And did any land near you?
GW: Yes. That one that stopped at the —
CB: The Post Office.
GW: Town Hall.
CB: Town Hall.
GW: That was the one when I squeezed Carol in this cupboard. God knows what he would have done if it had [pause] The cupboard was in the hallway.
CB: Was it a particularly strong cupboard?
GW: What, love?
CB: Was it a very strong cupboard?
GW: No. It was just a cupboard that used to be over the gas stove. We used to put pennies in when we wanted some gas. It was only about. I could just get in Carol. And those were the times when we, when we had gas masks for babies. Thank goodness Carol never went in it. It was only as big as a — just got you in. That was before I moved opposite the Common. I’m all upside down.
CB: Yes. You're alright. So when you had these gas masks for children did you put, when the child was very small did the child go into it completely?
GW: They were only about as big as that.
CB: A box about eighteen inches long.
[pause]
CB: We’ll just stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CG: Crib thing.
GW: Yes. It was.
CB: So actually it was a sort of box crib.
GW: Yeah.
CB: And you put the child in completely.
CG: That's right.
CB: Yeah.
CG: I remember that.
CB: What was it made of?
CG: It was metal.
CB: A metal frame.
CG: A metal frame. I don't remember covers in it but I remember my doll being in it. We had that for quite a while. But it wasn't a mask. It was a complete thing and I know the cupboards you’re talking about because I know where we lived. Goodwood Mansions, in Brixton.
GW: The houses opposite, they are no more. They're all gone.
CG: No. All those houses have gone. The mansions are still there but the little houses that were opposite they've all gone. So I think we were probably very very lucky. What else do you remember, mummy?
CB: So, when the doodlebugs came the first one that came and landed near you, what did it do? This is the V-1.
GW: Turned my stomach over because as soon as the engine stopped we didn't know where they were going to land. You know. I think they were worse than the bombs.
CB: So you heard it coming because the engine stopped.
GW: Yeah.
CB: And then what happened?
GW: Then it stopped and then we just used to pray.
CB: Yeah. But the one that landed near you.
GW: We didn't know where they landed.
CB: No. You said one landed near you. So what was the damage that made?
GW: That was at Brixton Town Hall.
CB: Yes.
GW: Over the houses. It's about one minute away. We didn't know where it had landed.
CB: What was the damage to the Town Hall?
GW: Nothing. All windows. That's all. But it was opposite the Town Hall.
CB: Yeah.
GW: Right opposite.
CB: And as, after the doodlebugs got going then you had the V-1 roc, V-2 rockets. What do you remember about those?
GW: V-2 rockets. Not a lot really. I think we'd been over the worst.
CB: Because you couldn't hear those coming.
GW: No. They used to stop. Oh, over on towards the end of it. I used to go dancing a lot before I had Carol. No. Carol was [pause] you was evacuated wasn’t it? You was old enough to be evacuated.
CB: Evacuated in 1944.
GW: Yeah. She was evacuated.
CB: Where did she go to?
GW: Pardon?
CB: Where did, where was she evacuated to?
GW: Bournemouth.
CG: Tring.
GW: Was it?
CG: Tring.
CB: Tring in Hertfordshire.
GW: Tring. No. You was born in Tring.
CG: Oh right.
GW: You was evacuated down at Bournemouth.
CB: Right. And you went as well did you?
GW: No. I used to have to earn a penny.
CB: But she was safer there in Bournemouth.
GW: There wasn't much doing down there. We just used to send the kids where there wasn't a lot of activity.
CB: Did you know somebody in Bournemouth? Is that why she went to Bournemouth?
GW: She had a cousin down there.
CB: So she was born in 1943. She was evacuated because of the doodlebugs was it?
GW: Well, everything in general.
CB: We'll stop there.
[recording paused]
CB: The evacuation thing is interesting because it varies. It varied so much between families. But who, how did she come to be evacuated? Did you decide or did the authorities say children had to be evacuated?
GW: Well, it's rather personal but my husband and I had broken up then.
CB: Right.
GW: And this lady that lives down in Bournemouth she was his sister or something. Was she a sister?
CB: We’ll just clarify that. Hang on.
[pause]
CB: So just to clarify this. The first evacuation actually was when?
GW: I had Carol in Lord Rothschild's.
CB: In Lord Rothschild’s house.
GW: In one of the old shooting lodges.
CB: Yes. In Tring. In —
GW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. That's so that's 1943. So she wasn't then evacuated. You were evacuated in order to give birth.
CG: Yes.
CB: And Carol was born in Lord Rothschild's lodge in Tring, you said.
GW: Yeah.
CB: Then when the doodlebugs came you didn't evacuate and she didn't evacuate at all then.
GW: She was back in London then.
CB: Yes. Exactly. It's after the war that she went to Bournemouth. Just to clarify that from what I gather you said.
CG: Nothing to do with Bournemouth.
CB: So that was nothing to do with the war.
CG: No.
CB: Right.
GW: What? Bournemouth?
CB: Yeah.
GW: No.
CB: No. That's okay. So we're in 1944. You're staying in London with the doodlebug. You. Who looked after Carol while you were working? Your mother did, did she?
GW: No. I had you in London when you was a baby didn’t I?
CB: So, did you work when Carol was very small?
GW: No. I didn't have any work then.
CB: Right. So —
GW: I used to live in Brixton didn’t I?
CB: Yes. And your husband was working so he was providing the income.
GW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Right. Okay.
GW: I’m sorry.
CB: That's all right. So what happened to your own brother and sister during the war? What did they do?
GW: My sister. She worked with me. She makes umbrellas. Doesn’t that sound terrible? She makes umbrellas.
CB: What? During the war did she make umbrellas?
CG: She only died a fortnight ago.
GW: A long way after the war.
CB: Yes.
GW: My brother went into musicians. Musicians?
CB: Munitions.
CG: Munitions. Making ammunition.
CB: So, he was in a Reserved Occupation.
GW: Yeah.
CB: Right. Was that in London?
GW: Yes.
CB: Or Woolwich?
GW: And my husband then, he was called up but he had to go either in the army or working in munitions.
CB: In munitions. Yes.
GW: Musicians.
CB: Munitions. Yes.
CG: Getting confused with musicians.
CB: You got it right. Yeah. He was in munitions. Yes.
GW: It's all coming back. Ask me something else.
CB: I will. I’m just going to give you a break.
[recording paused]
CB: What do you remember about your wedding, Gwen?
GW: The Registrar Office. It wasn't, it was all over in a couple of minutes, because there was an air raid on so I think they cut it short. But I remember going home to my mum’s. And she used all her rations up to buy a bit of ham. And it was good. I used to, I remember having, as a wedding present, a couple of tea towels. And that was a good present because you had to give the coupons up for many things.
CB: So, because of rationing it was very difficult to get —
GW: Yeah.
CB: Food and clothing.
GW: Well, we made do.
CB: What did you wear for your wedding?
GW: I had the dress. The lady around the corner made my dress. I remember giving up a load of coupons for the material.
CB: And so you had ham sandwiches, did you?
GW: Yes.
CB: And what did you drink?
GW: I can’t remember. It couldn’t have been, couldn’t have been whisky. I think we toasted it with tea.
CB: Why couldn't it be whisky?
GW: Couldn't afford it.
CB: Couldn’t afford it. Right. And who was at your wedding?
GW: My sister. My mum.
CG: Can you see that, mummy?
GW: My sister. My mum.
CB: We're looking at the picture now.
GW: My husband of course. It was just the family.
CB: Who was the best man?
GW: My husband’s band leader. His name was Bill. He was the manager of the band.
CG: Okay.
GW: He’s dead.
CB: The band worked part-time, did it?
GW: In the evening.
CB: And all of them had jobs in the daytime.
GW: They were all more of less doing government work.
CB: So what was your husband doing? What was his job in the daytime? At that time.
GW: Munitions.
CB: In munitions. In the munitions factory.
GW: Ammunition.
CB: Yeah.
GW: That’s the word.
CB: Yeah. Ammunition. Yes.
GW: Ammunition.
CB: Where did he? Where did he, where did he work?
GW: In a place just down where King’s Avenue.
CB: Right.
GW: They commandeered all the big houses that weren’t being used and they built things in the garden like sheds and all that. You know.
CB: They brought the work to the people. They'd got people there so they built the factory in the garden.
GW: Small factory. It wasn't a big one.
CB: Do you know what he was making?
GW: I don't know. Hush hush.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
GW: He paid six pence each for them.
CB: So, was that expensive or cheap?
GW: That was very expensive.
CB: Yeah.
GW: An egg was six pence.
CB: Then how much did you earn a week when you were working in the factory?
GW: About fourteen shillings. What's that today?
CB: Yeah. Difficult isn't it to work out? So fourteen and sixpence at twelve with twelve pence in the shilling an egg for six pence is a very expensive item.
GW: Eggs were a luxury.
CB: Yeah. How could you get them? Were they black market? Or were they in the shop?
GW: Yes. Black market. Six pence each.
CB: Did you know anybody who reared chickens during the war?
GW: I didn't ask questions. I just got enough eggs. And fish paste sandwiches. They went down a treat.
CB: What else?
GW: Oh, I can’t remember. Corned beef. We got a tin of corned beef. Everything was [pause] we were thankful that we could get it. You know.
CB: Yeah.
GW: No questions asked.
CB: No. And what about spam?
GW: Oh, spam was like a Sunday dinner.
CB: And what would you eat with spam?
GW: We could get plenty of vegetables. And I remember having whale meat.
CB: Whale meat?
GW: And horse meat.
CB: Yeah.
GW: Horse meat. Well, if you didn't know what you was eating you didn't ask. I remember. I remember getting horse meat in Brixton Market. My dad used to eat horse meat when he was in the trenches.
CB: Because so many horses were killed.
GW: Yeah.
CB: They were able to eat the horse meat. And how, what did it taste like?
GW: I don’t know.
CB: Can you remember?
GW: Just meat.
CB: Just good to get the meat. But did it taste like beef? Or did it taste like lamb? Or what did it taste? Completely different?
GW: Beef, I think. I can't remember, love. I didn't have it very often.
CB: And in the market did they tell people that it was horse meat?
GW: Oh yes.
CB: Right.
GW: They had to. They had to. But people still queued up for it. What was sweet.
CB: What about, what about drinks? Could you get coffee as well as tea or just tea?
GW: I think it was just tea. We were grateful for getting anything.
CB: Yeah.
GW: You didn't think that you was grateful in those days. It come along. You used to grab it.
CB: Yeah. Anything you could get. What about fruit?
GW: Fruit?
CB: Fruit. Apples.
GW: Fruit. I never saw a banana. Not for years. I didn't know what a banana tasted like because it come, had to be shipped over didn’t it?
CB: Yeah. So, what about apples and pears? Did you get those regularly or were they difficult to get?
GW: What was that love?
CB: Apples and pears. Did you get those regularly?
GW: Not regularly because they were so expensive.
CB: I think we'll rest there for a bit.
[recording paused]
GW: Didn't have much fish.
CB: You didn't?
GW: Not really. I can’t remember.
CB: Was that in the market as well?
GW: Everything was in the market.
CB: Right. Just —
GW: I can remember the horse meat though.
CB: But at least you could get meat.
GW: Pardon?
CB: At least you could get some meat.
GW: Yeah. But we never used to tell anybody that we queued up for horse meat.
CB: Why was that?
GW: Well. It wasn't the done thing, was it?
CB: Right. Just going back to your wedding why were you married in a Register Office and not a church?
GW: Because they, they used to bomb the churches. Anyway, the Registrar Office was much cheaper.
CB: Right. And then when Carol was born where did you have her Christened?
GW: I didn't. I’m sorry, Carol.
CG: That’s alright.
GW: She knows she wasn't Christened because every time I wanted her Christened there was an air raid on. So —
CB: And the churches had all been damaged.
GW: Yeah.
CB: And it's a bit difficult to run a Christening if you haven't got a church.
CG: [coughs] Excuse me.
GW: We had the party.
CB: Did you?
GW: We had the party but no Christening. I’m sorry Carol.
CG: It’s alright, mum.
CB: So, what, what did you do about coupons for that?
GW: Pardon?
CB: For the party.
GW: We had the party.
CB: How did you get the coupons for that?
GW: They used to bring their own. If they had drink they used to bring their own. Well, it was one of those things in those days.
CB: But you could soon get it swinging could you?
GW: Eh?
CB: You could soon get the, you could soon get the party swinging.
GW: And the night afterwards we had the party the house was bombed. Well, that’s when [unclear] my Vic.
CG: Uncle Vic.
GW: My Vic got bombed.
CB: Uncle Vic's house got bombed.
GW: Anyway.
CB: We’re stopping for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: We're talking about the atmosphere.
GW: This is not very —
CB: That's all right.
GW: Interesting. I used to go dancing during the war.
CB: Yeah.
GW: Not far from where I lived. And we used to have, we used to have the shrapnel come down. And if I walked close to a wall it used to ping off the wall. And that's where I used to come from the, from the dancing. I never used to know if my house was there or not. Or whether my mum was there. Used to go dancing down in the cellar. It was downstairs.
CB: In the cellar. Yeah.
GW: Well, we couldn't hear anything so we used to go down there dancing and pray that our house was still there.
CB: Yes. So you walked next to the wall so that the shrapnel which was from the anti-aircraft guns, is that right?
GW: Yeah.
CB: So — I’m going to stop just a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, Gwen we were just talking about shrapnel where does this shrapnel come from?
GW: Clapham Common. Clapham Common.
CB: Clapham Common. Right. So the shrapnel is as a result of the aircraft, anti-aircraft guns firing.
GW: Firing at the aeroplanes.
CB: Yeah. The shells explode.
GW: Yeah. I used to hug the walls coming home because the shrapnel used to hit the walls first. I don’t know —
CB: And bounce off.
GW: Yeah.
CB: Instead of hitting you.
GW: I remember once getting hold of a dustbin lid and holding it up above my head like an umbrella and running home.
CB: And did that get hit? Did that work?
GW: Well, I’m still here.
CB: So, did it, did the dustbin lid get hit?
GW: We used to hear it ping.
CB: Yeah that's it. Right.
GW: You know.
CB: Okay. Because it was lots of different sizes. The shrapnel was lots of different sizes wasn't it?
GW: I don't know. I didn't look. I didn't hang about. Only —
CB: But did, did you know anybody who got hit by the shrapnel?
GW: No. Not really. No.
CB: So, earlier in the war was when you went dancing and —
GW: That was the best bit.
CB: Was it?
GW: Yeah.
CB: So, who were the people you were dancing with?
GW: A lot of them were servicemen. They used to come down in their uniform and dance with you. But as long as I know, as far as I know nobody that I knew got, got killed or anything.
CB: And these servicemen. Which, which services were they from? Were they the Army, the Navy or the Air Force?
GW: The army and the RAF. Didn't get any Naval.
CB: Because they weren't in —
GW: That was in the age when I was looking for fellas.
CB: Right. So where did you meet your husband?
GW: He was the leader of the band that were playing. You mean Carol’s father?
CB: Yes.
GW: Ended up sleeping under the piano. God knows why. In the end people used to bring their bedding. The blankets and things and we used to stay down there, in the, what’s the name of the —
CB: In the cellar.
CG: The Italia Conti in Landor Road.
GW: Landor Road.
CG: Landor Road. But it was deep down.
GW: They used to stay there all night.
CB: How deep down was that?
GW: Pardon?
CB: How deep down was that cellar?
GW: You know. It was a dance floor. It wasn't just an ordinary cellar.
CB: Had it been converted specially?
GW: No. They still use it as far as I know as Italia Conti School of Dancing.
CB: Ah, right.
GW: All children now—
CB: Now.
GW: Use it.
CB: And your husband-to-be was the leader of the band down there, was he?
GW: Yes.
CB: So how did he come to [pause] get you as the prize.
GW: Get me as a what?
RG: I got that.
CG: How did you meet daddy?
GW: How did I meet Terry?
CG: Well, I would have thought that’s what—
CB: Yes. What did he say?
GW: I don’t know. You was a fella once. A young fella. How did he.
CB: He chatted you up at the end of the dance did he? Or in the middle?
GW: Didn’t chat me up. [laughs] I didn’t hear what he said [laughs]
CB: So, what was it that attracted you to him particularly?
GW: Pardon?
CB: What was it that attracted you to him particularly?
GW: His voice. Because he used to sing. “Who's Taking You Home Tonight?” And he used to sing it to me when I [pause] Are you listening, Rog?
RG: Yeah.
GW: One night he took me home and I was with him then [pause] Well, anyway [pause] After that I had a flower shop in the same road.
CB: Oh.
GW: You don't want to know about that of course.
CB: Of course we do. Yes. So how did he come to propose?
GW: Pardon?
CB: How did he come to propose to you?
GW: He didn't go down on one knee.
CB: Oh. How did you feel about that?
GW: I didn't take any notice. Only he just said. I don't know. I can't remember what he said but we got married. And that was —
CB: That's the picture on the wall.
CG: Yeah.
CB: But what about the ring? What had he done about the engagement ring?
GW: I won’t tell you about that because it was pawned for three weeks after I’d had it. I can’t. I think it had one or two diamonds in it. We were poor.
CB: So you never got it back.
GW: Pardon?
CB: You never got it back.
CG: No.
CB: What about the wedding ring? How did he deal with that?
GW: I think it was, went in the sea somewhere didn't it?
CG: I lost it.
GW: I was mucking about with Carol in the sea.
CB: Oh. And it fell off.
GW: We were playing in the sea and it come off and I never found it since.
CB: Oh dear.
GW: Never mind.
CB: No. We’ll take a break there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So after Carol was born you didn't work for a bit. But then when you went back to work what sort of jobs did you do?
GW: Waitressing mostly.
CB: In hotels or restaurants or what?
GW: Pubs. The club in the [pause] the Oval.
CB: Oh, The Club at the Oval. Yeah [pause]
RG: The Cricket Oval.
CB: Cricket.
RG: She met a lot of cricketers.
CB: So, you met a lot of cricketers at the Oval.
GW: I’ve got a lot of autographs as well.
CB: Have you. Yeah. What did they autograph? Their napkins or pictures?
GW: I’ve got them in a book.
CB: Oh right. And I’ve got a bat. All the autographs on a cricket bat.
CB: The whole team was it?
GW: Pardon?
CB: The whole team. The whole team signed the cricket bat.
GW: I can’t remember. Who were they Roger?
RG: You can remember.
GW: The West Indies?
CB: Oh, the West Indies was it?
RG: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
GW: I served a lot of cricket teams.
CB: Right.
RG: Geoffrey Boycott. She didn’t like him.
GW: Then I had a flower shop.
CB: Oh yes.
GW: That's when I met his nibs over there. Because he used to belong to the police force. Have you told him yet?
CB: Yes. So, he parked his horse at the door, did he?
GW: He come around on a, he used to be a mounted policeman in the house. You kept coming round the shop, didn't you? Why? Anyway, we're still here and that was thirty-one years ago.
CB: Was it really? Yes. Fantastic. So what's his name?
GW: Who? Roger’s. What's his name? Roger.
CG: Last name.
GW: Did you name your, did you get named after your dad? Well, I don't know. Oh don't sit there like a Cheshire Cat.
CB: Yeah. So what's his surname?
GW: What love?
CB: What's his surname?
GW: Gwyn.
CB: Roger Gwyn.
GW: That's why I could never marry him. Because I didn't want to be called Gwen Gwyn.
CB: That's the best excuse I’ve heard all week.
GW: That's as good as —
CB: That's very good.
GW: As good an excuse as possible.
CB: And he's still asking you is he?
GW: Gwen Gwyn. Sounds horrible [laughs]
CB: So moving on from there. What about the flower shop? How long did you run the flower shop for?
GW: Oh, I don’t know. Carol, how long?
CG: Quite a while.
CB: A long time.
GW: How long?
CG: Was it ten year?
GW: I can't see you. Speak.
CB: Ten years. Right. She says.
CG: It's quite a while. It's about ten years, I think.
GW: And then I left work and that's it.
CB: Yeah. And you now live in Gloucestershire.
GW: I now live in Gloucestershire.
CB: What made you move there?
GW: He was born there.
CB: Was he? And escaped to London to join the police force. The Metropolitan Police.
GW: When he was how old? How old was you when —
RG: Twenty-one.
GW: You joined the police force.
RG: Twenty-one.
GW: Yeah.
CB: Well, Gwen Wadmore, thank you very much indeed for a very interesting conversation.
GW: Well, I don't think so because I should have been able to answer lot of questions.
CB: When you're in your bath you'll think of all sorts of other ones.
GW: Pardon?
CB: Thank you very much indeed.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gwendolen Wadmore
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWadmoreGVE171227
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:14:50 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Gwendolen Wadmore was born in London in 1922, and lived there throughout the Second World War. Her early memories are marching with the Girl Guides. She left school at 14 and began work in a tailor’s shop; at the start of the war she was employed in the manufacturing of handbags for gas masks. The family lived close to Clapham Junction, a regular target for enemy bombers. Watching the barrage balloons being launched was early warning that air raids were expected. After one such raid, they returned from shelter to find the house opposite had taken a direct hit; their house also suffered blast damage. The bodies being removed wrapped in carpets is a particularly sad memory. Sleep was a problem in shelters which were cold, uncomfortable and smelly. She remembers arriving at work one morning and slept at her machine until after lunchtime. Gwendolen married in 1941 to a part-time band leader she had met through her love of dancing. They hastily married in a register office, followed by a paltry reception: toast was taken with tea. She remembers saving coupons for the food, ham and corn beef sandwiches, supplemented by eggs from the black market. Wedding presents were simple and useful. Her first child, Carol, was born in 1943. The baby was required to sleep in a modified metal crib which acted as a gas mask. The V-1 bombs are an unpleasant memory, the silence after the engines stopped particularly frightening. The V-2 were not so bad because no one heard them until the explosion occurred.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Mike Cheesbrough
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
bombing
childhood in wartime
fear
home front
love and romance
shelter
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2221/38711/MB CR 7 A.2.mp3
a440991978cc769bdb4b3ef740c48a51
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
ISRPt. Survivors of the 1943-1944 Pistoia bombings
Description
An account of the resource
12 interviste a testimoni dei bombardamenti alleati di Pistoia, realizzate da Claudio Rosati tra il 1983 e il 1984 con l'intento di comprendere e studiare gli effetti che le incursioni aeree hanno avuto sulla popolazione civile tra il 1943 e il 1944. Gli esiti della ricerca furono esposti al convegno internazionale di studi “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” svoltosi a Pesaro il 27/28/29 settembre 1984 e pubblicati nella rivista Farestoria n. 1/1985, edita dall'Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. L’istituto, dove le cassette sono state in seguito depositate, ha gentilemente concesso all’IBCC di digitalizzarle e di pubblicarle in licenza. Le interviste conservano la struttura originale, che può essere diversa dal modo in cui le interviste dell’IBCC Digital Archive sono di solito realizzate. La digitalizzazione rispecchia fedelmente le caratteristiche delle registrazioni originali, con minimi interventi. In base agli accordi con il licenziatario, i sunti delle interviste sono dati in italiano ed inglese.
12 oral history interviews with survivors of the Pistoia bombings, originally taped by Claudio Rosati between 1983 and 1984 with the aim to understand the fallout of the 1943-1944 operations on civilians. The findings were presented at the international symposium “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” (Pesaro, 27/28/29 September 1984) and then published on 'Farestoria' n. 1/1985, published by the Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. The Istituto, where the tapes were later deposited, has kindly granted permission to the IBCC Digital Archive to digitise and publish them. Interviews published here retain their original format, which may differ from the way IBCC Digital Archive ones are normally conducted. The digitisation captures faithfully the characteristics of the original recordings with minimal editing only. According to the stipulations with the licensor, summaries are provided in Italian and English.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MG: A Brindisi venti giorni consecutivi, venti giorni, quando aprirono il secondo fronte bombardando incominciarono laggiù e poi avrò [?] avuto due bombardamenti avanti d’andare militare io, a Milano, sono stato nei rifugi a Milano, tum bum bum bum, anda’ a Milano a –
CR: Al primo bombardamento di Pistoia c’era? Quello –
MG: Sì.
CR: Nel ‘43,
MG: 24 ottobre mi pare.
CR: La notte tra il 24 e il 25 ottobre, all’undici e quindici venne –
RG [?]: Io stavo leggendo “Via col vento”, tranquillo e beato, anzi c’era Vannino [?] –
MG: E io e Aldo, tutt’e quattro in casa –
RG: Tutti –
MG: E il babbo e la mamma di là.
RG: Perché “Via col vento” –
MG: Ma Aldo c’era?
RG: No, eravamo io e Vannino nel lettone, Lello nel lettino, il babbo e la mamma di là e a un certo momento fu dato la sirena – l’allarme, il babbo viene a vede’, s’affaccia alla porta ‘Ragazzi c’è i bengala’, sapevamo dei bengala dalla – dalla radio, ‘Ma che bengala?’ ‘I bengala’. Mai accaduto niente, mai successo niente, comunque da lì a lì [incomprensibile] noi si confinava con le concerie, ci si mette tutti sotto il letto [incomprensibile] da lì a lì parte le bombe sulle concerie.
MG: Le concerie, sì.
[parlano contemporaneamente]
RG: T’immagini l’effetto dirompente, i vetri che si spezzano –
MG: Dirompente, i vetri che si spezzano, tum, tum, tum, ballare il terreno sotto il letto, lì –
RG: Allora, non è un fatto di coraggio o di non aver coraggio, io mi vedevo, tremavo come una foglia, proprio tremavo e da lì a lì mi vedevo di già laggiù, poi a un certo momento c’è un pochino di calma e allora si salta la gora, si va dalla parte di là, ci si porta dei cuscini per ripararsi dalle sghegge, dice Gino ‘io voglio andare –’.
[parlano contemporaneamente]
RG: Un casottino, che la mattina dopo c’era un cratere, una bomba, proprio centrato. Aldo mi pare – no, Aldo non c’era, questo è successo prima, comunque io rimasi scioccato, cioè io capisco cos’era la paura, la paura della morte – cosa che invece non ho provato coi tedeschi, no, cioè, il fatto di dire tu sei di fronte a un evento – da un evento che prescinde dalla tua – dalla tua persona, perché le bombe eran le bombe, tant’è che m’è rimasto talmente la paura e la fifa che c’era famoso quell’apparecchio della notte che veniva a bombardare –
MG: Giovannino –
RG: Pippo Vannino, io appena sentivo sembravo una gazzella, partivo e dopo cinque minuti ero [incomprensibile]
MG: Lasciava babbo, mamma –
RG: Niente, niente, ero rimasto [incomprensibile] la mattina siamo andati a vedere gli effetti del bombardamento, io e Vannino siamo [incomprensibile] in Piazza Garibaldi nella caserma Umberto dove oggi [incomprensibile] tutto Dio bono anche lì raso al suolo [incomprensibile]. Se non che verso l’undici, l’undici e mezzo del giorno dopo, del 25 di ottobre, sirena, queste macerie che erano alte sette, otto o dieci metri l’ho scalate tutte di corsa perché con l’allarme nessuno ti controllava più, sicché il rischio non era – cioè andare a scalare le macerie poteva esse’ [incomprensibile] però scalare le macerie – se viene i bombardamenti Dio bono ti prendano, a me m’interessava invece uscire [incomprensibile] in cinque minuti siamo arrivati a Valdibrana io e Vannino, cinque minuti, aveo vent’anni, ero sessantatré chili, t’immagini te?
MG: Tu c’avrai messo anche un quarto d’ora via –
RG: No [enfasi], siamo arrivati lì e mi sentii tranquillo e infatti è passato gli aerei, che poi ne passava di lì andando in crescendo: ducento, trecento, cinquecento, una volta se n’è visti delle migliaia [incomprensibile] e va bene, di lì poi siamo sfollati alle Case Nove. Dalle Case Nove siamo sfollati alle Case Vecchie. Ecco, per precisare il discorso della paura, no, quante volte mi son trovato a faccia a faccia con i mitra [incomprensibile] non lo so, sarà anche incosciente, perché quello è armato ma non mi creava problemi [incomprensibile] poi mi son ritrovato a andare spesso e volentieri su al Signorino e mi son beccato diversi bombardamenti quando venivano per buttar giù i ponti: le Svolte, il ponte di Piteccio eccetera eccetera, e lì mitragliamenti e via discorrendo. Mi ricordo una volta ero proprio al Signorino – hai visto [incomprensibile] e queste bombe [imita il suono della caduta della bomba] ‘Bah, mi vengano addosso’.
CR: Ecco ma allora cosa pensavate? Che volessero colpire la gente per terrorizzarla –
RG[?]: No, no, no –
CR: Oppure invece sapevate che cercavan degli obiettivi?
RG[?]: Il primo bombardamento su Pistoia ho detto che era un bombardamento terrorista, perché non è stato colpito obiettivi militari.
MG[?]: No, no, hanno anche centrato – mi pare – la stazione, mi pare la Breda, perché anche la Breda non è che sia rimasta intatta, no, è chiaro, tu capisci bene, a centinaia e centinaia di metri con la luce dei bengala la notte, come fai? Anche loro a un certo momento poi sai, un si stava mica lì tanto – ci sarà stata l’una cosa e l’altra cosa, certamente non è che a Pistoia o in Toscana ci fosse le contraeree e i caccia – diciamo così – nazionali come potevano trovare inizialmente in Germania, si capisce bene – sa’, la guerra è guerra, a un certo momento –
CR: Ma c’era risentimento verso chi bombardava?
MG: No, no.
CR: Ah, non c’era risentimento allora –
MG: No, no, perché faceva parte del gioco, della guerra eccetera eccetera. Semmai – cioè noi eravamo già stufi di questa guerra non sentita, eravamo stufi dei tedeschi, dei loro sistemi, dei loro metodi e poi si sapeva che ormai era una guerra perduta e non si faceva allora – ma tutto rientrava nel gioco perché è chiaro, per riuscire domani a liberare l’Italia bisognava lo scotto pagarlo. Comunque, il giorno dopo, il pomeriggio, nonostante l’esperienza brutta della mattina d’esse’ buttati lì, pronti per esse’ portati lì a spalare le macerie fissi al sole – perché poi la paura qual era? Non era tanto quella d’andare a spalare e essere a rischio bombardamenti eccetera eccetera, quanto quella d’essere messi sul treno merci e portati in Germania. Il pomeriggio siamo andati a vedere i morti alla Misericordia, gialli come [incomprensibile] e allora c’era questo senso – e poi ormai – diciamo così dopo tanti anni di guerra eravamo stanchi, c’era ormai questo desiderio di uscirne fuori a qualunque costo e poi a questo punto – a questo punto c’è l’ulteriore sfollamento, chiaramente da Pistoia poi si va a finire su alle Case Vecchie –
RG: Gli Imbarcati –
MG: Agli Imbarcati e poi si va a finire alle Case Vecchie – alle Case Vecchie e poi ecco qui è bene precisare una cosa, l’effetto – ecco, rispondo alla domanda di prima, se c’era questo –
CR: Risentimento.
MG: Risentimento, no perché quando abbiamo visto – prima sentito il rumore di queste jeep, di queste camionette che si arrampicavano su per la montagna, bussata la porta e vedere questi elmetti con quella rete mimetizzata sulla testa eccetera eccetera [incomprensibile] un altro particolare interessante, la sera – il giorno avanti rivedere i primi alleati bussare alla porta [incomprensibile].
RG: In cima a San Quirico, lassù.
MG: In cima a San Quirico e il pomeriggio –
RG: Piovigginoso.
MG: Piovoso, sta piovendo, tutt’a un tratto – e c’era chi – una squadra di noi, ma tutti ragazzi abbastanza giovani, dai venti ai trenta, trentacinqu’anni – un calcio alla porta [incomprensibile].
MG: Si sente un cal – una botta alla porta, si spalanca –
RG: Entra –
MG: Entra delle stanghe, uno, due, tre –
RG: Fino a tredici tedeschi che grondavan dall’acqua –
MG: Era il guastatore tedesco –
RG: Mitra –
MG: Le bombe a mano infilate negli stivaletti, il mitra in mano, ecco, qui ho piacere che sia detto tutto, se ero io italiano, per tutti i sentimenti italiani – io guastatore tedesco – che loro, a parte il fatto che era tutto sbagliato quello che stavano facendo, combattevano una guerra non giusta, però con la storia dei partigiani che l’avevan sempre alle calcagne che avresti fatto te? Tu apri una porta e tu vedi una quindicina di italiani lì, tu puoi pensare anche che fossero partigiani, sarebbe venuto istintivo subito [imita il suono degli spari] una raffica di mitra e tutti morti e invece [incomprensibile] che eran quelli che via via facevan saltare i ponti, ville, tutti i posti –
RG: Però una cosa, che alle calcagne loro c’avevano tanti cani [?]–
MG: Vabbè, anzi, a maggior ragione, perché per loro è una questione di vita o di morte, anche per loro, perché un eran mia ragazzi Dio bono di cent’anni, eran ragazzi giovani come noi –
RG: Allora avean da scappare, vollero sapere –
MG: Ci chiesero dov’era –
RG: La strada per Casina, la Casina che era il punto in cima al [incomprensibile]
MG: Hanno ringraziato, penso che abbiano ringraziato [incomprensibile]
[parlano contemporaneamente]
CR: Ma perché gli è voluto anda’ dietro?
MG: Per fa’ l’eroe, per ammazzarli sette o otto, che dici –
[interviene una delle due donne presenti, ma è incomprensibile]
MG: No, no, lui prese il suo fucilino da caccia e è voluto andare a rompe’ le scatole. Cioè, sono quegli atti gratuiti che non hanno – non è una cosa organizzata, una cosa combinata eccetera, poi mi rammento già ancora il giorno dopo un giovane, un giovane italiano, c’era un tedesco lì di quelli – come si chiamano?
RG: Mandati?
MG: Mandati, col mitra accanto, si stava riposando, tac, ha avuto l’atto proprio di prendergli il mitra e l’ha portato lì ai cosi, agli americani.
CR: Ecco, ma alla gente facevan paura i tedeschi?
MG: Io – ti dico un episodio, Guido cugino nostro, muratore, un giorno siamo a prendere lì a una fontanina dell’acqua fresca e c’è – la fontanina è – rimane un pochino sotto al livello del sentiero e ti vedo venire due tedeschi col mitra in mano e fo ‘Guido c’è i tedeschi’, lui avea il fiasco in mano, ecco, appena ho detto ‘Guido c’è i tedeschi’ la mano ha incominciato a [ride] – io sono rimasto indifferente. Ripeto, il rapporto, cioè il mio terrore – io avevo paura degli americani [?] i tedeschi, in quanto uomini fisici –
CR: Ecco, generalmente, tutta la gente che ho intervistato mi diceva ‘Sì, le bombe, però la bomba la prevedevi [?] ma la paura c’era per i tedeschi’.
[parlano contemporaneamente]
RG: Io al contrario, aveo paura anche delle bombe, però le bombe – io il terrore mio era di trovare i tedeschi che mi pigliassero, addirittura magari ti facessero fori, ma anche se un ti facean fori ti portassero in Germania [incomprensibile] te un tu l’ha’ valutata questa co – però era più pericoloso entrare nelle mani a un tedesco –
MG: Ma è un fatto umano perché dice ‘Anche se mi prendano poi ho sempre la possibilità di scappare, una bomba che ti centra – cioè io tutto quello – ecco di lì è nato poi la mia paura per [incomprensibile] tutto quello che è rumoroso, che sa di schianto, la deflagrazione proprio mi dà fastidio –
CR: Ma i bengala della prima notte dice furono una cosa impressionante, vero? I bengala che lanciarono la prima notte –
MG: Impressionante perché [incomprensibile].
CR: Comunque dopo il primo bombardamento non ne avete vissuti altri –
MG [?]: Come no?
CR: Siete sfollati –
RG [?]: Sì, siamo sfollati ma –
MG [?]: Sì, siamo sfollati ma insomma –
RG: No, io che venivo a lavorare dal Mandoli, mentre venivo in città e che sonava l’allarme mi sembrava –
CR: Anche quando eravate dal Mandoli?
MG: Porca ma – bah –
CR: Ma gli davate conto agli allarmi?
MG: Dio bono, quando ci fu questo bombardamento –
CR: Prima no?
RG: Prima no, prima no, sa’, uno, due, cinque, non succedeva niente –
MG: Un venian mai, allora – ma dopo, dopo dio bono come si camminava.
CR: Ma pensavate che sarebbe stata bombardata Pistoia, prima che succedesse?
RG: Mah, io pensavo quasi di no, perché una piccola città nun c’era grossi obiettivi militari come fabbriche, né concentramenti di militari eccetera, pensavo che limitassero alle grosse città e centri industriali.
CR: In fabbrica cosa si diceva?
RG: Quando c’era l’allarme si scappava via come lepri –
MG: Insomma comunque, secondo me – secondo me Claudio diciamo richiamarsi al 1944 ci si richiama al momento in cui il popolo [incomprensibile] una guerra aperta, non sapevamo neppure allora come gli alleati si son dimostrati in una certa maniera e noi si pensava che fossero come i tedeschi, cioè dove passavano da vincitore era terra bruciata e invece si son comportati da amici, che poi c’è stata la storia delle bottiglie della grappa eccetera eccetera, hanno dato a piene mani, hanno regalato, hanno elargito, cioè è un discorso tipico di quei tipi di eserciti che hanno potenza, ricchezza, mezzi, benessere eccetera ecc –
RG: Comunque, Mario, furono agevolati anche insomma – o che fossero popolo o che –
MG: Certamente, hanno avuto un’accoglienza
RG: O chiamali partigiani anche, anche partigiani, insomma –
MG: Raffaello, secondo me loro hanno trovato una grossa accoglienza non perché erano inglesi, americani o sudafricani eccetera eccetera, perché è l’accoglienza tipica del popolo stanco, stufo della guerra che voleva finalmente ritrovare un po’ la pace, il senso della vita, il senso della famiglia, dell’umanità [incomprensibile] quando sono andati oltre Porretta, oltre Bologna eccetera eccetera, tutto bene, tutte feste, tutti divertimenti e tutte bande americane, tutto dio bono boogie woogie ecco, per fini’ il discorso, finita la paura, finito eh, si rincomincia da capo.
CR: Ma quindi c’erano gli americani e gli inglesi a Pistoia?
MG: E sudafricani, ma più che altro gli americani –
RG: Sudafricani e brasiliani anche –
MG: Però in preponderanza americani [incomprensibile] gli americani appena tre giorni di cannoneggiamenti partiva una pattuglia, andavano a vedere i risultati de’ cannoneggiamenti, dopo di che rientravano, era festa, tutti balli, tutti [incomprensibile].
