Category: WW2

The LDV, Railings And Carrots. This is the first in a series about The LDV, Home Guard and London 1940

‘Stratagems’ Chambers Dictionary, offers terms to apply to Government chicanery, most of them apply at times of crisis, and never more than in 1940, when the LDV, the Local Defence Volunteers, was inaugurated. I believe it was a moral booster, a “We are all in this together” type shot in the arm, a distraction from the parlous state we were in at the time of the Evacuation of Dunkirk. I am also certain it also applied to the Home Guard. They were cynical acts of people who knew the futility of it all.

Fifteen years old, evacuated to a little village nestling in the South Downs, just behind Brighton, I joined the LDV as a dispatch rider, with a ten year old second-hand bike. I hadn’t a clue where I was to ride to, and we never had a message anyway. It is absolutely true to say, we were apprehensive, and convinced we would be looking down the barrel of a Luger, any day soon. All the silly stories of one rifle among ten, pitchforks, and ten-gauge shotguns are absolutely true to the letter. Night after night, some of us were always up on the Downs in the dark, with our greenish grey arm band which was totally invisible, standing looking South, discussing anything but the hordes of paratroopers we were looking for. The most surprising thing about this pantomime was that we couldn’t see just how ridiculous it all was, and I’m convinced this was because we were all itching to get into the fray, schoolboys, shopkeepers and pensioners, and this was our only route.

The next insanity was ripping up iron railings to melt down for munitions. Throughout the country railing of all shapes and sizes were commandeered in the most ruthless manner, leaving amputated stubs sticking out of concrete and hand carved stone alike. Some of the most beautiful and precious wrought iron was sacrificed in this ill-gotten theft. It was theft because at the end of the war it was still lying in yards and some was reclaimed and re-erected. But they didn’t stop there; a plea to patriotism went out for copper and brass. My evacuation hostess was a fanatical patriot who asked me to smash up priceless brass ornaments and put a pick through the most beautiful brass pans and trays, to make them un-saleable. Some could not be damaged seriously. I unsuccessfully pleaded with her saying it would all be diverted, and at the end of the war I was proven right, it began to reappear, up and down the country in small amounts at a time..

A few years later in the War it was put about that night fighter pilots were fed carrots to improve their sight – carrotin can marginally affect eyesight – I believe the idea was to boost carrots as a food at a time when vegetables were in short supply. I think it worked, people were actually talking about it seriously. They are still at it – governments – the old conjuring trick – provide a diversion and you can get away with anything – one must think most critically.

Lewes – A Place Apart In retrospect there was something almost magical about the months I spent there. I was not aware of this at the time, I was often unhappy, but who is sublimely happy all the time, contrast gives colour. Lewes, the Town, was the hub, but it was really the district which was wonderfully anachronistic, such a revelation to the Town boy, contrasting to all he knew yet a living encapsulation of all he had read in novels, heard on the radio and imagined – it was pure Noel Coward and Ivor Novello

Incorporated into Lewes Grammar we resumed our education,. I was billeted in a village nestling against the South Downs in the Ouse Valley with a married couple, the Baileys. At first I didn’t like the idea of cycling 3 miles each way, every day, but later I realised I had been presented with a unique experience, one I would never have had if I had been billeted in the town. The village, just a collection of houses bordering the main street, itself a cul-de-sac, culminated in a path leading up into the Downs. There was a church hall for whist drives, the annual Christmas festival, the local drama group, in time the LDV; in fact, everything a village hall is expected to sustain. Opposite was the post office cum village shop, the hub of village gossip. In warm weather the village street acted as a funnel. Sitting high up on the hill studying, I found I could hear a conversation taking place below. Understanding what was said, I looked round and the only people in sight were women, half a mile below me, talking at the gate of the post office – they were gossiping. When they stopped and left, the sound stopped.

