Chapter Three - Adventures of War
THERE CAN be little doubt that Dunkirk was a miracle. Had our army surrendered at that time, we would probably have lost the war. As it was, indecision within the German High Command, a flat, calm sea, the bravery of our navy, and the 'Little Ships' saved the day. Troops returned on overcrowded trains, and nearby hospitals were full to overflowing with wounded servicemen. The situation seemed irretrievable, and the disaster complete, but I can never remember a spirit of defeatism. Churchill's defiance, the cheeriness of our men, and the fact that we had saved so many gave us hope, and as time progressed our confidence returned.
After the fall of France, we all knew that the full might of the German War machine would soon be turned on us. The pattern of events elsewhere told us that the first attacks would be by air, and our geographical position indicated that we would be in the 'Front line'. We braced ourselves and waited for the onslaught to come.
Initially, nothing much appeared to be happening, apart from attacks on shipping and coastal defences. However, the government's main concern centred on a probability that the Germans would make sea and airborne landings in the South East. This gave rise to feverish activity, including the building of defences in and around Ferryden and the billeting of soldiers in the village. The ringing of Church bells was forbidden throughout the country except as a warning of invasion. Local Defence Volunteers (L.D.V.) were called for, and George was one of the first to sign up. To begin with, the L.D.V. had little more than armbands for identification and broom handles to train with, but as the weeks went by they were issued with rifles. They became a fighting force, and were renamed 'The Home Guard'.
The village had good defensive potential and occupied a strategic position on the river, possessing the only bridge between a major seaport and the nearby 'garrison' town. The bridge was doubly important because of the strength of its construction and its position. The defences took the form of a series of blockhouses constructed around the perimeter. Road blocks and anti-tank obstacles were erected on each of the roads into Ferryden. There were slit trenches on the outskirts and numerous openings in garden walls for rifles and machine guns.
There was even a 'snipers nest' in a huge elm tree on a hill overlooking the bridge. This had a commanding view of the river and two of the three major village roads. In addition, there were fortified positions for field or anti-tank guns. The blockhouses were constructed in fields and gardens, on the river bank, and even in the churchyard. Some were disguised in rather ingenious ways. The churchyard blockhouse was constructed from ragstone and made to look like a functional outbuilding. The river bank blockhouse was disguised as a boathouse.
Approximately one mile outside the village, an emergency road with a girder bridge had been built, presumably to maintain traffic if the main bridge was destroyed. It was clear to us that Ferryden would be heavily defended, and at one stage there was a small naval gun, mounted and ready for action, in the high street.
All this activity made 'us lads' think it was time to put ourselves on a 'proper' footing, and we decided to form a 'war committee'. The main idea was to exploit the situation, make sure we had as much fun as possible, and do something for the war effort when suitable opportunities arose. There were no hard and fast rules, but we decided that no girls would be allowed. There would be no 'sneaks', and we would all nave to give a practical demonstration of our courage and 'fearlessness'. The original committee members were: Eric Daley, Dennis Hughes, Fred Walton, Teddy Carpenter, Billy Hodger, and myself. Charlie Daws was co-opted a little later on because he was always good for a 'dare', and never afraid of getting into scrapes.
The test of fearlessness was the execution of a dare, as thought up by other members of the committee, and courage was judged on each individual's willingness to take cover for five minutes or so behind a 'stockade' while the rest pelted it with stones. The stockade was made by digging a shallow trench and shielding it with corrugated iron. Communication in case of emergency was by 'field telephone'. This took the form of two cocoa tins connected with a wire under tension, the cocoa tin being both earpiece and mouthpiece.
You could 'chicken out' by waving a white" flag, but none of us did. We never seemed to appreciate the dangers of such actions, and to the best of my recollection, I was the only one to get hurt. This happened when I moved away from the 'stockade' without communicating my intentions, just before the 'baptism of fire' was due to finish. Fortunately, the injury was slight and as I did not complain, I passed. This was followed by a mishap on my 'dare'. The challenge was to jump off a cliff some twelve to fourteen feet high into a pile of sand at the bottom. I landed alright, but completed my task minus two teeth.