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Mario Galardini
Description
An account of the resource
L’intervistato è Mario Galardini, nato a Castel di Casio (BO) il 15 agosto 1923, consulente del lavoro. Interviene il fratello Raffaello, sono presenti Lory Galardini e Annalia Galardini. L’intervista è effettuata da Claudio Rosati presso la sua abitazione a Pistoia, il 12 settembre 1984. Durante il primo bombardamento di Pistoia, Mario Galardini si trovava in casa con la famiglia e si riparò sotto il letto. Raffaello Galardini ricorda le devastazioni avvenute in città e il terrore provato durante il passaggio dell’aereo ricognitore “Pippo”. In seguito, sfollarono alle Case Nuove e successivamente alle Case Vecchie. Mario Galardini fu obbligato dai tedeschi a spalare le macerie nel centro città, con la paura di essere deportato in Germania. Una volta, a San Quirico, vide arrivare un gruppo di tedeschi in cerca di un luogo in cima alla montagna.<br />Un passaggio di 35 secondi con inizio a 00:17:15 è stato espunto su esplicita richiesta dell'intervistato.<br /><br />
<p>The interviewee is Mario Galardini, employment consultant, born at Castel di Casio (BO) on 15 August 1923. His brother Raffaello edges in, Lory Galardini and Annalia Galardini are also in the room. The interview was conducted by Claudio Rosati on 12 September 1984 at his house in Pistoia. During the first bombing of Pistoia, Mario Galardini was at home with his family and took shelter under the bed. Raffaello remembers the havoc wreaked on the city and the terror caused by the reconnaissance aircraft Pippo. Then, they were evacuated to Case Nuove and eventually to Case Vecchie. Mario Galardini was forced by Germans to clear up rubble in the heart of the city, with the fear of being deported to Germany. One day, at San Quirico, he saw a group of Germans looking for a place on top of the mountain.<br />A 35-second passage starting at 00:17:15 was removed at the interviewee’s explicit request.</p>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MB CR 7 A
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Claudio Rosati
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984-09-12
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Pistoia
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:22:53 audio recording
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
bombing
Pippo
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2221/38712/MB CR 6 338 Giulio Fiorini.2.mp3
dd0c70836de09dcb4c5938f56787c031
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
ISRPt. Survivors of the 1943-1944 Pistoia bombings
Description
An account of the resource
12 interviste a testimoni dei bombardamenti alleati di Pistoia, realizzate da Claudio Rosati tra il 1983 e il 1984 con l'intento di comprendere e studiare gli effetti che le incursioni aeree hanno avuto sulla popolazione civile tra il 1943 e il 1944. Gli esiti della ricerca furono esposti al convegno internazionale di studi “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” svoltosi a Pesaro il 27/28/29 settembre 1984 e pubblicati nella rivista Farestoria n. 1/1985, edita dall'Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. L’istituto, dove le cassette sono state in seguito depositate, ha gentilemente concesso all’IBCC di digitalizzarle e di pubblicarle in licenza. Le interviste conservano la struttura originale, che può essere diversa dal modo in cui le interviste dell’IBCC Digital Archive sono di solito realizzate. La digitalizzazione rispecchia fedelmente le caratteristiche delle registrazioni originali, con minimi interventi. In base agli accordi con il licenziatario, i sunti delle interviste sono dati in italiano ed inglese.
12 oral history interviews with survivors of the Pistoia bombings, originally taped by Claudio Rosati between 1983 and 1984 with the aim to understand the fallout of the 1943-1944 operations on civilians. The findings were presented at the international symposium “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” (Pesaro, 27/28/29 September 1984) and then published on 'Farestoria' n. 1/1985, published by the Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. The Istituto, where the tapes were later deposited, has kindly granted permission to the IBCC Digital Archive to digitise and publish them. Interviews published here retain their original format, which may differ from the way IBCC Digital Archive ones are normally conducted. The digitisation captures faithfully the characteristics of the original recordings with minimal editing only. According to the stipulations with the licensor, summaries are provided in Italian and English.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GF: Dunque, il primo bombardamento di Pistoia bisogna che spieghi un antefatto: io un anno prima, in quella data, il 24 ottobre 1942 mi trovavo a Milano per ragioni di lavoro, sempre inviato dalla ditta, e ci fu un grande bombardamento, il primo grande bombardamento su Milano.
CR: Il ‘42 [incomprensibile] –
GF: ‘42, il 24 ottobre, quindi io avevo quell’esperienza lì, l’anno dopo, proprio il 24 ottobre del ‘43 io a cena dissi ‘Quest’anno a quest’ora m’andava peggio’, perché mancava cinque minuti alle 6 e quindi il bombardamento di là – si fece l’ora d’andare a letto e improvvisamente il cielo si illuminò dei bengala e allora capii che avrei – che avrei realizzato l’anniversario con un’altra serata disastrosa, infatti fu il primo bombardamento – il primo bombardamento di Pistoia, che mi pare fu verso le 11. Così, io siccome stavo di casa in Via Sant’Alessio, mi reputavo un po’ al sicuro, però posso dire che quando venivano gli allarmi io scappavo sempre più su di Sant’Alessio, sicché quel giorno molta gente in città non scappò perché forse non credevano che bombardassero, purtroppo venne – fu una serata tremenda, disastrosa, perché io avevo tutti i parenti in città che non s’erano mossi nessuno e quindi – poi i velivoli passavano – giravano e quindi si sentiva sulla testa, si sentiva il frastono dei bombardamenti, sembrava mandassero anche lì a Sant’Alessio, sembrava bombardassero dappertutto e tutti si scappava per la campagna, io mi infilai in un fiume, nel rio che passa da Sant’Alessio, col bambino – avevo un bambino piccolino, che me lo tenevo sotto di me che così tentavo di ripararlo, casomai – e così il bombardamento – il [?] bombardamento presi la bicicletta e venni in città –
[parlano contemporaneamente]
GF: Che poi in certe strade non si poteva neanche passare perché c’eran tutte le macerie, io andai subito in Porta al Borgo dove c’avevo il fratello, la mia sorella e avevo i parenti e fortunatamente eran tutti salvi –
CR: Però giunse inatteso, vero? La gente non se l’aspettava.
[parlano contemporaneamente]
GF: Non se l’aspettava, però quando videro i bengala qualcosa doveva pensare, qualcosa doveva succedere [incomprensibile] nessuno era sfollato a Pistoia, o pochissimi. Certo, da quel giorno cominciarono a sfollare.
CR: Quindi quando si aveva notizie di altri bombardamenti di altre città non gli si dava peso, cioè non è che –
GF: Ma, io a volte gli davo peso perché avevo già subito non solo quello lì del 24, ma la sera del 24 ce ne fu un altro a Milano, poi altri giorni ce ne furono degli altri a Milano, quindi li subii un po’ tutti io, tant’è vero che scappai da Milano e andai a Cernusco, a una decina di chilometri da Milano a dormire in una camera, perché a Milano aveo paura e così poi passati dieci giorni che doveo stare a Milano poi ritornai a casa contento perché qua si viveva ancora con una certa tranquillità. Però io che lavoravo al campo di volo non ti dico gli spaventi giornalieri minuto per minuto che si subiva lì al campo di volo, che quello era un posto dove facevano [incomprensibile] e infatti il secondo bombardamento picchiaron tutti sul campo de – il campo di volo, fra le piante lì – però io aveo fatto in tempo con la bicicletta a scappare e arrivare a casa nel secondo bombardamento. Il terzo mi pare che fosse di festa, non mi ricordo bene e allora bombardarono tutto lungo la ferrovia, o fu quello di Porta al Borgo, non mi ricordo bene il terzo, che bombardarono anche Porta al Borgo, anche quel giorno lì c’aveano dato il tempo di scappare ecco, fortunatamente e questo è il fatto.
CR: Che cosa si prova in quei momenti, quando –
GF: Senti, si prova – nel momento tu ti senti le gambe diventar di piombo e un tu ti movi, poi t’entra una grande forza addosso di fa’ chissà che, tu scappi disperatamente con tutte le forze che tu hai e tu ce la metti tutta allora [enfasi], ma nel momento – che ti cada un piombo addosso [incomprensibile] l’ultimo bombardamento [incomprensibile] perché quel giorno mi ricordo che dicevano ‘Oggi bombardan Pistoia, oggi bombardan Pistoia’ –
CR: Come mai?
GF: Mah, allora dice il mi’ cognato quando mi vide che partivo e ritornavo dopo desinare al campo di volo a lavorare ‘C’arriverai laggiù?’ mi disse e dissi ‘Sai il che fo’ – dico – ‘voglio ritarda’ un’altra mezzora’ e ritardai un’altra mezzora, poi [incomprensibile] di dover andare perché dico [incomprensibile] i mi’ compagni che c’andavano e insomma andai, però arrivai al passaggio a livello e suonò l’allarme, io – un fece in tempo a far chiudere le sbarre, girai la bicicletta e a tutta carriera ritornai per tornare alle Fornaci doe stavo di casa, lì a Sant’Alessio, però quando arrivai in Piazza Mazzini che imboccai Via dei Pappagalli cominciai a senti’ l’aerei che arrivavano [imita il rumore degli aerei] ecco, le gambe mi diventarono di piombo, io con la bicicletta un mi riusciva più andare avanti e allora imboccai lì a piedi Viale Malta e mi buttai in terra e aspettai. Dopo un po’ passa uno a corsa, era il mi’ cognato, gli s’era rovinata la bicicletta e mi fa ‘Sei costì anche te disgraziato?’ [enfasi] e pensare poi che ‘sto poero mi’ cognato è stato ammazzato da una cannonata tedesca, in casa nostra proprio [voce di sottofondo]. ‘Mettiti qui’ mi disse ‘mettiti qui’ [enfasi] e mi si buttò e cominciò il bombardamento [incomprensibile] tre ondate [?], tre volte si scappava ancora però ritornavano in un’altra ondata [incomprensibile] [voce di sottofondo]. Tra l’allarme e il bombardamento ci sarà stato cinque minuti [incomprensibile] però la città era tutta deserta, quando passai il giorno per andare a lavorare un c’era un’anima viva, una città morta [incomprensibile] –
CR: Il giorno dopo il bombardamento?
GF: No, no, no, no, quando – in quello del bombardamento, quando passai attraverso la città per andare a lavorare –
CR: Ma perché la gente viveva con paura allora?
GF: È scappata tutta, a Pistoia un c’era più nessuno –
CR: Ah, erano sfollati –
GF: Tutti, un silenzio di morte, un effetto proprio angoscioso, in questa città – un filo di voce da nessuno, io attraversai la città come t’ho detto e arrivai come t’ho detto al passaggio a livello e sonò l’allarme, io girai di corsa e rifeci la stessa strada per andare a casa insomma e quella casa lì che è sull’angolo in Piazza San Francesco io c’ero passato tre o quattro o cinque minuti avanti di lì e la casa era lì, ma dopo il bombardamento quella casa lì non c’era più. Un mio amico che era scappato sul Parterre [incomprensibile] vide un gran fumo laggiù e un c’era più quella casa, lui vide proprio il bombardamento e quella giornalaia che avea il chiosco nel mezzo alla piazza era dentro – dentro il chiosco, fu buttata fori, la Lidia, che ancora c’ha la bottega di – di – di libri, lei fu portata via nel [incomprensibile] attraversò la piazza [incomprensibile] –
CR: Ma secondo te la gente s’era abituata a questo stile di vita o aveva la paura o era cambiato qualche cosa?
GF: Molti erano sfollati, se n’erano andati via, in città c’era poca gente, noi si lavorava, perché purtroppo si doveva andare perché s’avea l’obbligo delle forze armate e tutto quest’affare qui, ma con uno spavento addirittura – perché bastava – vedi, noi si lavorava, no, ci si guardava tutti, bastava – nessuno doveva correre, se si vedeva correre si scappava tutti, incominciava a corre’ tutti, poi si pensò d’andare a lavorare in fondo al campo di volo, si spostava l’aerei laggiù in fondo e s’andavano a rifinire laggiù in fondo vicino all’argine –
CR: Perché?
GF: Perché si scappava prima, capito? Si scappava con più facilità che esser lì coi capannoni, la stazione accanto, il gas [?] erano così sotto tiro completamente e tante volte son passati di sopra a ondate e un era previsto. Il primo bombardamento di Pistoia noi siamo rimasti qui giustamente a guardarlo perché un s’era fatto in tempo neanche a scappare, a guardarli così [incomprensibile] io poi scappavo un po’ da una parte, un po’ dall’altra, un po’ andavo a rifinire in Torbecchia, un po’ – a seconda di dove mi venia l’idea di scappa’ da qualche parte. Un po’ andavo a rifini’ alla Pergola, dal momento in cui – non so, questo mondo, a ripensarci oggi sembra quasi che un –
CR: Ma che sentimenti c’era mentre si bombardava? C’era odio, c’era risentimento?
GF: C’erano – c’era altrettanta paura, certo. Non che ci fossero simpatici gli americani [ride], un c’eran simpatici, certo, eran loro che bombardavano –
CR: Loro lo facevan per liberarci –
GF: Ma, liberarci, però –
CR: S’avvertiva questo o no?
GF: Però come facevano quando hanno tirato le bombe in Porta al Borgo, alla Chiesanova, da quelle parti lì, via un si pò mia sbagliare di lì alla stazione –
CR: Allora secondo voi –
GF: C’è anche un po’ di terrorismo –
CR: Ecco, secondo voi c’era questo terrorismo sulla folgorazione, così?
GF: Sì, io penso di sì perché io quando bombardavano Porta al Borgo ero arrivato a casa e aveo preso il mi’ bambino e ero scappato nella stanza vecchia [?] e allora si vedevano gli aerei. Si videro quando sganciarono, dice il mi’ bambino – era piccino [ride] – ‘Babbo, hanno buttato le bombe nei [incomprensibile]’ sai, brillavano al sole le bombe [incomprensibile] certo la prima sera stettero tanto, stettero una ventina – anche venticinque minuti grosso modo a buttare bengala [incomprensibile] la cittadinanza scappare, in molti scapparono a Monsummano.
CR: No perché dice che – insomma, leggevo che sbagliavano nel raggio di un chilometro e forse anche di più, cioè dovevan colpire la San Giorgio e ci sta che per sbaglio andassero fino a un chilometro più in là.
GF: Può darsi, perché i capannoni del campo di volo un l’hanno mai colpiti, perché quelli furon poi buttati giù dai tedeschi con le mine, quindi bastava che stessi di casa nei capannoni e un venio neanche toccato, ma chi ci stava al campo di volo [ride]?
CR: Ma si riusciva a distinguere – cioè distinguevate voi se erano americani o inglesi, o no?
GF: No, non si guardavan mia, si doveva scappare –
CR: E la gente cosa diceva, ‘Son gli americani, son gli inglesi’?
GF: No, ma si sentiva il rombo dei motori [incomprensibile] il primo bombardamento di Milano [incomprensibile] “i liberatori” li chiamai [?] da tutte le parti, lì un c’era – un c’era – un c’erano obiettivi, bombardavan da tutte le parti.
CR: In modo indiscriminato.
GF: Indiscriminato, sì, sulla stazione un c’andò neanche una bomba.
CR: Avete continuato poi in famiglia a riparlarne dei bombardamenti o no?
GF: Sì, tanto, sì perché specie quando stavo con la mi’ socera lassù eravamo tutti lì [incomprensibile] io un ero mai tranquillo, tant’è vero quando c’erano gli allarmi scappavo sempre [incomprensibile] purtroppo siamo stati sfortunati – siamo stati sfortunati dalla parte del mi’ cognato poverino perché [incomprensibile].
CR: [incomprensibile].
GF: Io ero nel rifugio, s’era fatto un rifugio lì a Sant’Alessio, ci s’avea un ciglione alto, grosso così, lì a Sant’Alessio in Via di [incomprensibile] al principio delle Fornaci. C’è questo ciglione, s’era fatto un bel rifugio, questo ragazzo quel giorno un aveano ancora bombardato, c’era un giorno di sole, c’era i contadini che – che vendemmiavano, figurati, un s’era ancora sentito un colpo di – di – di cannone e andò lì a mangia’ un fico nel primo campo e arrivò due colpi bellici, lo ferì, un l’ammazzò, lo ferì in diverse parti del corpo e noi dopo il bombardamento – dopo il cannoneggiamento si prese un barroccino e si portò all’ospedale e le bombe, le cannonate venian di qua, di là, di là e noi via per strada con questo ferito, poi gli venne l’infezione, setticemia, fu salvato varie volte, venne un parente americano e portò la penicillina, la portò lui, gli americani un ce l’aveano la penicillina e questo cugino venne quando il mi’ cognato era moribondo, sicché portò questa penicillina, gliela dettero e questo malato si riebbe, ma poi era troppo – era troppo rovinato [incomprensibile] un giorno avanti venne questa cannonata [incomprensibile] e noi s’era nel rifugio e quell’altra il giorno dopo e allora urlava ‘[incomprensibile] morto’, ‘No, un tu ti sei fatto nulla, guarda, un ti sei fatto nulla’. Noi si chiuse in casa e fori veniano le cannonate una accanto all’altra boia cane e dice a me poerino quando fu bombardato [incomprensibile] che sapea che io aveo paura ‘Giulio anche te–’ anche lui avea paura come me – ‘Anche te ora ti tocca venire all’ospedale a portarmi’, ma che dici, aveo una lingua massiccia così che un sortia neanche di bocca dalla paura, ma son contento d’esserci andato, t’immagini quanto rimorso avrei avuto. A usci’ di là sotto terra e piglia’ quello sotto le cannonate e anda’ all’ospedale mi ci volle – mi ci volle una bella forza d’animo, senza essere eroe [incomprensibile], invece il mi’ cognato quell’altro che ha fatto la guerra – avea fatto la guerra, lui stava libero di qua e di là [incomprensibile] e poi c’era il famoso bombardamento della notte [incomprensibile] quello facea più spavento, quello m’ha terrorizzato più che altro, perché tu senti sgancia’ sulla testa [?], tu lo senti arrivare, s’avvicina, s’avvicina, s’avvicina, tu avverti poi tutto finché si avvicina e finché si riallontana, finché tu sentivi l’intensità che cresceva [enfasi] che quello tirava giù una bomba per volta, due e poi andava via.
CR: Ma come mai, come –?
GF: Come mai, quando si sentiva il momento che s’allontanava ci se n’accorgea perché l’orecchio [incomprensibile].
CR: Ma chi era quello che chiamavan Pippo?
GF: Sì.
CR: Però Pippo era un nome familiare, come mai l’aveano messo –
GF: Ma, io un so, io un lo chiamavo neanche Pippo, a me mi facea un gran spavento la sera quando arrivava questo qui di notte e ci svegliava e infatti girava parecchio, poi bum [enfasi] [incomprensibile].
CR: Ma a lavoro di che cosa parlavate?
GF: Si parlava della paura [incomprensibile] perché poi ci s’avea un segnale –
CR: Se ne parlava durante il lavoro?
GF: Porca miseria, sempre se ne parlava.
CR: Era un argomento di–
GF: C’era un – perché poi c’erano i tedeschi, quando si vedea scappa’ i tedeschi allora si scappava anche noi. Tante volte siamo scappati prima dell’allarme, che loro lo sapean prima di noi, capito, e poi c’è un coso – un – una macchinina a vapore, chissà perché prima del bombardamento quella lì si mettea in moto e andava via, un so, lì dalla stazione.
CR: E allora voi avevate –
GF: E noi si stava attenti perché –
CR: Avevate messo in relazione il fatto –
GF: Sì, si stava attenti [incomprensibile] e poi ci s’avea – sa’ – noi ci s’avea i tedeschi che ci guardavan lavorare, ci s’avea dei tedeschi lì. Almeno quelli lì eran de bontemponi e un ci rompeano tanto l’anima, certo quando veniva quell’altri – una volta io m’ammalai di un’angina [?] allora il giorno i tedeschi caricaron tutti gli operai com’erano, tutti in quella maniera su du’ o tre aerei e li portaron via, madonna, impauriti, sai doe li portaron? A ripara’ degli apparecchi in altri campi di volo della Toscana, poi li riportaron qui.
CR: [incomprensibile]
GF: A me un mi toccò mai, io appunto quel mese lì mi ricordo che mi venne male alla gola e stetti a casa, sennò mi toccava anche a me a partire. Io sull’aerei un c’ho mai neanche voluto volare perché non mi piace, poteo volare anche tutti i giorni per il lavoro che si facea lì [incomprensibile] poi la paura per la mi’ famiglia, perché poi c’era i mi’ bambini [incomprensibile] avea tre anni e ‘sto bambino più di venti giorni in braccio dentro questa buca con un mantello impermeabile [incomprensibile] e un giorno – una mattina sento alla finestra parla’ tedesco, proprio alla finestra, lì [incomprensibile] ci guardavano – noi s’avea paura di loro ma quei due lì avean paura anche di noi perché eran du’ ragazzi [incomprensibile]
CR: Comunque i bombardamenti cambiarono anche il modo di vedere la guerra da parte della gente –
GF: Ma poi di bombardamenti s’è avuto altro che quelli lì, poi c’è stato il cannoneggiamento: prima il cannoneggiamento degli americani dalla parte di sotto, il primo presero un fico lì davanti a casa nostra [incomprensibile] squarciarono un fico in due, ‘Dio bono, ora arrivano anche –’ [enfasi] fu il segnale di – di – di scappa’ di casa, tiravan di laggiù, fitti fitti, un cannoneggiamento – poi incominciaron dai monti, i tedeschi tiravano, sai, quando si portò il mi’ cognato all’ospedale in Viale Malta c’era tutti i cannoni in fila, americani, tant’è vero che quando si tornò in su col barroccio ‘Via, via’ disse ‘tirare via che tra poco sparare molto [?], via, via, via’ ci dissero, ma poi avanzavano sempre coi cannoni. Oh, una notte Dio bono si sente delle cannonate, avean piazzato un cannone proprio lì vicino casa nostra, centro metri un po’ più in là, sulla strada [incomprensibile], un cannone, un coso grosso che un andai neanche a vederlo [?] c’eran tutti i bagliori illuminavan la camera [incomprensibile] si sente entra’ in ballo questo cannone vicino in quella maniera [incomprensibile]
CR: Perché c’è anche l’adattabilità della gente alla situazione?
GF: Sì [incomprensibile] ti entra dentro quasi un coraggio a un certo momento di – ti viene la mattina d’alzarti e pensare d’andare laggiù e dissi ‘Bah, si tornerà a casa’ [incomprensibile] a casa è un conto, la campagna – ma andare al campo di volo laggiù –
CR: Lavorare in obiettivo militare –
GF: Dio bono, un obiettivo di ri – e c’eran tutti – poi lì se ti tirano una bomba, con tutta la benzina che ci s’aveva [incomprensibile].
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Giulio Fiorini
Description
An account of the resource
L’intervistato è Giulio Fiorini, nato a Pistoia il 26 novembre 1906, impiegato alle Officine San Giorgio. L’intervista è effettuata da Claudio Rosati presso la sua abitazione a Pistoia, l’11 ottobre 1983. Dopo aver vissuto il bombardamento a Milano il 24 ottobre 1942, Giulio Fiorini, esattamente un anno dopo, si trovava in Via Sant’Alessio quando Pistoia fu bombardata. Fuggì da casa e si nascose col figlio in un fiume. In città quasi nessuno si recò nei rifugi. Il secondo bombardamento colpì il campo di volo, dove lavorava alle Officine San Giorgio poiché era in obbligo di leva. Insieme ai colleghi spostò gli aerei in fondo al campo, vicino all’argine, affinché, in caso di allarme, potessero scappare subito. I tedeschi monitoravano sempre il loro lavoro. I capannoni del campo non furono mai colpiti dagli alleati, furono distrutti dai tedeschi con le mine. Aveva costruito un rifugio vicino casa e si trovava al suo interno quando il cognato più giovane rimase ferito a causa di un cannoneggiamento, morì poco dopo in ospedale. <br /><br />The interviewee is Giulio Fiorini, clerical worker at Officine San Giorgio, born in Pistoia on 26 November 1906. The interview is conducted by Claudio Rosati on 11 October 1983, at his house in Pistoia. <br />A survivor of the 24 October 1942 Milan bombing, Giulio Fiorini was in Via Sant’Alessio when Pistoia was bombed, exactly one year later. He ran away from home and hid, with his son, in a river. Shelters in town were all but neglected by the locals. The second bombing hit the airfield near Officine San Giorgio, the military establishment Giulio was posted to. With his colleagues, he moved the aircraft at the end of the runway, close to the levee, so they could take off immediately, in case of alarm. The Germans constantly monitored their work. Hangars were never hit by the Allies but mined by Germans. Giulio Fiorini built a shelter near home: he was inside with his younger brother-in-law who was injured following artillery fire. He died in hospital shortly afterwards.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983-10-11
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MB CR 6 338
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Claudio Rosati
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Pistoia
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:26:14 audio recording
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
bombing
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2221/38719/MB CR 1 437 A.2.mp3
85097194f91fab03bc2e81d4f80ced26
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
ISRPt. Survivors of the 1943-1944 Pistoia bombings
Description
An account of the resource
12 interviste a testimoni dei bombardamenti alleati di Pistoia, realizzate da Claudio Rosati tra il 1983 e il 1984 con l'intento di comprendere e studiare gli effetti che le incursioni aeree hanno avuto sulla popolazione civile tra il 1943 e il 1944. Gli esiti della ricerca furono esposti al convegno internazionale di studi “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” svoltosi a Pesaro il 27/28/29 settembre 1984 e pubblicati nella rivista Farestoria n. 1/1985, edita dall'Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. L’istituto, dove le cassette sono state in seguito depositate, ha gentilemente concesso all’IBCC di digitalizzarle e di pubblicarle in licenza. Le interviste conservano la struttura originale, che può essere diversa dal modo in cui le interviste dell’IBCC Digital Archive sono di solito realizzate. La digitalizzazione rispecchia fedelmente le caratteristiche delle registrazioni originali, con minimi interventi. In base agli accordi con il licenziatario, i sunti delle interviste sono dati in italiano ed inglese.
12 oral history interviews with survivors of the Pistoia bombings, originally taped by Claudio Rosati between 1983 and 1984 with the aim to understand the fallout of the 1943-1944 operations on civilians. The findings were presented at the international symposium “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” (Pesaro, 27/28/29 September 1984) and then published on 'Farestoria' n. 1/1985, published by the Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. The Istituto, where the tapes were later deposited, has kindly granted permission to the IBCC Digital Archive to digitise and publish them. Interviews published here retain their original format, which may differ from the way IBCC Digital Archive ones are normally conducted. The digitisation captures faithfully the characteristics of the original recordings with minimal editing only. According to the stipulations with the licensor, summaries are provided in Italian and English.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[incomprensibile]
CR: Ma a parte la data [incomprensibile] come ve ne accorgeste?
RS [?]: La sera io e [incomprensibile] e venne Fabio, sarebbe il babbo della Laurana, il babbo della Laura venne a chiamare il mi babbo e [incomprensibile] gli disse 'oh [incomprensibile] vieni a vedere, vieni a vedere' –
[Altro]: [incomprensibile].
RS[?]: Sì, e allora la mi mamma dice 'alzati anche te e vieni a vedere, mamma mia' dice 'vieni a vedere che c'è per aria' [incomprensibile] e allora [incomprensibile] ci sarà stato, era la sera verso l’undici sarà stato –
[Altro]: [incomprensibile].
RS[?]: Eh, anche prima, anche prima, e allora fu anche prima sarà stato [incomprensibile] e [incomprensibile] m'affaccio alla finestra, ti vedo i bengala e allora dissi '[incomprensibile] scappiamo' [incomprensibile] allora si prese le scale io, la mi mamma, il mi babbo invece rimase indietro e la Laurana, era piccina la Laurana, loro [incomprensibile].
[Altro]: [incomprensibile].
RS[?]: No, [incomprensibile] loro andarono vicino a casa sua, dove c'è quella [incomprensibile] loro andarono lì e invece noi s'andò in Piazza d'Armi, al rifugio di Piazza d'Armi, io e la mi mamma. Quando s'arrivò, a corsa, tutti – scappavano, quando s'arrivò vicino a entrare nel [incomprensibile] in quel bastione di Piazza d'Armi dove c'è [incomprensibile] come si chiama?
CR: La fortezza.
RS[?]: La fortezza [incomprensibile] c'è un rifugio [incomprensibile] entrò lì, la mi mamma non ce la faceva più [incomprensibile] e saltò fuori da lì dentro un [incomprensibile] forse un soldato [incomprensibile] un maresciallo [incomprensibile] e ci spinse dentro [incomprensibile].
CR: Ma ecco, e poi i bombardamenti successivi? Vivevate con la paura, con l'ansia? Ecco, la notte, cioè, le notti successive –
RS[?]: Ma poi la notte, non vennero più di notte –
MG[?]: No, di giorno.
RS[?]: Poi c'era quell'aeroplano fantasma, quello che viaggiava la notte sempre –
CR: Perché l'areoplano fantasma?
RS: L'areoplano fantasma, ogni tanto buttava qualche bomba ma, ma difficile, in qua e là –
CR: Ma vivevate con l'ansia oppure?
RS: Mamma, sempre con la paura –
CR: Sempre con la paura dei bombardamenti –
RS: Poi, la gente tutti sfollati –
MG: Perché anche noi un s'andò lassù a coso, a –
RS: Ma quello s'andò dopo –
MG: Come si chiamava il contadino?
RS: Lei andò alle Sei Arcole dalla zia Maria con Aldo, che Aldo era malato, lei andò lì –
MG: O un s'andò lassù da quel contadino?
RS: Ma quello s'andò dopo, s'andò dopo quando, quando arrivavano, erano vicino a [incomprensibile] loro. Che poi noi ci s'andò lassù perché a me mi sfollarono l'ufficio, lo portarono alla Villa Giacomelli, lassù per andare a San Quirico. Allora noi ci si sfollò lì da una nipote della Marianna alle case vecchie, a – come si chiama, alle case nove, come si chiama lì doe sta, doe sta Silvano?
MG: Dove sta la Lisa [?]?
RS: Sì –
MG: Le case nove dove stava Silvano.
RS: Sì –
MG: E le case vecchie dove stava la Lisa, per andare a San Rocco.
RS: Sì, ecco noi si stava lì.
CR: Ma ce ne furono degli altri dopo di bombardamenti?
RS: Poi ci furono di giorno, poi ci furono di giorno. Il palazzo giallo –
CR: Però voi eravate in campagna, quindi –
RS: Il palazzo giallo fu distrutto di giorno, di giorno o di notte? So che fu distrutto all'ultimo bombardamento il palazzo giallo –
MG: Quello non me lo rammento –
RS: Non me lo ricordo se fu distrutto di giorno o di notte –
CR: Il primo dovrebbe essere stato il 23, 24 ottobre del '43, è possibile in ottobre?
RS: Sì, sì, sì, sì, sì, sì, d'ottobre, che non era ancora freddo, non era un'annata fredda, no. Che poi noi quando si sortì di lì, noi si guardò – io vidi da loro tutta la polvere, il foco, dissi 'addio, hanno distrutto la casa, credevo che la casa di' –
MG: [incomprensibile].
RS: Sì, e si vedeva le fiamme e si credea che fosse andata giù anche la su' casa, i vetri eran tutti rotti. Perché mi ricordo loro scapparono e andarono su a Pontenovo, voi andaste a Pontenovo con Angiolino –
MG: Sì, ma quella notte lì per i campi –
RS: Mah, un lo so, insomma so che voi – lei non c'era e e e tornanno indietro Angiolino, Raffaello e Mario, dissi 'andiamo a vedere che è successo loro' e noi s'era venuti verso casa vostra e s'andò a dormire nei vostri letti, che c'era la Laurana, Fabio e s'avea paura –
MG: [incomprensibile].
RS: A me parea fosse a Pontenovo voi –
MG: [incomprensibile] dalla Maria –
RS: Sì, eri a Pontenovo voi, via.
CR: Ma morti ce ne furono nel primo bombardamento?
RS: Eeeeh [enfasi].
MG: Specialmente sulla strada Pratese andò giù tante di quelle villette.
RS: Ce ne furono sì, mamma mia, e sa' la mattina si riprese servizio noi, il che c'era al Genio Civile basta, perché tutti affluivan lì per via dello sgombero delle macerie, per levare i morti, mamma mia Signore.
MG: Oh ma il primo bombardamento mi pare centoventi morti.
CR: Qui a Pistoia?
MG: Sì, di una famiglia ci rimase – una famiglia erano in cinque, ci rimase altro che il padre e un figliolo di diciott'anni perché loro erano in stazione e la su famiglia alla Vergine, sicché la famiglia di loro, tutti, tutti morti, proprio appena sortivan di casa, una bomba li prese in pieno.
CR: [incomprensibile] allora si viveva con più paura.
MG: Appena scattava l'allarme si scappava, si scappava di là verso Sant'Agostino –
RS: Si scappava [incomprensibile] la mi mamma urli – e c'era l'ingegnere capo d'allora [incomprensibile] Pasquale tra un po' ci rimane perché un lo volean mandare e rimase lì salvo per miracolo, perché un voleano mandare perché dicean che si dovea andar via all'ultimo, ma quando sentian l'allarme un si capia più nulla e poi sonava sempre dalle dieci e mezzo all'undici, l'undici e mezzo sempre a quell'ora lì.
CR: La mattina o la sera? [rumori di sottofondo].
RS: Il pomeriggio, la mattina, la mattina via, la mattina. Sempre a quell'ora lì suonava.
CR: Comunque il più brutto è stato il primo allora.
MG: Sì.
RS: Il primo, perché il primo non ci s'aspettava [incomprensibile] poi fu di notte, sicché –
MG: Insomma centoventi morti quella notte.
RS: La Laurana, era piccina mi ricordo e poi loro andaron da una parte, perché non so se loro andaron via prima e noi dopo e poi insomma ci si ritrovò e s'andò a dormi' tutti in casa [incomprensibile] della nonna [?] Marianna [rumori di sottofondo] quella notte lì perché – ma io non so se era andato giù il palazzo o se s'avea paura, io un –
MG: No, ma non andò mia giù subito il palazzo sai –
RS: No, mi sa che l'ultimo bombardamento –
CR: E dentro il rifugio quanto ci si stava?
MG: [incomprensibile].
RS: Finché un cessava l'allarme, poi sonava il cessare l'allarme –
CR: E c'entrava tanta gente?
RS: [incomprensibile] se ci cascava una bomba si facea la morte del topo [incomprensibile].
MG: [incomprensibile].
RS: L'avean fatto anche lì da noi giù in fondo al palazzo giallo, l'avean fatto anche lì, che poi la gente avea paura, dice 'sì, se casca qui' dice 'qui sì che un si ritrovano', sul principio ci s'andava tutti, perché magari s'avea meno paura, perché ancora un s'era sentito dire, poi dopo sa', quando cominciarono a prende' campo le 'ose e vede' che dovean esser fatte con un certo criterio e lì non eran fatte con criterio –
MG: Allora andavi lì in Piazza d'Armi [incomprensibile].
CR: [incomprensibile].
RS: La mi mamma mi ricordo mi dicea 'ora mi schianta il cuore', si mise a sedere e [incomprensibile] disse 'vieni via dentro il rifugio', mi ricordo dette la spinta lui perché quella oramai avea corso, s'era corso tanto, un ce la facea più.
CR: Che poi quando cascava la bomba doveva tremare [incomprensibile].
RS: Ma un boato si sentiva, sì, e poi tremava, quando cascavan vicino. Noi s'era tutti dentro, dentro i letti di loro anche e un mi ricordo anch'io se mi tagliai ì, ci si tagliò in diversi perché eran [incomprensibile] tutti dentro perché le bombe, le conce le avean bombardate tutte, sicché te l'immagini [incomprensibile] te l'immagini, mamma mia Signore.
CR: E il tempo sembrava lunghissimo?
RS: Eeeeh [enfasi] ma se ne sentì tante quella notte Madonna.
MG[?]: Ma Nino era stato in Russia, lui sapea il che volea di' la guerra, allora quando vide [incomprensibile] 'mettemosi tutti sotto i letti, mettemosi tutti sotto i letti', Angiolino non c'entrava sotto i letti, si mise dentro il forno ma avea un po' le gambe di fori così [risate].
RS: Che affari, che affari, ora si ride ma credetemi –
MG: [incomprensibile].
RS[?]: Ma poi si scappava dall'altri capi di Sant'Agostino e tutti i giorni ci toccava scappare e andare a Sant'Agostino sai laggiù, perché allora c'eran tutti campi e ci s'infilava in mezzo alle frode, sa, giù –
MG: Giù nelle fosse.
RS: Giù nelle fosse –
CR: Ma vi eravate un po' abituati però via [incomprensibile].
MG [?]: Ora [incomprensibile] s'avea fatto la pratica sai di scappare.
RS: Poi s'andò sfollati lassù –
CR: Perché Piteccio fu bombardata parecchio, vero?
RS: Forse Piteccio per via delle volte.
CR: Per via del ponte, che non riuscirono mai a prendere.
RS: Mamma mia, che lavoro, che lavoro [pausa] Ora, ora non sembra mia più vero, non sembra più vero, anche poi quando s'andò lassù sfollati alle case vecchie, lassù vicino alla chiesa di San Pio [?] dalla parte di là, che s'andò sfollati, [incomprensibile] tutti in una stanza, certi accampamenti – e veniva i tedeschi –
CR: Qualcuno dice 'un sembra più vero', dice 'un sembra più vero'.
RS: Un sembra vero d'aver passato che s'è passato e mi ricordo prima che arrivasse gli americani [incomprensibile] che c'era i tedeschi, ma i tedeschi – dei tedeschi un c'era d'ave' paura nel senso se si viaggiava donne –
CR: Sì, sì è vero.
RS: Un ci davan noia, ma quando poi c'era gli americani e tutti quei negri a quella bella villa che disse lei, la villa –
CR: A Celle.
RS: La Villa di Celle, c'eran tutti gli americani.
CR: La villa dei Marines.
RS: E lì c'era d'ave' paura, perché a passa' di lì – e mi riordo ci si dovea passare e Raffaello, allora s'era fidanzati, m'accompagnava sempre perché se vedean le donne addio, invece coi tedeschi sì, per carità, i tedeschi c'era d'ave' paura della fucilata, non che che venissero dietro alle donne, no no.
[altra voce di sottofondo]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Raffaella Sorsini
Description
An account of the resource
L’intervistata è Raffaella Sorsini, nata a Vicchio (FI) il 25 maggio 1919, impiegata in pensione. Interviene Marianna Galardini, nata il 18 maggio 1897. L’intervista è effettuata da Claudio Rosati a Pistoia, presso la casa dell’informatrice, il 12 luglio 1983. Durante il primo bombardamento di Pistoia, Raffaella Sorsini andò con la madre al rifugio di Piazza della Resistenza [Piazza d’Armi]. Marianna Galardini sostiene che nel primo bombardamento ci sono state centoventi vittime e che in Via Pratese sono state distrutte numerose villette. In seguito al trasferimento del suo ufficio alla Villa Giacomelli, Raffaella Sorsini sfollò in campagna, alle Case Nuove, vicino a San Rocco. È dovuta più volte scappare nella zona di Sant’Agostino, all’epoca area non urbanizzata. Infine, ricorda di non aver temuto di essere importunata dai tedeschi in quando donna, ma di aver avuto tale paura all’arrivo dei Marines americani alla Villa di Celle, dovendo obbligatoriamente passare da quella zona, tanto da farsi accompagnare dal fidanzato. <br /><br />
<p>The interviewee is Raffaella Sorsini, born at Vicchio (Florence province) on 25 May 1919, retired clerical worker. Present Marianna Galardini, born on 18 May 1897. The interviewer is Claudio Rosati, the interview took place in Pistoia on 12 July 1983, in his house. <br />During the first bombing of Pistoia, Raffaella Sorsini went with her mother to the Piazza della Resistenza [Piazza d’Armi] shelter. Marianna Galardini claims that the death toll of the first bombing was 120 people and that many detached homes in Via Pratese were destroyed. Following the move of her office to Villa Giacomelli, Raffaella Sorsini was evacuated to the countryside at Case Nuove, near San Rocco. Many times she fled to the Sant’Agostino area, at the time still rural. She says that she never feared being sexually harassed by Germans, but conversely, she was scared by US Marines at Villa di Celle: while she had to walk past, she was accompanied by her fiancé<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">e</span>.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Claudio Rosati
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983-07-12
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MB CR 1 437 A
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Pistoia
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:37:49 audio recording
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
bombing
evacuation
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1009/18734/ESoutezDMadgettLR-AG441016-0003.1.jpg
ed54b7b016021cf9f6de10b8ae64cba9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1009/18734/ESoutezDMadgettLR-AG441016-0001.1.jpg
64ada84ce12273bc5e52da53580d06a8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1009/18734/ESoutezDMadgettLR-AG441016-0002.1.jpg
d424124811c4fcc9f8f76b1a7e5c31a7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Madgett, Hedley Robert
H R Madgett
Description
An account of the resource
250 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Hedley Madgett DFM (1922 - 1943, 147519, 1330340 Royal Air Force), a pilot with 61 Squadron. He was killed 18 August 1943 on the last operation of his tour from RAF Syerston to Peenemünde. The collection consists of letters, postcards and telegrams to his parents while he was training in the United Kingdom and Canada. In addition the collection contains memorabilia, documents from the Air Training Corps, artwork, a railway map, diaries, medals as well as his logbook, photographs of people, places and aircraft. Also contains letters of condolence to parents and a sub collection containing a photograph album with 44 items of his time training in Canada'.<br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Joan Madgett and Carol Gibson, and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br /><span>Additional information on Hedley Madgett is available via the </span><a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/114690/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/madgett-hr/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a><span>.</span>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-03-17
2019-06-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Madgett, H
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
9 Provincial Terr
Green Lane
Penge SE 20
Oct 16
Dear Mr & Mrs Madgett,
A few lines hoping they find you both well after all these trying weeks.