The Charm Of The Ouse Valley. On a map of the area between Lewes and Newhaven, you will see the Ouse valley with such lovely village names as North Ease, South Ease, Rodmel, and on the other side, Glynde with Glyndebourne. In 1939-40 it was an area given over to agriculture. There was a poet called Pound, who lived in Rodmel. Not Ezra Pound, but a local focus of interest. He had named all his children with Christian names beginning with ‘P’, so everyone opened the mail. This was typical of eccentricities I found in the Ouse Valley. There were marked social differences in the Valley. There were the farm labourers, maids and their families. Then there were the traders, the post mistress and shopkeepers in Lewes and also some of the farmers. Then there were the professional classes, the Baileys fell into this category, maybe the vicar, next came the gentlemen farmers, the inherited wealth and finally the dignitaries such as the MP and the squire. By association I was part of the professional group, but though I was never truly comfortable, I learned much through socialising. The general air of the whole area was ‘County’ with a capital ‘C’. In our own village was the local Squire. Whether he really was, I never knew, but with the name of Sir Amhurst Selby-Bigg he had every right to be. He and his wife would give out prizes at do’s and in the summer he generously threw his personal tennis court open to the village and we had tournaments there with breaks for Robinson’s Barley Water. There were wealthy farmers who were sociable and as we went to school with their children we had an ‘in’ to the higher echelons of farm life. We went to market with them, helped with the harvest and generally mucked in, but these were not the farmers we had helped prior to coming to Lewes, these were ‘gentlemen farmers’.

The winter of ’39-’40 was particularly severe, to the extent that when cycling to school the only way of turning the corner at the bottom of a particularly steep hill was to ride straight into a six foot high drift, extract oneself and then head off on the next leg. Later there was a sudden thaw followed by an equally quick freeze which left the roads coated in about an inch of ice. We evacuees made slides and the locals had ice skates and were to be seen pirouetting and twirling past us. We slowly integrated.

Even though the war had gone badly and there was the threat of invasionb hanging over us, one cannot live in a state of frightened paralysis. Slowly our lives became normal as we entered into a routine and with the routine, helped by the friendship of the people of the Valley, came a wonderful period of my life which was totally foreign to what I had known before. While I was rubbing shoulders with the English class system at its most rigid, what I found there probably knocked any snobbery I might have had out of my outlook for all time. I think I must have seen it for what it was and eschewed it because instinctively, from a social aspect, I became classless.

Encyclopaedia, make no mention of Evacuation, which affected 5 million children, in June ’39, disrupted families whose children were dragged off into the depths of the country, but also the poor devils who had to look after them. Evacuation is a sort of two way mirror, showing each group how the other lived. Not all of us were small with labels tied to our lapels, some were in their last year at school and had to go because the school went. In Sussex I lived in four different homes, three far outside my own experience. We were taken to a Sussex village, assembled in the church hall where we camped out until fixed up with digs. My first home was in a children’s orphanage where I was very happy helping the older children look after the little ones, but that was only temporary until an ordinary billet was found. Next I joined the Assistant Headmaster and his wife at the home of a senior member of the Stock Exchange and life really did change. The house, was mock-Tudor, standing in vast grounds, with a ‘shoot’ attached. The owner, Tate, had the sort of life-style common today, but one I had only seen at the cinema. It was a two car family, with a gardener-chauffeur and live-in maid. We dined off polished mahogany with lace mats, silver of the highest quality, each with his own napkin-ring and linen napkin. Brought up to protect the wood of our dining table under all circumstances, passing glasses, salt cellars and dishes, one to another on this highly polished surface, was like scraping an open wound but I soon acclimatised and decided I liked the life. I was treated as one of the family, but I had to earn my place by helping the maid, cleaning the car when the chauffeur was off and acting as a sort of gilly when Tate went shooting in his private shoot, which was a fair size. We hunted pheasant, partridge, rabbit and hare I was beater, gun carrier, and clack when Tate managed to hit anything, which was not too often. In search for rabbit, Tate saw one; I saw a flutter of grasses and suggested he shoot between the rabbit and the grasses, which he did and killed three rabbits. At length he explained to me how he did it – several times, never once mentioning my part in the operation. He told the tale to everyone in the house, including the maid, finally telephoning all his friends with news of the carnage. Generally, however, he was a poor shot and maimed more than he killed, with the result I mostly had to dispatch the poor things.

We were evacuated prior to when Chamberlain was doing his diplomacy and the rest of us waited with baited breath. I remember the day war was declared, it was a beautiful sunny day in August, we listened to the fateful words spoken on the radio and then, those like the Assistant Head and Tate, who had seen it all before, looked meaningfully at one another and no one spoke for a while. On an errand for Mrs Tate, emptying the cigarette machines in the district of cigarettes – she expected the cost of tobacco to rocket – I heard air raid sirens for the first time, it was eerie, but an air raid in that beautiful countryside on that beautiful day was really unimaginable. I was in matriculation year – working in Tate’s house under the eye of the Assistant Headmaster’s wife, it was like a correspondence course because there was nowhere the senior boys could be accommodated. We met occasionally but most of our work was done individually, with the consequent drop in standards. Those days would have formed the summer break under normal circumstances, so when it was time to resume schooling in the proper environment we were all shunted off once again to join the locals in a grammar school. I finished up in Lewes, a lovely part of East Sussex, for a period of my life I’m glad I did not miss.