Being one of the younger members of our war committee, I was always keen to prove myself, and on one occasion agreed to try and ride 'Cobbler', one of the dairyman's ponies. The idea was to widen his horizons, so that he could somehow do his bit for the war effort - maybe a charger for the Captain of the Home Guard, or the more humble duty of a steed for the messenger boy.
Cobbler was a fairly docile little horse, who had served his master well and was enjoying semi-retirement. He was kept in a dry stable, always given plenty to eat and drink, and had a warm bed of straw to lie on at night. During the daytime, he spent many pleasant hours grazing in a nearby orchard watching the world go by. The only work he had to do was the evening milk run, which he seemed to enjoy. As we were facing a national crisis, where volunteers of all ages were contributing, we felt sure he would be more than willing to do his bit.
Our first task was to make sure that Cobbler would be willing to have somebody on his back, and I was nominated to make the first attempt (under Eric Daley's supervision). I don't know whether Cobbler objected to the whole idea, or whether he thought that being a charger for the Captain of the Home Guard was just not his style, but he was obviously not prepared to cooperate. From the moment I sat on his back, he started bucking. It was like a scene from a Wild West rodeo.
The little horse cavorted round the orchard, whinnying, and making himself thoroughly objectionable. Not satisfied with trying to project me into space or decapitate me on the branches of the nearest tree, he made one last attempt to unseat me by charging towards a nearby hedge at full tilt, and stopping suddenly just a few feet short. This was successful, and catapulted me over the hedge into a service road beyond. Not content with this, he poked his head over the hedge, showed his teeth in a gesture of defiance, and let out a loud 'N-E-I-G-H!'.
Fortunately I was not hurt but, needless to say, there were no more attempts to tame this ungrateful beast. As far as we were concerned, he could 'stew in his own juice' and we made it plain that if the Germans came, and he was up before a firing squad, none of us would make any attempt to plead for his life. The irony was that, a few years later, Cobbler became the 'star of the show' at the local church fete, giving pony rides (as meek as a lamb) to the children for a 'Tanner' each. I swear he grinned defiance at me as I stood nearby and watched!
Although the Government's emergency powers placed many restrictions on the civilian population, there can be little doubt that we had the time of our lives. Most of the younger men had been called up, or drafted into war work. The women were busy taking over some of the men's jobs, or doing voluntary work. Classes at school had to be enlarged because of the shortage of teachers. The police were overstretched, and we were on half days. In view of this, we had a lot of time on our hands, enabling us to get into scrapes that would have been unthinkable in peace time.
One instance I can recall was an occasion when our war committee decided to do something about the food shortage. By sheer chance, we had come across a bag of gunpowder in an old shed which we thought might come in handy. This had been used for blasting in a sand quarry many years before, and had obviously been forgotten. The quarry was a familiar haunt of ours, and infested with rabbits. Rabbits were a favourite on most menus, and were regarded as pests by the local farmers. We therefore concluded that a bunny's 'scalp' would help the war effort, provide our parents with a welcome addition to the pot, and save a few crops at the same time. We agreed that it might be possible to use the gunpowder to do this and thought up a unique plan.
We knew that most bunnies lived in burrows with two entrances and, after some deliberation, decided to put an explosive charge in one, set it off, and catch the unfortunate rabbit as it cannoned out of the other. Having selected what we believed to be an inhabited burrow, we drew lots on who should place the charge and ignite it. The task fell to Charlie Daws, who was a new recruit to our war committee and anxious to prove himself. He was given full instructions on how to proceed, whilst the rest of us stood at a distance from the exit hole with a large outstretched sack to receive 'the catch'. Muffet, the dog, stood a little further back in case the rabbit overshot. We felt that she would provide a good back stop as she had an excellent reputation as a 'ratter', and would certainly not be deterred by a strange airborne rodent with long ears.