I felt I had to write to see if you had heard any further news of your son Bob, as we have reasonly [sic] heard of a young chap that went on the same raid & was presumed killed like our dear boys, his mother received a P.O.W. card from him 3 weeks ago the first news they had received since reported missing, he was seriously injured & says that there are others there but is not allowed to give their names. I must say that this has made me feel more hopeful, that we may one day hear something of our dear boys.
You will note my change of address as I was very unfortunate to have a direct hit with a fly bomb on my house & lost everything I had, I was at work at the time but my daughter was at home & taken to hospital and treated for shock and cut leg lucky for her she was in the Anderson shelter and doesn’t remember anything about it, only to be carried over the debris in the policeman’s arms, but Im [sic] pleased to say after a few weeks in Norfolk she is fit & well again now.
I will now close hoping to hear some good news soon
Yours Sincerely
D Souter
[page break]
[front of envelope]
[office stamp]
BROMLEY & BECKENHAM KENT 17 OCT 1944
Mr & Mrs Madgett
127 Longlands Rd
Sidcup
Kent
[page break]
[back of envelope]
Mrs Souter
9 Provincial Terr
Green Lane
Penge SE 20
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Hedley Madgett's parents from D Souter
Description
An account of the resource
Writes asking if they have had any further information. Writes that a friend whose son was posted missing on the same operation had been notified as prisoner. Notes change of address as 'I was unfortunate to have a direct hit with a flying bomb on my house'. She was at work but her daughter was at home but in the Anderson Shelter and taken to hospital.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
D Souter
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-10-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter and envelope
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ESoutezDMadgettLR-AG441016
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-10-16
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
bombing
missing in action
shelter
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2101/34733/AEllisS-U211116.2.mp3
f9a020bfce981c980a709db759c752b4
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Right. So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive with Sidney and Una Ellis. We’re in Firbeck in Nottinghamshire. It’s the 16th of November 2021. I shall put that there. It is recording. Yeah. So, could you tell me a little bit about your early life and growing up in Sheffield?
SE: Well, I was born and bred at 54 Wulfric Road which is on the Manor Estate in Sheffield. A council house. There were five of us. Parents, my elder Sister Reine and my elder brother Lewis. Lewis was eight years older than me and needless to say with that age gap he very much my hero even before he joined the Air Force. Of course, he was crazy about flying like I suppose a lot of young chaps were in those days and always wanted to go in the Air Force at the earliest possible moment. And I suppose in some respects I followed that and thought well, you know this is what it’s all about and I had a tremendous interest in aircraft. So even before the war started I think I could pick out a Heinkel from a Messerschmitt and so on. But the war, well let me say this straight from the start for a kid of that age bearing in mind I was eight years old when the war started it was exciting. It was so interesting. I mean, there were just so many things happening. We were never ever bored. I mean and, I mean if anything I mean the main problem was it took your mind away from the sort of things you should have been thinking about which was school of course. Anyway, I followed my, my brother Lewis. He passed what they subsequently called the Eleven Plus, we called it the Scholarship and went to High Storrs Grammar School and I followed him subsequently. We, both of us went before that to Prince Edward School at the top of Prince of Wales Road. Anyway, back to the war. I think the earliest things I remember was going on a seaside trip to Rhyl and on the way back seeing barrage balloons and subsequently of course we saw barrage balloons very close up because they used to be all over the place in Sheffield. The next thing was of course air raid shelters. Well, I mean the whole business. I think before air raid shelters we had gas masks and we all had gas masks and we had, at school we had to try them on and we had to sit in class with a gas mask on. And I always remember that they discovered a new form of gas so we got a little green part and a roll of tape and we had to attach the green bit on to the rest of the gas mask. And then air raid shelters. Yeah, well a air raid shelter in the back garden so we had to dig in a big hole, put the air raid shelter in it. Now, we didn’t go to the extent that a lot of people went to but we did sort of put some bedding in there and a heater and so on and a proper sort of wooden floor and so on. The other thing, big change at home my father was an expert breeder of canaries, canary birds and he had a large hut at the top of the garden and an aviary and so on. His main market and his main sort of source of breeding birds was Germany. The war finished all that so he did away with, or gave away all his canaries and replaced them with chickens and we had a whole range of chickens and from very early on we had a constant supply of eggs. Of course, my dad following his hobby with canaries had to do the same thing with the chickens and when they weren’t brooding they used to sit on eggs and then we got our own little chicks which my dad then sexed into male and female. The females went on one side. They were for laying. The cocks we kept and put in a separate pen and fattened up for eating. We also had rabbits that we used to keep for eating and I remember my mum used to make mittens out of rabbit skin. Incidentally, my mum, brought up in the country had no problem, my dad had no problem whatsoever killing a chicken and my mum had no problem at all plucking and drawing a chicken. Incidentally, on top of that my grandmother out at Anston they kept pigs so we also occasionally got a bit of pork and ham when they killed a pig. So, we didn’t do too badly from that point of view during the war as far as eating were concerned. We were pretty healthy. The most exciting of all in the first instance was the [pause] No. Wait a minute. Before the Blitz. Dunkirk. Now, this, this really was something because St Swithun’s Church Hall became what shall we call it? A —
UE: Reception Centre.
SE: Reception Centre for all the troops coming back from —
UE: Dunkirk.
SE: From Dunkirk. So, the word went around the estate of course in no time at all that something was happening and busses of all shapes and sizes and coaches were all coming up and all parading around, around the church and so we all rushed out there and sure enough disposing troops. All mixed up. All regiments of all different types and so on and they were all sort of being sorted out in St Swithun’s Hall and billeted in houses on the Manor Estate. Now, we couldn’t take anybody because we had a three bedroom house and of course and so we were full but my Aunt Bett, that’s my mum’s sister who lived around the corner she took two. Two soldiers. One from the Royal Engineers and the other one from the Gordon Highlanders and I can see those two fellas even now and they, because they used to, well they gave us all sort of souvenirs. Chocolate and what have you. And I think they must have been with Aunt Bett for what, I suppose at least a couple of weeks I would think before, because that’s what they were there was such a mix up and I always remember some of them were sort of walking wounded with their arms in slings and bandages around their head and this sort of thing. And of course, we used to be around there asking for souvenirs. I used to have a tremendous collection of hat badges and buttons and the like. Yeah. So that was that. Blitz. Yeah. Well, that was, talk about excitement that, now that really was something. It, the first Blitz of course on Sheffield they hit the city centre. Now, on the Manor Estate we’re not all that far. I mean we’re on the top side of Norfolk Park and beyond Norfolk Park is the city centre but of course we —
UE: High up.
SE: Were high up. The first thing was the air raid sirens. So, we all went into the shelter and before long the aircraft battery at Manor Lane, there was a big aircraft battery there, a tremendous din. And then searchlights and we’re all in the, and then we hear the droning and then we hear bombs falling. Well, this was too much for —
UE: Lewis.
SE: For Lewis. And for that matter for me in spite of my mum’s pleading.
UE: Pleading.
SE: He had to stand outside and before long I went to join him and there we were because the sky was full of bursting anti-aircraft shells, searchlights and of course the thing that sticks in my mind most of all was when a searchlight found an aircraft and I can see it now. It was a Heinkel and it was lit up by the searchlight and one searchlight and then another, at least another three or four, five searchlights all joined it and then the aircraft shells bursting all around it and we were hoping. Before it was hit it went into a cloud and we never saw it again. Anyway, they said this went on, I don’t know a long long time anyway. Anyway, when it was all over and we got the all clear we came out of the shelter walked along to the corner of Queen Mary Road where we could actually look right down the centre of Sheffield and what a sight. We could see the whole centre of Sheffield was ablaze and of course don’t forget these were the nights of blackout when everything normally was absolutely black and there we had the brightest thing we’d seen since before the war started and there we are. And as I say never ever can I ever remember feeling in the least scared at all. It was just sheer excitement all the time. Anyway, it was shortly after that that Lewis went into the Air Force. He was, he’d be seventeen on the Blitz. He turned eighteen and went and joined up in January was it and I think actually, actually left. Yeah. He was called up in February. Yeah. And of course, he always wanted to be a pilot of course and that’s what he turned out to be. And the further he went I mean I took a immense interest in where he was and what he was doing and all the aircraft he was flying. I kept a list of which I’ve still got somewhere and yeah it’s in, in the back of that spotter’s book I think.
DE: Yeah.
SE: And yeah. What else? I don’t know. What do you want to say, Una?
UE: Well, I was only very very young of course when the, when the war started but I do remember when the sirens went that we all had jobs. Even, even I had a job. But my brother’s job was to come in and put my siren suit on and take me and of course my sister was a very young baby down to the air raid shelter. And ours was I suppose quite luxurious. We had bunks and we had what we would have called not an oil stove it was a wood burning stove. And of course, I was always curious why the chimney had a kink in it and that was of course so that the light from the fire wouldn’t reflect in to the sky. And we shared the shelter with our next door neighbours so it was quite full because there were five of us and two from next door in the shelter when the sirens went. But my particular job even at sort of two and a half three was to tear newspaper up and thread it on a string for the toilet because of course you couldn’t go back into the house and it was a bucket with a lid. The children at school were always interested in what we did for that. And my brother had a job. He had to carry some food in. And my father as soon as the sirens had gone he would go and light the stove and get it quite warm for us inside so we were quite cosy. And I know that we had at one time, we weren’t evacuated but I think it was an incendiary dropped at the corner of Sicey Avenue where I lived on the Shire Green Estate. And I know and I can remember another, another very pleasing episode. We had Canadian officers stationed. I think they were stationed near Ecclesfield and I don’t know how my parents got to know them but they used to visit the house and my mother would use a big [unclear] and she would make a meat and potato pie. Mainly potato but of course we were on rations and meat was fairly scarce. But I know they used to supply us with various things. They used to bring various things because they were very well looked after and remember evenings when they came my mum and dad said, ‘Oh, no. Go on. The children are asleep.’ And they used to come upstairs and I can remember lying in bed and I shared a bed with my sister, one of them between us with his arm around us singing. Singing songs well into the night. And it was, that was a happy time. But, and at school, I went to school by the time the war, the Christmas that the Blitz was in Sheffield. We were lucky that my parents had collected our Christmas presents and at the time I’d been desperate for a little black doll and my parents had got me one. And Christmas morning highly delighted my mother had knitted all the hat and the matinee coat and the dress and the bootees and everything and she was all dressed up and I played with her outside with my pram and being called in for tea went out to fetch her in and she’d gone. Someone had been and stolen her so I was only blessed with my little doll for a few hours. But that was very very upsetting. But my father used to keep rabbits and things but I would never ever wear the gloves because we’d treated our rabbits as pets. And let me think. Oh yes. At school we had underground shelters in primary school and we used to have practices. I don’t think we ever went down there when there was an actual raid on but they used to have practice sessions and we would go down under the shelters and apparently, my brother told me that his teachers used to tell them ghost stories down underneath which he quite enjoyed. He thought that was great. But no. I’m trying to think of other things that happened.
SE: Well —
UE: Of course, I was still, still young because I was seven years younger than Sid was.
SE: Oh, you were well you were born in ’38.
UE: Yeah. Yeah.
SE: So, you were only one year old. You must have had one of those baby enclosure type you know, masks, gas mask. Well, it wasn’t a gas mask. It was a —
UE: No. I know my, I know the baby had like a Mickey Mouse one.
SE: No. That was when they got, they were toddler’s. Toddlers had Mickey Mouse but if you were a small baby it was —
UE: That wasn’t me.
SE: Like a small incubator.
UE: I mean, I was two and a half by the time the Blitz was on. Two and a half, three.
SE: I know but we got, we got gas masks before the war started.
UE: I remember the gas masks. I remember the gas masks.
SE: They were before the war started so you’d only be one. Well, I don’t know. Perhaps if you were walking you’d have a Mickey Mouse which looked like a Mickey Mouse with a [pause] Anyway that’s, incidentally talking about your mum’s meat and potato pie she just I suppose it was sentimental really but she used to make sort of wartime meat and potato from thence on.
UE: Yeah.
SE: You know, lots of potato and not much meat.
UE: In a [unclear] we’ve got the, we’ve still got the [unclear] It’s in the loft.
SE: Talking about Christmas presents you say, yeah what you could get and what you couldn’t get. Very limited. And I was lucky again because my, my dad was a tram driver and his, his conductor became very friendly, a fellow called Albert Foster and he was very handy with his hands and I remember him making me an absolutely superb, first of all a farmyard and then bought the animals. Other people bought the animals to go on. And then, I think a couple of years later a garage. Magnificent presents actually you know to say that there was a war on. But that was typical of course. Anyway, just thinking on about Blitz. The second Blitz of course was more serious from the, from the war point of view because it hit the East End and this time they did really hit the steel industry. But we were further away so we had, we had all the noise from, from Manor Lane again but as I said we, we just, just not the [pause] As far as I recall it was more overcast that night and certainly nothing like as exciting as that first Blitz night. But in point of fact, we had the nearest bombing factor where we lived was on the second Blitz. It was on Prince of Wales Road. Not far away. In fact, a few houses on Prince of Wales Road were damaged not least from incendiaries as well, as I recall. What else? I don’t know. Lead me for a bit [laughs]
UE: I can’t think of anything else much.
SE: Of course, the, the, my brother was killed of course which had an immense —
UE: Effect.
SE: Effect on me I suppose. More. I didn’t realise it at the time. I think I sort of went in to a sort of —
UE: Wasn’t your mum called in to school about — yeah.
SE: Well, later yeah. Yeah.
UE: Because he never told. Never told his friends.
SE: I never told anybody. I didn’t want to tell anybody. I mean the lads at school were, you know knew I’d got a brother in the Air Force. In fact, you know that used to give me a status and I suppose in a funny sort of way I mean not that it was important but I sort of lost my status overnight literally and, but I, it certainly affected my schoolwork in the first instance. And I do remember my mum coming to school and meeting Dr Mack who was the headmaster and him sort of having a talk to me and trying to urge me. And in actual fact, for whatever reason however it came about from sort of definitely falling away in ’45 by the time I took the School Cert in ’47 well I did get, in those days you had to pass seven subjects to actually get a school certificate. There was no question of how it came subsequently of getting passes in separate subjects and I mean this many levels and so on. But yeah, so the war and I remember having strange feelings because don’t forget my brother was killed on the 23rd of February and of course the war was over, well VE day on the, on the 8th of May. Celebrating. I know my cousins wanted to go into town and I wasn’t all that keen. It seemed all a bit strange that people were celebrating while at our house of course I mean, well I mean, I don’t like to even think about how it affected my parents. Bear in mind of course that my, my dad had spent the whole of the First World War in the Western Front in the Royal Field Artillery and he became deaf as a result of that which always affected him. In fact, it stopped him being a tram driver and he had to go into the [pause] he had to go into —
UE: Workshop.
SE: The tram sheds. Just doing odd jobs and cleaning and so on after that which of course lowered the income. We never, never had much money anyway. But yeah, it, it was, it was a rum time. But I was saying my, my dad spent the whole of the First World War on, in France and I recently found his, his paybook which sort of confirms all the places he went to and so on. But my mum lost a brother in the First World War and my father lost a brother in the First World War and then there again then they lost a son in the Second World War so, I don’t know. Doing your bit for Britain. I suppose it was a bit over the top really. Anyway, there we are.
DE: It’s, it’s fascinating. Thank you. I wonder if you could tell me a bit about what it was like when you, when your brother joined up and his, his career and where he went and the things he did.
SE: Yeah. Well, he, he joined up. He went to Scarborough. He joined up as an, he immediately went for aircrew tests. He went down [pause] I can’t remember. Actually, at my age my memory sort of has big gaps. I forget things. He went down to London for aircrew tests and passed for, for pilot. Came back and then subsequently went to Canada and did his training in Canada. After he qualified as a pilot and got his wings he went in to, he became what was called, I think a staff pilot and he was flying, well various aircraft but essentially went to a bomb and gunnery school where they were actually training bomb aimers and gunners and obviously Lewis was piloting the plane while they were chasing drogues and what have you. And of course, he did that for quite a time and until he came home and originally when he came home, we found out subsequently that for whatever reason it appeared as though he was, well he wanted to go in to, in to Transport Command and he was, it looked as though he was going from one piece of correspondence we had. But for whatever reason obviously he finished up in Bomber Command with 166 Squadron at Kirmington.
UE: Well, they needed pilots.
SE: Yeah. They must have been short of pilots. Of course, we know there were huge losses which of course is something I feel very strongly about which of course I’m not alone in this. That obviously, I’ve took a lot of interest and whereas war was exciting when I was a kid bearing in mind you learn as you grow up and so my attitude towards war is entirely different now and I get very mixed feelings. My feelings towards my brother don’t change but I can’t forget that he was involved in the Dresden raid and then what I’ve learned subsequently the raid when he was killed was over Pforzheim when the actual civilian deaths were, I think at the highest rate that they’ve recorded of any, of any raid in Germany. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about that. It does, it plays on my mind that and when people say that bomber aircrew should have been regarded as war criminals because what they did was as bad as a lot of the things that happened in Nazi Germany, area bombing. And then of course I’ve looked it all up and followed it subsequently and I know that all about the Silverman Enquiry into the whole raids to test the population’s reaction to air raids and morale and it was proven that it did not affect morale. In fact, it could improve morale in spite of that. In spite of that Winston Churchill together with Harris they’d got it stuck in their mind that terrorising the population was a way to conduct the war. And that’s what happened to Bomber Command and that’s why they became the, to have the highest losses of any, any section in the war. Huge losses and bear in mind that most of these lads were the, if you like the cream of youth because most of them were Grammar School lads who’d, the ones that had succeeded like my brother did, you know from working class backgrounds and became aircrew and then they were lost. And then to crown it all of course there’s been more recognition I suppose of what Bomber Command did over the past maybe ten, fifteen years but it was the only, the only —
UE: Force.
SE: The only force not to get a campaign medal was Bomber Command which of course being probably the bravest of all is, well it’s pitiful. Ridiculous. Anyway, there you are. I could go on but just the other side of the excitement of war. No. No. Believe me war is to be avoided. Whether it’s in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else. That’s, it should be the absolute last resort but there we are.
DE: No. I agree. Yeah. Could you, you know bearing all that in mind and your family’s experiences and your, you know father’s experiences in the First World War why, why did he want to join the RAF?
SE: Youth. Excitement. He wanted to fly in the first instance. I think that was it. I mean, don’t forget we’re talking about the 1930s. I mean we regard flying now, you know I mean everybody, everybody’s flown. I mean everybody’s been on an aircraft I mean and flown around the world and so on. That wasn’t the case in the ‘30s. How many people had flown in the ‘30s unless you were extremely rich? I mean, bear in mind, I mean we never had a motor car. I mean most people didn’t. I mean, how many people had motor cars? Obviously, in the war I mean you were restricted anyway but I mean I, we never had a motorcar and so when it came to flying and the opportunity to fly I mean, fantastic. Wonderful. And that was the first attraction of course. The fact that you had to fight in a war in order to be, become a pilot and to fly I suppose that was, yeah, that was a bit of a problem. But no. No. The first instant was flying.
DE: Right.
SE: Without any doubt at all and Lewis loved it. I mean, he made that absolutely clear. He used to love flying. Yeah. And he was, they always said, I mean other people said he was a natural pilot. I don’t know if you want to talk about his, his best pal in the war, in the Air Force who was Gus Knox who was a New Zealander.
DE: Yes. Definitely. That’s on my list.
SE: Yeah. Well, you’ve got all the, I’ve kept all the correspondence there separately but he met Gus Knox in Canada and Gus Knox was a wireless operator actually although he subsequently as I understand it earned his wings later on in the war. He, he met him in Canada and they became extremely close friends. In fact, some of the correspondence shows just how close. I mean relative to some of the things he talked about and so on. They left Canada. I think Lewis left Canada first to come back home and Gus Knox shortly after that and he went back. Well, he didn’t go back to New Zealand. He went in to the Pacific. He was on Catalinas. Flying Boats. There was a lot of correspondence then. In fact, it’s quite funny actually because the correspondence was censored and we’ve got one letter which is, is full of strips.
UE: Full of holes.
SE: Because in that particular letter the censors actually cut out, cut out the letters and sentences. But that correspondence went on for some time. Just to indicate the depths of their friendship Gus Knox named his son, he’d already got a daughter and his wife became pregnant shortly after and that’s referred to in the correspondence. And then it was a son and they named him Lewis. Lewis [Laidley] Knox —
DE: Right.
SE: Who must be probably in his late seventies, eighties now in New Zealand. Anyway, Gus Knox carried on writing to Lewis and he started getting letters back in some cases and he stopped getting replies and this was obviously after the 23rd of February ’45. And so he was sending letters even after Lewis had been killed which at that time he’d, because he’d had letters returned from various stations because Lewis was on, made a tremendous number of moves after he came back from Canada but he was writing to Lewis’ home address. So, we’ve got those letters and then eventually he sent a letter to my father, in effect fearing the worst. The fact, he’d not had a letter for so long and fearing that Lewis had in fact been killed and of course they wrote back and telling him that. And then this quite a moving letter which he writes about his friendship for Lewis. And anyway, there we are. There’s a whole bundle of correspondence there on that. Yeah.
DE: Thank you. And there’s all the letters.
SE: Yeah.
DE: From Lewis.
SE: What you’ve got is my, my, it’s my mother really. I mean, she was an, she, she didn’t like throwing things away and she would, sort of things like letters such as these I mean she would never think of throwing away. I suppose I still have that hoarding thing.
UE: Yeah [laughs]
SE: According to Una. Anyway, all the letters are there that Lewis sent to us all the way from the very first letter when he went into the Air Force to the last letter he sent to us from Kirmington. In other words from 1941 right through to February ’45. We’ve got a few letters that Lewis had actually saved for whatever reason that’s been sent to him from, from home and from various people. Incidentally including letters from me because he was always interested in the fact that I’d gone to school and there is a particular letter which incidentally started all this off because I wrote him a letter all about my early days at High Storrs Grammar School mentioning the masters and I even, as I say I sent him all the details and even the nicknames.
UE: The timetable.
SE: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Even the timetable. And he, what am I saying? The other. Yeah. He, I’m trying to think of the letter he sent. Oh yeah. The other thing what I did find well even touching actually is a lot going back to Gus Knox actually. In a lot of the letters it does in fact refer to me asking how I’m going on and so on. And of course, it just brings back to mind that Lewis talked about after the war going to New Zealand. In fact, all of us going to New Zealand and who knows it could be quite easily if he hadn’t been killed we could very well. Life would have been different because I would have been a New Zealander by now. So, there we are.
DE: Yes. smashing. Thank you. I think I’ve covered most of the things I’ve jotted down to ask. Have you anything to —
UE: No. I don’t. I can’t think of anything else.
DE: I’ll not press stop. I’ll just —
[recording paused]
DE: Ok. So, tell me about RAF Firbeck.
SE: RAF Firbeck. Well, it all starts with the fact that Firbeck Hall became a famous country club. A guy called Nicholson who owned the Grand Hotel in Sheffield acquired the Firbeck Hall Estate in the 1930s and made Firbeck Hall into an absolutely magnificent country club with absolutely, they did actually, did everything. He constructed, he got a leading golfer, was it Cotton, to design the golf course which surrounded that? Went in to all the fields all around here and they did everything. I mean, but anyway now going in to all that the main thing here is they constructed an airfield. It was at that sort of level that they constructed an airfield so that people could actually fly to Firbeck Hall Country Club.
UE: For the weekend.
SE: It opened in 1935. The war came in 1939 which put the kibosh on the whole thing. Firbeck Hall became a hospital and it also became the officer’s mess for the RAF, obviously took over RAF Firbeck.
UE: Wasn’t it a Polish —
SE: No. No. No.
UE: No. Not.
SE: But they, they took over the being so remote as it was in those days it was became a special operations and I think there’s no doubt about this now because it’s all come out subsequently. The last resort. Well, I don’t know about the last resort it might have been a first resort but if Hitler had invaded they would have been met with poison gas. The poison gas would have been delivered by Avro, by Avro Lysanders that were stationed at RAF Firbeck and they —
UE: [unclear]
SE: The remnants of it are all around Firbeck. In the wood behind the airfield there’s the result of all the, what do they call them?
UE: The remains of the billets.
SE: Where they kept the poisoned gas and, what did they call it? The Decontamination Centre was actually where our village hall is now. Right next door to us and don’t we know about it because of the special drains that were constructed between our actual garden and I found out when I tried to dig out a pond.
UE: Dig a fishpond.
SE: Anyway, the, that was, that was RAF Firbeck and about what was it three, four, five years ago.
UE: Yeah.
SE: They, what did they call them? You might know them. The aircraft. The airfield. The Airfield Association that are going around checking or if you like looking into the history of every RAF airfield from World War Two and they came across RAF Firbeck and that’s when all this information came out together with lots of photographs incidentally.
DE: Ok.
SE: Confirming all this. All these characters in decontamination suits and so on and the —
UE: Memorial as well.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. The, after they’d done all this they, they erected a Memorial out of local stone in, actually it’s in the path that runs through what used to be the airfield and with a Memorial type there and we had a grand opening but they, they couldn’t find, what was it? They had Austers there as well and there is still an Auster flying but that wasn’t available. We had a Tiger Moth actually did a fly past.
DE: Right.
SE: When we went to all this business. Now, the point I’m making here from what we were talking earlier is —
UE: The people that turned up.
SE: We all met up. Now, needless to say the British Legion and all the characters all turned up you know in what is the uniform of grey slacks and navy blue blazers and obviously berets and medals.
UE: Medals.
SE: And all the rest of it and after the, after all the celebrations of, of inaugurating the thing which was on the first Remembrance Day after, it was lightened up for that anyway we were all in the Black Lion Pub and I’m sat next to, well sat at a table with three or four of these lads and I’m saying, what —
UE: ‘What did you do?’
SE: So, ‘What did you do?’ You know. Sort of to get involved in all this lot. Oh, you know, anyway I’m not going to go into all the detail but we all got, they’d all done National Service and none of them had, you know been anywhere near a war or anything like that. But for these lads and don’t get me wrong I’m not blaming them for it I mean it would appear that the most exciting thing that happened in their life was being in the Services. Particularly in the Army and and it’s led to following you know this business almost like a hobby because practically every other weekend there is something happening and they put on that uniform.
DE: Yeah.
SE: And they go along, you know. I’m not saying, I’m not going to say rent a crowd but anyway but and and and that sort of brought me comes back to what I’ve just been talking about.
DE: About remembrance.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: So, you were in the RAF. Yeah?
SE: Yeah. Oh yeah.
DE: And you don’t feel the need to —
SE: I went in the RAF I mean this is [laughs] right. Say when you as you get older it didn’t take me long actually. Don’t forget I, I was, I was doing the student apprenticeship at Hatfield’s in Sheffield and I was supposed to be deferred. I would have been deferred from that job. My, I’d always made it clear, you know earlier before Lewis got killed that I wanted to follow him in the Air Force. I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to learn to fly. Again, no thought of, you know originally of getting killed or anything like that. Needless to say my parents made it absolutely clear that that was the last thing they wanted me to do. I mean bearing in my mind what we said about losing brothers before —
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
SE: Losing a son. Anyway, the fact remains I thought well, I’ll give it a try anyway. So the first thing I did when I’d been called up for National Service and reported to Padgate, and early on they ask you what you wanted to do and I applied for aircrew. And I went down to Hornchurch and had a full aircrew test and got through. But instead at that time when I went in in ’47 National Service was eighteen months. As a result of that of the forty, fifty of us who were in that draft went down and did that test only five were offered pilot. National Service pilot. In other words to learn to fly in that eighteen month so in effect be available for a Reserve or hopefully to persuade them to sign on.
DE: Yeah.
SE: Anyway, I I passed there. I didn’t want [laughs] I didn’t get, well I got, I could have been a pilot for eight and four that’s what they offered me. Eight hours. Eight years.
UE: Eight years.
SE: Followed by four on the Reserve and eight years when you’re eighteen years old seems a hell of a long time so I won’t commit myself and, but it was still there. But then unfortunately shall we say, or fortunately for the Air Force, I don’t know if fortunately or unfortunately for me although, well let’s put it this way in the meantime I became an instrument engineer. Instrument repairer or instrument mechanic as they called us then because we still had the three grades and I knew a lad in, in HQ who was a cyclist like me and I’d been told I was going to be posted to [coughs] excuse me. I’ll have a drink [pause] Because I was going to posted to Sutton Coldfield and they told me at the last minute it had been cancelled. They were short of instrument people in the Middle East and so I was sent out to the Middle East and finished up at Fayid, on the Suez Canal on 39 Squadron. Mosquito night fighters that changed to the Meteors. Life in the Canal Zone, you couldn’t have a worst bloody posting in the RAF I can assure you. And in fact, I don’t know, I mean even a pal of mine committed suicide out there and he wasn’t alone. The thing that kept me going is, was cycling actually. I organised a Cycling Club out there. Anyway, that’s another story. Let’s put it this way whatever thoughts I’d got about making a career in the Air Force was certainly put way on the back burner from having to spend because incidentally I’d been in Egypt for about a couple of months when instead of having to complete eighteen months they extended National Service to two years. So, I just got to hate Egypt and it kept me there for another six months. And so, oh another interesting thing here I think one of the first things that happened when I was, got to [unclear] I was sent to station headquarters and I’m not sure if it wasn’t the CO wanted to see me. ‘Ellis, you passed aircrew test. Now then, why on earth haven’t you taken it up?’ You know. You silly boy [unclear] and all that. ‘Oh, I’ll think about it, sir.’ So that was that. When I was leaving [pause] well some time in between I was sent for again and the last thing before I was demobbed they asked me again and now, blow me I’d been home for what was it twelve months, eighteen months something like that and they called me up on Reserve for RAF Waddington. Only for a couple of weeks I think it was or it might have been a month. I don’t know. Because I remember there two things happened when I got, early things that happened when I got to RAF Waddington was the station WO called me over and told me to get my hair cut. And then the next thing that happened I was sent for by station headquarters and asked if I was interested in becoming, you know aircrew again.
DE: Sign on ‘til you get to the end.
SE: So, there you are. That’s what happened to my big, you know dreams.
DE: Yeah.
SE: From being a kid.
DE: And you —
SE: You grow up you see.
DE: Yeah, and you don’t feel the need for —
SE: You grow up the hard way.
DE: You don’t feel the need of putting the blazer and the medals on and parading at the weekends either.
SE: Well, yeah. I mean maybe. Maybe it’s just me. You know brought up don’t forget kids like me I mean I wore you’ve got to admit this I mean, I mean I’m not, I wouldn’t say normal but let’s just say that war, World War One cast a, if not a shadow an influence on my early life and it was continued into World War Two and it was continued through National Service. So, it’s there all the time. Now, anybody sort of born anything subsequently you know after the war would just, probably well, I don’t know maybe some people born after the war if they’d lost somebody in the war would obviously be affected by it but for the vast majority of people I mean all these influences that I had. I mean my actual education. I mean, I went to High Storrs like my brother did but half the, I mean it was a boy’s school incidentally, half the teachers were women and the ones that were men they were all old men and they were all — so there was no young vigorous teachers. What a difference after the war. It must have been ’46, the year before I finished we got a new form master called Albert Leach and then even well when you think about it subsequently what a difference when you get a young fellow like him you know after the war and his all way of teaching and generating. I was saying how my performance you know it went down after Lewis was killed but surely one of the characters who got me back to somewhere normal was having a young male teacher like Albert Leach. Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Interesting. Thank you. I’m going to, I’ll hit pause again.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Sidney and Una Ellis
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-11-16
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:49:44 Audio Recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AEllisS-U211116
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney and Una both experienced the effect of the war in Sheffield as a child. When Dunkirk survivors arrived at the nearby Reception Centre Sidney collected many souvenirs such as cap badges and his aunt also took two soldiers in to her home while they were waiting to be returned to their units. Sidney’s eldest brother, Lewis trained as a pilot and was posted to 166 Squadron. He was shot down and killed 23 February 1945. Sidney joined the RAF during his National Service.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Sheffield
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
166 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
killed in action
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Kirmington
searchlight
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2604/45259/PBrownG2301.1.jpg
7d02ee8c84e40d818808949ed098d2d8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2604/45259/ABrownG231006.1.mp3
b1d31396faa33eb1a8728340465637b2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Brown, Geoff
G Brown
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Geoff Brown (b. 1923). He grew up in Grimsby and remembers the town being bombed with butterfly bombs. He served as a clerk in the army serving in France and Egypt post war. After demob, he worked as a lorry, coach and taxi driver.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-10-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Brown, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is an interview for the IBCC Digital Archive with Geoff Brown. My name is Dan Ellin. It is the 6th of October 2023 and we’re in Grimsby. Also present in the room is Paul [Thenick] and Geoff’s son, Alan. I’ll just put that there so we can hear your voice. Geoff can we just start a little bit about your early life and where you grew up please?
GB: Well, I grew up where I am living now in Chelmsford Avenue only it was across the road at number 12. So I only moved, so I’m still in the same area I’ve been for ninety three years. Born there. Then when I got married I bought this house and so that my lifetime has been in the same area as when, when we used to go, come out in the morning looking for shrapnel as I told you.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And that’s what we was doing that morning with a friend of mine. She was a girl who lived around, only around the corner in Littlefield Lane but we did it regular. If there had been an air raid the night before and we was in the shelter we would get up to go and look for shrapnel. I don’t know why. I don’t want keeping it or anything. Just a matter of interest, you know. And that was I was doing that on, on the morning they dropped the butterfly bombs. Do you want me to carry on?
DE: Yes, please. Yeah.
GB: And I was walking down Littlefield Lane looking for shrapnel and the sports ground that was there in them days in the hedge was a, was a, as I see was a lump of iron. I wasn’t sure what it was and there was a soldier stood nearby. But I threw a brick at it and nothing happened. I didn’t know ought about butterfly bombs and people being killed that morning and I threw a brick at it. So I picked it up and I gave it to this soldier. I says, ‘Do you know what it is?’ He didn’t know but he did an amazing thing. He opened his army knife, jackknife with the prong and as you’ve just seen what Paul showed you what he’s trying to prise it open. Well, God knows none of us would be here if he’d have succeeded. But he tried and he couldn’t. He couldn’t force it open and he just said to me, ‘You have it. There you are. You have it. You found it. You have it.’ Of course, he didn’t know it was a bomb and I didn’t know it was a bomb so walking back to where I lived which was only across the road and the girl I was with she took it in her house because it couldn’t be far. That was in Littlefield Lane where the bomb was found and her father said, ‘You’re not —' So she came out. She said, ‘My dad don’t, don’t want that in the house.’ Again, nobody is saying it’s a bomb. He hadn’t or any. So she gave it to me. I said, ‘Well I’ll have it then.’ Souvenir. And I walked around the corner and I go in the house. My father is home. He was a fisherman and he says, ‘You’re not having that in the house.’ Again, none of us thinking for one minute it’s a bomb. I’d been kicking it along the road as I’m walking back because it would roll over with a kick like, you know. And anyway, I’ve got it in my hand and I opened the front door and as I opened the front door there was a bomb disposal lorry coming down this avenue which was across the road. Coming down here and an officer walking in front and he was looking which I didn’t know he was looking for these butterfly bombs and he saw me with it in my hand. Now, I’ve had it a good half hour. I’d kicked it and had it. If I’d had known what was going to happen I’d have just walked it across the road to a green. To a patch of green field you know. But he panicked me, ‘Drop it. Drop it.’ I dropped it on the [laughs] well, I didn’t drop it. I put it down on the doorstep and so I I’m out the, I’m really worried at this stage. I don’t know what’s going on and they’re looking for me and it was a butterfly bomb. So they sandbagged it up within a few minutes. Sanded it all up and detonated it about an hour later which blew the windows of, of our house and a neighbour’s house and I think one across the road. The explosion blew the windows in but not the doors. Well, I’m terrified now. I don’t, I think because what happened in them days your father would give you a good hiding you know as punishment. It wasn’t like it is today. He was alright. He never. But if you really misbehaved you got a good hiding and you expected it. You got it at school. You got the cane every time you misbehaved. Your teacher used to bend the cane like that. I don’t know whether, but you expected if you’d done something wrong. Now I’m terrified. I thought well I’m not going. I’m not going in because I’ve seen the damage it’s done like you know. But, but the opposite was the case as it turned out. I didn’t know it at the time but my parents were lucky that I was alive. That I’d picked this bomb up, carried it about and survived. They had to blow it up to do it so, so I didn’t know at the time. I was about, I don’t know roughly about an hour out the house terrified to go back home because I thought I’m going to get a good hiding for this. And anyway, I didn’t. Obviously. I didn’t. That’s as near as I could tell you about it but I did also know at the time the words were going around with people living nearby oh there had been a few on the Castle Market in the town centre. Eighty people. Eighty two I believe. I’m not, but it was said at the time eighty odd people had been killed but it was all in secrecy. Nobody, you know it was never ever mentioned. Mainly the radio in them days. I’m not saying whether telly, I can’t remember if there was telly on or not but not many people did have tellies and if they did they weren’t very good ones. But the radio, we all listened to the radio and it was never mentioned which too me at that age I thought that’s a surprise. Nobody wanted so everything was kept in secrecy. Then a few years later, I haven’t got the paper now, I don’t know what happened but a woman came from Paris researching the butterfly bombs and the council had told them about where I lived. Could have been in the paper, the local paper so they knew. And she come to the house and anyway cut a long story I don’t know what, she went to London to a thing in Trafalgar Square about the, so she said about the butterfly and she come back. She said, ‘I’ll come back at Grimsby and let you know.’ Well, I never did hear from her again. She wrote me a letter where I think I’ve got rid of it. She wrote a letter thanking me for, for what similar to what your knowing. All about the bomb and what I knew about the bomb which wasn’t a lot except that I survived it. So that is pretty near what happened.
DE: Yes. Smashing. Thank you. Did, did you ever see any others?
GB: No. No. I heard of nearby on Cromwell Road not far from here. Another street about a half a mile, a mile away there were several people cycling to work that morning. Railway workers, milk people that early morning work and a lot of them were exploding as soon as they were in the streets early on. But quite a few laid in parks. A cemetery as it was in them days in the town centre. Ainslie Street Cemetery it was called. It’s a park now. But there was quite two or three people killed in there by walking along and touching them. One or two three or four year later so I was told you know. So they were dangerous for a few years afterwards if they laid undetected. But a lot of them fell so I was told I mean fell in the streets and Paul told me that if they dropped as a canister if one fell there would be twenty more nearby.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Which I didn’t know. I mean I was, I wasn’t, I had no information like that at all.
DE: No. Of course not. No.
GB: I just considered myself when all the facts came out how lucky I was that I even kicked it along the road and I’m not being dramatic about it. I did. And taking it home. It’s a canister. Closed like that. But I never thought for one minute all that time that this was a bomb and the soldier certainly didn’t. So if a soldier and people like that didn’t know on the hours with them being dropped you could understand. You know, I understood what was happening.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But the bomb disposal officers just told me to drop it and stood on the, I’m just about to step off the step to get rid of it. Put it, you know because my father, we he said he didn’t want it in the house so I thought well I’ll get rid of it because I’m just thinking it’s shrapnel. It’s to do with that you know. Never in my wildest dream think I was carrying an unexploded bomb about.