The Incident Of The Adder I was almost totally a town boy. I loved the country and found pleasure in walking through the shoot and across the fields. This day I came across a short grass snake, it was light fawn and dark brown with markings in a ‘V’ pattern on its head. Twelve to fifteen inches long it looked positively beautiful and I could not resist it. Apart from those I had seen in Africa I had only seen snakes in glass cases at the Zoo. I picked it up and stroked its head and back and after a while put it in my jacket pocket. In successfully frightening the maid with it, I decided to put the grass snake up my sleeve, and then reaching for the salt; the snake would glide down my arm, slither across the shiny mahogany – Surprise!! The grass snake had other ideas. Firstly it mysteriously transformed itself into an adder, next, bored with games, it bit me in the thumb and finally it poisoned me. It must have been a Sunday because Tate was at home. When he saw the snake he realised it was an adder and promptly killed it. Next he telephoned the local doctor, some 5 miles away and then drove me to him at speed. By the time I arrived a lump had formed in the lymph gland under my arm and even though he gave me an antidote I could not use my arm for days after that – serve me right for my ignorance.

Under The Stairs As far as I was concerned I could never be bothered to get out of bed unless the bombing was so heavy my mother insisted and then she and I sat in the cupboard under the stairs. It was there that I witnessed real fear, almost to the point of terror for the first time. My mother had always been a cool customer in all circumstance. Whatever her emotions, and I have seen her white round the mouth with sheer anger; she was always dignified, usually kept her own council and apart for some slight indication as I have just described, one would not know her real reactions. On many nights when she insisted I join her, in what she referred to as the ‘cubby-hole’, we would hear bombs falling, windows rattling, but on only one occasion when I was at home did a stick of bombs actually threaten us. There were about six in a row. We could hear each explode with barely a second between them, which seemed an age, and there was a steady increase in the vibration of the explosion and in the noise each made. Inexorably they came, as steady as time itself and we were both sure one would hit us. It was then I saw my mother, she was white knuckled, rigid with such a fixed look on her face that I was more worried for her than where the next bomb might fall. It landed beyond us and the house shook. In the light of the torch, with the drama increased by the oblique shadows and sharp contrasts cast by it, I saw her slowly relax, but it was some time before she fully recovered.

The Balham Tube Station Disaster A considerable number of people in London generally, and our district in particular, took shelter from the blitz in the underground railway stations, sleeping on the platforms. There were other shelters, there were brick structures with heavy reinforced concrete roofs, a very common sight on the street corners of Belfast when I arrived there in ’42. Some people used Anderson shelters, made from corrugated steel and provided by the ARP for the householder to erect. You had to dig a hole about half the depth of the shelter height, then the body of the shelter which was like a tiny Nissan hut was put in place and covered with sandbags. The idea was fine if the base of the shelter could be drained and water prevented from getting in, otherwise within months of being erected they were useless. My grandmother was issued with a Morrison shelter some way through the war. This was nothing other than a dining table made from steel and capable of supporting beams and similar debris, should the house be damage. The idea was that the family slept under this thing every night.

It is only as the years have gone by that the true price, of what the Continentals and Russians paid in the Hitler War, has come to light. It dwarfs what I write here, but at the time we, on the receiving end, thought ourselves hard done by. On the night in question my friends and I had been off somewhere and were on our way home when we heard the air raid siren wail. Almost as soon as the guns opened up we heard the most awful bang and reckoned rightly that a bomb had fallen in Balham High Road, but we didn’t hang around to find out what had happened, for once discretion took over. It was therefore the following day before we heard of the disaster and the full extent of what had happened. The story we heard was that the bomb had fallen in the centre of the High Road over the platform area of the tube station, but that was all the damage that was done at that moment. Unhappily though, almost immediately, one of the last buses of the evening ran straight into the hole left by the bomb and burst a huge water main, this in turn poured gallons of water into the tunnel.

It was a disaster contrived by contributing circumstances, each of which, while serious would not have been catastrophic. The authorities knowing about the water main, had taken it into account in the planning. They had assumed that if the pipe received a direct hit the water would flood the street and then descend the escalator, so to avoid that eventuality they had installed water-tight doors which were shut at night. Coupled with this the station was at the lowest part of the line so that any water entering the station could not flow out, and last but not least, it had been designed as a station in peace-time, it was therefore merely an emergency measure, not a purposely designed air raid shelter in the accepted sense. I don’t remember the death toll, it is a matter of record, but most people knew someone who had experienced that awful night or perhaps perished.