Charlie had been told to place about one pound of gunpowder in the centre of a piece of newspaper, push it down the hole, light the extreme edge, away from the powder, and retire immediately. In his anxiety to do a good job, he struck a match, and whilst it was still flaring, plunged It straight into the gunpowder. Nothing happened at our end, but there was a tremendous WHOOHPH! at the other, with smoke and flames completely enveloping poor old Charlie. When it cleared, we saw a rather pathetic figure with a black face, hair completely singed off at the front, a smoking pullover, and no eyebrows.
Fortunately his arm had been protected by long sleeves and a glove, otherwise he might have been seriously injured. We had to clean him up before he went home to his mum, otherwise she would have slaughtered him and probably skinned us alive for good measure. Needless to say, we decided that this method of catching rabbits was a bit too ambitious.
The discovery of a store of gunpowder was, to our war committee, a real 'coup' which we regarded as a 'state secret'. There would have been dire consequences for anyone who gave even a hint of its existence. We did not want to offer such valued treasure to the Home Guard, but concluded that it would have great potential for our own endeavours, including the manufacture of fireworks. Much to our disgust, fireworks were no longer available because of the war and we felt that the possession of gunpowder gave us a new dimension.
We had a secret meeting to discuss this, and concluded that we had the ability to manufacture our own. By sheer coincidence, I came across a journal that very day which contained an article describing how this could be done, and we decided to 'have a go.' Using cardboard, adhesive tapes, glue, and touch paper (made by soaking blue wrapping paper in saltpetre), we eventually made a very attractive looking conical container. This we filled with a mixture of gunpowder, iron filings, and powdered copper sulphate. The additives were intended to give colour, and a 'cascade' effect.
The trial was carried out in the lavatory at the top of our garden, chosen because of its relative seclusion and the absence of all but a modest amount of daylight. The firework was mounted on the lavatory seat, and positioned with great ceremony. Charlie Daws lit the blue touch paper, and we stood back to admire the spectacle. At first, there was a satisfying 'hiss' accompanied by a shimmering cascade of silver and blue sparks. As the firework burned, the 'hiss' got louder. The increasing internal pressure forced the cascade higher and higher. This continued for a second or so when, suddenly, the whole thing split apart. It shot into the air like an aeroplane, whizzed around inside the lavatory, exploded in an incandescent ball of smoke and flame, and landed in a smouldering heap on the floor.
We emerged from the lavatory coughing and spluttering, hoping that nobody would notice the pall of smoke and the unmistakeable smell of gunpowder. Fortunately my-parents were out but when we went back to clear up, we found that a hole about the size of a saucer had been burnt through the middle of the seat, with an even larger area which had been burnt to a cinder. The whole thing was an indescribable mess and, much as we tried, it was impossible to repair the damage or disguise the mass of burnt woodwork.
Because of the permanent shroud of darkness in the lavatory, the hole in the seat and charred woodwork were not noticed for some time. In fact, it was bath night that brought the problem into the open. Both Mother and George could not understand why their backsides had suddenly turned black. Mother was also furious that her, underwear had suffered and that our pants, vests and shirts were all soiled. Father eventually got the blame, being accused of taking candles up to the lavatory at night to read the paper, and leaving them to burn out. This was one instance where 'discretion was the better part of valour' and I said nothing.
At some time in their lives, most boys have been guilty of annoying the police, and we were no exception. Before the war, one of the most common tricks was to light a firework near to a policeman and 'scarper' before it went off. To us it was a bit of fun, and although we knew there would be trouble if we were caught, we also knew that P.C. Hatfield accepted such irritations as boyish pranks, worthy of a 'clip round the ear', but probably no more than that.
War put an end to our supply of fireworks, but we soon discovered that percussion effects could be created using caps or match heads, and nuts and bolts. Armed with this knowledge, we decided that it was time to have a bit more fun at P.C. Hatfield's expense.
The device we used contained caps or match heads sandwiched between two bolts held together by a nut. Having put the 'explosive' in place, we carefully screwed the bolts up until resistance was felt. This assembly was fitted with a flight and thrown high into the air, where it descended vertically and exploded on impact.