DE: So was, was the raid when they dropped those was that any different to any of the other ones that you’d experienced?
GB: No. Not as far as I know. About the air raid? No. Not to my knowledge. We’d had an air raid. We had quite a few of them but they very rare dropped bombs on Grimsby. They did drop bombs but we used to think rightly or wrongly if they were blitzing Hull or they’d gone inland a bit, Sheffield and places like that if they were coming back going back home and they’d got they’d got some bombs. I don’t know whether this be true or not but a lot of people thought it the bombs on Grimsby as far as I know was never a bombing raid on Grimsby. The butterfly bombs was but the real bombs that did a lot of damages to people’s houses and killed people we thought whether that’s true or not we always thought at the time well they’re coming over they’ve got a couple of bombs. I can’t ever think. There was bombs dropped on Grimsby. Of course, there was but nothing compared to what Hull which was only across the river. So whether that was true or not we thought it was true.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But other people would be more accurate and probably say no they did. But I don’t think. We never ever got a blitz or what I call a raid. Several bombs were dropped on the town, a few on the dock but it was never ever and I never thought it was but I weren’t the, I’m only thirteen.
DE: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
GB: My father didn’t think it was. Elderly people didn’t think it was. They just thought well they’re coming over Grimsby on their way home.
DE: And they’ve got a couple left.
GB: Whether it’s true or not.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It might have been. It might not have been but they certainly, they didn’t, they didn’t, I can’t think of anywhere in Grimsby where there was incendiary bombs targeted. Several bombs did fall. I’m not disputing that but it was only one or two or three like. That’s what I was understood at the time and that’s what my father would be telling me and, but yeah I don’t think we were ever targeted as a bombing trip to be bombed. Well, we had nothing here. We was a fishing port. That’s what, that’s what I think. Whether it’s right or not. I mean we had no industries. Not in them days. All the Humber Bank come after the war. All the industrial. There was no shipyards here. They were all in Goole and Hull. You know what I’m saying?
DE: Wasn’t Grimsby one of the biggest fishing fleets in the country?
GB: It was the biggest ever.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I’m not saying that dramatically but you could walk across Grimsby, my dad was a fisherman, he came ashore later on in his life, worked on the dredgers but you could walk across Grimsby dock from one and I’ve done it because he took me down the dock at times. You could, you could walk across hundreds and I mean hundreds. Not exaggerating at that. In them days. ‘50s. ‘50s, ‘60s until the Icelandic War came along and everybody, everybody, I would say nine out of ten people working were connected with the docks in them days. They were either dockers, and I was a taxi driver just as I got older. I come out the army, I took up taxi driving. I used to take loads and loads of people to the, to the docks and visit the boats coming in. There aint any now.
DE: No.
GB: Not one. It all comes from Iceland now. Over land and Alan he —
AB: It does. Yeah.
GB: Alan worked down the dock.
DE: Right.
GB: For a fish merchant for a while.
DE: Can I, can I take you back to the war?
GB: Yeah.
DE: So what was it like when, when you saw Hull being bombed? Did the sirens go in Grimsby?
GB: I can give you our lifestyle at that time.
DE: That would be brilliant. Yeah.
GB: Yeah.
DE: Please.
GB: We had a, my dad built us an Anderson air raid. Everybody had one. Anderson. He made a good job of it. Concreted it. Bunk beds. So when the Germans came over and there was a blitz we would always go in the air raid shelter. Although it wasn’t Grimsby they were but we stayed in it until you got the all clear. Sometimes we slept in it all the time because it meant, it meant not getting out of bed and coming down. In the early days that’s what we did. So, and there was a lot of false alarms in the, by the sirens in the early days. I went to school which was only not too far from here at the top of this avenue and our school days was one in the afternoon one week and one in the mornings the next and then if the sirens went which they often did on our way to school because they were false alarms the majority we had to go back home. So my wartime education wasn’t the best of educations but it was good in other ways. I won’t go into that but didn’t seem to bother me too much. We had, we had a good education of what but it, it was a wartime education and Paul asked me once but it was exciting. I won’t say it was exciting for everybody because it wasn’t but it was for me seeing all these, all these German planes coming over in the early part of the war. Sirens going, guns going off and we’re in an air raid shelter and my grandad’s giving me a running commentary of what’s happening outside because he’s looking out. He’s, he was in his eighties then so you know he wasn’t bothered but my mam and dad was.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And they would be frightened for us in the air raid shelter. But it only ever happened once nearly and this is the truth. They got a plane and the first time I’d ever seen it or heard of it there were all the searchlights and they got a hold of this German plane going over. Of course, all the others zoom in and he’s saying, ‘Oh, they’ve got a German. They’ve got a plane in the searchlights.’ The next thing it’s coming down the searchlight screaming. What it’s going to do? It’s coming on. It’s going to drop on the house. That’s the opinion we got in the shelter. Anyway, he dropped a bomb and it dropped in a field only just up here at the, there’s a little circle of shops here. There was a school there. Chelmsford School isn’t it? And it made a big bomb crater which they turned it into an open air theatre of all things.
AB: [unclear] school.
GB: And, but that’s the nearest personally when I thought it’s going to land on us. It sounded like it was because he come down. He'd what we called in those days dive bombed to get out the, away from every other. He come out and released a bomb that he had and it wasn’t too far away but it found, it sounded like it was coming down on us. So we were lucky in Grimsby compared to –
DE: Yeah.
GB: Hull and industrial places. Everybody knows the cities that got blitzed. Sheffield and that but we were a fishing port. This is my opinion. I was only that, and my father. A fishing port. That wasn’t going to prevent the war effort, you know sinking a few trawlers. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but we didn’t get bombed.
DE: No. I suppose it could have made, made a few people in the country go hungry if they’d, if they’d —
GB: Yeah, because Hull, I used to stand in the street on an evening. You could see the flames in Hull. The sky. Red sky. And we knew that was getting bombed because they were coming over here to get to Hull only across the river.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
GB: But so in the early days of the war I’ll make it as brief as I can we saw a lot of German planes come over and then in my, later in the war we saw all the Lancasters going to bomb because they circled over Grimsby.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Oh, they say they took off from all the, I mean there was hundreds of them. Waltham. I think they had Wellington, it’s a village outside just out three or four miles away isn’t it? I’ve forgot some of them. Kirmington which is Humberside Airport now.
DE: Yeah.
GB: That was a bomber station but I think that had Lancasters. But the biggest one in this area was Binbrook. That was by far the biggest one and then of course you go further and there’s Scampton and them places you know.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But there was Kirkby in Lincolnshire which has got a Lancaster come out on trial. You know, it runs. It doesn’t fly.
DE: Yeah. I know. I’ve seen it. Yeah.
GB: Have you?
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, I’ve been there. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But that was a station but there was many. I think a lot of the pilots used to go to a Bluebird thing at, a pub just outside Woodhall Spa.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Which I think the Dambusters originated in that area. So I believe. I don’t, but they flew from Scampton.
DE: Yeah. They flew from —
GB: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So I’m telling you something you know. But that, that was my wartime experience. Seeing it change from Germans coming over in their thousands. And on a June night, a summer night ’44 time or whatever and I’ve never seen the sky so full of Lancaster bombers just coming over the rooftops. Those from nearby. And they would circle right high up and then they would all go eight, half past eight at night. And we knew. We were in the air raid shelters because when they were coming back a lot of them were damaged and being followed by German Messerschmitts you know. So they were following the damaged ones in so the sirens would go. So we knew when they went off that the sirens were going to go for the, for them returning.
DE: Oh right. Ok.
GB: I don’t know whether you knew that.
DE: No. I didn’t know it was.
GB: But they did. They certainly did and we knew they would do so we, we prepared ourselves in the air raid shelter rather than wait until two, 3 o’clock in the morning and then because all the guns are going off like you know. But the main thing I was told was the damaged Lancasters and there was many. I met a lot of Australians at that, that time. A bit older. I’m talking a few years after the butterfly when I was fifteen, sixteen because they came in. They were a lot of them at Binbrook. Ever so many.
DE: Yeah.
GB: In fact, the, the local churchyard’s got a full crew of how many died there at Binbrook. That was the nearest one and I used to go to Binbrook a lot because later on I did a I got a PSV and the people at RAF Binbrook would go home on a weekend. I’d take them up to Newcastle and bring them back you know. So Binbrook was our biggest. Biggest one and they were always having dos. There was a film wasn’t there made of American. Yeah. American planes.
DE: They shot the film Memphis Belle at Binbrook.
GB: Memphis Belle. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, I knew one or two that got bit parts for it you know. They had to have their hair cut to take part.
DE: Yeah.
GB: A lot of —
DE: I was one of them.
GB: Was you?
DE: Yeah.
GB: Yeah. Well, they come into Grimsby and they were recruiting seventeen eighteen for them parts for it.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I had a couple of blokes going and of course long hair was the fashion in them days. The Beatles type of thing. And they had to have all my hair cut off.
DE: Yeah. That’s right.
GB: You know.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So they could get a part in this film they were making.
DE: So did you go, did you go down the shelters in the winter as well?
GB: Yeah.
DE: What was it like in them because they were –
GB: Well, my dad was pretty good on that thing. He, we had a I forget what kind it, like a heater. Old fashioned type. But we had bunk beds so we had covers. That’s the kids like you know. And then he’d concreted it and he’d put like a thing all on top of the ceiling that absorbed the heat from the the stove. It was like a stove, an old fashioned stove but it generated a lot of heat. That was in the winter of course.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I think, well I forget what he stuck on the top but he’d done a good. He could have grassed it all over and flowers on it you know. He made a good job of it really. We thought it might have still been there but it isn’t. The people who live in the house now said no they got rid of it. So [pause] so that’s it. I saw the worst part of it if you could call it that though Grimsby wasn’t, wasn’t that bad. The worst part of it, the early part and of course the church bells were going to go. We were all frightened there was going to be a bloody, an invasion. Oh, by the way there was barricades right across the road, this road just, just at Chelmsford Place into our doorway right up to our and only had a little gap for cars to get through or transporters.
DE: Yeah.
GB: They used to come and hang lights on it during the evening so you could see it but I don’t know if they didn’t last long but while there was a threat of invasion that’s where they were around several main roads in Grimsby. One on Laceby Road. I can remember that one. But in different parts of the town was these barricades and we thought the Germans were going to come because the church bells were going to ring. You know, if church bells start chiming get in the house quick. It never happened did it?
DE: No. But you say the night that the butterfly bombs dropped there was, there was a soldier on the streets. So was, was there a lot of military people in the town?
GB: No. No. There wasn’t. I was surprised there was one there anyway. I’m not saying but yeah we had a big gun up the road here at a place called Norwich Avenue and it was manned by, I can remember it like yesterday but it fired out to sea. It was on, it was on a swivel. It was down in like a trench you know but a big, not an anti-aircraft for shooting planes.
DE: Oh right.
GB: But to fire out to sea. It wasn’t there long. About, well I’m guessing but it was there maybe a year.
DE: Right.
GB: It was there in the early part of the war and I know it was Scottish that were manning it and it was in a field at the top of this avenue.
DE: Ok.
GB: At the time. So yeah, my wartime experience was a bit limited to what there were. We was a lad and it was exciting. We all, the best way to describe it because it was at school because at school it was all propaganda when I think back now. We was drawing Spitfires and God knows what all to [pause] propaganda.
DE: Yeah.
GB: We’re winning you know.
AB: Raise morale.
GB: When we certainly wasn’t.
AB: To raise morale like.
GB: Yeah. Yeah. But that’s what we, that’s what the teachers gave us.
DE: Yeah. Sure.
GB: I can remember drawing aeroplanes and that in your pastime like you know. Oh, Spitfires are doing this and that. We’re winning the war.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Which we wasn’t.
DE: You’d be saying —
GB: Pardon?
DE: You say you did see a change though. The early part of the war it was —
GB: Yeah.
DE: It was the Luftwaffe coming over and then later on it was the RAF.
GB: Yeah.
DE: Going out.
GB: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, I joined the regular Army later on and had another life experience. I was ever so lucky. That was [unclear] I was in Egypt. I’ll come to the point quickly.
DE: Ok.
GB: I was a lucky lucky survivor. More probably lucky than, than the butterfly bomb. In Egypt in the 50s, late 50s. I was in Egypt for three years in a tent in the desert and for latrines, toilets we just dug trenches.
DE: Yeah.
GB: As deep as this and probably as wide as this and it stunk but that was another thing. But when you was filling them up you just shut them, we just covered them over you know, soiled them over and this particular morning, I was in the Signals which we had an office. So I worked in the Signals office typing messages. But they gave you what [pause] anyhow what was it? Fatigues. We got the morning to do something so the sergeant major in the camp said, ‘Dig another trench.’ You know, so that’s what we did. Get to the point. We nearly finished about six feet deep. Well, and I’m there with this other corporal. There were two or three men under me and this corporal said to me, ‘Well, I’ll do it.’ This was six, 7 o’clock in the morning. ‘I’ll, I’ll finish off now here until NAAFI time, then you come and take over from me.’ So I said, ‘Ok,’ you know. I didn’t have far to go. It was only say across the road to my tent. I went back to my tent. I was only just sat in my tent after he’d said it and I heard somebody screaming and running. Oh God. What’s gone on? So I darted off to where they were digging the trench and there was nothing. Just all loose. It could have, it was like sand.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It wasn’t soil. Well, it was a mixture of sand and soil all loose and it had all just nothing there. Sergeant major come running, ‘What’s happened?’ I said, ‘We were just digging that trench.’ And I says, ‘The corporal was at that end and as I walked away the corporal at that end said he would do it and the signalman was at the other end.’ To cut a long story short we all started digging like hell where we thought they were. It took about three or four hours to get to them because when you are digging sand it’s going back in as fast as it's coming out. We’d only got shovels. We weren’t engineers and we should have been. That was the long and the short and tall. It should have been —
DE: Shuttered and stuff.
GB: Yeah. But it wasn’t. We just did that and I had noticed a lot of loose sand at the bottom but that’s all I noticed. I didn’t make no more than I thought well we got as far deep as we should go and anyway we got to the first corporal about four hours and he’d made a jump and his hand was up in the air. Covered in sand. We got around him like and the other corporal about six foot the other way. Not corporal. He was a Signalman. He’d done the opposite. Them few seconds as it had come in encased them. Suffocated them. He’d gone like that. He’d put his head down.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So we took longer to get to him because the corporal had made a jump. But why I’m saying this is that was me within minutes.
DE: Yeah.
GB: If that corporal had have said, ‘Well, you do it Geoff and I’ll come back,’ you know. It was as simple as that. But he said, ‘I’ll do it.’ And I went back to the tent. Two or three minutes later I ran over to where we thought he was. All, all loose so I was lucky there. Probably more lucky than I was with that bomb but about the same.
DE: Crikey.
GB: But if that bomb had have been, had have come down as it should have done and was open I wouldn’t be here. Definitely wouldn’t because I mean when I threw a brick at it it weren’t far away. But I thought it was shrapnel. It was a lump of iron to me. So that’s, that was my wartime.
DE: Yeah. You’ve been lucky. Really lucky twice then.
GB: Yeah. Lucky. The other time I’m only telling you because I was.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Very lucky twice.
DE: Wow.
GB: But I can’t really [pause] its ever so hard for me to explain how I, it was exciting. I mean it was exciting seeing hundreds of planes in the air both ways. Both the Lancasters later in the war and the Germans coming over the other way. Coming over for Grimsby. They were the anti-aircraft guns were having a go at them with the searchlights and then they were going on to wherever they were going. They went much further. I’m just saying Hull —
DE: Yeah.
GB: Hull we could see.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I could, you could see the red sky and so you knew they were getting bombed.
DE: So how close to where you lived were the, were the anti-aircraft guns?
GB: Well, one was quite a way. One was on the Grimsby docks on what, what we call the North Wall. As you come in to the dock there’s a harbour wall where all the trawlers when they’re going back to sea all line up and go out. Well, you come in to the dock into the big bason where the dock tower is.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But the North Wall is a wall. Later on fishermen used to fish off there didn’t they a lot?
AB: That’s right.
GB: People, blokes like him fishing you know.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But the trawlers all berthed up. Some had already landed their catch. The next day one day millionaires weren’t they? Was that the expression wasn’t it?
AB: Yeah.
GB: One day millionaires.
AB: [unclear] really.
GB: They came in, got drunk as hell ninety percent and then the next day they got paid and their wives all went with them you know. It was an environment that was and then they were going back to sea. Hundreds of them.
DE: And was that what your, what your father did then?
GB: Early part of the war. Yeah. Early. I’m not sure if he was just before. He’d come from Yarmouth. He was a fisherman in Yarmouth. He came into Grimsby, met my, met my mother and settled in Grimsby in Alexandra Road and then moved to Chelmsford Avenue.
DE: Right.
GB: And then he stayed as a dredger. He went on the dredgers because the docks was always being dredged.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And he used to take me. I used to enjoy it. I used to walk across all these boats from one instead of going right around you could walk from one over one trawler to the dredger and they had what they called a hopper that they used to take the dredger dropped all the mud into it and then they’d take it out into the Humber.
DE: Yeah.
GB: The hopper, and when they got so far out they just knocked all the pins and the bottom of the boat opened.
DE: Yeah.
GB: I was fascinated why you didn’t sink but you didn’t because it opened up.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It went down and then closed up and then you’d come back. Back to the dredger and start it up.
DE: Start it up again. Yeah.
GB: They don’t do much of that now do they?
DE: No.
GB: Which is amazing to me because it should be done shouldn’t it?
AB: You’d have thought so. Yeah.
GB: Yeah. You would have thought so but it’s all coming up like everything. I won’t go into that. That’s another story. But we, we flooded around here a lot and my wife was really into it wasn’t she? She had the council all at the back here. And I had an opinion it was all dykes. When I was a kid across the road behind the waterways a dyke. A dyke in Littlefield Lane. A dyke here wasn’t there? Everywhere.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Dykes everywhere full of water. And they started filling them in. Building houses. Littlefield Lane. Ever so many. Them dykes all went. Same here. All up there. Building everywhere. But they filled all the dykes in. Now, its elementary to me where does the water go if there isn’t no dykes? Heavy downpour full of rain. The drains don’t, I’m diverting slightly. I hope I’m not putting you off too much.
DE: No, that’s fine.
GB: But the drains don’t get sorted out one hundred percent. Every now and along they come along and steam clean where they used to be cleaned every week. Buckets used to go down.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And the kids used to stand and get rid of all the silt and muck. So now when we get heavy rain the road floods. I’m talking about bad floods.
DE: Yeah.
GB: The floods were coming up to our back door weren’t they Alan?
AB: Yeah.
GB: Up the road there a bit higher up because they were a bit high. A spring was up there. They were flooding bad and we was all protesting getting the councillors to come around. Succeeded in the end but to me it was because they got rid of everything.
DE: Yeah. It’s logical isn’t it? Yeah.
GB: If you walked down Littlefield Lane there was two dykes either, either side. I know because we played in them. To get across the road here at the bottom of Chelmsford Avenue to go to the street there was a bit of green and from the waterworks which is massive now come right along and it was a dyke. We played in it. We jumped over it. You know what I mean? Mainly going after water rats and things like that. You know. A bit of excitement. And of course, they filled them all in. Consequently we flood. I think they’ve sorted it out a bit now haven’t they?
AB: Yeah.
GB: But my wife she was really into it. Big time. She had them coming here regular didn’t they? ‘Oh, my friends are coming.’ I said, ‘They’re not your bloody friends. They get paid for coming.’ They’re coming. Yeah. She was right but she was good wasn’t she Alan?
AB: Yeah.
GB: She got every, all the neighbourhood watch all involved.
DE: Right.
GB: Just about this flooding. Went in to town council. Had the councillor’s coming. But she called them her friends. I said, ‘They’re not your bloody friends. They got paid to come here.’ You know, if you ring, if you phone them because you wanted them to come they’re not coming on a freebie are they? I’m a bit older, you know. A bit. I consider myself.
DE: That’s fine. So when did you leave school?
GB: I left at fourteen.
DE: Ok. So that’s still in the war.
GB: Pardon?
DE: That’s still, would that be ’44 was that?
GB: That would be ’44.
DE: So what did you do then?
GB: I got a little job as an errand boy down Pasture Street. A long way away. And then I became, and then I got a job as an apprentice motor mechanic in a street that’s no longer there. It’s in the town centre in Maude Street. But we were Rolls Royce agents. The two gaffers had two Rolls Royces and I was what they called a grease monkey for a long while because in them days if a Rolls Royce come in for, we had a Rolls Royce man. Rolls Royce trained.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And he just worked on Rolls Royce. We had other cars at the back of the garage but we was mainly a Rolls Royce and I had to go underneath for him to start doing anything there was all little castle nuts with split pins in.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Underneath. You can’t believe it. It wouldn’t be like that today. But underneath a Rolls Royce was all covered and they’d been assembled bit by bit so sometimes if you wanted to quickly turn a clutch you had to cut the chassis to get the bloody gear box out of a Rolls Royce. God. Also. But he was brilliant the mechanic. And because I was what, in them days early days his grease monkey he used to say, ‘Come on. I’ve done it.’ And he used to test the Rolls Royces by putting a threepenny bit on top of the bonnet, turn the engine on and it just purred and he said, ‘Good.’
DE: [Well those —]
GB: He said, ‘I’m going to test it now. I’m going to go to Aylesby.’ I can always remember the route. Aylesby which is a village outside of Grimsby. Five six mile. He said, ‘We’re going to test it,’ and I loved that. It was a thanks for coming and getting these posh Rolls Royces and go for a test run when he’d done whatever he was doing. And I stayed there. I was apprenticed and I didn’t have to go in the Army as a, what do you call it? National Service.
DE: Yeah.
GB: At eighteen. I got that deferred automatically because I was an apprentice motor mechanic but I didn’t like it. I hated it but I had to serve my time.
DE: Right.
GB: And I still had to go in the Army on a low wage at twenty one.
DE: Right.
GB: So nought to do with my parents, I decided. I said, ‘I don’t want to do this I’m going to go in the Army on a decent wage. I don’t want National Service money.’ I said I’ll sign on for five years which I did. Two things happened there. I got the best posting you could ever get at that time was Paris. I got sent to Paris, in the centre of Paris.
DE: Wow.
GB: With all these top Montgomery, Eisenhower, all lived there and in our camp all the chauffeurs. American and British used to drive into Paris to bring them to work. But the NATO headquarters in Paris. I think it moved to Brussels years later. But that’s where I was. In Paris typing messages all the time. Coded. I didn’t know what they were because it was still the end of the war.
DE: Sure.
GB: You know. But in our camp all, all the chauffeurs, American, I got to know American master sergeant and he drove Eisenhower all during the war. his chauffeur. You know, wherever Eisenhower he went.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Of course, he finished up in Paris when the war was, well it was just finished. ’45. So I was in Paris just at the end of the war which was a good place to be because it was, the French was ever so you know and it was packed with Americans. I worked. I’d been trained at, with British GPO Catterick Signals but when I got to Paris it was all American Western Union equipment and so I’m now working with Americans. If you don’t mind me just telling there was officers in the Royal Signals were clueless. They’d done no, no signals training. Absolute pay. Give me your money. I’m trying to get your money. But if ought went wrong in the signal office or ought the Americans were completely different. Officers in there knew Western Union. ‘Have you got a problem?’ Yeah. I’m just saying which we had. I used to type all day long coded messages and my mind used to go. Oh, what am I doing tonight? What am I doing tomorrow? And then we run a tape which we had to because that’s what we was doing and then I’d run the tape on. No mistakes. And I think I haven’t been, I’ve been doing it fingertip because it covers you. You didn’t know what keys. I learned that in Catterick. Sixty words a minute.
DE: Wow.
GB: I learned how to type. And then I went to Egypt. So I went from —
DE: From the best.
GB: The best to probably one of the worst.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It certainly was. Egypt. It was a shithole. I’m not kidding you. It was filthy. They was and but you learned when I first got there I went to the cookhouse for a meal and it was all Sudanese sweating like hell. Black as the ace of spades. I’m not knocking them for that but the bloody food was like camel meat. I’m not kidding you it was not going to do you any harm but you didn’t look like. So I said, ‘Well, I’m going in the NAAFI,’ to my mate, ‘I’m going to have egg and chips.’ Pay for it. And the ones that had been there two or three years in the cookhouse, old sweats they just they got this they called it pomme. It was mash but it came out like bloody chewing gum. It plopped onto the, the Sudanese used to say, ‘Put your plate down there.’ And they’d bang the thing on it and it plopped on your plate. That’s how bad it was. But when you’d been there a few years and there’s nothing else and the meat was terrible so the veterans are there shoving all the Daddy’s sauce on. You know what I mean?
DE: Yeah.
GB: Going down. ‘I can’t eat that. I can’t eat that.’ A week later I was eating it because it wasn’t bad for you even though it was crap. The vitamins. Yeah. Honestly it was vile. But in the end you were just like every bugger else. If you were hungry.
DE: You ate it.
GB: You got hungry and, you know. Anyway, I’m diverting aren’t I?
DE: Well, it’s fine. I’m after, you know all these stories not just not just the butterfly bomb stuff.
GB: Yeah.
DE: So yeah.
GB: And then I got interested, me and my wife got interested in the RAF stations and we started going around. Went to Binbrook, Kirmington, Elsham. I could go on. Kirkby and different ones. I don’t know why we got interested. We got interested in going around the church seeing the survivors. Because I picked up, when I was taxi driving Australian who’d landed, he’d docked at Immingham late on and it was blowing a blizzard and I am not kidding. A blizzard and he said, ‘My father got killed in Lichfield.’ And as Alan would know I’d gone to Birmingham all my life hadn’t I, as a lorry driver taking fish but I’m doing part time taxi driving and it was a snowy night. Snowing like hell. And he said, ‘But the ship is sailing seven, 8 o’clock in the morning from Immingham so I can only go overnight.’ ‘I’m not taking him,’ all of them were saying at the taxi firm which was Coxon’s, a big one at the time. And I was doing a bit of weekend work for them because I didn’t work weekends as a lorry driver. Anyway, I said to him, ‘Well, I’ll take you. I’ll take you,’ because I knew the route like the back of my hand. To cut a long story I got him to Lichfield but we come home in one of the biggest blizzards ever and they gave me the best car they’d got to do the job. It was a Daimler as I remember it but the, I could only just see over the wipers.
DE: Yeah.
GB: The wipers and I’m driving. I’m coming back, coming home. The roads were being kept up, main road by snow ploughs. How bad it was. Anyway, to cut a long story short I got him back about 11 o’clock in the morning. But what a journey that was.
DE: Wow.
GB: Taking him there. Just part of my experience of it but lorry driving and then I got a PSV didn’t I? I got I didn’t work weekends so a local company asked me if I’d do jobs for them and they give me all sorts of jobs. Some of the jobs I really liked but I used to go to Liverpool every Saturday to take people who were going to the Isle of Man and they crossed over on the ferry. I stayed and I met The Isle of Man man he’d come over from there. So he’d picked my passengers up I’d dropped before.
DE: Yeah.
GB: And we all had a meal on the Merseyside and he went back over to the Isle of Man and I come back bringing the people back to Grimsby. It was a Grimsby firm, quite a big one but a big, I’ll tell you what happened there which Alan will know. In the ‘60s firms were buying other firms out and then shutting them.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So a firm from Newcastle bought Granville Tours out which was Grimsby and shut them within weeks and we had busses going everywhere. Scotland. Holidays and you know. Isle of Man. Isle of Wight. All over. All over. Anyway, they shut them. Out of work. But the firm I worked for which my son worked for [unclear] got took over by Ross’s and then I’m cutting this story short I’d been there twenty years hadn’t I? Something like. I got a good, I’d got a good pension coming because what’s the firm? Imperial Tobacco.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Imperial Tobacco had bought Ross’s out to shut them. They didn’t know at the time but I did that the Imperial Tobacco Company bought Ross Group, Ross Foods out so they’re now paying me my pension. They made me redundant. I didn’t mind that because I’m with Imperial Food. So to this day I’m getting a good pension but they keep sending me letters. They’ve packed up. I think they’ve give up on me. Would you like to have a, get your full pension money? So I talked it over with my wife. I said this is dead lucky how I’ve been in this. I said, ‘No. Keep, keep giving me my pension which I get to this day.
DE: Fabulous.
GB: And I’m ninety three now and they’ve been sending it me since I was in my sixties after I retired. Ten years. When you take a lump sum rather than your pension. No. No. Keep sending me my pension.
DE: Brilliant.
GB: And you see I’m ninety three and getting a pension off them that was in the ‘60s, I mean that’s dead lucky. That’s just lucky.
DE: Yeah. Smashing. I think unless you can think of another story to tell me you’ve been talking for fifty minutes so unless you’ve got something else to tell me I’ll say thank you very much and we’ll stop now.
GB: No. No. It’s a brief thing of what I can remember. But I enjoyed the wartime.
[recording paused]
DE: Right. So tell me about being evacuated.
GB: Well, I wasn’t.
DE: No.
GB: I wasn’t evacuated.
DE: Tell me the story.
GB: Right. We were told at school as they were evacuating people from London and different areas weren’t they? All over. Evacuation was going. Anyway, we were told, ‘You’re going to be evacuated to Canada.’ And so we got gas masks, my parents took me down to the big college that’s no longer there, Eleanor Street. Forgot what it’s, swimming pool, college and we’re all lined up there and we were waiting to hear when we were going and how we were going. We’d gone down. We’re all there. My mum and dad took me and it come on the radio that the German submarine had sunk a ship to Canada with schoolkids on. I can’t give you the detail but I know it certainly happened. I can’t tell you what ship and how many but the thing was this ship got sunk with, with evacuees on it outside Canada so we all, we were all told to return home. You’re not going because of this. This. Now, I know it happened but I can’t tell you the ship because I, but it certainly happened and we were waiting to go to Canada. I was waiting outside the school for, to see where we were going, Liverpool or wherever and it got cancelled that morning because of this ship had been sunk off the Canadian coast. It was going to Canada with schoolkids in. I know the casualties were heavy you know but I don’t know. I’m a bit vague on that except I know it did happen.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
GB: That’s all I can tell you.
DE: I’ve heard that story too. Yeah. That must have been horrible to think that you were going to be leaving your family and going all the way over there.
GB: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Well, they took us. I can remember standing, gas mask on standing out with all these other school kids to be processed to see what, what train you were going on and what thing, you know. I mean it was while we were coming, I didn’t hear this like but the authorities heard that the ship had been sunk and a lot of a lot of schoolkids had got killed on that boat.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Drowned on that boat because it was sunk by a submarine. So they decided they weren’t going to do it.
DE: So then it, then it was back home and —
GB: Aye. Well, got to say that. What would it be. I would say, I’m guessing here now ’43 ’44.
DE: Yeah. I think –
GB: Around that time.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Around that time when everything was happening.
DE: Yeah.
GB: It wasn’t later on because it was in the early part of the war.
DE: Yeah.
GB: Maybe ’42.
DE: Well, we can look up. I can’t remember when it, when it was but I know the story.
GB: I think you would. I think if you research it you’ll find what it was and when it was.
DE: Yeah.
GB: But I’m only telling you what we were told.
DE: Yeah.
GB: We were told you’re no longer going. A submarine has sunk an immigrant boat with a lot of casualties.
DE: Yeah.
GB: So we decided you’re not going.
DE: Yeah.
GB: You’re not going to go.
DE: Crikey.
GB: But we were there waiting to go. Waiting to find out where we were going to go. Liverpool I’m assuming. Like Liverpool if you’re going to Canada. Over the other side.
DE: Yeah. Smashing. Thank you.
GB: Ok.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Geoff Brown
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-10-06
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:54:56 Audio Recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABrownG231006, PBrownG2301
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-06
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Grimsby
France
France--Paris
North Africa
Egypt
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff grew up in Grimsby and remembers picking a butterfly bomb up and taking it home.
Geoff was born and lived in the same area of Grimsby all his life, at the date of his interview he was 93. The first part of the interview concentrated on his experience of finding a German butterfly bomb close to his home, Geoff described how after an air raid the local children would explore the local area looking for shrapnel. On this particular day when he was about 13, he and a friend found this device which looked different, he asked a soldier what it might be but he didn’t know. His friends father did not want it in their house and Geoff’s father said the same thing although they did not know what it was. Geoff was standing outside their house when a bomb disposal team came by probably looking for the bomblets. They told Geoff to drop it they then surrounded it with sandbags and detonated it with a small explosive charge which blew out some of the house windows. Geoff considered himself to be lucky as although they had mistreated the device it had not exploded, he also made the point that no one knew what they were as the authorities decided not to issue any information about the bomblets. He could not remember any anti aircraft guns locally but did remembers a large gun nearby.
Geoff described how his father a fisherman had build an Anderson air-raid shelter in their back garden and when the sirens alerted them to a raid the whole family gathered there. He described how one night a German aircraft caught in the searchlight beam dived down and dropped their bomb quite close to the house. He made the point that air raids on Grimsby were not that frequent unlike Hull just across the river, although Grimsby at that time was a major fishing port where literally you could cross the harbour stepping from one trawler to the next. Geoff remembered that early in the war the aircraft they saw were German but later on the large formations of Lancasters were evident.
Having left school at 14 he went to work at the local Rolls Royce dealership as an apprentice but disliked the work. Just post the European war conscription was still in place but Geoff volunteered to join the army for five years as you could choose your job and were paid more. He was trained as a signaller, his initial posting was the army headquarters in Paris which as it was just post war Eisenhour and Montgomery were there. Geoff was then posted to Egypt which was very different to Paris, living in tents awful food. Another lucky escape happened there, with a group of soldiers they were digging trenches by hand to be used as latrines, a fellow corporal told Geoff take your troops and go for a break then come back and relieve me, but the trench collapsed and killed them as Geoff and his group were on break.
Having completed his time in the army Geoff became a lorry driver during the week and a taxi driver at the weekend and he remembered the filming of Memphis Belle at RAF Binbrook.
Almost as a postscript Geoff remembered another lucky escape, early in the war in many towns and cities the school children were evacuated to safer areas to escape the German bombers. He remembers being gathered at school expecting to be told that they were being evacuated to Canada but a ship carrying evacuees had been sunk near the Canadian coast so the plan was abandoned.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Trevor Hardcastle
Julie Williams
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
military living conditions
searchlight
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/458/8026/PColonnaB1601.1.jpg
e09401e927096ae064b806af42874de5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/458/8026/AColonnaB161008.2.mp3
5eb85ed8d2540363aca12ab64ae4c997
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Colonna, Benito
B Colonna
Benito Colonna
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Benito Colonna who recollects his wartime experiences in Rimini.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Colonna, B
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Benito Colonna
Description
An account of the resource
Benito Colonna reminisces about the bombings of Rimini and other wartime experiences. Benito was with his mother when he witnessed the 1 November 1943 bombing: he saw aircraft approaching and bombing the town, concentrating the attack on the railway station. People were caught unprepared, they were unaware of the danger, and many didn’t manage to reach a shelter. Recalls the noise of the explosions, smoke and fires everywhere - nearly sixty people died that day. Another subsequent strike involved nearly fifty aircraft but this time there were less casualties and more damage. Stresses the strategic importance of railway lines. Explains how they were forced to leave their home when Germans established a military zone. Reminisces about German troops searching his home, where his father and a friend were hiding.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Daniele Celli
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-08
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:01:51 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AColonnaB161008
PColonnaB1601
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Rimini
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending OH transcription
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1875/46455/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v230002.mp3
523ce88877fb13518712fa48add88342
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
34 items. Interviews with veterans recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.<br /><br />Interview with Bertie Salvage <br />Three part interview with Dougie Marsh <br />Interview with Terry Hodson <br />Interview with Stan Waite Interview with John Langston<br />Interview with Nelson Nix <br />Two part interview with Bob Panton <br />Interview with Basil Fish <br />Interview with Ernest Groeger <br />Interview with Wilf Keyte <br />Interview with Reginald John Herring <br />Interview with Kathleen Reid <br />Interview with Allan Holmes <br />Interview with John Tomlinson <br />Interview with Cliff Thorpe and Roy Smith <br />Interview with Peter Scoley <br />Interview with Kenneth Ivan Duddell <br />Interview with Christopher Francis Allison <br />Interview with Bernard Bell <br />Interview with George Arthur Bell <br />Interview with George William Taplin <br />Interview with Richard Moore <br />Interview with Kenneth Edgar Neve <br />Interview with Annie Mary Blood <br />Interview with Dennis Brader <br />Interview with Les Stedman <br />Interview with Anthony Edward Mason <br />Interview with Anne Morgan Rose Harcombe<br />
<p>The following interviews have been moved to the relevant collections.<br /><span>Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46454">Kathleen Reid</a></span><br />Interview with Wing Commander <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46467">Kenneth Cook DFC</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46456">Colin Cole</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46464">Charles Avey</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46470">John Bell</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46459">Les Rutherford</a><br />Interview with <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/46460">James Douglas Hudson</a></p>
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RH: Right.
Interviewer: Hello there. Just for the record could you just please give your full name and date of birth.
RH: Yeah. My name is Reginald John Herring and I was born on the 25th of the 4th 1930.
Interviewer: Ok. Thanks. My name is Dave Harrigan and I’ll be just carrying out the interview with Reg. Reg, then, well let’s just start really before the war obviously.
RH: Yeah.
Interviewer: Just to talk a bit about your family background where you came from. Family history if you like and then we’ll just proceed through.
RH: Yes. Well, briefly I was born in Hackney. I had three brothers, three sisters and we moved from Hackney, they were going to pull the house down. I should say also at this point that my mother had died when I was six years old. So at that point we moved from Hackney to a place called Becontree. At that point my elder sister was married and away from the home. My second sister was away living in Norfolk with her friend. Her boyfriend. My third sister was engaged to be married and my eldest brother was already married. My second eldest brother had moved away to Wolverhampton to get married and I was left with my father and my elder brother Joe who was four years older than I. At this point it was during the beginning of the Phoney War. One thing that is vivid which I made a note of there is the barrage balloon incident at Whipps Cross Hospital, near Bridge Road where they hoisted a barrage balloon. We were all excited about it and so forth. Then the Phoney War went on. In the meantime, apparently I understand now that we were not at that time entitled to an Anderson shelter. We didn’t qualify for one so dad decided to build one and we were banned from going to the end of the garden until he’d finished it. This project involved the half rolls of mangles, wooden mangles and I don’t know if you can remember these wooden mangles or not but they are split into two half-moon sections. So we had, I don’t know how many of these mangle rolls delivered or dad brought them along but we were not allowed to go down there until he’d finished. And the great day come. It was a Sunday. I remember it being a Sunday and off we went down the end of the garden to see this wonderful shelter that he’d built which looked like Fort Knox with all the wood and as I say the dirt and a couple of little shelves inside for two candles apparently. Well, we said, ‘Oh yes, this is fine dad. Great.’ You know, ‘This is marvellous.’ Well, the following week it rained like hell and the whole lot collapsed. So we still [laughs] we still were not entitled to an Anderson shelter but by this time the six months had gone by and the war had actually started so we were evacuated, Joe and I, my brother. And the first evacuation was to Sizewell on the east coast. We weren’t there terribly long, about a month or so when for no reason we were aware of we suddenly got moved from there over to a place called Hockley Heath, twelve miles west of Birmingham. It wasn’t very pleasant. It was a detached home. Sorry, a semi-detached home with a Welsh family lived on one side and the people we were living with was, the husband was Welsh and the wife was English. The husband was a very stern man and we didn’t very much care for him at all. But by this time the time was creeping on. We had the usual things a child would have to do. Chopping wood and my particular job was to keep this water container full of water because we had no gas. We had no electricity. The lighting was an oil lamp that came down from the ceiling and it was, and the battery powered radio [pause] I’m going a bit too fast here. By this time Joe was now fourteen and he disappeared. He was taken back home. Apparently because he was fourteen and dad said he was ready for work so he couldn’t stay there. So I was now left on my own with this family. And the two children next door didn’t like me at all. I was a London boy. They didn’t like me. Anyway, time went on and as I say my duty was to fill this water bin up and also chop the wood. Keep the woodshed full of chopped wood. So this went on. If I wanted to I couldn’t, I was never allowed into the best room. We had a kitchen sort of with a wood burning stove in the corner but the best room I never went, actually went in. I went through it to go up the stairs to go to bed but I was never allowed to sit in it. So if they had their battery powered radio on with accumulators obviously I could listen to it through the wall. So I was quite content to listen to the radio through the wall until it was time for me to have to go to bed. And then we had a bus that took us to school. We had an incident on the bus. Now, again I was a bit of an outcast being a London boy. I wasn’t a local lad. I didn’t mix too well so I used to sit at the back of the bus and I always stayed there. And there was an incident with a malicious, wrong word, a girl was molested down at the front end. The bus driver by the way had a sort of a metal screen around the back. I can’t recall it exactly but he could hear the noise but couldn’t see what was going on and he wouldn’t stop the bus. I don’t know for what reason until we got to the school where there was a big kerfuffle and we was all taken into this room and interviewed. Nothing was said. We were all interviewed and the following day the bus turned up again as usual for school and there was this lady accompanying the students on the bus. So we all go to school again and again we get interviewed. Come back home and I can remember the woman saying to me, ‘You’d better go straight to bed because I don’t know what he is going to do when he comes home.’ Which frightened the life out of me. So now I went up to bed and shed a few tears. And then I heard a knock at the door and the voice I heard was, ‘Well, I think it’s better to leave him alone for tonight.’ So with that I didn’t hear any more and this lady went away. There were no telephones by the way. There was no way of communication other than by physically knocking on the door. Who this lady was I don’t know to this day. The following morning thinking I was going back to school again I started to get dressed and the lady came up and said, ‘I want you to put on your best clothes.’ She said, ‘We’re going to the Bullring at Birmingham,’ she said. ‘Apparently,’ she said, ‘Whatever was said about you was wrong and this is a present.’ So off we go to the Bullring at Birmingham. I’m wondering what I’m going to get as a present and we go into this ironmonger’s shop. Came out with a three quarter size axe. And then it dawned on me what the present was. It was for me for the wood from the shed. So anyway, I was out in the woods, the two lads next door and myself and looking for broken trees and sort of to cut up and they decided they wanted to have a go at me with birch branches. So they started battering me with these birch branches so I lost my temper and chased them back home with the axe. Shortly after that I got called back to London. Dad called me back to London and I then went on to Canterbury Road School and I was there for about two years I think. At that time my sister Maud who lived in Canterbury Road and her husband said to my father, ‘Well, we can give you one room for you and Reg to live in,’ you know, ‘For the time being.’ So dad and I lived in this one room. My sister had never done anything to it. Never cleaned it or anything like that. She had one child at this point and time went on. We had a couple of air raids then one in particular where we’d, we had a Morris shelter or a Morrison shelter which as you know is still famous with children in the second room at the front and the siren had gone and things were getting a bit noisy. So I grabbed the young boy, Terry, the youngest son and got him in to the shelter and my sister was just following us in when this bomb dropped. The next thing I know is that I’ve managed to pull the grill up. I remember getting the grill up. The grill was a framed mesh that you could drop down. I remember pulling it up and then it was all rubble then. Or dirt and rubble, noise, darkness. And then we heard the voices. ‘Are you ok? Are you ok?’ And these hands came in and started pulling the rubble and dust away and brought the grill down and as I made a note in there I said the faces, everybody’s face was white and grey. We all looked the same you know [laughs] It was quite weird. We got out at that particular point and then disaster struck. My sister had come into the room which she didn’t normally do and she’d found bed bugs under the bedframe. Now, the bed frame was the old-fashioned frame of two steel, one forward, one aft. Sorry one frame at one and one into the other and the bed itself was in a silver frame with a mesh on it dropped into it and it was in those joints where these bed bugs were coming. Now, my sister obviously told her husband who was a captain in the Home Guard and I could hear him having strong words with my father and the next thing I knew was we’d moved. We moved to one room in Leslie Road in Clapton. That home is still there. I’ve got it on the internet. So we got this one room. I’m now, what? Fourteen? About fifteen. Fifteen, sixteen years old. Dad had a girlfriend, a lady friend and when we moved there she said, ‘Well, I’ll take Reg’s ration coupons and his clothing coupons and I’ll see that he gets —' you know. Well, that didn’t happen. I never saw them again and I never got any clothes from her or anything else. Dad never stayed there. I say he never stayed there that’s wrong but he very infrequently stayed there so I’m more or less left on my own in this room. And the situation was that we had, there was a bathroom there but they’d boarded the bath over and left a bowl, a washing up bowl and there was a bucket with a lid on it that you could shut, put over the bucket and that was our toilet. And I used to have to take this bucket, it was terribly embarrassing for me at that age to have to take this bucket down the stairs, through their kitchen and empty it into their toilet at the bottom of the stairs and then wash it out and bring it back up again. And then horror of horrors I discovered more bed bugs. So I went out and bought myself a couple of boxes of Swan Vestas and I rolled the mattress back as far as I could get it at one end and I literally sat there burning these bed bugs. One in each corner and I moved the mattress back and burned the other corner. And when I saw my father I said, ‘I can’t stay here any longer. You know, I’ve had enough.’ So I went and joined the Navy. So I must have been seventeen and a half then. So that’s basically the, that part of the history. The rest of it is Naval.
Interviewer: I think it would be interesting just to so what was the actual date that you joined the Navy?
RH: I joined on the 1st of January 1948.
Interviewer: Right. So obviously after training there you just, you were part of the post-war fleet really.
RH: Yes, I mean I don’t know if you want the movements. I mean it was quite a quick.
Interviewer: Yeah. Please. Yeah.
RH: I went to Royal Arthur which I now understand was Butlins at the time or before the war. I was there for six weeks and then I was transferred then to HMS Anson which was a thirty five thousand ton battleship for a further six weeks which I then got myself into serious trouble. I knew nothing about the Navy like most of the new lads. Nothing. So the routine of having to change and get dressed into another part of the uniform, working rig they called it and be up on deck in twenty five minutes was beyond my capabilities. I couldn’t shower and, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shower, get changed, get up on deck which was five decks below the main deck, right [laughs] to be on parade in time. And of course, having a shower in stone cold and it wasn’t fresh water it was salt water I couldn’t stop myself I had to urinate in the shower and one of the old ABs, able seaman who had seen the last war and the war before that, you know collared me. Put me in the rattle on charge. So I was then charged and my punishment was to be up on deck at 5 o’clock in the morning with two other lads who were also under punishment and we had a hundred weight of potatoes and we had to peel them by 7 o’clock.
Interviewer: By hand.
RH: That was part of the punishment. The other part of the punishment was jumping over six inch anchor cable with a rifle over your head. You know, to hop over the cable and hop right around the [unclear] front end, back over the starboard and port anchor and come back again and then hold the rifle out at arm’s length for thirty seconds. And the, what do you call it? The sight would make a dent in your arm. Actually bruise it, you know. We’d done this for seven days I think it was on the trot. It was all good fun.
Interviewer: So once you’d been indoctrinated then obviously we talked a bit about how the Korean war broke out. Would you like to mention that a little bit?
RH: Yes. That was quite quick for me. Theres a routine in the Navy that you were obliged to look at the notice board every morning. That’s the first priority. The reason for that is to see if you’ve been drafted. You’re being sent somewhere else. So I was in, hang on I’m in advance of myself. Yeah. Prior to that I was on bomb and mine wreck dispersal. Do you want that bit or shall we just move to the —
Interviewer: We’ll move onto the thing. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. Yeah, I was on HMS Tyrie, which was a trawler. There’s a photograph of it there. A converted trawler for wreck dispersal and we blew up wrecks on the east coast. Big [unclear] they were quite large [blows] because we used to use pairs of five hundred weight charges tied together. Take them out and you’d have two depending on the size of the wreck you’d have probably two on one side of the side of the boat, two on the other side of the boat. Not the ship. The sea boat. Right. You would have previously located that wreck with ASDIC, now called Sonar and you’d drop a marker buoy on it. So the following day you’d come back ready to drop your charges down alongside the ship. The idea being that either to blow a trench one side and then blow the ship or the remains of the ship into the trench or take off the superstructure. It had to be at a certain level below high water for the passage of big ships.
Interviewer: Right.
RH: Coming through the Channel. So that was the theory. We’d had a particularly nasty one where we’d lowered the charges and we were ready to blow and I’ve written what happened then. The boat sailed off for about two miles away and the sea boat then had a big reel of cable in it, electrical cable with a chunk of old copper iron plate for the earth and set the detonator charger, you know. And you would go by the buoy marker as to where the charger was obviously. Now, we didn’t realise it. Nobody realised it. Unfortunately, the gunner who was in charge of all this operation had gone sick and was replaced by another gunner who was very very young and unfortunately, no didn’t quite know what was going on. The chief torpedo man told him that it was unwise to set the charge until we’d done our last run and made sure that the buoy hadn’t moved. But he decided we’d carry on. Anyway, we blew the charge and we were too close to it and this three quarter ton reel of, three quarter underweight not a ton went over the side along with the stoker who was in charge of the engine. He got a broken arm, the coxswain got a broken ankle because the rudder came down and whacked him in the leg. So it was panic stations for a while and of course we got the first wave of the blow. So we managed to get the boat in line with it so we’d got bows on to it and took the, took the wave. In the meantime, the ship hurried along at ten noughts, we couldn’t go any faster [laughs] and picked us up. That was the Tyrie. I then went in the depot and went on to bomb and mine disposal and we had to go out to a Grimsby trawler during the night that had picked up a mine in its net. They wouldn’t let it in harbour obviously because of the, and if you could imagine this big net full of fish and stuck inside the fish was a dirty great mine swinging on a davit. So, anyway, we get out there and get aboard and it was an old World War One mine corroded, terribly corroded but in the compartment of the mine itself you’ve got quite a large airspace. You’ve got the main charge but quite a nice airspace and which had got compressed air in it and you’d got the detonator and primer and then the main charge. You’d got a detonator, primer, charge in that order. So the primarily thing is to get the detonator out first. Once you’d got that you were fifty percent safe. So to get to this situation we said to the skipper, ‘Well, you’ll have to lower the mine down on the deck.’ Bearing in mind that with a trawler there was plenty of light so it’s fair, you know. So plenty, so we got the coconut matting and lowered the mine down on the deck. And then we cut them out the trawler net and the skipper was screaming his head off because it was about three hundred pound he said for a new net. So we cut the net and all these fish came pouring out all over the place. You’ve now got a deck full of slippery fish, blood, guts and all the rest of it hanging out and a horrible looking mine sitting there very forlorn, you know [laughs] So anyway fortunately we spotted the detonator so the officer in charge said to me, ‘Alright, Herring.’ I don’t know, they don’t call me Reg. Herring. He said, ‘Put that in your pocket and get up on the bridge.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. I put it in my pocket and I trundled up to the bridge. The skipper said, ‘What are you doing up here?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been ordered to come up here with the detonator.’ Well as soon as I said that he shot off [unclear] [laughs] So I’m standing there with this detonator in my pocket. I mean it’s dead, it wouldn’t do anything and we got the, got the primer out and declared the mine safe etcetera. So I then got the order to throw that detonator over the side and that was the end of that episode. Another episode was a bit sillier which involved a callout by a man. I don’t know what harbour it was, I don’t know what seaside resort it was but this chappy had previously reported a landmine on the coast. On the, on the foreshore. And the way I understood it was that if a mine was found above high water it belonged to the Army. If it was found below high water it belonged to the Navy. So we got called out and he had previously reported a mine, a landmine and it had been dealt with by the previous squad to me. So I was the new boy in this squad. You know, the do it all lad. So off we go down to wherever it was and I can remember there being a jetty with a load of people on it in the distance. But the chappy said he’d marked it with some stones but unfortunately the tide was coming in so we had to be a bit sharp about it. So we formed up in line abreast and shuffled our way through the surf until we, one of us stumbled across this little pile of stones you see. I say little pile, it was quite a big pile. Right. Ok, we’ve located it. By this time the sea is now coming in urgently so the gunnery officer in charge said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Herring, get out there,’ he said, ‘With the phone.’ We had been a portable handset phone and, ‘Get out there,’ he said, ‘And see if you can feel around it and tell us what the measurements are and so forth, roughly.’ I said, ‘Right.’ So I’ve got my hands in this sand and silt, I’ve got the sea coming up and I can’t swim by the way. I’ve got the sea coming up over my shoulders and I’m saying, ‘Well, I think it’s about two foot wide, sir and about two inches, three inches deep.’ Because as far as you put your hands in the sand it came back again at you. So you know you couldn’t really tell. I said, ‘It’s got a handle in the middle.’ So, I heard a sort of a mumble. ‘Right. Ok. Get a line on it. It’s a mark —’ something or other. I could only just get this in the phones. So I tie the rope around the handle. It’s quite true this is. We all got back to the shore, pull the cord tight on this so-called mine and the four of us got on to the end of it and heaved. Nothing happened. So we commandeered four policemen. Now, by this time the crowd on the jetty had got bigger. They was quite some way away but they had got bigger. And the four policemen and ourselves heaved on this line so the order is two, six, heave. You’ve probably heard it yourself. So anyway, ‘Two, six, heave,’ and we were all flat on our backs and out comes a brightly green painted dustbin lid.
Interviewer: Oh no.
RH: So [laughs] it was just after that I was sent to Korea [laughs]
Interviewer: As a punishment [laughs]
RH: I was causing too much trouble I think.
Interviewer: I agree. That’s marvellous. I mean we’re getting near the end of our time but if its ok with you I’d just take a quick resume really of your service in Korea. You know, what actions that you saw.
RH: Yeah.
Interviewer: The ship you served on.
RH: I was shipped out to Hong Kong and I was supposed to pick up the Cossack at Hong Kong.
Interviewer: That’s HMS Cossack.
RH: Sorry, the HMS Cossack. Yes. But unfortunately, I was unwell and was transferred to the Peak Hospital which is or was right on the top of the mountain at Hong Kong. There was a Navy hospital here. In the meantime, Cossack had sailed off to Japan ready to load up for the Korean action presumably. Anyway, I was sent to the Peak and after about five weeks I came back down again and I joined a New Zealand frigate for passage to Hong Kong, to Seoul. That was what I was told. They were going to Seoul because nobody really knew anything at that point in time and I joined the frigate and we sailed out of Hong Kong and I was, I went down to the Mess desk and the Mess deck was in total silence. And that’s totally unusual for a ship. Everybody was dead quiet. And it turned out that when you were in harbour on a, on a warship they normally put an awning over the quarter deck so the officers can have tea parties and so forth while they are in harbour. But as soon as you leave harbour you take it down and this rating had gone along the guard rail itself to take down part of the awning and slipped and gone underneath the [port screw]. So the journey out to Cossack was quite miserable. It was only about, I don’t know twenty four hours or so. The two ships met in some bay. I don’t know what bay. I don’t know where it was but this frigate joined up with the Cossack and they lowered the boat and I jumped in it. Take the boat over to the Cossack, climbed the ladder, saluted the quarter deck and before I could get down below she was underway and off to clear. At 5 o’clock in the morning we were firing all guns and we had anti-shock lamps and every one blew. We had, what was it? Coconut. Not coconut. Cork. We’d had corks all over the deck head. So apart from the broken glass and everything else we were covered in cork. That was our opening attack [laughs]. The next thing that invaded us was cockroaches. So I mean the ship had never fired it’s guns for a long time. It hadn’t fired them since the, I think it was the Narvik raid. It had been fired with dummy shells, you know blank shells but never the actual cordite shells so of course the kick back was tremendous. It went right through the ship and all the cockroaches thought we’ve had enough of this and fell down like, you know [laughs] So you got a dinner full of cockroaches. What did we do then? Yes, we’d done a lot of secret things that no one would ever admit to. We had a job to go and apparently to pick up this man who was supposed to have been an agent for South Korea and we had twelve bods on board and by God they looked ferocious. They were blacked up. They were bearded. They weren’t Naval people at all and they sat on the torpedo deck during the passage and we’d, we’d hoisted up alongside on the port bow. I remember a dhow, a small dhow. I don’t know the details of it but I found out afterwards that the idea was that they were to be taken to a certain point up on the Korean coast, loaded on the dhow, sailed off and capture this bloke. They caught the bloke because I’ve seen photographs. Well, I’ve seen the bloke himself with a bullet through his head on the upper deck of our ship. That’s another little story. They brought him back but they wouldn’t bring him back alive. They would not bring him on board alive. They insisted that they kill him first and they did. They killed him first and they sailed off on their dhow and that was the end of that. So we had this body in a cabinet, a steel cabinet on the deck which normally held brooms and scrubbers and things like that you know. And this body was temporarily bunged into this cabinet. Right. Now, we have the middle watch coming up. The middle watch is from twelve to 4 o’clock in the morning and the gunnery people are always on standby. They’re not at action stations but they were at what they called cruising stations whereby they can immediately be at action stations if required. So therefore they’ve got to stay by their guns. So there’s one man on the phone, sitting on his guns who has to be on watch all the time. The other three or four of them could lay down on the decking if they wanted to. But they couldn’t leave the deck. They had to be in their positions. Now, apparently, I don’t know who organised it to this day, how it was worked out but the body during the middle watch was taken up and laid alongside the now prone sleeping sailors who were dozing off during the middle watch. When it came to the end of the watch they all sort of woke themselves up and started to come down the deck for their food and which left one bod laying down who nobody knew about. So, ‘Come on Harry, what the hell are you doing.’ You know. ‘Get up. It’s the end of the watch.’ And of course, that’s what they’d done they’d put the body on the deck at the same time [laughs] So —
Interviewer: Military humour never changes does it?
RH: No. No.
Interviewer: Yeah.
RH: But —
Interviewer: Ok. Well, thank you very much Reg. We’ve come to the end of the time now.
RH: Yeah. That’s alright.
Interviewer: It’s a wonderful tale you’ve told there. Very eloquent. Thank you very much and we will be in touch with you. Ok.
RH: Alright. Fine. Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Reginald John Herring
1014-Herring, Reginald CJ
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v23
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dave Harrigan
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:36:25 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Herring was living in London at the start of the war with his father and elder brother. His father built a shelter that collapsed after a heavy rainfall. Reg was evacuated to Sizewell and then to near Birmingham. After the war Reg returned to London and decided to join the Navy where he worked as bomb and mine disposal. He had many interesting years in the Navy including a strange mission to collect the body of a spy.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--London
England--Sizewell
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
childhood in wartime
evacuation
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1134/11663/PSmithS1801.1.jpg
f94dbb60395c90067e51aab4f5d2c80c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1134/11663/ASmithS180725.2.mp3
6e885283915121698b10221dcfa7e7f9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Sydney
S Smith
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sydney Smith (b.1934). She was a child during the Blitz and served as a nurse in the RAF post war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, S
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So I’ll, I’ll just introduce myself. So I’m David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Mrs —
SS: Sydney.
DK: Sydney Smith at her home on the 25th of July 2018.
SS: Yeah.
DK: If I just put that down. Down there.
SS: That’s right.
DK: It’s that’ll pick you up. If I’m looking down —
SS: Yes.
DK: I’m just making sure it’s recording. Ok.
SS: If you look up behind me that’s a picture of me in the Air Force.
DK: Oh right. Can I take a closer look is that ok?
SS: Yes. Do.
[pause]
DK: Oh right. So, you’re a nurse there. And was this your husband then?
SS: Yes. That’s right. I had to leave the Air Force to get married.
DK: And, and was he a policeman?
SS: He was a policeman in the Metropolitan Police.
DK: Oh wow. So, lovely photos aren’t they?
SS: Yes. I think I would have stayed on had I not met my husband.
DK: Really?
SS: Yes.
DK: Was that, was that the thing? Once you got married you had to leave.
SS: Oh yes.
DK: The nursing profession.
SS: In those days, yes. You did.
DK: Yeah.
SS: I mean it went to the European court and then they said that you know females can be married.
DK: Right. Yeah. And I’ll just ask you then do you have reminiscences or remember much about the war itself?
SS: Oh yes.
DK: And can you just tell us a little about —
SS: I was five. I was five when war broke out and I lived a few miles from London. About eight or ten miles from London. And the Battle of Britain was fought over my head. And I saw a plane shot down and I saw people come down in parachutes. And it made such an impression on me that these young men were willing to sacrifice their lives for my future that when I grow up I’m going to do something for the Air Force. I didn’t know what. And then when I finished my nurse training I decided I would join the Air Force and do my bit for them.
DK: So, so what years then were you doing the nursing training?
SS: I was 1951 I started.
DK: ‘51.
SS: The nursing training.
DK: Right.
SS: And nineteen fifty — oh I can’t remember. ’56 I joined the Air Force.
DK: Right.
SS: Yes.
DK: And just going back to you remembering the war time do you remember anything after the Battle of Britain? Between then and the end of the war.
SS: Oh yes. I mean being a school child and —
DK: But were you evacuated then? Or —
SS: No. I wasn’t evacuated.
DK: No.
SS: Because I was going to be evacuated to America. I’ve actually got a newspaper cutting about that. And my mother was ill and couldn’t take me to the Centre where we were meant to be. And so I was going to go on the next boat and the ship I was on was torpedoed.
DK: Oh.
SS: And I think there were about seventy children drowned.
DK: No. Oh dear.
SS: And she wouldn’t let me go after that.
DK: No. No.
SS: So I never was evacuated.
DK: No.
SS: So I spent my schooldays, a lot of my schooldays when the air raids were on during the day was spent in the shelters which were long iron things. Iron shelters with and because they rusted, the sides and were covered with earth.
DK: Earth. Yeah.
SS: Yeah.
DK: And did you have those in your school then?
SS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
SS: In my school.
DK: And can you remember which schools you attended?
SS: Yes. I attended Byron Court School. The whole of my time at Byron Court School was at that, and that was in Wembley.
DK: In Wembley. Right.
SS: Yes.
DK: So, so you’d have had a good view of the Battle of Britain then from Wembley.
SS: Oh yes. That’s why I said.
DK: Yeah.
SS: I remember the Battle of Britain especially.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But we, nights when the bombings and that sort of thing my mother would sit up with me and my brother and she, she said, ‘Don’t worry. Jesus will look after us.’ And he always did. And that’s what I remember. But my parents they first of all got an Anderson shelter. But Wembley has got a very high water table.
DK: Right.
SS: So it was always half full of water.
DK: Yeah.
SS: So my stepfather and my step sister used to go down in the shelter but my mother said, ‘No. We’ll be alright.’
DK: And can you remember the damage in the area? The bombings.
SS: Oh yes. I can remember those. I remember going out with my mother once with the baby in the pram with a big baby gas mask.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And strapped to the pram. And me with my, wearing my gas mask on the [unclear] and it was pouring with rain and there was an air raid. Daylight air raid. And they were dropping incendiary bombs all around. And every time we heard something come, you know the babies pram hood was up and my mother and I crouched by the pram and just hoped for the best. But we got through.
DK: So how many was in your family then? There was —
SS: Well, there was my father died when I was a baby.
DK: Right.
SS: So there was my stepfather and my, I had a step sister. I had a step brother in the Air Force.
DK: Right.
SS: He was already in the Air Force before the war started.
DK: So your step brother was quite a little bit older than you then.
SS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
SS: That’s right. Yes. He was older than my mother too.
DK: Oh right.
SS: Yes. So anyhow my, no my stepbrother was fourteen years older than me.
DK: Right.
SS: My step sister was four years older.
DK: Right.
SS: And then they had two children and they were wartime babies.
DK: Right. Right.
SS: Yeah.
DK: And what did your step brother do in the Air Force? Do you know what he was?
SS: No. My stepbrother.
DK: Yes. Your step brother. What did your step brother do in the Air Force?
SS: He was ground crew.
DK: Right.
SS: Yes. But he did occasionally go up with, as a gunner.
DK: Right.
SS: In the planes. But he was in Aden quite a bit.
DK: Right.
SS: And he brought, he came home on leave and brought a banana and it was at the bottom of his kit bag and it was black. But we shared it between the five of us.
DK: So was that the first time you’d seen a banana?
SS: Well, since I was a little toddler.
DK: Yeah. So do you remember the, I mean you were very young at the time but were you, can you remember being scared or was it a real excitement?
SS: Oh, the first, the first time there was an air raid was near Christmas time and the sound of the ack ack guns it frightened me.
DK: Yeah.
SS: It really did frighten me.
DK: And that’s some, that fear you can still remember.
SS: Oh, I can. Yes.
DK: So did, did you see aircraft actually shot down?
SS: I did.
DK: Yeah.
SS: I saw one shot down. Actually shot down. Coming down the —
DK: Coming down.
SS: And I used to have nightmares afterwards.
DK: Really.
SS: And I said to my mother, ‘Did I see an aircraft shot down?’ She said, ‘Yes. You did.’ And I did see parachutists come out of a plane. But I didn’t see, actually see the plane come down.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And as children we used to collect all, you could go around after the runway and look at the bomb damage and that sort of thing. All these houses. These houses, and all exposed. You know all their private things exposed and all that sort of thing. And we used to collect shrapnel.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Oh, you know. Big. Especially the boys used to collect shrapnel.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And the bigger collection the better. And all the drawings of course were planes dropping bombs.
DK: Really?
SS: Yes. That’s all the drawings the children did.
DK: So it was having quite an impression on them as children.
SS: Oh. Oh it was.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And we had no care or anything like that. No counselling.
DK: No.
SS: No.
DK: That’s, that’s a more recent thing isn’t it?
SS: It is, isn’t it? Yeah. No. We were meant to get on with it.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And cod liver oil and orange juice. That used to keep us going. Cod liver oil was horrible.
DK: So you can remember the rationing then?
SS: Oh, I can.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Oh yes. And how, when anybody was getting get married we all sort of put all our points together to make a wedding feast and that sort of thing. When my birthday parties my mother used to get some plaster of Paris or whatever and ice a cake tin. And we saved up our sweet ration, put it under the cake tin and the iced cake tin was my birthday cake.
DK: Oh right.
SS: Yes. And the school lessons were sometimes in the shelters and —
DK: So you can, so it was quite a big shelter.
SS: Oh yes.
DK: In the school grounds then.
SS: It took two classes.
DK: Right.
SS: So there must have been about sixty or so children in.
DK: So an air raid could have been going on and you were still having your lessons.
SS: Oh yes.
DK: In the air raid shelter.
SS: Oh yes. And if there was an air raid warning during school time they used to ring the bell six times.
DK: Right.
SS: And if it rung six times. Beep. Beep. Beep. That was meant we had to line up at the door and then walk down. No running. No running. No talking. Into the air raid shelter. And one class would be one side.
DK: Right.
SS: Or one half of the shelter. And the other class would be in the other half.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And the teachers at the door.
DK: So after the bombing of London and the Battle of Britain do you remember much about the war after that period?
SS: Oh yes. I mean, it was, it was my, our life. I mean it was just growing up.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And our life. We accepted it as war.
DK: Yeah.
SS: We didn’t, we didn’t know why but —
DK: Can you recall seeing our planes flying out to Germany?
SS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Lots of them. And we used to be aircraft recognition. I was quite good at it then.
DK: Yes.
SS: But I couldn’t remember now.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But oh, the Spit, or the bombers going over.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And the Spit, and the Spitfires, you know.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Or whatever accompanied. The Hurricanes or whatever accompanying them out anyhow. I don’t know how they went but —
DK: And was it quite a sight to see then?
SS: Oh was it? Was it, yes.
DK: The planes going over.
SS: Yes. Well, hundreds of them just going over and over and over and I thought oh, you know, those men.
DK: So, and can you remember the war ending and how you felt about that? I know you’d have only been a child but —
SS: That was wonderful because we had street shelters in those days. They built these street shelters. My mother wouldn’t go in to the them.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But, and I wasn’t, and all the children were most of the children anyhow used to love to go up lamp posts and on to the top of the shelters. I wasn’t allowed to. But VE Day. I, well first of all let’s do the landing.
DK: The D-Day.
SS: At D-Day.
DK: D-Day. Yes. I’m jumping ahead a bit, aren’t I?
SS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
SS: I came home. We used to come home for lunch you see.
DK: Right.
SS: School dinners were only just coming in and we used to have to eat them in the classroom if we, so I came home to dinner and walked home. And my mother came and greeted me at the door. She said, ‘We’ve landed in France. We’ve landed in France.’
DK: Yeah.
SS: VE day. She was so pleased. So excited about it.
DK: So how would she have known? Would she have heard that on the radio then?
SS: She heard it on the radio.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Yes. And then VJ Day. Well, we sort of knew it was coming. We knew it was coming but we didn’t know when.
DK: And after D-Day do you remember the Doodlebugs? And the —
SS: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And the V-1s.
DK: V-2s.
SS: V-2s
DK: Yeah. Rockets.
SS: My mother reckoned she saw a V-2. She was opening the curtains in the morning and she saw this thing come down like that. Ever so fast and then this loud bang.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And she reckoned she saw it.
DK: She saw it. Yeah. And do you remember the Doodlebugs as well?
SS: Oh, do I? Yeah.
DK: The noise they made.
SS: Frightening. That was frightening.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Because when it stopped you didn’t know where it was going to land.
DK: And did any land near to your house at all?
SS: Not to my house. No.
DK: Right.
SS: But over the railway. There was a railway line in between. Over the railway line there was. And oh that silence. Oh. We were so frightened. It was the silence that really frightened us. It wasn’t the Doodlebug. The noise of the Doodlebug.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: It was really frightening.
DK: Just waiting for the explosion.
SS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Yeah. So VJ Day was a wonderful day. It really was.
DK: Or VE Day.
SS: VE Day. Yeah.
DK: VE Day. Yeah. Yeah.
SS: VE Day. And I remember VJ Day too.
DK: Oh, right. Ok.
SS: Well, VE Day I was allowed on top of the shelter. My mother let me go up. And we, the children were allowed to stay up and play and then the next day all the ration points were collected and then we, we had them all and we had the street party in our street.
DK: Right. Yeah.
SS: And all that sort of thing. And it was really, really exciting.
DK: And can —
SS: And my step sister, she was then seventeen. She went up to London to join in all the celebrations.
DK: Oh right.
SS: And she fell pregnant.
DK: Oh [laugh] oh dear. Whoops.
SS: So there was a shot gun marriage later on.
DK: Right. [laughs] Ok. Ok. These things happen.
SS: They do. Yes.
DK: Obviously celebrating too much.
SS: But as a child I would go out to play in the summer holidays and things like that and nobody worried about me. And we’d all come home to dinner and I mean the Americans and everything but we didn’t worry about strange men or anything like that.
DK: No.
SS: It never occurred to anybody.
DK: So even though there was this potential danger as a child of bombs and everything you did have more —
SS: Yes. Well, if there was an air raid we’d run home.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And that’s it.
DK: But despite that you think you had more freedoms then.
SS: Oh, we had more freedom, yes. Well, there wasn’t, no cars on the road hardly or anything like that because petrol was rationed.
DK: Yeah. So do you remember the Americans then?
SS: Oh yes. I remember the Yanks.
DK: And what did you think of them?
SS: Oh, well they were over here.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Yes, and yes if you got friendly with a Yank you could get chewing gum and my step sister got nylons and things like that.
DK: Right.
SS: That’s how, I think that’s how she got pregnant.
DK: [laughs] Was he an American then, was he? Or —
SS: I think so, yes.
DK: Yeah. Right. Ok.
SS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Ok. So, so the wars ended then and how old would you have been in 1945?
SS: Ten.
DK: Ten. Ok.
SS: Ten going on, just going on to eleven.
DK: Right. So, you’ve, you’ve experienced and you say that that then drove you then to the nursing side of things. Is that what you wanted to do?
SS: Yes. With the Air Force.
DK: Yeah.
SS: I was going to do something for the Air Force.
DK: Right.
SS: When I grew up.
DK: Right.
SS: And I carried that all the way through my childhood, adolescence and that sort of thing.
DK: So you qualified as a nurse first.
SS: I qualified as a nurse.
DK: Yeah. So how many years did that take?
SS: Well, that took, well I did two years orthopaedic nursing.
DK: Right.
SS: And I was an orthopaedic trained nurse. And then I went and did two years general training. But I didn’t do the midwifery part of it.
DK: Right.
SS: I joined the Air Force. I thought I’d join the Air Force.
DK: And your training. Was that under the NHS?
SS: Yes.
DK: So you’d have been one of the very early nurses.
SS: Yes.
DK: In the NHS then.
SS: Yes.
DK: So what year are we talking about now? Roughly.
SS: We’re talking of ‘51 I joined the nursing.
DK: 1951. So, not, not —
SS: As a nurse. As —
DK: Not long after. Not long after the —
SS: That’s when I did my training. Started my training.
DK: Right.
SS: ’51.
DK: And do you, you joined the Air Force in nineteen fifty —
SS: ’56.
DK: ’56. Right. And how many years were you in the Air Force then?
SS: Four years. Four years short term commission.
DK: Right. So can you just say a little bit about what you did as a nurse in the Air Force then?
SS: Yes, well —
DK: What your duties were.
SS: Well, first of all I went to Halton. Oh, it was a lovely place Halton then. It was countryside and it was lovely. And there we learned the basics of the Air Force. We learned how to march. That was a laugh to see. The poor flight sergeant trying to teach us how to march. And then, then on the wards we, the matron was [pause] I can’t remember her name now. Sorry. I can’t remember them. I’m not good at remembering now.
DK: Would her name be down in your recollection there?
SS: No. Not the names. No.
DK: No. No.
SS: No. Because you see since I’ve come here I’ve had sepsis and it affected my memory.
DK: Ok.
SS: So it is a shame really.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But it wasn’t.
DK: What was, what was the matron like then? Were they quite stern ladies?
SS: Yes. Well, they were group. Group officers.
DK: Right.
SS: And they were. They were quite nice. It was the CO’s inspections that I remember especially.
DK: So you actually held a rank in the RAF.
SS: I did. I was, I was a flying officer.
DK: Flying officer. Right. Ok.
SS: Yes.
DK: And, and were all the nurses flying officers then?
SS: Those that joined. But further then you became a flight officer.
DK: Right.
SS: And then you became a group officer.
DK: Right.
SS: And now it’s Group captain. You see.
DK: Because presumably then was it the Women’s Royal Air Force then or the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force?
SS: Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service.
DK: Right. Ok. Ok. So, it’s like slightly different.
SS: The PMRAFNS.
DK: Right.
SS: And anyhow, Halton was lovely where we did our basic training. And then I was posted to Nocton Hall. Nocton Hall was lovely. It had been a Royal, an American Air Force base hospital.
DK: Right.
SS: And it was all hutted wards and things like that.
DK: Right.
SS: And it was, Nocton Hall I did enjoy. At Nocton Hall I used to nurse. And one of the patients I nursed was Bobby Moore.
DK: Oh right.
SS: He was SAC Bobby Moore.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Robert Moore. And he’d hurt his knee playing football.
DK: Oh dear. It didn’t end his career though, did it?
SS: No. It didn’t, did it? [laughs] No.
DK: So do you remember much about him then do you?
SS: Not an awful lot.
DK: No.
SS: Except he was a very nice cheerful chappie.
DK: Yeah.
SS: In fact it was great fun nursing with the Air Force because they were all young men you see.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And they were all fit apart from knees or strains or something.
DK: Did you deal with any injured aircrew at all?
SS: Oh, yes. Yes.
DK: Do you know what they had?
SS: And one man he baled out at, I don’t know at a thousand feet. Something. More. And his parachute didn’t open. And he was alive with practically every bone broken.
DK: Oh,
SS: But he died soon after admission.
DK: Oh dear.
SS: Fancy getting [pause] it was awful.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And but mostly it was either flu or something. We had the bad flu epidemic when I was at Nocton Hall.
DK: Right.
SS: It was a very bad one. And we had one young man. Airman. He was flown in from Scotland to us and they tried to keep him alive and I was on night duty and his wife was on the way with, and she’d got a two year old and he died ten minutes before she arrived.
DK: Oh dear. Yeah.
SS: Yes. That sort of thing.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But mostly I mean we, I nursed some Australians. ANZACs and things like that.
DK: Did, did you get posted abroad at all?
SS: Yes. Then after Nocton Hall. Oh, I must tell you about the fire escape because Nocton Hall has burned down, hasn’t it?
DK: Right ok.
SS: It has.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: And it was a lovely. We were in the actual hall which Ann Boleyn apparently had had and we shared rooms and there was just one big main staircase so fire escapes. And the fire escape that I should have had would have been in the bathroom with a rope. I had to let myself down on a rope [laughs] so I’m glad about that. I must have a drink.
DK: So you never had to use it then.
SS: No.
DK: So did you get on well with your fellow nurses then? Was it —
SS: Oh yes.
DK: Was there a lot of comeraderie?
SS: Yes. And the officers because we messed with the officers but we had our own separate quarters.
DK: Right. And what did you do in your time off? Where did you sort of socialise and —
SS: Oh yes. That sort of thing. Yes.
DK: Where did you go in your time off?
SS: Well, I mean we used to go to the, officers used to take us to Cranwell for certain events and things like that, or we went to Glyndebourne.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Oh, you know it was very nice. I was once the library officer.
DK: Right.
SS: I think it was Nocton Hall that I was at and I was library, in charge of the library in the mess and I introduced them to Ian Fleming.
DK: Oh yes.
SS: And 007.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: They were just coming out. Those books.
DK: Oh right.
SS: And they were very, I really enjoyed that.
DK: So about this time then you you’ve met your husband then.
SS: No. No.
DK: Oh.
SS: I didn’t meet him until I was in Germany.
DK: Ah right. Can you say a little about what happened while you were in Germany then?
SS: Yes. Well, we went over on a troop ship to the continent and the troop ship was fogbound and so it didn’t dock. We were supposed to have breakfast on the train you see. So lunchtime came and we hadn’t had anything to eat. And so they had to open the emergency rations.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And we had hardtack and bully beef. And then it was later on in the afternoon when it finally had docked.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember where you docked now then?
SS: Yeah. Hook of Holland.
DK: Right. Ok. And where abouts were you based in Germany?
SS: Wegberg. I don’t know if you, well first of all I went to Rostrup.
DK: Right.
SS: Rostrup was, I don’t know it seemed to be a new hospital to me. But we had to close it, and all the things that couldn’t be transported were bulldozed.
DK: Oh right.
SS: And there was Germany bombed to the ground. In need of things.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And surgical things and all that sort of things and houses.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: So all the married quarters were bulldozed.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But because they were our, still our enemy.
DK: Yeah.
SS: We did —
DK: Did, did you get to meet many Germans while you were out there?
SS: Yes.
DK: And —
SS: And German, we used to have German civilian patients sometimes.
DK: And what were your feelings then because you’d not long gone through a war and now your meeting them presumably for the first time. Was there any bitterness? Or —
SS: Not with us nurses.
DK: No.
SS: No.
DK: Did you feel any bitterness towards them at all or —
SS: No.
DK: No.
SS: We used to think it was most unfair because we were still on ration and there were these fat Deutsch fraus in these [laughs] in these cake shops eating cake with cream on. Cream cakes with extra cream on.
DK: So they didn’t have any rationing then? Or —
SS: Didn’t seem to have. I don’t know whether they had but [laughs]
DK: So the only bitterness was the fact they were getting cake and you weren’t [laughs]
SS: No [laughs]
DK: Ok.
SS: [laughs] Yes.
DK: So —
SS: But it was the time then of the Berlin blockade.
DK: Right.
SS: They were, I mean they were even by air transporting coal to Germans.
DK: Yeah.
SS: The West Germans.
DK: Did you get to Berlin at all? Or —
SS: Yes. I did.
DK: Right. So —
SS: Once. I went with a friend in her car.
DK: Right.