An ideal place for annoying P.C. Hatfield was at the foot of the bridge where he was often on point duty. His place of duty was in front of a yard, overlooked by a bank which carried a service road flanked by a high wall. The wall was some thirty to forty feet above the officer, providing a convenient launch point and easy escape routes.
Charlie Daws was given the job of tossing our first home made 'bomb' into the yard, which he did with great gusto. Whether in our enthusiasms we had used a higher charge than normal, or the canyon effect of the buildings had made the explosion sound that much greater, I will never know, but the bang was louder than any firework. It startled the cats and made the dogs bark, but even worse, the bolts had blown apart. One landed with a clatter on a tin roof and the other went straight through a bedroom window.
P.C. Hatfield looked round and checked the road in both directions but, to our disgust, stayed at his post and carried on as though nothing had happened. We concluded that he must be either deaf, or hardened to the unexplained noises which were a feature of those days. Either way, the whole exercise seemed a complete waste of time from our point of view and we lost interest in annoying him.
Although we did many things by decision of the war committee, there were lots of solo efforts, and my particular passion was fishing. I spent many happy hours on the banks of a nearby ballast pit, and succeeded in catching quite a lot of fish, which cats in the neighbourhood thoroughly' enjoyed. In my view, this was undoubtedly a contribution to the war effort, as it provided our pets with a square meal when food was becoming less plentiful.
The problem was that wartime restrictions made a lot of the fishing gear very expensive and in short supply. We therefore had to use some ingenuity and make our own. Rods were made from two willow sticks joined together with a large nail, sharpened at both ends and driven into the pithy centre of each one. For extra strength, the join was reinforced with a suitable strengthening strip and bound with twine for several inches on either side.
The line, also made of twine, was attached to the top of the rod. There was no provision for a reel, as we had developed a fishing technique that was very effective without one. Floats were made from corks with chicken feathers stuck into them, and weights consisted of little bits of lead cut or scraped from piping and 'pinched' onto the line. Hooks were made from bent pins, and strong cotton thread was a substitute for cat gut. The fact that this makeshift arrangement enabled us to catch thirty five fish in just one day was a measure of its success.
The technique was to bait the hook, wait for the float to bob, 'strike', and pull the fish out all in one movement, keeping the line taut. The more conventional way of 'playing a fish' would not work, because the hooks had no barb, and any slackening of the line allowed it to slip off.
Most of the fish were little more than 'sprats', being about four to five inches long, but one day I caught (by our standards) a 'whopper'. The first indication of something unusual was the float disappearing rapidly out of sight. When I struck, the line tightened and I could feel the power of the fish as it struggled to get free.
The rod beat almost double before it came to the surface, and when it did, the sudden release of tension catapulted it into the air with such force that it left the hook, cannoned into the bank, and disappeared into a rabbit hole. For a moment I thought I had lost it, but it unexpectedly case flapping out of the hole and, by sheer chance, 'jumped' straight into a bag I had placed nearby. It measured about eight inches in length, and weighed roughly three quarters of a pound.
My catch was carried home in triumph with thoughts of a splendid fish supper. Mother disillusioned me however, indicating that, as a fresh water fish, it would taste very 'muddy'. She said the only way to make it palatable was to soak it in vinegar for at least twenty four hours before cooking. My face fell, but she persuaded me that it would be better to cook it for 'Herbert', a new little cat we had acquired. He was delighted with this unexpected bonus, but it was too big for him to consume on his own and the 'leftovers' provided a real treat for a few of his feline friends.
Inventive genius was a necessity in those days, and we took great delight in getting round the restrictions and shortages. A very useful member of our war committee was Dennis Hughes. He had access to his father's workshop, where there were all sorts of woodworking tools, including a manually powered lathe.
Like most boys, we were secret smokers. The cheapest and most unobtrusive way of doing this was to collect 'butt ends' and smoke them in a pipe. The problem was that we only had one clay pipe between us, and that became a non-starter when the committee and our friends got together for a 'burn up'. Dennis suggested that the way out of the problem would be to make everyone a pipe of his own. This, he said, could be achieved by using dead elderberry wood to make a stem, and cherry wood to make a bowl.