SS: We had to get special. All sorts of special permissions and things like that.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And we had to drive through West, East Berlin to —
DK: Yeah. East Germany.
SS: East Germany.
DK: Yeah.
SS: To get to Berlin.
DK: Yeah. The Soviet area.
SS: Without stopping.
DK: Oh right.
SS: If we’d stopped we would have been arrested.
DK: Right.
SS: So we had to go without stopping. And when we got there it was wintertime and there was forty, forty degrees of frost one day and everything was frozen.
DK: Yeah. So what was Berlin like in the, this would be the mid-1950s, wasn’t it?
SS: Yes. That’s right.
DK: Was it, was it being rebuilt then or —
SS: Oh yeah.
DK: Was there still a lot of damage there or —
SS: There was quite a bit of damage.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But we, I didn’t go on the U-bahn trains because I hadn’t got a pass into, behind the Berlin Wall.
DK: Right. Yeah.
SS: So we had to go, you know stay our side of it.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
SS: Yes.
DK: So how long were you in Germany for then?
SS: Two years.
DK: Right.
SS: And then I went. Wegberg was lovely because it was from, from Rostrup we went to Wegberg. And Wegberg was lovely because it was near the Second Tactical Air Force Headquarters.
DK: Oh right.
SS: And the Americans.
DK: Yeah.
SS: You know what Americans are like. They had a cinema. They had a swimming pool.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And they had all sorts of dos and that sort of thing which we were allowed to go to.
DK: Right.
SS: I was allowed to swim in the swimming pool and that’s where I got that little trophy. That little one on the side there [pause] That little dish. No.
DK: Oh that. Oh that one. Sorry.
SS: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Oh. Oh right. So it’s RAF Germany 1959. Women’s Royal Air Force Relay.
SS: Yes. And I did the backstroke. And when I got back to the mess —
DK: That is a swimming, swimming trophy then.
SS: Yes. All these WAAF. Strapping WAAFs we were and three of us nurses, and we got that.
DK: So just for the recording then it’s a —
SS: Yes.
DK: Brass swimming trophy.
SS: Yes.
DK: And it’s got —
SS: Yes.
DK: The crest of the Second Tactical Air Force on it.
SS: Yes. Of course they were this —
DK: 1959.
SS: The nurses and that were listening on the radio. On the radio. Local radio. Their radio. RAF radio about this swimming gala you know. And when I got back over my door in the mess was this lavatory paper and it said, ‘Backstroke Syd, Wonder kid.’ [laughs] That was the sort of friendship we had, you see.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: Yeah.
DK: And at this point you’d met your husband then have you or —
SS: Yes. He was corresponding with me.
DK: Right. Ok. And he was in the police force at this time.
SS: Yes, that’s right. Yes.
DK: So, he was in the Metropolitan Police.
SS: Yes. He was. Yes. And you see, my brother, my young brother he was a policeman. He was a training policeman and his, this sergeant, he said you know he hadn’t got a girlfriend. He pricked up his ears and he said, ‘Well, my sister’s in Germany. She said she’d like a penfriend. Would you be a friend? A pen friend.’ And that’s how we got. He started writing and then, and we corresponded and when I came home on leave he said, you know we became quite good friends. I went back again and [pause] yes. He proposed before I went back.
DK: Right. Ok.
SS: He said would I marry him? And I said, ‘Well, I’ll see.’ I couldn’t make up my mind because I didn’t really want to leave the Air Force.
DK: No.
SS: But —
DK: And before I put the recording on your said that once you married you had to leave the Air Force then.
SS: Yes.
DK: Yeah
SS: That was the end of my time in the Air Force.
DK: Yeah. So, so you had to make a choice then of whether you got married.
SS: Yes. That’s right.
DK: Or stayed in the Air Force.
SS: Yes.
DK: And as you say you would have like to stayed in the Air Force then.
SS: Oh yes. I would. Yes.
DK: That’s —
SS: Yeah.
DK: Very unfortunate. That wouldn’t happen now though would it?
SS: Oh, no. We had to go to the European Court for them to get it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. No. It seems, seems —
SS: And it, I walked, I go to the Aircrew Association because —
DK: Right.
SS: I did one casevac. I did a casevac.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
SS: Yes. It was a child and he’d had his tonsils out but he was still complaining of pain and his tonsils regrew. He had cancer of the tonsils.
DK: Oh.
SS: And we flew him out.
DK: Yeah.
SS: And we went in an Anson.
DK: Right.
SS: And there was thunderstorms all over Europe and we went up and it was lovely to go up in the plane and see these lovely clouds and that sort of thing all shining.
DK: So, he was, he was evacuated out of Germany was he?
SS: Yes.
DK: And where did you fly to then?
SS: We fly to, oh we fly to Northolt.
DK: Oh, ok. So he was evacuated.
SS: Yes. We went to a London hospital.
DK: Right.
SS: Yeah.
DK: So he was German was he? The child.
SS: No. No. The child was families.
DK: Oh right.
SS: Yes.
DK: So he was a British child in Wegberg.
SS: Yes
DK: A service family then.
SS: Yes.
DK: And you flew in an Anson to Northolt.
SS: Yes.
DK: Oh right. Was that the only emergency flight you had to do?
SS: I did one other but that was only a short flight.
DK: Right.
SS: Yes.
DK: So in the Air Force then did you get much opportunity to actually fly apart from those two?
SS: No. I didn’t.
DK: No.
SS: No. No. No. So, but I did enjoy it in the Air Force.
DK: So looking back then did you stay in touch with some of your nurse colleagues?
SS: I did for a time.
DK: Yeah.
SS: But I mean over the years.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Sixty, well nearly sixty years ago.
DK: And how do you look back on your time in the Air Force?
SS: Oh, I loved it.
DK: Yeah.
SS: I loved it. And do you know occasionally I do dream and I dream that I’ve been called back again but I haven’t got my uniform because I gave my unform to the Hendon Museum.
DK: Oh. Ok.
SS: The museum. They hadn’t got a nurses uniform.
DK: Oh right.
SS: So, I gave them my uniform.
DK: Do you know if it’s on display there at all?
SS: It was on display. I saw it years ago.
DK: Oh right.
SS: Whether it’s still there or not.
DK: Well, the next time I’m there I’ll see if it’s, if it’s there.
SS: Yes. Well, they’ve still got it anyhow.
DK: Yeah.
SS: Yes.
DK: Ok then. That’s marvellous. Thanks for your time. As we got to the end of your Air Force career I think that’s probably the best time.
SS: Yes.
DK: To stop the recording if that’s ok. But thanks very much for that. That’s been very interesting.
SS: Well, it was interesting —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Sydney Smith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmithS180725, PSmithS1801
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:33:27 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
Netherlands
Netherlands--Hoek van Holland
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Description
An account of the resource
Sydney’s father died when she was a baby. Her mother remarried and had another daughter and son. The son became ground crew in the Royal Air Force.
Sydney lived a few miles from London and attended Byron Court School in Webley. She was five when war broke out and eleven when it ended. She remembered the Battle of Britain and hundreds of aircraft taking off for Germany. A lot of Sydney’s school days were spent in the air raid shelters. From an early age she decided she wanted to work for the Air Force. Sydney started her nursing training in 1951 with the National Health Service and in 1956 she joined the Air Force for four years short commission. She recollects her posts at RAF Hospital Nocton Hall, Hook of Holland and then in Germany. When Sydney married she had to leave the Air Force, which she loved. Her husband worked for the Metropolitan Police. She donated her nurse’s uniform to Hendon museum.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1951
1956
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Anson
bombing
childhood in wartime
home front
incendiary device
love and romance
RAF Halton
RAF hospital Nocton Hall
shelter
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1197/11770/PWiddowsonFE1801.2.jpg
7aa5a49f8a57f0aa46b301fea31ba807
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1197/11770/AWiddowsonFE180731.1.mp3
2a989177d4b38c12f0c5bc2e992b9be8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Widdowson, Eileen
Frances Eileen Widdowson
F E Widdowson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Eileen Widdowson (b. 1932). She grew up in Peterborough and remembers being bombed.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Widdowson, FE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: So, this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Mrs Eileen Widdowson on the 31st of July 2018 at her home. It is 2018, isn’t it?
EW: It is 2018. Yes.
DK: I was going to stop. I was going to say nineteen. Anyway, I’ll leave that on there.
EW: On there. Ok. So I’ll just talk to you.
DK: Just talk normally.
EW: Yeah.
DK: It’s catching you there. So if I keep looking over I’m just making sure it’s —
EW: It’s still going.
DK: It’s still going. Yeah. So —
EW: Well, I was born —
DK: Yeah.
EW: In 1932. In Peterborough actually. I have a sister who is two years older than me which makes her eighty eight and we’re both still going strong at the moment.
DK: Good.
EW: And so of course living at Peterborough my father was, he died when I was seventeen months old.
DK: Oh no.
EW: And so my mother came to live in Grantham because she had an older brother here who had a shop and I think she, she didn’t get on with my aunt over there so I think she escaped really more than anything. And of course my grandmother had a bungalow at Snettisham. On the beach in Norfolk. On the day that the war was declared we were there and panic set in I think. I mean I wasn’t really aware what was going on then but in hindsight it was panic because I think everyone thought it’s going to start now.
DK: Yeah.
EW: You know. And so everybody packed up and we all came home and I can remember walking up our road and a lot of the people were out on the outside on the front. You know, talking about what was going to happen.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And all the rest of it. And I can remember people talking about bombs and things to my mother and I thought well I don’t know what a bomb is, you know so I suppose it’s nothing really. You know. It’s just something. And I just forgot about it. I don’t remember being scared or anything because obviously I didn’t know what a bomb was going to do.
DK: Yeah.
EW: However, we soon found out because my mother lived right almost one street away from the railway station here which is of course is the main line north to south. And so, and my school was at the top of our road which was, you went down some steps to the, to the station so it was very close to, to the station. And the first thing I can remember about going to school after the war was declared was that the teachers said we had to ask our parents if they had any net curtains. Old net curtains. And I thought well I wonder what they want old net curtains for. You know. But I soon found out because we had to cut them into squares and they pasted them on the windows.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: Of the school.
DK: Yeah.
EW: To stop the blast.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But of course then of course what happens to the kids when there’s a raid because there were no shelters. Nothing like that at the time. So when, the teacher said, ‘When the siren goes you will have to get under your desks.’ And we thought oh great. That’s really safe. You know. We never thought about how ridiculous it was.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: You know, you just didn’t.
DK: It was, did it seem looking back on it as a child a bit of an adventure then?
EW: Well, it did then.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because we hadn’t really had any sign of bombing or anything in the first year because it was just you know —
DK: The Phoney War.
EW: Phoney War. Yes. And then she said that when the siren used to go and then you had time to get, hopefully to get to a shelter but then the three pips would go and that meant that the planes were overhead.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And you just had to hope that they weren’t going to hit you.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because it was too late then to run for a shelter.
DK: Just for the recording can you remember the name of your school?
EW: Yes. It was Spitalgate School.
DK: Spitalgate School. Right.
EW: And it was up near St John’s Church, which —
DK: Ok.
EW: Is dead opposite, almost opposite the railway station.
DK: Yeah.
EW: You just went down some steps.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And the first sort of thing that I can remember about doing all this was that eventually the siren did go and unfortunately [laughs] it was a raid and so she said we all had to go into the cloakroom and put coats over our heads. And I mean it isn’t until you grow up when you realise how ridiculous these things were.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: Because all that you wouldn’t see was the bullets coming through the roof.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And he, so that was my first experience of what was going to happen. And fortunately they, they didn’t hit the school.
DK: Can you, do you remember seeing the aircraft themselves?
EW: Oh yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
EW: This was the story that I told this young lady. That’s why she —
DK: Yeah.
EW: She thought you’d like to know. Because of the raids, the severity of some of the raids because as you know Grantham was surrounded by airfields.
DK: Yes. Yes.
EW: And also we had a big munition factory at Marcos. British Marcos. And they were making ammunition and guns and all sorts of things.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And it, obviously it was a good place to get rid of, if you like.
DK: Yeah.
EW: As far as the Germans were concerned. But having said that we, the teachers had said to the parents if there is a raid and it’s a real, real one, you know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Not just a make believe one. They said, ‘Would you come to the school and fetch your children if you live near enough to get there.’ Kind of before the three pips went, you know. Well, of course we lived, we had to come up my street here and go through another street called Fletcher Street and then turn and go up Norton Street to the school. But what had happened was that in the old days they used to deliver beer at the pubs on a horse and dray. Well, the horses were big shire horses and so what they used to do they used to tether the Shire horse at the back of the cart so it couldn’t bolt. But the horse was dancing around with the noise and pulled the cart across the street. So my mother in the meantime had come to fetch me and we were running down and that’s what scared me really. My mother never ran anywhere —
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because she was forty four before she had me so she was quite an elderly mother and I thought I wonder why she’s running. And of course then I turned around and I looked at this plane and it was dive bombing down Norton Street. And I could see him. I looked into his eyes. He’d got goggles and a leather helmet and it was one of the black planes with the white, you know.
DK: Swastikas.
EW: Thing on. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. The iron cross.
EW: Well. The iron cross. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. The black cross.
EW: And I sort of looked up at him and I don’t, I can’t remember being terrified but I thought, I wonder why he’s coming down here you know. It was a child’s perception.
DK: Yes.
EW: Of not knowing what could happen to you. But in, after this.
DK: I don’t suppose you —
EW: I realised.
DK: I don’t suppose you realised at the time as a child the real danger you were in.
EW: No. No. Because afterwards, you know many years afterwards I heard that some of the more Nazi orientated pilots would shoot people running in —
DK: Yeah.
EW: Especially in London, to the, to the shelters. And so I suppose basically my mum and I were very lucky but it was, so he came dive bombing down and of course we couldn’t get through the small street that we had to go through to get home because this horse had pulled the cart across.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And so my mother pulled me up and she pushed me into a, as we, ginnels or what passageways to somebody’s house and she went and knocked on the door and this lady let us in.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But after that I’m not sure quite where he went but I think he had, he had machine gunned the school roof.
DK: Right.
EW: And why I don’t know because he could have seen there were playgrounds laid out. So why he didn’t shoot me and my mum I don’t know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But he could have done if he’d wanted to. And it was, it was all sort of over in a flash, you know and he went up to bomb Marcos I think as well because he did drop a bomb in the station goods yard. The Germans never actually hit the target here.
DK: Right.
EW: They always missed. Fortunately for some people but unfortunate for others. And once he’d gone my mum waited until they’d untethered this horse because I think I’d rather face a German plane than a horse’s hoof like that size.
DK: No.
EW: Because they’re very, very big.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Those horses. And anyhow, we managed to get home and afterwards you know I’ve thought about it so many times and I’ve thought well at least I was lucky that I’m still here.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I said to all my children if it hadn’t have been that that pilot had probably got a conscience I wouldn’t have been here and neither would any of my children.
DK: Could you hear his guns firing at all? Or —
EW: We heard them in the school when we were in school.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But you see my mother came to fetch me.
DK: Yeah. But not during this incident then.
EW: Not. No.
DK: No.
EW: Because he was dive bombing down the street. It all happened in a moment really.
DK: In a flash. Yeah.
EW: And I just turned. I don’t know whether it’s because I looked at him I don’t know.
DK: He just didn’t. Didn’t fire.
EW: He just didn’t and so he went up to Marcos. Now, I can’t —
DK: So Marcos is the armaments —
EW: Marcos is the armaments factory.
DK: Do you know whereabouts that was?
EW: Yes. It’s on Springfield Road.
Dk: Springfield Road, right.
EW: But it’s all be knocked down now.
DK: Ok.
EW: It’s a housing estate.
DK: Right. Ok.
EW: As all. But it was strange because you always knew when they were testing the guns they’d made.
DK: Right.
EW: Because they had gun tunnels.
DK: Oh right.
EW: Underneath the ground. And every day you could hear this rat a tat, rat a tat and they were testing the guns under there.
DK: Right.
EW: Now, whether the underground things are still there I don’t know but it’s definitely all gone.
DK: Yeah. A housing estate now.
EW: Yes. It’s all gone. Well, the reason it’s gone is because Steel World took it, which was a Swedish firm.
DK: Right.
EW: And unfortunately when we had the Argentinian War for the Falklands.
DK: Yeah.
EW: They found out that that firm had been selling arms to Argentina.
DK: Argentina. Right.
EW: So it was our guns made in Grantham that was killing our soldiers. Our people. Yes.
DK: The Argentines were using — yes.
EW: So that was closed down and you know finished. So that was the end of that sort of thing.
DK: So the housing estate then is, is fairly recent. Since the eighties.
EW: Yes. Yes. Oh absolutely.
DK: Yes.
EW: Yes. Very. I should think the houses there are about eight or nine years old.
DK: Oh right. Right. So, fairly recent.
EW: Yeah. They’re not. Yes, fairly recent.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And, because Marcos was a place where all the women met their husbands.
DK: Right.
EW: Because there was a huge dance hall there and everybody, all the kids went from here. The youngsters you know they met their husbands and a lot of the girls married in to the American side of things.
DK: Yeah.
EW: When they came over.
DK: So Marcos then was a big employer here.
EW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Absolutely.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Yes. And Dennis Kendall who was a member of parliament he owned it but as I say he sold it. Well, he left and of course after the war it was sold but it was just sad that these guns were killing our RAF lads.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But as I say that was one incident and —
DK: Just going back to that incident then with this plane flying down the street.
EW: Yeah.
DK: Can you remember anything that your mother said when you got home? Was it, was there anything?
EW: Well —
DK: Was she a bit shaken?
EW: Very shaken. But my mother was a Victorian lady. She was born in 1888 believe it or not.
DK: Right.
EW: And she was always I didn’t realise she was an old lady until I grew a bit older and I realised that you know my mother wasn’t the same age as the mum’s meeting the children from the school at the same time.
EW: Right.
DK: But having said that you know she, but she did have a really bad nervous breakdown after the war ended.
DK: Really.
EW: Because, partly because you if you had a spare bedroom or you could all bunk in to one bed you had to let the room go because they were bringing people in.
DK: Yeah.
EW: To the munition factory from all over the country. To work in the munition factory at Marcos. And of course auxiliary firemen. They were brought in as well to, you know. And so because my mother had to, we all had to sleep three of us to a bed because she had to give up her front bedroom.
DK: Yeah.
EW: For, and we had two or three girls came from up north. Newcastle way. They were working at British Marcos. And then after they left we had a gentleman from Nottingham. He was in the Auxiliary Fire Service.
DK: Right.
EW: And then he got posted somewhere else. And then we had two soldiers billeted for a short time. One was a Scottish lad and the other one was for Newcastle. And I don’t know what health and safety would have felt about all this because as children they had to muster at St Johns Church Hall which was at the top of the steps down to the railway station just where our school was. And that’s where they had to muster. And of course they all had guns and things. They were going off to France or somewhere.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And they used to let us carry their guns for them [laughs] I can, I can always remember trudging up the road with this gun on my shoulder, you know. And I think, you know health and safety would have a fit now wouldn’t they?
DK: They probably would.
EW: And they gave us sixpence each you see.
DK: Yeah.
EW: For carrying the guns.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: But sadly, after the war ended Mac, who was the chappie from Newcastle he became a long distance lorry driver and he called in on us one day to tell us that Mac, not Mac the other lad. I can’t remember his name.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: But he didn’t make it.
DK: Oh.
EW: He never came back so —
DK: He was killed in Europe then.
EW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Yes. And so that was one thing. But another point was that we used to go out collecting ‘hips. Rosehips. Picking rosehips because you could take them to a central point and they’d give you so much a pint for these. And they used to make rosehip syrup for the babies.
DK: Right.
EW: Because orange juice was unobtainable and of course they needed vitamin C.
DK: Right.
EW: So that was the only way they could do it. So we used to collect those and we also, my sister and I it’s hard to believe now because I don’t think there are any streams around here that are healthy.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But there was one that was kind of. It was up Harlaxton Road which is on the road to Melton Mowbray. And they, there was a stream there and there was watercress growing in it. And my sister and I used to go and pick it and bunch it and sell it for the Red Cross.
DK: Right.
EW: And of course we were all saving for aeroplanes and all sorts. You know. There were big target things on the Guildhall with the picture of a Spitfire. You know, you were making money to buy them.
DK: This was the Spitfire Fund.
EW: Yeah.
DK: The Spitfire Fund. Yeah.
EW: And so those sort of things we did. And collect newspapers. And another thing I remember, I think the worst thing I remember about saving stuff was that we had pigswill bins at the top of the street.
DK: Right.
EW: Well, the stench sometimes was disgusting and they used to come and collect it about every other day you know. And all this waste food went off. I felt sorry for the pigs actually. But I suppose they boiled it down.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But that, that and when the pig swill lorry had been oh God it’s, the smell lingered forever you know in the street. And they did, when the war first started they came around collecting any old aluminium saucepans you’d got or —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And they, I mean St Wulfram’s Church, the big church you know that was all railings all around it and of course they cut all those down. Everybody’s metal gates went.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: All the fences. Everything was melted down, you know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because really —
DK: Allegedly.
EW: We were totally, yes. Supposedly.
DK: Because they said it was the wrong type of metal apparently. So —
EW: Oh. Did they?
DK: Allegedly, it’s gone, it’s down a mine in Wales.
EW: Oh, is it. Oh, my God.
DK: All the saucepans and things.
EW: What a shame.
DK: Tell the story again.
EW: Yeah. Well, I don’t know about that, I suppose that’s —
DK: I don’t know if it’s true or not.
EW: Well, lots don’t know a lot of things happen like that because they didn’t really know.
DK: Yeah. It was a propaganda thing, wasn’t it?
EW: Yes.
DK: To make you feel involved.
EW: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
EW: I can remember the man coming around and teaching you how to work at a stirrup pump.
DK: Right.
EW: You know they used to put one end in the bucket of water.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And you sort of pump this thing up and down and it was supposed to, I don’t think it would have put anything out but —
DK: No. Can you remember much of the damage around Grantham?
EW: Oh, I can, I’ve got a book actually.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Which you can see.
DK: Oh right. That’s Grantham’s war years.
EW: It’s very difficult to get it now. It’s out of print.
DK: So, just for the recording it’s, “Grantham. The War Years. 1939 -45.”
EW: That’s right.
DK: “A pictorial insight.” by Malcolm G Knapp.
EW: Yes.
DK: Right.
EW: If I see another one I’ll buy one and —
DK: Yeah.
EW: Donate it to them. Yeah.
DK: I’d like a copy of that. I’ll look out for it myself.
EW: Yes.
DK: See if I can get a hold, get a hold of a copy.
EW: You mostly find them in charity shops.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because when people die, people take all their belongings in.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And that’s [pause] but as I say oh and I can, another thing I remember is Gracie Fields came —
DK: Oh yeah.
EW: To Grantham. And she was, there was on the High Street we had a huge water tank which was a reserve water tank in case they hit the water mains and that was on one side of the town green and we, I used to have to go that way to go to school.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Well, my friend and I we knew that she was coming and she, she put her head out of a hairdresser’s window across the road from the Guildhall and she was singing out of the window. And of course my friend and I, we were enthralled you know because Gracie Field was famous then you know. And we stopped and listened and of course when we got to school we were very late so we got detention. But it was worth it. And also —
DK: So there’s a Wings for Victory.
EW: That’s the one. Yes. Yes. That’s —
DK: Yeah [a picture there] Yes.
EW: Yes. That’s and that’s the Guildhall there. Yeah.
DK: So there’s quite, quite a few pictures of the damage here, isn’t there?
EW: Oh yes.
DK: The railway line in particular.
EW: Yes. Now that was another thing. The railway line. When this bomb, this plane dropped a bomb he was trying to hit the railway lines but he missed and hit the station goods yard. The bomb didn’t go off. Which is probably as well for our school otherwise —
DK: Yeah.
EW: I think it would have been very badly damaged. And needless to say they moved the school out later on. Somewhere a bit more safe.
DK: Yeah. Horses there.
EW: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yes. They used to deliver everything with horse and dray.
DK: Yeah. Sorry. You were saying.
EW: Yes. When he dropped the bomb in this good yard as I say it didn’t go off and the next day at school, oh the chappie went in. That’s right. The chappie went in to, bomb disposal chappie went in to detonate, you know to take the —
DK: To defuse it.
EW: Defuse it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And sadly it did go off and killed him. And so of course the next time around at school in the playground the boys had all got, you know the little match boxes you used to get? The Bryant and May match boxes. They cut a hole through the bottom and the tray and they put a piece of cotton wool inside it and they pricked their finger to get some blood. And then they would put their finger, their thumb through this hole in to this cotton wool.
DK: Right.
EW: And then they were going around the playground saying, ‘Do you want to have a look what we found?’ You know. And it was pretty grim but I mean that’s what we did.
DK: A thumb.
EW: And I said, you know, ‘Where did you find that?’ ‘Oh, in the station goods yard.’ You know. And I mean it was a bit macabre but that’s how you lived. I mean —
DK: Yeah.
EW: As you got older, as I got older I got I was more scared because I knew what was happening. And sadly they tried to bomb St Vincent’s. I expect you’ve heard of St Vincent’s.
DK: Yes. The 5 Group Headquarters.
EW: Yes. That’s right. Well, they, they missed. Which is perhaps a good thing for for that but they hit Stuart Street and they brought most of Stuart Street down.
DK: Right.
EW: And also they hit a shelter dead on and all of the people in the shelter were killed.
DK: Oh dear.
EW: That was awful.
DK: Can you remember, you mentioned that Grantham was a centre of the RAF bases. Can you remember much about that RAF activity over and around Grantham?
EW: Yes. The RAF have always sort of been a bit more special I always think because people respect the RAF.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Quite a lot. Because it’s difficult even now to get into the Royal Air Force. You’ve got to be a bit more intelligent than most.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But having said that it was basically more the Americans that caused the bother.
DK: Right. Right.
EW: Than, than the RAF. I mean we used to see a lot of the RAF but they were never around for that long because they were on airfields outside of Grantham.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: You know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But having said that I think the Americans did cause a lot of trouble, because they came over here and they still had this apartheid attitude.
DK: Yes.
EW: To the black Americans.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I’m afraid a lot of the pubs in Grantham had masses of fights and things going on between the black and the white Americans.
DK: Really?
EW: Yeah. And the white Americans were horrible to them.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Even in a war they were horrible to them. And I mean if a girl in Grantham went out with a black American well it was terrible you know. These, the white Americans called them sluts and all sorts.
DK: Oh dear.
EW: But quite a lot of, of Grantham girls married American.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Airmen and soldiers.
DK: Did you personally know any that married Americans?
EW: I didn’t know them. No.
DK: No.
EW: Because I was too, really too young —
DK: Too young. Yeah.
EW: To fraternise with them.
DK: Yeah.
EW: You know.
DK: You didn’t have any neighbours that that were —
EW: Oh yeah. There was a lady. A girl, a girl called, I think her name was Eileen Dawson. She married a GI.
DK: Right.
EW: And went to America.
DK: And went to America. As a GI bride.
EW: Yes, and another, well another friend of mine, her, she was, she was, she was slightly older than me and what used to happen with some of the young girls in Grantham the young eighteen, nineteen, twenty, they had, laid buses on to take them on a Saturday night to Alconbury which was an American air base.
DK: Yes.
EW: And so this friend of mine, Jean she married a GI chappie. Well, I didn’t know at the time that he was a native Indian.
DK: Oh right.
EW: And she had a daughter with him and afterwards when the war was over she went over there to live. Presumably to live with him and when she got over to America he lived on a Reservation.
DK: Oh.
EW: And of course you can imagine that life on a Reservation was not very good.
DK: Yes. That must have been a bit of a cultural shock.
EW: Absolutely.
DK: Yeah.
EW: So of course she came back again and they were divorced. And her daughter was born stone deaf.
DK: Right.
EW: And, but she looks exactly like an Indian squaw. She does honestly. She’s a lovely girl but she does look exactly like an Indian squaw. But having said that —
DK: And is she still alive?
EW: Yes.
DK: Still here?
EW: Yes. She’s still alive. Yeah. They’re both still alive. Yes.
DK: And still living in Grantham, are they?
EW: Yes.
DK: Oh right.
EW: Well, they live, I think they lived in Gonerby which is just a little village at the top of the hill.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: It’s not far away and, but do you remember when Cilla Black used to do that, “Surprise. Surprise” show.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: Well, this girl this daughter was on it.
DK: Oh right.
EW: And they arranged for her because she’d never met her father, you see. She arranged, they arranged for her to go to America to meet her father.
DK: Right.
EW: However, she only stayed about a week instead of a fortnight because she didn’t like him.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And she didn’t like the, she didn’t like where he lived.
DK: Yeah.
EW: So she came back again to Grantham but that was a shame really because you know they thought they were doing a really good thing sending her there.
DK: It’s often the way though isn’t it?
EW: It is. Very often. Yes.
DK: No doubt she had a picture of her father and it just wasn’t the same.
EW: Absolutely. And it wasn’t the same.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Well, of course it was a few years afterwards because she was, she must have been in her twenties when she went over.
DK: Right.
EW: But I don’t think she’s ever married. The girl. The daughter. But yes, I mean, and a lot and another girl who lived up near to my school she married a GI. But not all of them found it what it, what they, I mean because the lads used to embroider stories about they came from this, you know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And they had that, and their parents were rich. And when they got their it was a different story. So a lot of them did come back but I mean some of them couldn’t afford to come back.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because obviously they went very cheaply over there and, you know once they were married they used to get married here but a lot of the American lads used to spend time with Sheardowns, the farmers. They are sort of, well Peter Sheardown, they had a big farm sort of around the Bottesford area and they used to have, entertain these Americans and give them Sunday lunches and things you know. And even when, sometimes even now some of the American soldiers, oh they’re getting scarce now.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because they’re all dying off but the ones that can come over and they visit them. Because I work for Cancer Research, I have done for thirty years and Mrs Sheardown works with me. So you know she was telling me all about the, her mother in law used to have all these Americans there.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And feed them up because a lot of them were lonely obviously and they sort of came to England. It must have been a culture shock for some of them.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because England didn’t have what they’d got. And we were short of food.
DK: Yes.
EW: Yeah.
DK: Yes.
EW: But I know sort of talking about food I, before the war I used to love pineapples. Pineapple chunks. And of course you couldn’t get them because they were bombing the, or submarining you know torpedoing the ships. And I went to this birthday party and I saw on the table this bowl which I thought was pineapple chunks. And so I took a really big bowl full because I thought oh I haven’t seen any pineapple chunks for years. And I took this big lot. Well, it was disgusting. She’d cut a marrow into cubes and put yellow colouring and pineapple flavouring in it.
DK: Oh dear. Oh dear.
EW: And it was absolutely ghastly. And that taught me a lesson I’ll tell you. Not to, not to be deceived about what you were eating in the war. It was very difficult because things weren’t quite what they seemed.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And it I had to eat it because I daren’t leave it because I’d been so greedy. Served me right. Taught me a lesson. Just check what you’re eating. But —
DK: Can you remember, going back to the Air Force again about the bombing raids of our planes going out on —
EW: Oh yes. I, I because we used to go to bed obviously and in the middle of the night mostly the siren would go and my mum used get us to go in the shelter because they built all the brick shelters down the side of, one side of the road.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And they went because our street was a hill.
DK: Right.
EW: And so they went down in you know rotation. One a bit higher than the other. And they all smelled of wet concrete and whatever else.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Somebody had been in there. And they weren’t, and they weren’t very pleasant. But I don’t know why looking back now and knowing what happened to that other shelter with all the people in it I think you were safer staying in your own house really.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. And can you remember our planes at all when they were flying out to Germany?
EW: Oh yes. Oh definitely.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And we always recognised the German planes.
DK: Right.
EW: Because I, they used to, they didn’t sound like our planes.
DK: Right.
EW: They used to chug chug chug.
DK: Yeah.
EW: That was the sort of noise they made. And you always knew when it was a German plane and when they were our planes, and I, we used to watch them sometimes going over and you’d sort of, ‘Please go over. Please don’t turn around and come back,’ you know, because you knew they were one a, they had a specific target.
DK: Target. Yeah. Yeah.
EW: You know. To hit.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But there was another story that I was told. My cousin lived in London and next door to her was a Jewish couple. And when my two oldest girl were little I used to go and stay with my cousin and the children used to go around and see who they used to call Auntie Ackerman. And her name, her husband’s name was Ackerman.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And he was obviously a Jewish man. But he was with I don’t know whether it was MI6 or MI5. Something.
DK: Oh right.
EW: The ones that used to do the spy catching.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And he said that he caught loads of spies in Grantham.
DK: Really?
EW: Because there was so much going on here with all the airfields and they knew that that raid was being planned at St Vincent’s.
DK: Yeah.
EW: So that’s how they tried. You know, they tried but unfortunately they missed. Well, fortunately for the pilots.
DK: Yeah.
EW: They missed St Vincent’s and hit Stuart Street and brought it down. It was dreadful. And killed all the people in the shelter.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And as I say they never managed to hit the railway lines.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Although they tried. But of course after this particular incident in the school, the school was moved to I think they went to a sort of an old house that was a big house.
DK: Right.
EW: That was —
DK: Requisitioned.
EW: Yes. Requisitioned for them in Grantham. But when, after we had, one night we had a terrible raid and we didn’t have time to get into the shelter because the three pips had gone. And my mother lived in a terraced house on Grantley Street which is as I say was near the station. And we used to, it was before the days when, ordinary people didn’t have refrigerators.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And she used to have a cellar and on the, as you walked down the steps of the cellar there was a long slab. A cold slab.
DK: Yes.
EW: As they used to call it. But it was solid brick until you got to the bottom and then there was a kind of alcove like that taken out of the wall and my mum used to keep the saucepans in there originally. And so she put some blankets in there and some pillows and she shoved us in there. And when I think about it now I think we could have been a sandwich of bricks.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: But you don’t think about that until afterwards, you know.
DK: So just moving on then can you remember the war coming to an end and —
EW: Yes.
DK: And the big changes around that.
EW: Absolutely.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Yes. I was hoping that the war was going to end on the 4th of May because that was my birthday.
DK: Right.
EW: But it didn’t. It didn’t end until the 8th I think it was, wasn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
EW: When it had finished.
DK: VE Day.
EW: And I can remember sort of being out in the street with friends and we were all excited but we didn’t really know what was going to happen next because obviously they were still fighting in Japan.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: And it was [pause] I was of course thirteen. Well, with my mum being quite a Victorian lady I wasn’t allowed to go with all the girls.
DK: No.
EW: To have a knees up in town, you know. But that’s what happened. Everybody went barmy because all the lights came on and —
DK: Yeah.
EW: People hadn’t, I mean children who were born before, when the war started had never seen lights in the street.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And, and what have you but it was I think everybody went barmy really.
DK: Yeah.
EW: I think it was such a relief but thinking back I think I must have been a bit of a child who was, who looked at what was happening to other people.
DK: Yes.
EW: Not the people that were enjoying themselves but those people that had lost sons and husbands that were never going to come back.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I can remember feeling sadness because they weren’t. They wouldn’t be able to go out and celebrate.
DK: They couldn’t join. Join the celebrations. No. No.
EW: Join. No. And as I say it was, it was a time when everybody stuck together. Everybody helped everybody else.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And its, it doesn’t happen anymore. Not, not most of the time. I mean, no, no way in that period of the war time would anybody be lying dead in a house and nobody notice.
DK: No. No.
EW: Which is what happens today.
DK: It does unfortunately, doesn’t it?
EW: So I think, but living through a war like that taught you to appreciate everything you had after that because it was a deprived time. And I mean the dentist is quite happy because I’ve still got my own teeth. And I said, ‘Well, that was because we didn’t have any sweets,’ because —
DK: Right.
EW: You know, sweets were on ration.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And when I went to school we used to go to the little shop next to the school and buy penny carrots and the lady used to peel them for us and we used to eat those instead of sweets. Yeah. And we did have another visitor, quite an important visitor to Grantham and we all had to go out in the street with flags and things and it was General Montgomery.
DK: Oh right.
EW: He came here.
DK: Do you remember seeing him?
EW: Yes. Oh yes. He came up the street in his, you know he had sort of like a vehicle that was specific to him.
DK: Right.
EW: I’ve see that vehicle. It was in a caravan show in the NEC once.
DK: Yeah. it’s a big green thing.
EW: A green van.
DK: Yes. I think —
EW: Yeah.
DK: Yes. I think I know what you mean.
EW: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I can remember we were all waving like mad because Monty was really a hero in a way.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because he was a very, he didn’t please everybody.
DK: No.
EW: Especially the old generals that were making a mess of everything. He was, he was a man who knew what he wanted to do. And I think him and Rommel respected each other.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: In a way.
DK: Yeah.
EW: So, but Grantham really was in the midst of it because of all the airfields.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And —
DK: Do you, do you remember, did you visit any of the airfields at all or do you remember going past them?
EW: Well, we’d go past them.
DK: Going past them.
EW: Yeah. Because you weren’t allowed on.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Civilians weren’t allowed to go on but Spitalgate was, we used to, it sounds daft really because Spitalgate Aerodrome is on Somerby Hill.
DK: Yes. Yes.
EW: And Spitalgate Hill is the other one next door.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: So we, my mum used to take us because we did go for walks in those days, and we went up there and we used to pass the aerodrome and we used to see all the planes and everything but it was just —
DK: Yeah.
EW: Normal for us to see all this stuff, you know.
DK: It’s just an army barracks now, isn’t it?
EW: Yes. But it’s closing down.
DK: Closing down. And going to be another housing estate.
EW: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely disgusting, isn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I mean that place was, it was for the RAF to start with.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Then it was, went to the WAAFs. The WAAFs were there because that’s where I went as a Guider.
DK: Right.
EW: To see Lady Baden Powell.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: On that airfield. And then of course it turned into [pause] I can’t remember what the people are that’s there now? It’s the —
DK: It’s the Duke of Gloucester barracks now isn’t it? I think.
EW: Yes. It is. Yeah. Prince William of Gloucester.
DK: Oh, Prince William of Gloucester, is it? Yeah.
EW: Yes. Yeah.
DK: But not for much longer. As you say there’s a —
EW: No. It’s going.
DK: Going to be a housing estate.
EW: Yeah. So that’s sad.
DK: More houses.
EW: Its, oh I can’t remember what they call it. It’, it’s s got a name now.
DK: Yeah.
EW: It’s for a specific kind of soldier. I don’t know quite —
DK: It’s not the Engineers is it?
EW: No. No. My husband was in the Royal Engineers.
DK: Right.
EW: And he, he was, he went in for his National Service just after the war finished. But of course then he had to stay much longer because as an engineer, a Royal Engineer, he was on the Berlin Airlift.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
EW: Because the Russians had blockaded.
DK: Yeah. Berlin. Yeah.
EW: Berlin. And they wanted the lot and everybody said you’re not having it, you know. And so of course he was, as an engineer he was helping with the airlift but he was also digging up the airfields in Berlin to stop the Russian planes landing.
DK: Right.
EW: You see, that’s what they had to do. They decimated a lot of —
DK: Yeah.
EW: The runways.
DK: Make it, make it difficult.
EW: To make it difficult for them to come. Yes.
DK: If the Russians had invaded.
EW: Yes. Absolutely and —
DK: So was he out there for the whole of the Berlin Airlift then?
EW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Yes. So he had to stay in longer because they used to do two years or something like that.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And he got, had to stay longer until it was all finished.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because the people were starving. I mean, they had nothing. Nothing could get in so we were dropping it from here which we —
DK: Yeah.
EW: We hadn’t got that much.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But we were giving what we could and other countries the same. And they were bringing them in by plane and dropping them in to Berlin because I know that the Germans started the war but they were like the civilians were like us. They just had to put up with what was happening.
DK: The enemy now was the Soviet Union, wasn’t it?
EW: Absolutely.
DK: That was the point. Yeah.
EW: That’s when all this Cold War started.
DK: The Cold War started.
EW: And strangely enough when my husband and I went over to East Germany —
DK: Right.
EW: After they’d just, they brought, I think they started taking the Wall down in November and we went in April. And I bought a piece of the Berlin Wall.
DK: Oh right.
EW: And I had the last one of the last leaflet stamp for Checkpoint Charlie.
DK: Right. So that was ‘89 1990 was it?
EW: ’90. Yes.
DK: ’89. ’90.
EW: Yeah 1990.
DK: 1990.
EW: My husband was stationed in Germany. He was stationed in Hamelin because that’s where the Royal Engineers base was.
DK: Right. Right.
EW: And when we went over in 1990 it was still there. The Royal Engineers were still there.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Because of course there was such a lot of work to do. I mean, you saw when I was in East Germany it was horrible. It was. Especially I went to a place called, I think it was called Erfurt. Erfurt or something like that.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: And that’s where all of these horrible prisons were where they tortured people. And they still had the Kaiser’s train.
DK: Right.
EW: With his initials on it and everything.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And Hitler had made people plant fruit trees all along the grass verges so that when his troops marched through they could have something to eat. And, and they were still there.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But it was a terribly black. Everything was black and polluted.
DK: Yeah.
EW: It was awful.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And those silly little cars they used to have.
DK: Oh, the Trabants.
EW: That’s it. They used to have them on poles with advertisements on.
DK: Yeah. Yes. I’ve seen them in Berlin. Yes.
EW: Yeah. And of course you see in the Potsdamer Platz which is the centre of Berlin where all the big embassies used to be that was flat. Absolutely flat.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: But I think they have rebuilt since.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And —
DK: Berlin is a lovely city now.
EW: It is. Yes.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: I’m sure. I’ve not been back since. And my husband had never seen the other side of the Brandenburg Gate.
DK: Right.
EW: And so —
DK: You can just walk straight through now.
EW: Absolutely.
DK: Yes. Yes.
EW: And but it was very, very badly polluted. Everything had been neglected and they had no paint. They couldn’t paint their windows or anything so they had to keep, as they rotted they had to take them out and make a new window frame. But they could never buy any paint.
DK: Paint. Yeah.
EW: To paint it with. And we stayed at a hotel which was where the Eastern Bloc leader used to stay.
DK: Yes.
EW: And it was supposed to be a five star.
DK: Eric. Eric Honecker.
EW: That’s it. Honecker. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But no way was it. No way was it a five star. But you had to accept the fact that it was only just, the Wall had only just come down and in fact all of it wasn’t down.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And we walked along it on the eastern side and some of the slogans and the paintings were very provocative. It’s a wonder they didn’t all get shot. You know. But you know that’s how it was.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But it was sad because you’d walk up a street and there would have been a bridge. A railway bridge across the street.
DK: Yes.
EW: And they just chopped them off.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And no man’s land, you know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And people’s houses that happened to be on the borderline. They had to have all their windows blocked up.
DK: Yeah. Because you could get through to the other side.
EW: Yeah. Yeah. It was awful.
DK: I’ve seen film. There’s film. People escaping, isn’t it? They’re climbing out the window.
EW: That’s right.
DK: Because they’re pointing to the west.
EW: Yeah. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And of course as soon as they found out what people were doing.
DK: They bricked the windows up.
EW: They put the windows up. Yeah. But it must have been a horrible place to live because we did a little tour of, of Germany and they said. ‘Oh, this is the place where a little, a boy a young boy was trying to escape and he got tangled in the barbed wire.’
DK: Yeah.
EW: And they killed him.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And then they showed us the place where the officers who tried to shoot Hitler or blow him up.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: They were executed.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And they showed us the place where that was done. You know.
DK: It’s an interesting city. Berlin.
EW: It is.
DK: It’s got so much history.
EW: And of course while, when we were there in that Potsdamer Platz we said, the man said to us, ‘Oh, that is the bunker over there.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Where Hitler was. So I said, ‘What, what will you to do with it? I said, ‘I hope you don’t leave it there.’ He said, ‘No. We won’t.’ He said, ‘It’s going to be destroyed.’
DK: Yeah.
EW: ‘Because,’ he said, ‘We still got a lot of neo-Nazis in Germany.’
DK: There’s the Jewish Memorial on top of it now.
EW: Is there?
DK: On the site. Yes. Yeah.
EW: Oh, well that’s wonderful.
DK: Yes.
EW: Yeah. That’s wonderful. Yeah. We had a chappie came to talk us at Chapel Guild not long ago and he was, he was a Polish man and he was a Polish Jew. And him and his mother and his brother and sisters all got dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and put on a train. A cattle wagon.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And his father he never saw again ever. And his mother survived and he survived but the rest of his family were —
DK: All killed.
EW: Yeah. And they just walked out of their house. They had to leave everything.
DK: Yeah.
EW: They were allowed to pack one small suitcase about like that.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I mean he’s, he wrote a book about it.
DK: Right.
EW: And he, a wonderful man you know. Doesn’t, he doesn’t look for sympathy.
DK: No. No. No.
EW: At all.
DK: It’s just but it’s important he’s, he’s telling this story isn’t it?
EW: Absolutely. That’s why, yeah. That’s why we had him.
DK: Some people don’t believe it, do they?
EW: No. Well, they don’t choose to believe it.
DK: Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Yes.
EW: Yeah. But as I say, I mean I can remember. I can always remember saying to my mother when the siren went in the middle of the night, ‘I hate that Hitler.’ You know.
DK: Yes.
EW: Because I hated getting out of bed because it was —
DK: Yeah. It becomes quite personal then, doesn’t it?
EW: Oh absolutely.
DK: You’ve got a figure of hatred then. Yes.
EW: That’s right. Yeah. Well we used to, we used to draw derogatory pictures of him and all sorts you know. I mean if ever they we would have to have got rid of them otherwise we would all be shot. You know. And the sad thing was that one of my aunties had the name of Cohen and of course that is a Jewish name.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: Now why she had that name I don’t know because we’ve never gone back into her history. But I think we’d all have got the chop straightaway because we were related to her.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And —
DK: Just going on to your daughters. You said both of your daughters joined the Air Force then.
EW: Yes. Yes. They did.
DK: Was that anything to do, do you think with the stories you told them when they were younger or is it a choice they made?
EW: It’s the choice they made. I think basically they’ve always, the girls have always been, they’ve always known what they wanted to do. My eldest daughter she was, went to college and did business studies.
DK: Right.
EW: And things like that and she’s been working for Grantham Council for years and years because she’s sixty two now. My eldest daughter. And my second daughter, Karen she’s a state registered nurse and she wanted to go in the RAF.
DK: Right.
EW: But if she’d have gone in the RAF she would have gone in as an officer because she was state registered.
DK: Right. Yes.
EW: And David her husband he was in the RAF but at that time he was only a corporal.
DK: Oh, right. Yeah.
EW: And you couldn’t marry.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Beneath your rank. I think it’s changed now.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
EW: Yeah. But at that time. So she didn’t go in because obviously she wanted to marry David so he went in the RAF and he’s, he’s been all over the place and he was with Number 1 Fighter Squadron to start with.
DK: Right. Right.
EW: But as I say he, he’s out now but he’s working for this firm of surveillance.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And he’s got people going all over the world you know and sometimes they have a bit of a rough ride, you know. If somebody doesn’t like the look of them they take their passport and say there’s something not right in it and —
DK: Yeah.
EW: They have to sort it out otherwise those folks would be incarcerated forever, you know.
DK: So your two daughters that did join the RAF.
EW: Yes.
DK: What did they, what were they doing?
EW: Well, my that daughter there. That’s Louise. She’s number three daughter I call her.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: She went into the dental trade.
DK: Oh ok.
EW: And she ran dental units in the places that she —
DK: Right.
EW: Was posted to.
DK: And the picture there is her in the Falklands then.
EW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Yeah. That’s she getting an award. And so, but she loved it. I mean I thought they’d chuck her out after the first week because she’s terribly untidy. And when I spoke to one of the officers in, she was, she was based in Cyprus for three years.
DK: Right. Right.
EW: At Akrotiri. And I said to this officer, I said, ‘I thought you might have thrown her out by now.’ She said, ‘No way,’ she said, ‘She’s brilliant at her job.’
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I thought they were talking about somebody else. And of course —
DK: How many years was she in for then?
EW: Twenty two.
DK: Right.
EW: Yeah. And she’s out now but she’s running a big dental unit in Nottingham which is a seven dentist practice. I think there’s going to be more now because they’ve just built a big extension. And it deals with the students at the university.
DK: Oh ok.
EW: So she’s, she runs that. She’s the dental manager there.
DK: So daughter four. She was also in the air force as well then was she?
EW: Yes.
DK: Yeah. And what —
EW: She was my youngest one.
DK: Right. And her name was?
EW: Helena.
DK: Helen. Right.
EW: Helena.
DK: Helena.
EW: And that was Louise.
DK: Right. And what was she doing then?
EW: Well, she went down. Now, where did she go first? I can remember where Louise went first. She went to RAF Valley.
DK: Right.
EW: Because the girls in her flight gave her some cardboard sheet with cotton wool because they said all you’ve got down in Anglesey is sheep.
DK: Yes.
EW: But we did go down quite a lot to see her.
DK: Yeah.
EW: They had a big air show down there.
DK: Right.
EW: And then she, where did Helen, Louise go next? I think they wanted somebody to go to the, to the Shetland islands.
DK: Oh.
EW: And so she offered to go because nobody wanted to go there.
DK: No.
EW: Because it’s a bit sort of bleak and however it was all changed and she ended up in Cyprus for three years.
DK: Right. Very nice.
EW: Yes. And then her husband came back and said that, ‘We haven’t had a holiday for ages.’ I said, ‘You’ve just had a three year holiday on the government,’ you know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But they don’t look at it like that.
DK: No. So daughter number four then. What did she, she wasn’t a dentist?
EW: No. She went in as, she was going to go in, they wanted her to go in as air traffic control.
DK: Right. Ok.
EW: And when she was at the Grantham and Kesteven Girl’s High School they used to send the girls in sixth year down to do you know whatever they wanted to do they could go and see what was involved.
DK: Yeah.
EW: Well, they sent Helena down to Chivenor.
DK: Right.
EW: I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Chivenor but it was a —
DK: It’s Devon isn’t it?
EW: It’s a training area.
DK: Yeah.
EW: For air traffic control.
DK: I think it’s Devon. Isn’t it?
EW: I don’t know. I’m not sure where she went.
DK: I think it’s that way.
EW: I can’t remember. But I think it sounds like.
DK: Yeah.
EW: You know. So, anyway she went down there and she came back and she said, ‘Mum, I cannot do that job.’ She said, ‘You’re stuck in this little room and it’s dark and you’ve got all these blips on the screen.’
DK: Yeah.
EW: She said, ‘It would drive me mad.’ So anyway in the end she went in as a medic.
DK: Oh right.
EW: And she, she did the, she was in the department at Biggin Hill where these pilots used to go down for their medical.
DK: Right.
EW: Before they had the interview at Cranwell.
DK: Right. Yeah.
EW: Which is why they decided a long time after that it would be cheaper if they had the medical unit.
DK: In Cranwell.
EW: In Cranwell, you know.
DK: Yeah.
EW: It’s a bit like —
DK: Save all the trouble then.
EW: Shutting the stable door after the horse has gone you know. And so anyway that’s what happened. They made a unit in, in so of course she came down and of course she was living quite close to home but she, she did get married and she had a married quarter there.
DK: Right.
EW: But this one. She, well where was she? Where’s that? There’s a hospital somewhere. An RAF hospital. Where’s? I’m trying to think where it was.
DK: Yeah.
EW: This is the trouble when you get old. Your memory goes, you know. Over things that happened recently. I can remember what happened years ago.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: But she had to come out of the RAF because she got married and she was expecting a baby.
DK: Right.
EW: And of course they wouldn’t have married women then in the RAF with children.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
EW: So after about, I don’t know how many years she was in but she came out. She had to come out. Well, you’ve heard of the Underwood brothers have you.
DK: Yeah
EW: Yeah. They were big rugby players.
DK: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
EW: Well, Rory Underwood was a pilot.
DK: Yes. Yes.
EW: And his wife was an officer in the RAF. Well, they chucked her out as well because she’d got a child. So she took the case to —
DK: Court.
EW: Court.
DK: Yeah.
EW: I presume it was the European Court.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And they said that the RAF had no right.
DK: Oh right.
EW: To throw out women when they’d got children because all they had to do was build a creche.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And the mothers would pay for the children to go in the creche. And of course there were schools for English children because in Cyprus Louise’s children went to school there.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But as I say, so of course after, she had another child after that when she was still out.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And eventually Rory Underwood’s wife took as I say took them to the court.
DK: Court. Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And it was ruled that they couldn’t chuck women out. So she went back in.
DK: Oh right.
EW: And she had to do another seven weeks basic training which was a bit of a shock and of course since then they’d moved the WAAFs down to Halton.
DK: Yeah.
EW: So she went down to Halton because she was at Swinderby the first time.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But of course they closed that down now. That’s all gone.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: Both of my girls passed out at Swinderby.
DK: Right.
EW: And then of course she had to come back and she had to pass out at Honington but they did get the flight award and there was an older chappie in there as well and he was called dad and because she’d been in before these young girls called her mum. So they had a mum and dad in their flight.
DK: Yeah. Dear.
EW: So we went to see her pass out again.
DK: So she did twenty two years then.
EW: Yes.
DK: And your other daughter. How many years did she do?
EW: She did nine.
DK: Nine.
EW: She did nine really because she got married and her husband was training as a structural engineer and of course he couldn’t move.
DK: Right.
EW: Because he was doing his chartership.
DK: Right.
EW: And so she said to them, ‘Can you, can I be based in Lincolnshire?’
DK: Yeah.
EW: And of course you know what the RAF’s like. You know, if you ask for something they send you the furthest away.
DK: The exact opposite. Yeah.
EW: Yeah. So they said no. So she said , ‘Well, I have to come out then because,’ she said, ‘My husband is, he can’t move.’
DK: Yeah.
EW: And I’m not moving without him. So that was it. so she said well I’m coming out because she had to decide because she was, she was getting promoted and once your promotion comes in you’ve got to be posted.
DK: Yeah.
EW: And so of course it was either or. And I mean she could have been sent to Lossiemouth or anywhere miles away.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
EW: And so she came out but since then she’s worked in a bank and she’s now working for, well she runs a business that they look into the debt, people’s —
DK: Yeah.
EW: Bank accounts if they’re letting houses.
DK: Right.
EW: You know. The rents. To make sure that they’ve got enough money to pay. She’s doing that now but I think she regretted coming out.
DK: Yeah.
EW: But she really didn’t have a choice because —
DK: No.
EW: But funnily enough those two girls married two brothers.
DK: Oh right.
EW: So we have two brothers and two sisters married. Yeah. But —
DK: Ok then. That’s, that’s an hour been recording here so we’ve moved on a bit from the wartime years.
EW: Yes. We have.
DK: I’ll stop it there.
EW: Yes.
DK: But thanks very much for your, your contribution there. I’ll —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Eileen Widdowson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWiddowsonFE180731, PWiddowsonFE1801
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:58:55 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Grantham
Description
An account of the resource
Born in Peterborough, Eileen Widdowson’s father died when she was quite young, which resulted in the family moving to Grantham. With the East Coast main railway line and also a munitions factory, Grantham was a regular target for the Luftwaffe. Eileen recalls life at school, describes being told to sit under desks or sitting in the cloakroom with her coat over her head during air raids. On one occasion she had been collected from school by her mother and they had become trapped in a street when a brewers dray horse had bolted, blocking their exit. She recalls looking up at the diving aircraft, and being close enough to be be able to see the pilot’s eyes through his goggles. Workers from all over the country came to work at the munitions factory, and Eileen remembers sleeping three to a bed, to allow workers to be billeted in the spare bedroom. She collected rose hips and watercress to be sold, with profits being donated to the Red Cross. Grantham was a social destination for the many nearby airfields, and although there was little trouble with personnel, she does recall how white and black Americans would often fight, her first experience of racial discrimination. Before marrying, her husband had enlisted in the Royal Engineers after the war and was stationed in Berlin during the Berlin Airlift, working on the airfields. Two of her daughters later joined the RAF. Eileen gives accounts of the experiences of all three, including one of her daughter’s rejoining the RAF after a change in legislation, initially being forced to leave when becoming pregnant.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
African heritage
bombing
childhood in wartime
entertainment
home front
Red Cross
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2257/40604/PEdwardsF2-2201.1.jpg
725fb23cfcf3869419f2d279f4c4d56c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2257/40604/AEdwardsF2-220811.1.mp3
dc20b7b226f6d219e3f962d3c59d659c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Edwards, Frank
F Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frank Edwards (b. 1937). Originally from London, he was evacuated to the Lincolnshire/Leicestershire border. Has written a book about his experience.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Edwards, F-2
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: I’ll just introduce you. So this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Frank Edwards at his home on the, what’s the date today [laughs] hang on. The 11th of August 2022. So if I just put that down there.
FE: Yeah.
DK: If I keep looking at it I’m just making sure it’s still working okay.
FE: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So put that there. So if you just talk naturally.
FE: Yes. Talk naturally to you. That’s alright.
DK: If I ask you first of all. Whereabouts were you born?
FE: I was born in London on the 28th of the 10th ’37. I was born at St, not Stephen. Wait a minute. I’ve put it down. I never can[pause] St Leonards Hospital, Shoreditch.
DK: So it’s Shoreditch. So you’re a Shoreditch man then.
FE: A Shoreditch man. I was born within the sound of Bow Bells so they call me a proper Cockney.
DK: A proper. A proper Cockney. A proper Cockney. Well, I’m originally from West London so —
FE: Oh, was you?
DK: So people refer to me as being a Cockney but I can’t claim that.
FE: No. No. No.
DK: Originally from Hounslow.
FE: Oh yes. Hounslow.
DK: That area.
FE: That’s more on the outside.
DK: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all West London and near to Heathrow Airport.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. So what was, what was it like then? Shoreditch in those days.
FE: Well, I was only four years old so I can’t remember a lot but what I can remember is the Doodlebugs coming over and the sound and the silence and then the explosion and my mother used to grab all of us boys because there were four of us and a sister and used to run us down to the Underground.
DK: The London Underground.
FE: The London Underground.
DK: The London Underground. Yeah.
FE: And we used to stop in there overnight if the raids were still going on.
DK: Can you remember which Underground station you went to?
FE: No. No. I can’t.
DK: So you stayed on the platform there.
FE: No, we went to the Underground.
DK: Oh.
FE: And laid all on the platform. There were all the sheets and blankets and everything there. Us boys thought it was good fun because we was running up and down.
DK: Yeah.
FE: With all the other children. Thought it was good fun and, yeah —
DK: So that would have been 1944 then.
FE: That would have been. Yeah. It would.
DK: So you would have been, well seven at the time.
FE: Wait a minute. ’37. No, I was just over four year old.
DK: Oh, right. Okay. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Just over four. And one time we heard the Doodlebugs coming and my mother grabbed us and we was running down to the Underground and there was the explosion and we sort of turned around and we could see the end of our house caving in. So it didn’t actually hit it. But it was —
DK: Yeah. From the blast.
FE: Very very close and —
DK: Do you actually remember seeing the Doodlebugs in the sky?
FE: No. No.
DK: Yeah.
FE: No. I can’t remember seeing them. We used to hear the noise of them coming and then there was a big silence before the actual explosion.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. As they dropped.
FE: As they dropped. And —
DK: So, what, was there much damage to your house then?
FE: Well, not a lot. No. It was just more or less one end of the sitting room had gone out.
DK: So —
FE: And we carried on living in it because I can remember the boards.
DK: Right. I was just going to have a look. Yeah.
FE: That they had put these boards up at the end.
DK: Can you remember what sort of house it was? Was it a terraced house or a semi? Or detached?
FE: I think it was a terraced house.
DK: A terraced house. Right.
FE: Yeah. And my youngest brother he was born under the kitchen table in an air raid.
DK: Wow.
FE: And how I know that because my mother told me that that’s where he was born.
DK: Can you remember what year that would have been he was, he was born?
FE: He’s two years younger than me. Yeah. Yeah. Two years younger. That’s right. So that would have been what ’34, ’37. That would have been ’40. wouldn’t it?
DK: 1940.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So that would have been during the Battle of Britain as it were and the Blitz.
FE: Yeah. That’s right.
DK: The Blitz. Yeah.
FE: She was, he was born under the kitchen table and a neighbour came and grabbed all of us because there was an air raid going on and she took us down to the shelter and somebody came around to look after mother while she was giving birth.
DK: Wow. So I don’t suppose you really remember the start of the war then. You just really remember towards the end.
FE: That’s right.
DK: The second part. So were you actually evacuated at one point?
FE: Yes. When I was practically five all I knew was we were suddenly going somewhere with my mother. I didn’t know where it was or anything about it. But anyway, we all got loaded up on the train at Kings Cross and big excitement I suppose for us boys.
DK: So, so —
FE: We’d never been out of London.
DK: Yeah. No.
FE: In our lives. In fact, we’d never been out of the street I don’t think and as I say we got loaded up on the train and my mother came with us.
DK: So was your, your brother as well was he?
FE: Yeah.
DK: So it was just you and your brother and your mother.
FE: Two. Two brothers.
DK: Two brothers.
FE: Yeah. Two brothers and —
DK: So altogether three.
FE: Yeah. Three.
DK: You and two brothers plus your mother.
FE: And my sister.
DK: Oh, and a sister.
FE: Yeah. No. My sister went to Somerset.
DK: Oh okay, okay.
FE: Yeah. Now why she went to Somerset I never found out.
DK: No. So where did your mother and the sons go to then?
FE: We all came down here to Grantham Station.
DK: Oh. Right.
FE: We got off at Grantham Station. There was a coach waiting for us. Brought us all down to Croxton Kerrial where the water spout is.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: On this side of the road and anyway we had to line up outside the vicarage. All in a line. I’d got a label as everybody else with your name on it and I had a little suitcase with a gas mask.
DK: Yeah.
FE: I had a gas mask.
DK: That was a child’s gas mask was it?
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And anyway, we all stood outside the vicarage and people from neighbouring villages came and said, ‘I can take one.’ ‘I can take two.’ And anyway, with us three boys and my mother we was the last ones —
DK: Yeah.
FE: To get picked. And there was a kind lady, Mrs Shipman, she said, ‘Well, I’ll take the three boys until we can find somewhere else for one or two of them.’ And so my mother came with us to get us settled in but after a couple of months probably she got so she wanted to get back to London. She was a proper Londoner.
DK: Yeah.
FE: She didn’t like it in the countryside.
DK: No. No.
FE: Couldn’t settle.
DK: Do you know, can you recall what your mother was employed doing? Was she, did she have a job at the time?
FE: No.
DK: Right.
FE: No.
DK: So she was just a housewife.
FE: She’d got four children so, so —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: I presume she never —
DK: And can you recall what your father would have been doing?
FE: He was a firewatcher.
DK: Okay. So he remained in London.
FE: He remained in London.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And my mother said that she wanted to get back to him you know. His eyes wasn’t very good so that was the job he was doing. Fire.
DK: Right.
FE: Fire watching. And anyway, we went to this very kind lady. She was a farmer’s wife but her husband had died and we really settled in well except my mother as I say.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Which she went back to London.
DK: Can you recall the lady’s name that you stayed with?
FE: Mrs Shipman.
DK: Mrs Shipman. Sorry.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So was she living on a farm or —
FE: She was on the farm.
DK: Right.
FE: A lovely farmhouse.
DK: Can you remember whereabout the farmhouse was?
FE: It was in between Branston and Knipton.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I think one of the boys Shipman still lives in the farmhouse.
DK: Oh, okay.
FE: And we settled in quite well us boys. We thought it was great running all around.
DK: Looking back it must have been a bit of a cultural shock coming from London.
FE: Going to —
DK: And a terraced house to all this open countryside.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Does that really stand in your mind then?
FE: It does.
DK: Open and —
FE: I can remember when the door was open because of course we wasn’t very old. We used to run. Run out and go all around the stackyard and everywhere and they used to come looking for us to get us back into the house and yeah it was great. Really really enjoyed it and anyway after a time Mrs Shipman found that she couldn’t deal with three. Three of us.
DK: Would you know how old she would have been roughly?
FE: She was getting on. Wait a minute. Let me think.
DK: In her fifties or sixties or perhaps a little bit older.
FE: I should say she was.
DK: I know it’s difficult looking back.
FE: Probably sixty.
DK: Sixty. Yeah.
FE: She seemed very old.
DK: I was just going to say.
FE: Yeah. But they would do to boys.
DK: Must have seemed ancient to you.
FE: That’s right.
DK: At the time.
FE: Yeah. But she was definitely getting on a bit.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And what stands out in my mind really was the lovely meals that she cooked and she used to lay the table with all the silver and all the rest of it because they were a little bit on the posh side. And yeah that sort of stands out in my mind when the table, called us in for dinner or whatever and seeing the table all laid out which at home I suppose we just sat around an old table.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And that was it.
DK: So how long were you evacuated for? How long did you spend at the farm?
FE: Well, she found she couldn’t deal with the three boys so at the end of the lane from the farmhouse was the farm worker’s cottages. There was two. And one of the farmworker‘s wives said she’d take one.
DK: Right.
FE: The cleaning lady from Croxton Kerrial she said she’d take me.
DK: Right.
FE: So we were split up.
DK: Split up. Yeah.
FE: My younger brother he stopped with Mrs Shipman.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: Yeah. That was the one that was born under the table.
DK: Right.
FE: And —
DK: Just for the record recall your brother’s names? Your younger brother was —
FE: My younger brother was John.
DK: John. Yeah.
FE: My eldest brother was Terry.
DK: Terry. And your sister who’s gone to Somerset.
FE: Lily.
DK: Lily. And your parent’s names?
FE: Alfred and Lilian.
DK: Lilian. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. And —
DK: So you’re now being looked after separately.
FE: That’s right.
DK: In the —
FE: And as I say I went to Croxton and soon settled in. Very very good people. Treated me like a son. Just like a son and I started calling them mum and dad because well more or less forgetting about my parents.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: And as I say they looked after us very well and there was no problem. No problem at all. Mr Woods died and of course she had to look after me on her own. Her son and daughter they was in the forces.
DK: Right.
FE: So they was away.
DK: Yeah.
FE: From home.
DK: Do you know what they were doing in the Forces? Can you recall that?
FE: I think [pause] I think she was in the ATS.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah. I’m not a hundred percent about that. I don’t know where he was or what he was in but when he came home after the war he was that thin and always said he wasn’t treated very well. That’s all I can remember what —
DK: So he may have been a prisoner of war then.
FE: Could have been.
DK: Yeah.
FE: A prisoner of war. I don’t know.
DK: You don’t know. No.
FE: But yeah, I can always remember looking at him and he was that thin.
[telephone ringing]
DK: I’ll stop there.
[recording paused]
FE: That was my daughter. And where had I got to?
DK: The son came back after the war.
FE: War.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Very thin.
FE: As I say I grew up in the village and went to the village school and got on well at the village school.
DK: Was it, was it, I’m imagining, I’m assuming it was quite a small school then.
FE: Oh yes. It was. Probably thirty pupils in the school.
DK: Right.
FE: There was a big room and a small room as we called it. Two teachers and we lived next door to the policeman and the schoolteacher lived next door to the policeman. So she was one side.
DK: Yeah.
FE: We was the other. And yeah, had a great time living there. Started to get into the countryside ways with a lot of farmers. Spent a lot of time on the farm. And blacksmith. There was a blacksmith, a village shop. There was everything in the village. A bakers, a butchers.
DK: So though although there was rationing at the time you don’t really remember —
FE: I don’t.
DK: Needing to struggle produce wise. Yeah.
FE: I don’t think that we struggled quite obviously because —
DK: It was all locally produced stuff.
FE: We had a big garden.
DK: Right.
FE: We grew a hell of a lot of vegetables.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And we kept a pig in the pigsty at the top of the garden. When you had your pig killed you shared.
DK: Yeah.
FE: With your neighbours.
DK: Yeah.
FE: When they killed —
DK: Shared.
FE: They shared with you.
DK: Oh okay.
FE: So really I don’t think we really struggled. No. I think we was alright for food and Mrs Wood was a very good cook and bottles in the pantry. There was all these bottles all on the shelves full of all the whatever. Blackberries, plums and all the rest of it. Yeah. She was very good. And anyway, I grew up in the village. Had a great time. Got on with all the children. There wasn’t football. We never had a football in those days.
DK: I was going to say you had sort of toys and things to play with. What, what were you —
FE: Well, we didn’t really because there wasn’t a lot.
DK: No.
FE: We used to have a hoop and a stick. Used to run around the road with this hoop and stick. Conkers when it was conker time.
DK: Yeah.
FE: No. We really didn’t have a lot to play with. We had a tennis ball. I can remember having a tennis ball throwing about. But as for a football. No. Whether there was a football in those days I don’t know.
DK: Did you spend a lot of your time during the day then out in the fields and —
FE: Out in the fields.
DK: Running around. Yeah.
FE: I started to get in with the keepers a little bit. There was a keeper in the village and I used to go across to him and he was going on his rounds so I spent a lot of time with him and the farm seemed to be very small in those days.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Just a matter of you know fifty acres that was.
DK: Yeah. They were then weren’t they? Not like the big —
FE: That was the farm.
DK: Farms you get now.
FE: And just up the road there was a farmer. I used to spend a hell of a lot of time with him. He used to let me drive the horse and the cart.
DK: Right.
FE: And of course that was a big thing for a boy out of London to drive a horse [laughs] a horse and cart. And yeah, I spent a hell of a lot of time in the hay field and that sort of thing. And anyway by the time I got to the age of ten my mother wrote a letter and said all the boys had got to go back to London. They could get a council house as long as they had the boys back.
DK: Right. Right. What year would this have been then?
FE: I can’t. Ten years old. ’37. 1940. ’46. ’47. Is that right?
DK: ’47 yeah. So this was after the war then.
FE: This was.
DK: So you were an evacuee then from the period after the Doodlebugs.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So the Doodlebugs ’44.
FE: Yeah.
DK: You’re then evacuated and you were there until 1947.
FE: Seven.
DK: So two years after the war in fact.
FE: Yeah. ’37, ‘38, ‘39, ‘40, ‘45, ‘46, ‘47. Yeah. So I’d be ten year old in ’47 wouldn’t I be?
DK: Yes. Yeah.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: That’s when I had to go back to London.
DK: Right.
FE: And of course I said I’m not going back and —
DK: I’m not surprised.
FE: And all the rest. I was a country boy.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: A proper country boy. Grew up running in the fields catching rabbits. They bought me a dog and I used to use that a lot rabbiting and I used to catch these rabbits. And coaches used to stop at the Peacock Inn in the village, that was a public house and I used to make sure I was down there as they was unloading the coaches. Used to say, ‘Anybody want a rabbit?’ ‘Oh, I’ll have one.’ I’ll have two.’ And just used to go with my running dog across the road, into some fields, catch these rabbits and wait there until they came and they’d give you sixpence, a shilling or whatever.
DK: Wow.
FE: And hand over to you.
DK: You don’t do that sort of thing in London do you?
FE: No. Crikey. No. No.
DK: Just, just going back to the period of, of the war while you were up in this area. Can you recall anything of the war? The aircraft or anything going on. The troop movements.
FE: I can remember a plane crashing.
DK: Right.
FE: Along the Saltby Road. In fact, the fence is still there where it went through.
DK: Oh, okay.
FE: There was a hedge.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And then I think it landed one side, came across the road into the next field. That’s where the first fence is. I can’t remember seeing the plane.
DK: Right.
FE: No.
DK: You saw the damage afterwards.
FE: Saw the damage. That’s right. And it wasn’t far from the village in fact.
DK: And that’s out at Saltby.
FE: Yeah. On the Saltby Road.
DK: The Saltby Road.
FE: Yeah. And —
DK: Was it, was it a large aircraft? Do you know? Or —
FE: I don’t know —
DK: No.
FE: Anything about it. No. It was just that people said a plane had crashed.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And the only other thing really I can remember was the Yanks.
DK: Right. Okay.
FE: When the Yanks came.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Because they used to run after the vehicles and shout, ‘Any gum chum?’ [laughs] and they’d throw you candy or —
DK: Yeah.
FE: You know, chewing gum.
DK: Do you recall them being quite flamboyant then?
FE: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
DK: Did you, did you get to speak to any of the American soldiers at all?
FE: Yes. I did because they used to stop and say, ‘What are you doing?’ And all that sort of thing and yeah it was their accent that sort of baffled us a little bit being boys. But yeah, that was quite interesting with the Yanks —
DK: So they were —
FE: Because they had these open jeeps.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So you saw them in the jeeps and they’d sometimes stop and chat to you.
FE: In the jeeps. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yes. But anyway, we had to go back to London and I cried and cried and half the village turned out to say goodbye because I got on with everybody in the village.
DK: Yeah.
FE: They used to make cakes for me and God knows. Give me sweets and —
DK: Did you and your two brothers all go back at the same time?
FE: Yes.
DK: Right.
FE: Except one. One brother went back. The other one stayed on the farm.
DK: Oh, okay.
FE: And he never did go back.
DK: Oh right. And he was your older brother.
FE: He was the youngest one.
DK: Ah. Right.
FE: That was born under the table.
DK: Right. Right. So he never went back to your mother then.
FE: So we went back.
DK: Yeah.
FE: To Chingford in Essex.
DK: Just the two of you.
FE: Just the two of us.
DK: You and one brother. Right.
FE: And my sister from Somerset.
DK: Yeah.
FE: She also joined us. But I hated it. Couldn’t settle at all because we were used to country life and —
DK: Presumably you went back to school in Chingford did you?
FE: Went back to school in Chingford. In fact, I’ve still got two or three of my old school books. Yes. Went to the school in Chingford.
DK: And was this a bigger school than—
FE: A massive great school.
DK: Yeah, and you —
FE: Massive great school.
DK: You didn’t settle in I assume.
FE: Didn’t settle at all. My accent was country as you can tell and I used to get bullied. Started getting bullied.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: Anyway, one of the teachers one day he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ Or something. And I said, ‘Oh, I’m getting bullied,’ and all the rest of it and anyway he told me to go to the gym and start boxing.
DK: Right.
FE: So that’s where I used to go three times a week and started boxing and I wouldn’t say I was good but I got quite good and one day I decided. Right. This bully. I’m going to have him today. And he came along the corridor and as he went by you know, like that. And I called his name and he turned around and I got stuck in to him and really gave him a good hiding. His mate stopped me in the end and the teachers got to know and they said, ‘You did a good job there.’ [laughs] I was chuffed to bits.
DK: I’m not sure teachers would do it that, sort that out that way.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Today. Would they, no.
FE: But —
DK: Suggesting or say boxing lessons and [laughs] whack the bully.
FE: That’s right. Boxing lessons.
DK: But sorted the problem out then did it?
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Sorted it out and I never boxed again.
DK: Right.
FE: That was the last time —
DK: Okay.
FE: I ever did. And we couldn’t settle. We used to go my brother and myself we used to go out, for long walks. Epping Forest. We used to go to Epping Forest and spent hours in Epping Forest just walking through the wood and all the rest of it. And one day we came to this public house and outside was a massive great tank. And it said on the wall above it, ‘Pull the chain and see the otter.’ So of course we’d see the otter. Pulled the chain so we pulled this chain out very very gently and there was a kettle at the end of the chain [laughs] Isn’t it funny how things stand out.
DK: How bizarre.
FE: In your mind isn’t it?
DK: Do you think then that your walks into Epping Forest you were trying to recreate living in the countryside?
FE: I think we was, you know and it was to get away from our parents as well. We could not get on with our parents.
DK: No.
FE: No. They was completely different to Mr and Mrs Woods. I couldn’t get on with them. My brother, he started to get on with them a little bit and my sister did. But no. I couldn’t get on with them at all. And —
DK: Did you think you were perhaps a little resentful then that you had to go back to the, I suppose your parents are strangers now aren’t they?
FE: That’s right. They’re complete strangers. In fact, I didn’t even recognise my mother.
DK: Really.
FE: No. No. I didn’t know her at all.
DK: That’s sad.
FE: And anyway we had to stand it. We went to the, to school and when I got to, we used to come down here for holidays back to Croxton and really enjoyed it. Never wanted to go back but had to go back and —
DK: How did you get up here in those days? Did you come by train or —
FE: Came by train.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yeah. And I used to get pocket money while I was down here to pay to get back and also pay for me to come back next time. Summer holidays. And when I got to fifteen I decided to run away —
DK: Right.
FE: And to come back down here. And I told me brother and my sister and anyway I packed a few things in a case and when my parents were wherever out the door I went and away I went. I knew the way roughly because I’d done it a few times. Got to King’s Cross. Got on the train. I thought it stopped at Grantham. It went straight through Grantham to Doncaster.
DK: Oh.
FE: So of course it was panic stations.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And I got off at Doncaster. Didn’t know what to do. Saw a policeman and I went to the policeman and said, ‘I want to get back to Grantham.’ And of course they started enquiring, ‘What are you doing?’ I told them that I’d run away from home. I wanted to get to Coxton Kerrial on the way to Melton Mowbray and anyway after a while they loaded us up in the police car. Took me back to Grantham to get on a bus. Put me on a bus to Croxton Kerrial.
DK: So the police didn’t think about sending you back to London then.
FE: No.
DK: No.
FE: No. They was going to get, well in fact they did get in touch with a police station in London —
DK: Yeah.
FE: And said, ‘We’ve got your son here.’ What they said I can’t imagine but anyway, I ended up at Croxton and walked through the door because in those days you didn’t knock at the door you just walked in. Everybody’s house you just walked in. Walked in and they were sitting around the old black lead grate. I can see them sitting there now. A big fire. A kettle on and anyway they looked and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’ve come to stay. Can I?’ And they said, ‘Of course you can but what about your mum and dad?’ I said, ‘They don’t know where I am but the policeman’s rung them and I think he’s told them.’ And anyway, they got in touch with my parents or the police or whoever and my parents knew that I couldn’t settle with them so they said, ‘Alright. He can stay with you.’ So that was the start of it. I soon settled back into country life again.
DK: So you never went back to London to live then.
FE: Never went back to London. Never saw my parents again.
DK: Really?
FE: No. I just did not like them.
DK: Oh wow.
FE: And I made sure that I didn’t see them again.
DK: Right.
FE: My father died crossing the road in London. He worked as a cabinet maker.
DK: Right.
FE: And he was crossing the road in London got knocked down and killed and nobody came forward and said, ‘I saw what happened.’ And all those people yet nobody came forward. And yes, my mother I think, I think she, I’m not a hundred percent sure but I think she did die of cancer.
DK: Right.
FE: And no, as I say I never saw them again. So it came to time to think about work and of course, with being on the farms as much as I did as a boy I thought, ‘Right. Farm work.’ You know, that’ll be the thing for me.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Although I did spend a lot of time with keepers. And anyway I started on the farm. I had to be there at 7 o’clock in the morning ‘til 5. Six and a half days a week.
DK: Can you recall where that farm was?
FE: That farm was the Shipman’s farm where I was—
DK: Oh right.
FE: First evacuated to.
DK: Right. Right. So you’d gone back to the farm you —
FE: Gone back to the farm.
DK: Where you were evacuated to —
FE: Evacuated.
DK: Right.
FE: As a start —
DK: Yeah.
FE: That’s where I —
DK: Yeah. So you knew the people working there and you knew everybody.
FE: Oh, knew everybody.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: That’s right. And yeah, loved it really because it was still the old binders and horses and the odd thrashing drum with the tractor or whatever attached to it. Still all the old machinery. But of course, as time went on things was changing and the horses began to disappear and the tractors was taking over which I didn’t like. I liked the horses. And [pause] alright?
DK: Yeah. Okay.
FE: And yeah, I got on very well there and I decided to join a handbell team which was in Croxton Kerrial. Mr Farnsworth used to run it. He was a farmer. And joined this team, got on well with the handbells and we was playing at the vicarage and in the distance I could see two girls and I thought she looks alright as you do.