The stem would be made by sectioning the elder into six or seven inch lengths and removing the pith. The bowl would be made by sectioning a reasonably thick cherry wood branch into two inch lengths on the lathe, drilling out the centre to take the tobacco, and drilling another hole in the side to take the stem. We made a prototype, and it worked beautifully, setting the scene for a production run. Within a day or two, we had some ten to a dozen pipes.
Having solved this problem, we were now faced with the difficulty of getting enough butt ends to go round. It was Charlie Daws who came up with a solution. We could mix the scarce tobacco with dead leaves which had been dried and crushed. The mixture, he suggested, would burn OK, and still give a satisfying tobacco taste. We tried it, and it worked, but the taste was revolting.
For our first 'mass burn up', we decided to climb up into a huge elm tree in a nearby meadow, which was affectionately known as the 'Arm Chair'. This tree had a relatively short trunk, with a large basin-shaped section at the top from which radiated a number of hefty boughs. In all, there were about a dozen of us smoking away when, somewhat revolted by the taste, I decided to blow instead of drawing the smoke into my mouth. The result was that the pipe heated up quickly, and after a few minutes caught fire.
The rest of the boys thought this was a great idea and followed suit, generating clouds of smoke. This spiralled upwards, diffusing into the branches and foliage. At first, all that could be seen from a distance was a thin wisp of smoke coming from the topmost point of the tree, but within minutes the elm was surrounded by a blueish haze that started to drift across the meadow. Unbeknown to us, P. C. Hatfield was passing by on his bicycle and, seeing what must have looked something like Moses's 'burning bush', decided to investigate.
We were just beginning to thoroughly enjoy ourselves when somebody shouted 'here come the cops'. I shall never know how we managed to get out of the tree so quickly, and scatter so effectively. Within a matter of seconds the tree was empty and we had disappeared, leaving a perplexed and perspiring policeman standing there with his bicycle, scratching his head, and not knowing which way to turn.
Another example of Dennis Hughes's genius was the 'smoke bomb'. This was made from cine film and newspaper, and by a stroke of good fortune he had acquired several spools of reject film. He demonstrated its effectiveness by rolling strips of the film in newspaper to make a tube, and then setting fire to it. As soon as the film inside the tube ignited, he extinguished all visible flames by stamping his foot on it.
The film, which was made of nitrocellulose, continued to smoulder, generating dense clouds of white smoke. Our first experiments were in his father's workshop, where we set one off. The neighbours thought the shed had caught fire, and rushed out with buckets of water to extinguish it. Needless to say we had departed long before they got there. The smoke bomb was very useful, helping us to escape from a number of tight corners, but much to our disgust, when we offered it to the Home Guard, they were not interested.
The old shed where we had found the bag of gunpowder turned out to be a real 'Aladdin's Cave'. One afternoon Fred Walton came struggling out of it with an earthenware jar containing several gallons of liquid, which we took to the stables. On investigation, we discovered that the 'liquid' was home-made parsnip wine, at least thirteen years old. Having tasted it and found it to be very palatable, we decided that it must be good to drink, and started to share it out.
Not having much experience of home-made alcoholic beverages, we were totally unaware of its potency, and started to consume it in tumblerfuls. I am not quite sure when the wine started to have an effect, but I can remember staggering down the road with one of my pals who was in a similar state, both of us singing at the top of our voices. Somehow I managed to get to bed without my parents finding out what had happened, but some of the others were not so fortunate.
Fred Walton fell into the bran bin and spent most of the night banging on the lid with a stick and telling everyone what fine fellows they were. Teddy Carpenter fell asleep on the hay and did not wake until the early hours of the morning, and Billy Hodger spent several hours putting his arms round one of the horses' necks, swearing his undying love.
Our parents never did find out, but they had a shrewd suspicion we had been up to something involving 'the demon drink'. Several of the lads were quite ill on returning home, but to my knowledge, nobody let the cat out of the bag. However, after that incident, we were careful to avoid consuming strange drinks.