DK: As you do. Yeah.
FE: Yeah. So after we’d finished I went down and said, ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ And that’s my wife.
DK: Ah.
FE: There.
DK: Well —
FE: And she —
DK: A very attractive lady.
FE: She says, ‘I will as long as long as I can bring my friend.’
DK: Yeah.
FE: I thought bugger. That’s done it. [laughs] And anyway, we did. We went for a walk and that was the start of the romance but I wanted to go into the Army.
DK: Right.
FE: So I, we’d been courting for probably a year or so and I told her I was going to go in the Army and I thought well that will be the end of it. She’ll [pause] but anyway she decided. She said, ‘Alright, I’ll wait for you.’
DK: Okay.
FE: And I went in for four years and —
DK: Was that —
FE: In the Coldstream Guards.
DK: Oh Right. Okay.
FE: Yeah. Coldstream Guards. And spent most of my time in in London. Did a lot of the Guards. Did the lining of the Mall and all those sorts of things which the Guards did.
DK: So —
FE: And Trooping the Colour and —
DK: So would this have been the 1950s or the 1960s we’re looking at when you were involved?
FE: I went in in ’56.
DK: ’56. Right. Okay.
FE: In the Army.
DK: So late 1950s then.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Yeah, and got on very well. No problems at all. Never got made up which I hoped I would but never did but doing a lot of the Guards, Tower of London and Bank of England. We used to do the Bank of England. The Tower of London. Oh, I can’t remember the names of them now.
DK: So how many Trooping the Colours did you do then?
FE: Two.
DK: Two.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. We used to be outside the Palace on guard. In those days you was outside. You used to have your sentry box. Two of you. And outside the railings and you had the signal when you was going to march you up and down to the other one at the other end. Tapped your rifle.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Two, two taps and then you’d both start to march up and down. And then when you was going to go back to your sentry box you you were swinging your arms and did two. That was the signal.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You used to get a lot of dates. The girls would come up and, ‘Meet me at —’ so and so and you’d put them up your sleeve.
DK: Oh right.
FE: So when you got back to barracks you shared them out with your, with your mates [laughs] and yeah sometimes you know I was being faithful. Yeah, some nice girls. No doubt about it but there was quite a few rough ones. And —
DK: So you got married then after you came out the Army.
FE: After I came out the Army I got married more or less straightaway and soon a daughter was on the way. And —
DK: Did you go back into farming then after that? Or —
FE: I was going to I thought I’d end up back on the farm where I originally worked but he’d set somebody else on in the meantime because he didn’t know how long I was going to be.
DK: Yeah.
FE: In the Forces or whatever and he said, ‘I’m ever so sorry. I can’t give you a job.’ But anyway, word got around that I was looking for work and a farmer in the same village I lived he came and offered me a job. And which I accepted and there was a house with it.
DK: Which village was this then?
FE: Croxton Kerrial.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah, so anyway I accepted the job, a decent little house along the Saltby Road and enjoyed it on that farm. It was very good. I took a lot of responsibility because he was getting old and did a lot of the, a lot of the work no doubt about it. But I was getting in with the keepers a lot. Helping keepers. I was very interested in keepering and anyway one day I was hedge cutting and this car stopped on a Tuesday morning and he was watching and then he drove off. But the next Tuesday he was there again and so I got out and I went across the road to him and I said, ‘Do I happen to know you?’ And he said, ‘No.’ But he says, ‘I know all about you.’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ And he said, ‘You spend time with the keepers.’ He said, ‘Are you interested in a keeper’s job?’ So of course, I wanted to know all the details and he said it meant setting up a shoot at Londonthorpe.
DK: Okay.
FE: That was Belton Estate.
DK: Oh right. On the Belton Estate. Okay.
FE: The Belton Estate. And it was a syndicate that wanted to set up this shoot and offered me the job.
DK: Was that before the Belton Estate became National Trust then?
FE: Yes.
DK: Right.
FE: Before then. Yeah. And anyway, I accepted the job. I had a hell of a job to get there. When we moved it were, oh my God snow. I don’t know how deep it was but it took a long while before it went. But eventually we moved in.
DK: This wasn’t the very bad winter of about 1962.
FE: No. I don’t think it was.
DK: The next one.
FE: No.
DK: So this would have been the 1960s then would it?
FE: It would have been the ‘60s.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And settled in. It was a big farmhouse. Cold. Very very cold in the winter. Beautiful in the summer. Set up this shoot which was a big thing because I’d never.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You know I’d just been with the keepers and then just suddenly —
DK: You were in charge of it all.
FE: I was responsible —
DK: Yeah.
FE: For a shoot.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And we was rearing with broody hens in those days. Used to put the eggs twenty, twenty two eggs under one hen and used to have a row of sitting boxes with all these broody hens in and got on very well. And then of course it got more modernised and we, I started having Rupert Brooders. You could put a hundred chicks under one of these.
DK: So what type of people that came out on the shoots then? Were they from the estate or were they from outside or —
FE: No. They was from, from all over. Some, some were farmers. Some were businessmen.
DK: Right.
FE: You know. Those sort of people.
DK: So you had to organise their visit and the shoots.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
FE: My wife used to do their lunches on a shoot day.
DK: Right.
FE: We used to have ten, ten day shooting. She used to do the lunches but the only trouble with, with them they stayed too late at night drinking. Oh God. They was in my house because they had a room in my house.
DK: Right.
FE: 10 o’clock at night they’d still be there.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: And —
DK: They liked their drink did they?
FE: They liked their drink.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: Of course, in those days the police wasn’t about.
DK: Yeah.
FE: Or bothered or anything. And they used to get in a fair old state some of them. I can remember one day one of them was driving out and he went up on my grass and took the clothesline with him as he went out [laughs] Out the gate.
DK: Oh dear.
FE: And then they used to go down to Londonthorpe village and have another session there with somebody. So God knows what they was like when they got home if some of them got home.
DK: Yeah.
FE: If some of them got home.
DK: So were they were they sort of regulars then that you tended to see that came on these shoots?
FE: Yes, it was mostly rich people.
DK: Yeah. I was going to say.
FE: Rich people.
DK: And you tended to see the same ones again.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Each time.
FE: They could invite guests.
DK: Right.
FE: Yes. They could. Which several of them did. If they couldn’t get it for business or whatever.
DK: Yeah.
FE: They’d let somebody else —
DK: Else go.
FE: Go in their place. But there was one funny thing happened because there were still poachers in those days and of course pheasants was worth five pounds a brace where now you can’t give them away.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And that was a lot of money.
DK: Right.
FE: In those days. And anyway, I had a phone call saying there was poachers up in such and such a wood. Belmont Wood. And we all helped each other, the keepers. So got we got radios, got in touch with the keepers because I knew they’d be out on their rounds and we all met and went up to this wood where the poachers was and we decided we’d walk straight down the side of the wood. There was a sort of a ride and we walked down this ride. We could see these two chaps and we got within a hundred yards of them and this Alsatian came up and smelled one of us and the other one turned and run. I thought that was strange. Alsatians. Still never clicked. But anyway, we decided we was going to surround them and jump out on them with the sticks and what have you and we jumped out and shouted, ‘Stand still.’ Which they did and it was two policemen dog training. Of course, we all started laughing like mad when we found out it was two policemen and one of them said, ‘Please don’t tell anybody at the police station will you.’ [laughs] And yeah that was very funny that was. We had a good night that night after. But —
DK: Was poaching in those days a real problem then?
FE: It was for about two years and then it began to ease off because I was only a matter of what two miles from Grantham.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And the poachers came from Grantham.
DK: Right.
FE: They could walk you see or bicycle and hide the bicycle —
DK: Yeah.
FE: Under the hedge somewhere. We knew who the poachers was. We knew their names and where they lived and everything.
DK: Yeah.
FE: But it was one of those things. You had to stop out at night and hope that you caught them or they didn’t come because they found out that you was out. One night I did get poached. And I was feeding in the wood and I thought that the pheasants seemed a bit, a bit wild, a bit spooky and I started having a look around and found some feathers. And then walked a little bit more and found some more feathers and I knew that they had been. It must have been the night that I wasn’t out or something. And anyway, in those days we had alarm guns. And in fact, I had mine made and made for me. And you put a cartridge in and you had a trip wire that went across and when you tripped the wire it set it off and bang! In the middle of the night that would be a hell of a noise.
DK: Right.
FE: And anyway, I set this up on the place where I thought well if they come this is where they’re going to walk. Not walk through the thick briars. It was just a little track and I went the next morning and had a look and I could see that it had gone off and I had a look around and couldn’t find any falls at all. And then I saw a cap laying up.
DK: Right.
FE: It must have gone off.
DK: And he’d —
FE: Frightened them that much.
DK: Lost his cap and run.
FE: Set off running or something.
DK: Yeah.
FE: And left his cap behind [laughs] you know.
DK: So, so were you still working at Belton House then at this time?
FE: At Belton.
DK: Belton Estate or something.
FE: Yeah. It was nothing to do with Belton Estate. It was their land.
DK: Right.
FE: But they rented it. The shoot actually rented the land.
DK: I see.
FE: For the shoot.
DK: Right.
FE: Yeah. But it was still Belton Estate.
DK: So how long were you there for then?
FE: Well, suddenly one day one of the syndicate came to me and said, ‘I’m ever so sorry. I’ve got some bad news.’ I thought, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ He said, ‘Belton Estate is going to the National Trust and they don’t allow shooting.’
DK: Ah, so —
FE: So I was —
DK: So you actually lost your job because the National Trust had taken over.
FE: I was out of a job.
DK: Oh.
FE: Because of the National Trust.
DK: Oh right.
FE: And anyway —
DK: I bet, I bet you weren’t too pleased about that at the time.
FE: I wasn’t. No.
DK: No.
FE: But there you are. One of those things. I thought well I’ve got to start looking for another keeper’s job somewhere but we had another shoot day and one of the syndicates said to me, ‘Don’t worry about losing your job. I think I’ve got another one for you lined up.’ So he said meet me —’ so and so and we’ll go to where this which was at Burton Coggles.
DK: Right.
FE: Just down the road.
DK: Right.
FE: And Sir Monty Cholmeley. So we met Sir Monty and I said, ‘Well, I’d like to look around.’
DK: That’s Sir Monty Cholmeley.
FE: Yeah. Sir Monty Cholmeley.
DK: Right. He was the local landowner presumably.
FE: Yes. Well, he owned the estate.
DK: Yeah. Right.
FE: A small estate.
DK: Right.
FE: Easton Estate and anyway we met Sir Monty. He took us for a ride all the way around and showed me the woods and what not and told me that they had twelve shoot days a year and all what I wanted to know about the shoot and I took the job. Accepted the job.
DK: Right.
FE: He was a very very good boss. No problem at all. You meet him when you was on your rounds. He would always come and talk and offer you a drop of whisky out his bottle and yeah got on really well with him. Had some good shoot days. Things seemed to go well.
DK: So are we in to the 1970s now then? About that time? Just so —
FE: It would be. It would be about the ‘70s wouldn’t it because I was at Belton ten years.
DK: Right.
FE: So that had, let’s think [pause] Went in to ’56 in the Army. It would be ‘60 when I came out. Ten years. That makes it ’70. It would be.
DK: 1970.
FE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got on very well. Had some good shoots. Decided to set another keeper on to work with me. Got on very well with Barry. He was a good keeper. Got on very well with him and we made a nice, a nice shoot and anyway decided to retire at the age of sixty, sixty seven.
DK: Okay.
FE: Decided to retire and the boss was having a meeting. He said he wanted me at the meeting and I went and he said, ‘Right. You are retiring. This is what’s happening to you. I’m giving you a house rate and rent free for the rest of your life.’
DK: Wow.
FE: And that’s this one.
DK: And it’s this one. Right.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Wow.
FE: And so I’ve been here [pause] oh God. About eighteen years I think.
DK: Eighteen. Eighteen years.
FE: Eighteen, something but yeah. Crikey where has that time gone? I can’t believe that.
DK: Well, we’ve come full circle around to your retirement home so I’ll stop the recording now.
FE: Yes.
DK: Because I think I’ve got everything I need. It’s got your story about your evacuation and what you did after the war.
FE: Yeah.
DK: So thanks very much for that. That’s been most enjoyable and most interesting but I’m going to switch this off now.
FE: Yeah.
[recording paused]
FE: Mind really I just did it for friends.
DK: So this was the book that you wrote.
FE: Yeah. And sold. Oh, I don’t know what it was. Fifty in the first week.
DK: So was it a privately published book then, was it?
FE: Yeah.
DK: Right.
FE: And anyway, all the books went and somebody said, ‘Oh have you got a book left?’ And I said, ‘Well, you can borrow mine.’ I can’t remember who it was. Never got it back. So I’m the only one without a book.
DK: Without a copy of it.
FE: Without a copy of the book.
DK: Can you remember what it was called?
FE: “London Evacuee to Countryman.” You can still get it.
DK: London Evacuee —
FE: “Evacuee to Countryman.”
DK: Country man. Okay. What, I’ll see if I can get hold of a copy.
FE: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You’ll be able to get a copy.
DK: If I get two I’ll —
FE: I’ve also been.
DK: Send one on to you.
FE: I’ve also been in two magazines.
DK: Right. [pause] So that’s the “Sporting Shooter.” [paper rustling]
FE: Yes. And I’ve also been in the “Lincolnshire Life.”
DK: In, “Lincolnshire Life.”
FE: I think it was, “Lincolnshire Life.”
DK: Yeah. So they did an article about you there then.
FE: That’s what I got it off when I came out of hospital.
DK: Very good.
FE: Good isn’t it? That’s it.
DK: Oh right. So this is where are we? So this is, oh it’s quite recent then. August 2022.
FE: That’s right.
DK: Oh, so I’ll just make a note of this. August 2022 of the, “Sporting Shooter.” What are we? Page thirty four. Page thirty five. Okay.
FE: I’ve also got the other one in the cupboard behind you.
DK: Oh right. So this, this covers your story of the Doodlebugs.
FE: Yeah.
DK: And going out to [pause] on page thirty six. I’ll have a look at that. Oh right. So do, do you still shoot at all or —
FE: I packed it up probably ten years ago.
DK: Right.
FE: I found that I couldn’t swing the same.
DK: Right.
FE: The old joints with arthritis.
DK: Not quite as good.
FE: I thought well now’s the time to —
DE: To give it up.
FE: Give it up. So —
DK: Just put this back on again. Its rather odd that in some ways because you became an evacuee and came out here it totally changed your life and the direction you would have been taking.
FE: Completely.
DK: So in some ways, well in almost all respects it was actually a good thing that you became an evacuee. Saw a different life outside London.
FE: That’s right.
DK: And then had a life and a career from that.
FE: That’s right. What if I’d stayed in London what would have happened? I could have been killed. Just don’t know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
FE: What would have happened.
DK: Well, your career would have been totally different wouldn’t it?
FE: Totally different. I would have probably been with my father cabinet making or whatever.
DK: Yeah.
FE: You don’t know do you?
DK: No.
FE: What could have happened.
DK: Okay then. I’m going to stop this again now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frank Edwards
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-11
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:56:16 Audio Recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AEdwardsF2-220811, PEdwardsF2-2201
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Melton Mowbray
Description
An account of the resource
Frank was born in London. He describes V-1 coming over and taking shelter in the London underground.
Frank talks of his evacuation to the countryside near Croxton Kerrial when he was nearly five. He was accompanied by his two brothers and initially his mother. His sister was sent to Somerset. He enjoyed his time in the countryside and shares memories about the people who looked after him, his school, mealtimes and leisure time pursuits.
Frank reluctantly returned to Chingford in Essex two years after the end of the war. He missed the countryside and was bullied at school. At the aged of 15, he ran away to Croxton Kerrial, to which his parents subsequently agreed. He never saw his parents again.
He started work on a farm and met his wife. After four years in the Coldstream Guards, he married and worked on another farm in Croxton. Frank then moved to Londonthorpe to set up the shoot. The shoot rented the land from the Belton Estate. When the estate was bought by the National Trust, no shooting was permitted. He was taken on as keeper by Sir Montague Cholmeley. After retirement, the latter let him live rent free.
Frank has written a book, “London Evacuee to Countryman” and appeared in Sporting Shooter and Lincolnshire Life magazines.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
shelter
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1719/28737/AHattG180817.1.mp3
dfc189f8996872b70ef5d9432c50c913
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hatt, Gladys
G Hatt
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gladys Hatt nee Parkes (b.1928). She was evacuated but later lived and worked in Manchester during the war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hatt, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: My name is, my name is Denise Boneham and I’m talking to Gladys Hatt on the 7th of August nineteen, sorry 2018 and the time is now 13.58. Gladys, would you like to tell me a little bit about your life before you left school in 1942?
GH: My father was a sergeant in the Home Guard and I used to do a lot sewing, stitching stripes on uniforms because he had a section, you know in the Home Guard. I was a machinist at fourteen and I worked in Sparrow Hardwick’s and I worked on delicate underwear. Expensive underwear. And because I was good at that as the war started I was put on uniforms because I worked over where the Army and the RAF were billeted and we’d done the RAF uniforms. I won’t tell you what we put in them. A lot of notes. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then when I was eighteen the war was still on. I lived more or less in air raid shelters from being young to being eighteen, nineteen. And I don’t know. I just worked on uniforms for the Army. Army uniforms. I was a good machinist. The only thing I didn’t like was trying to sew a glengarry because I, that’s what I called them, course they’re not that, I used to get told off. I got told off a lot because I cursed and I liked fancy work not heavy great coats and uniforms. Stars and stripes because we had the Americans over then and they used to come in the factory and ask would we do this and could we do that? Oh yes. ‘Would you like to put these stripes on for us?’ ‘Well, you’ll have to ask my manager.’ ‘Yes. That’ll be alright.’ I was on piecework so they were taking my money away from me. Anyroad, and there was blackouts so we used to finish work at five. Then I had a good hour, nearly an hour’s walk home. Bombs were falling, sirens were going and I had to go through an underground station which is Mayfield railway station and I worked above it so I had to go under it to go home. I had to walk home. Sirens would go and I’d have to go in to the nearest air raid shelter regardless. I lived in air raid shelters. I fed in the air raid shelters. I’d probably sleep in the air raid shelter and go to work the next morning in the same clothes I had on. One particular week we got bombed out so I had no clothes. People used to bring you stuff, you know and send stuff and, well it was a hard life then but I was still working. And I worked at, what’s it called? Walmer’s. They were the people that made the uniforms. Walmer’s. I remember that because they were the ones that made the uniforms. And there was not much life after that because you’d go to work, you were either in an air raid shelter during work. You’d go home. You were still in an air raid shelter. You’d go back to work. And that’s how you lived. Well, there was not much life at all really. My dad was in the Home Guard. He was a sergeant because he’d been in the forces and was a regular serviceman. I was born in barracks at Aldershot. But that’s another.
[recording paused]
GH: And I hadn’t got much life really at fourteen, fifteen with the war. And well, I can’t tell you much. Oh, and by the way I was the first Rose Queen in Manchester at St Pauls Church. I was the first Rose Queen in forty nine years to be Rose Queen and I held that for three years. Dowager and then retiring Queen. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: We were, we couldn’t tell anybody what you do. I’d done the trousers for the RAF and we’d done the, what do they call them now? I forget. What were the [pause] the battledress. They called them something. Not windjammers. Oh, I forget what they called them. I used, I’d done that. And we used to put letters in. ‘I’ll be your girlfriend.’ ‘I know who —' You know. A bit of fun. And yeah, it was really nice. I enjoyed myself.
[recording paused]
GH: And no. No. Oh, do you mean from the lads that was billeted underneath. Oh, sometimes you’d get something like, ‘See you tonight doll.’ Or, you know, and that but no. I, we didn’t, you didn’t do like you do today in them days [laughs] My dad would have had my guts for garters. Don’t put that down. He was very strict and, seeing as he was a sergeant. Yeah. But it was, it was the life because there was no pictures or theatres because if you went the sirens would go and you would finish up in air raid shelter so you never got anywhere really and that was it.
[recording paused]
GH: Then after that when I was, I was the Rose Queen in Manchester, I was confirmed at the Manchester Cathedral for the first Rose Queen of Manchester and I stood that for three years. That was just after the main part of the war if you know what I mean. And yeah, and of course everything was coupons so where they had five or six children my mam had to go and borrow coupons to buy the stuff for me to have for my, all my rigmarole. And that was it. Then I met my boyfriend. Well, we knew one another. We were at school together. We were in the same class. He was the same age as me and he went in the Army. He was in the Royal Corps of Signals at Catterick. And we got engaged. We got married when all the rationing was on. We’d be taking coupons from different, where they had big families for my wedding outfit and that. We got married in, he was in uniform. I think he was. Or he got a suit off his brother, I think. But anyway, that’s so, that was my life. I didn’t have much as a youth if, like they have today. Nothing like that. And I was still on work at the Army. I used to do the parachutes then because that was when they had a big training camp at oh, what was the name of the place? I can’t. The names of the place. Anyway, I was still on parachute so seeing as everything was on coupons and I was getting married so I made my wedding dress out of the off bits of the parachutes. I got permission off my forelady and when the photographs were taken I was [stripped half naked] because they weren’t [laughs]
[recording paused]
GH: That’s how it went and then I, well he was in the Forces, he was billeted out in Germany. I don’t, I do now but I didn’t know then where he was and he was in Glückstadt in Germany. Then I had my girl. Yeah. But that’s more or less my life. I mean during the war you lived from day to day because you couldn’t, I mean we got bombed out. The bombs were dropping all round you. You were going to work while they were dropping. When you were in work the sirens would go you had to go in these shelters. So that was my life really when I should have been out like they are today. No. No make-up. No nothing. Plain Jane.
[recording paused]
GH: We were rationed. You were rationed with clothes if you got any because you lived in a siren suit like the RAF have today. Them zip ups what they fly in. We used to do them and finished up with one of them. But there you are.
[recording paused]
GH: Not really. But we used to, all the bits and all the dead ends we used to make up for ourselves. Yeah. We got permission but wear cut offs and that you know but we used to put notes in. In the pockets. ’Hope to meet you.’ ‘Hope you are there.’ You know. Being teenagers. But for [pause] yeah. it was a, it was an existence life really but it was an enjoyable one what you made yourself. Not like they have today. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: You worked in sections on them because they were big and I used to be on the cords that come from the top. You know, they went like that. Well, them cords had to be fastened in. Well, I’d done that part. It was very tedious. I think [pause] Yeah, but we didn’t know much about that because you were under, you know what did they call it?
[recording paused]
GH: Sort of thing, you know because they used to come in packs and we, we had girls at the end of the row. They’d pack them. Pack them and then there’d be trucks outside taking them because they were, they’d want them straight away sort of thing. But it was very hard work and your fingers were raw because the material was so [pause] I can’t tell, explain it to you. It was soft, the parachute but it was like a waterproof as well. It was. I can’t. It was, it, and we used to have to sew it and put all the rings all on. Oh, your fingers used to be raw but there you are. We got, I think they got six, oh I don’t, old money. You know. You had half crowns. Two half crowns was, four and a half crowns to a pound. That’s what we got. So I was on about three pound a week which was then a lot of money. But security. We hadn’t to tell anybody what we were doing. Where we’d be. What we were doing. How we got it. Nothing. And if a lot of them were torn or anything went wrong they used to, I don’t know who the persons were who used to come with a lorry, say, ‘Can you mend these and do —' And that’s what we done. And that was my life.
[recording paused]
GH: Yes. When you are thinking names my best friend was Una. Una Whitaker and Doris. Oh, what was her sur —
[recording paused]
GH: We was always together. We worked together and we went out together and I can’t remember the other names. ‘Course you used to have to have a permit in them days to go to the pictures and you used to have to queue up because they’d show a film for two hours and then they would come out and you could go in so I don’t really think of, but you were permit. Yeah. And if the air raids went of course you had to leave and go in the shelter. Well, you’d be in there all night but back at work next morning regardless of whether they were bombing. You still had to go to work. So, but that, that was the, really it was a, it was a hard life. Not like they’ve got today.
[recording paused]
GH: I don’t. No. My dad would have never had let me go. He was already a sergeant in the Home Guard and he’d been a regular serviceman. No way would he have let me go because I wanted to go when I was eighteen. Oh yeah. I wanted to go in the RAF. Yeah. But no. No. No. We were on permit. We couldn’t tell anybody what you’d done. How you’d done it. Where you’d done it. Nothing. You never told anything like that. No. The only thing you could say I went to church. That’s about the only thing. You didn’t because them days everything was you don’t tell anybody. Everything was rationed. If you got it. Yeah. But I don’t know. But we used to get a lot of black market off the Forces because they were issued with chocolates. They weren’t very good chocolates. Very chewy [laughs] You went to the toilet after you’d had it. Yeah. We used to get a lot off the Yanks because they were billeted above us. They used to give us chewing gum and that stuff. Yeah. But I was never allowed to go with them or anything. I had to be a good girl. My dad was very particular. And he was the type who was in the Home Guard because he’d been a regular serviceman long before. I was born in barracks. Aldershot.
[recording paused]
GH: Yeah. Well, that’s another story. My mother and father had this friend and they had a pub and it was built on the canal banking. On the bridge where the canal went under. Of course, they used to transfer the glass, all the stuff from the electric works, the gas works, the gas man all on the canals. Of course, you hadn’t to tell anybody that you see and they used to go under the bridge and under the next one to the station which was in Philips Park where, oh that’s something else. I daren’t go in to all that but yes. It was a hush hush life if you know what I mean. There was no like they have today. I had to be in say 8 o’clock. When I was older I had to be in at eight. Used to kiss him goodnight on my step while my dad was at the back of us. But that’s it. That was my life.
[recording paused]
GH: Air raid shelter and back at work. Them were your three. You were either at work, air raid shelter or [laughs] going to work.
[recording paused]
GH: That was a two up two down and I was, the park, the gas works and the electric works. That’s why we got bombed out. Didn’t know where my mum was, my dad was in the Home Guard and I was in sat in an air raid shelter. Twenty four hours a day.
[recording paused]
GH: Into a prefab. I was married. The first one out of a prefab. Yeah. That was in the paper. I don’t know where that went. Yeah. Well, we got bombed out so they gave us a prefab. Well, you know what they were like. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room, a kitchen. I got married from that. Yeah. I had nothing. Nothing. Because everything, my bottom drawer had all been, well it had gone. Yeah. So, I had to start from scratch from there. Oh God. Well, where they had, we were lucky because in where we lived there was a lot of families had four or five children where my mum only had me. So you were sort of really tight rationed then. And of course, they’d have the blue books for babies and that. They couldn’t afford to buy all that stuff so they used to sell your ten shilling for a coupons. And that’s how I got my wedding cake. Through somebody else having eight or nine children and my mother kept buying the coupons. It wasn’t the money, it was rationing. To get my, for my wedding cake.
[recording paused]
GH: Oh yeah. We had a canteen. Yeah. And ENSA used to come play because you only got a half an hour break so they’d play and in the other part they had a stage. Well, not a stage. It was the canteen, you know and they’d do us a table. Yeah. We had that. ENSA. Yeah. And we, a lot of the Yanks were billeted in Hardwick Green so they used to come because we was above them and they used to come in even then, the Yanks. And of course, they’d got all the stuff. Chocolates. Sweets. You name it they had it. Cigarettes. Bacca. And we used to swap for them to come in. They’d give us whatever, you know. I tell you it was all black market in them days. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: If they didn’t come in to the, where we were they’d probably be with management if you know what I mean. We’d be in the machines you know. It used to make your fingers raw that parachute stuff. Oh, it was horrible stuff because it was waterproofed and it was, how can I explain it? It was hard to work with. The cords you know. And then somebody else had done the rip cord, somebody else done something else but I done the stitching. The sewing of the pieces. It was all piecework. Yeah. But when they’d finished I made my wedding gown out of all the bits and of course I was stripped jack naked wasn’t I?
[recording paused]
GH: No. Not to my knowledge. We didn’t know where they went. I mean no idea. I couldn’t tell you ‘cause I know underneath where I worked there was a lot of Italian servicemen and across the way, across the Green was the American. Yeah. They used, you know in Manchester that was Hardwick Green when, you know, they used to come in to the canteen entertaining the troops. But you didn’t go home, you stayed and if the sirens went you had to go in the shelter. Then you had to make it up when you come back. Yeah. It was a hard life at fourteen to be. It really was because it wasn’t all sit about, you know. No. You always had to be one ahead all the time. Yeah. And of course, when you were I started my period. Not that often. My periods, well it weren’t things that you could just go like you can today and we used to have a machine in the factory and our head forelady used to get them to come and put packs in. We used to have to pay tuppence. That’s another story.
[recording paused]
GH: Streets all lit. Oh yeah. And everybody had electric which wasn’t a lot had electric in them days. Everything was lit up. Christmas trees. Anything. Yeah. Banners everything. Yeah. They danced in the street. I danced from where I lived through Manchester. Piccadilly. That’s where it was all. Everybody. Thousands of people. We walked and marched playing drums, banjo, everything. Yeah. Of course, my, well my family when I got married they were all musical so they were all the big entertainers. Danced all the way from where I lived in Bradford Manchester all the way to Piccadilly, Manchester. Hundreds and hundreds. Banners, fireworks, you name it. Yeah. I even had clogs on then. We had to wear clogs because you couldn’t have shoes. Couldn’t have coupons for shoes. You had clogs. Do you know what clogs are? Yeah. Mine were blue. They were my best ones [laughs] with pink ribbon. Yeah. So that was my life then.
[recording paused]
GH: I was the first Rose Queen in Manchester. Yeah. Manchester Cathedral. Yeah. And at my church, the parish church, that got bombed. Yeah. Because I, my thing was from that church, you know. They used to have the board. Your name was on that. That all went. Yeah. The cathedral got bombed. Yeah. Because I was confirmed at the Manchester Cathedral when I was first Rose Queen in Manchester. Them were days.
[recording paused]
GH: Oh, the story. But my husband then was my, well we weren’t girlfriend and boyfriend. We went to school together. We lived near one another and he, I was in the Girls’ Brigade. He was in the Boys’ but his father made him go in the NFS. Well, that, that’s another story because he was such a man that he’d never sit still and he said, ‘You don’t go from there ‘til I tell you.’ And this night he said, ‘I’m going with my mates,’ because we were always together. Families. In the air raid shelter. ‘I’m going with my mates.’ And he went and he got the worst leathering he, and he come back and he leathered him. I mean hit him with the belt. He’d joined the NFS because his other mates. Well, of course, do you know what that is. The Fire Service. Of course, he was out in all the Blitz. And his dad worked down the pits. At the pits. They still carried on work and this particular time he didn’t go to work. He waited for him. He got the big, I always remember. I weren’t married then. We were just schoolmates. He give him the biggest good hiding and he pinned him to the chair, ‘You don’t move from there ‘til I let you out.’ Yeah. This was during the war, you know. Yeah. And then as I say he joined with all the other lads and he was in the NFS and of course then he was a very clever man. Very clever. He joined the Army and he went in the Royal Corps of Signals during the war and he was billeted at the somewhere in the Pennines. Under the Pennine thing. I didn’t know where he was then and he was on the Morse Code. He was very very clever our dad. Very. Always top of class. Of course, he was on the thing and of course he was censored all the time. He hadn’t to speak and do anything tell anybody what he’d done. It was only since. We knew what he was doing. He was in the underground on the whatsit. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: Do it because you only had outside toilets them days and if you had them they were bombed [laughs] They don’t know they’re born today.
[recording paused]
GH: My mam, oh she was in Ferranti’s. She was doing the shells. All the things there what they’d done with the shells and bullets and what have you. Yeah. And the other gran, my mother in law she was on the same. Yeah. She, she was the wire. Wire work. All her fingers, the barricades and all that were red raw and they’d get gloves two or three times in the day and they were raw, her fingers with the barbed wire and the wire. Yeah. If got caught with someone else oh she had terrible fights. Yeah. This was all going on during the war.
[recording paused]
GH: I’d got, they had, we had a wardrobe with a drawer at the bottom and my dad said, ‘You can have that drawer.’ Well, I thought I was anybody getting my own drawer you know. And of course, being, going with my husband I used to put a couple of pillow cases. Different things for when we got married and of course that all got, that went because we got hit and all I could say were, ‘They took all our bottom drawer.’ It was only like that but it had all my things in and being a machinist any cut offs I used to make things. If it was only an ironing glove or something I’d make it for my bottom drawer. Tea towels and pot towels. Yeah. So, I wasn’t very happy about that when we got bombed because then I went, ‘Oh, my bottom drawer’s gone.’
[recording paused]
GH: Now, that isn’t a sixty four dollar question because the rooms were big. I’m not talking of, I’m talking of a big area. You could set a bomb off. A bomber could go up. And underneath we went in the shelter. Jewsburys and Brown had that floor and they had to give these other floors up because when you were on parachute you had a high stool and you used to have to put your hand up if you wanted to go to the toilet. Somebody behind you would come in. Never stop. And you know they were big tables and all the rip cords and you were stitching. You couldn’t stop, take you out, because you were on a conveyor and you’d go on to the next one and then you put your hand up to go to the toilet and somebody behind steps in and it were oh, they didn’t know you were born these days. Brought them in because what was that place called? Not the [unclear] Oh.
Other: What —
[recording paused]
GH: You had to do it. God. Choose? I was, I made my clothes out of pieces of parachutes, you know. When we done them you got bits off. I made it, and I was stripped jack naked because I didn’t know it was, what did they call it? On you. Yeah. You’d go. You’d go. You’d go. I, I had two friends. Eunice and Joan. They were, oh I think they were the, they were a bit older than me and I I relied on them if you know what I meant. What they didn’t have to follow. Of course, my dad didn’t like that because they were older and I was following in their footsteps and I went and bought some high heeled shoes. What he did? [makes noise] Put me in my [unclear] shoes again with the button in the middle.
[recording paused]
GH: With thirteen other people and two mothers. Your parents didn’t know. They just put you in a van and off you went. My husband. Well, we lived together. We worked together. Parents were friends. Everything. He was put on a, with an elderly couple and they had a little farm holding. Well, he was in seventh heaven wasn’t he? Here’s me in this big mansion with about thirteen in one bedroom and fourteen in another and you had to put your hand up to go and have a shower or, not shower, a bath and three had to use the same bath water. First in. God I was always last in [laughs].
[recording paused]
GH: But it was just, I can see it as fun now because you didn’t really know at like today at fourteen they’re grown up. We weren’t. It was fun but when you think about it it wasn’t. Now, it was a hard life. Because, I mean even soap, you know how you go, ‘Watch it. Turn the water off. Don’t use all the soap.’ Because you got one tablet for a family. Is that going on there?
[recording paused]
GH: Well, my dad’s brother he was a tailor. He said she’d be a, thing and he used to have me doing little bits you know because them days families worked together and it was my dad’s youngest brother and he was magical with the sewing machine. That’s how I got started. Yeah. He used to run a pair of trousers up and a coat for me in a half an hour. Yeah. Hard times them were.
[recording paused]
GH: Called them windsweeps, you know. And at work they used to say, ‘Come on. We’ll do your hair for you,’ because I was younger than them and we’d go in toilets at dinnertime. Have our dinner and then go in and I had long blonde hair and they’d done it all up. My dad, he used to come to work and wait for me, take me home and he took one look and he got psst right across my ear hole, ‘Who done that?’ Well, it were at work. They’d done it all in wind, you know sweeps and oh that was the end of my life.
[recording paused]
GH: Well, they used to get cigarettes as you know and being with the servicemen below, oh they’d throw you twenty Piccadillies. You know. Of course, they were all smoking. I had to. He made me chew it. ‘Don’t ever let me cop you smoking.’ ‘I said, ‘Well, they all do it.’ ‘You don’t do what they do.’
Other: But I think, I think you did that because you were very young weren’t you? I mean you were the youngest in a factory. I used to go. When I was younger I remember going to the factory where mum still worked and you were still the youngest then weren’t you?
GH: Yeah.
Other: So, oh, I think there were some younger ones in there. Do you remember the [unclear] —
GH: It’s a well-known factory now. You’ve probably heard of it. Sparrow Hardwick. They do all the high-class underclothes. Night clothes.
Other: Used to. I don’t think they do now.
GH: I don’t know whether they do now but they used to do. We had these turbans. You know. Yeah. On account of the machinery when we were on parachutes, because they used to hang and you’d sew and they used to go along your thing, you know. We used to have to wear, oh God yeah turbans they was called. Yeah. It was, oh and we wore you couldn’t wear shoes. You had to wear these pump things. Something similar to a slipper today. Pump. We used to call them pumps.
[recording paused]
GH: They were in the middle of something and then the management the man he’d switch the mains off because you had to turn the electrics off. Then we went to the thing and bombs would be dropping and we were still going down in to the shelter.
[recording paused]
GH: This was my mother in law now, or then, she adopted Walter, this man and he went in the RAF. Of course, he was [pause] what was he? A warrant officer. He used to come home on leave and all this and that but he was actually a Canadian.
GH: And it was through my brother in law he knew him and that. Anyroad, that was another story and he was a warrant officer in the RAF. I’m trying to think. DFC. Now, I should have had that but my mother in law got robbed and they took it and we’ve never been able to find that. We had the police. We had everybody. Because the names, you know what they are don’t you? And the names are on when he was warranted and all that but we never ever got it, did we? His DFC. That’s a shame because I could have passed that on to my children. But there you are. We never know. Somebody’s got it somewhere. But how do you find them? I mean his rank. Everything’s on it. I mean my mother in law adopted him. Yeah. His parents went out to Canada, I think. They got killed or something. He had, but I don’t know, I don’t know all the story to that. But anyroad where that DFC went I don’t know.
[recording paused]
GH: I did too.
DB: What was he? What did he fly?
GH: The Hurricane. No. Bomber.
DB: The Lancaster.
GH: The Lancaster. Yeah, oh I can’t. Yeah. Lancaster. Yeah. Yeah, but he was on Bomber Command and all wasn’t he?
Other: Yeah. He was.
GH: Yeah. I’ve got nothing because we got bombed out, you see. I lost a lost a lot of stuff when we got bombed out. Because you know we used to work with siren suits. Yeah. And they were a horrible stuff. They were imitation nylon and it was, oh God. But you had to wear them. And the hood up. When you went out you had to have the hood up like a lot of monks. It’s not funny.
[recording paused]
GH: Because if my dad had seen me putting lipstick on he’d have painted my face and a kick up the bot. So we used to hide it in us pocket and then go out. Go outside. Yeah. Them were the days.
Other: [unclear] was. Yeah.
[recording paused]
GH: Yeah. Well, I don’t know where they were stationed. Did you?
Other: It was an airbase.
GH: I mean they could go from Ringway and get bombed and they would be somewhere else. You’d never know where they were, do you? When he come home, yeah wasn’t often then in them days like they do today. Yeah. When he come home he was all full of the joys of spring because my mother in law adopted him and I wasn’t married then to my, but I knew him because we all lived next door but one to one another. Yeah, he was oh he was a lovely lad. He really was. Yeah. He was adopted. Yeah. Yeah. He got, he joined the, Eric went in the Army, Bill went in the Army and he went in the RAF as a, and he was a warrant officer. I don’t know what that covers. I’ve never found out. Do you?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gladys Hatt
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Denise Boneham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:44:02 Audio Recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHattG180807
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Gladys Hatt was working in Manchester as a teenager when it was bombed. She recalls her life was a sequence of work, shelter, work and there was no teenage life for her. She worked as a machinist sewing uniforms which was a big change from her original fine needlework she had done before. She then went to work sewing parachutes which hurt her hands. She was the first Rose Queen in the city for forty nine years. As she was preparing for her wedding she collected her items for her bottom drawer but her house was bombed and she lost everything.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Manchester
England--Lancashire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
bombing
civil defence
entertainment
evacuation
home front
Home Guard
shelter