The Guns I came home from evacuation in time for the blitz on London, so all the hassle of evacuation was totally negated, except it had been an incredible experience and I had learned more about life in one year than I would have in three or four, at home.

At the time, among the younger people there was a level of excitement, which I suppose, was the same hysteria felt by our fathers, twenty-six years earlier. We were dying to get into the war, to join the others we had known at school who were two years older and already in uniform. Our only recourse was second best, if we couldn’t get into it, we would watch from the sidelines and perhaps also try to join the Home Guard. If my mother had known what we were up to in those early days of the blitz she would probably have tried to chain me to a water pipe, but she thought I was playing Ludo or some other parlour game in a friend’s house, as did all our parents. Fortunately, then, the telephone was the exception rather than the rule. Our little subterfuges, lies if you like, were easy to make convincing.

Around where we lived there were Ack Ack gun emplacements, there was one handy to Clapham South Station, on Clapham Common, and this was often our substitute for a night at the cinema. We had a rough idea when the raids would start and would go up to the Common and hang about outside the fence within which were several guns, manned by soldiers. We would hear guns and see the searchlight beams in the distance. Next there would be a sudden hiss and crack as our searchlight would arc-up and a huge, bright beam would shoot up into the air and move with a stiff but steady motion, like a bright stick of light, a gigantic pointer sweeping the sky, then the guns would open up and the immense noise of the first salvo was both startling and exciting.

What goes up, of course, must come down. The shells were timed to explode and designed to shatter into red-hot shards of jagged steel about four inches long and about three-quarters of an inch square in cross section, twisted and bent – lethal. These would fall to earth during an Ack Ack bombardment, hitting the pavement at speed, creating sparks and then ricocheting off into the darkness in any direction. Sometimes one could hear a sort of purring noise as they hurtled through the air. Everyone picked up their first when it was too hot to handle, but experience is a great teacher.

We wore tin hats we had scrounged because there was no warning when a shower of steel was likely to fall. It was not our guns that were the problem, they were making steel rain for someone over Wandsworth of Streatham. We were getting someone else’s shrapnel, and it was on you before you were aware. The cacophony of the guns obscured how close or distant the action was and therefore where the metal rain might fall. The strange thing was we were not afraid, merely afraid of missing some momentous historical moment, which we did. We were too young and too stupid. When something really serious really did happen, fortunately we were several streets away from Balham Station.

I remember the Parachute Mines, as we called them, they could clear a good many houses if they exploded . About half a mile from us, after a night’s raid the woman of a house in Upper Tooting went into her front, first-floor room to find a mine hanging by the ‘chute’ cord in the room. It had come through the roof but not exploded. Fortunately the army defused it.

My mother was living in a house called Glenlea in Dulwich. It was a huge house standing within its own grounds and had been taken over by whatever Department of the War Office was responsible for receiving, training and returning Dutch escapees from German occupied Holland, who wished to become saboteurs and Resistance Fighters. A cousin of ours, who was a ship’s captain pre-war, and had lost a leg in an action earlier in the war, was now a Commander in the Navy, liaising with the exiled, Dutch government officials. It was uncharitably suggested by some in the family that he had been a smuggler before the war, so this might account for his close association with the Netherlands. For whatever reason, he set up this sort of spy school and then persuaded my mother to take charge as housekeeper. When I went home on leave, I had permission to stay there at Glenlea with the ‘Dutch Boys’, as she called them, and was privy to much that went on. They had a radio room where they learned to use radio transmitters and, one assumes, code books although that was never discussed. On one side of the garden was a very tall tree growing close to a wall and from the tree a thick rope hung. I understand that the routine was to climb onto the wall with the rope and then, swing like Tarzan, until fully extended, let go and thus learn the technique of landing with a parachute.

Every Sunday evening, a ritual was performed. The BBC would play, in turn, the National Anthem of each country in exile. The radio was on, the evening meal was over and we sat, smoking, drinking, all were listening. When it was the National Anthem of the Netherlands, the men would stand, some would sing, and at the end they would toast Queen Wilhelmena in unison. Over weeks the men would disappear from time to time to go on courses elsewhere and then return, all without comment. The idea was that no one should know if they had left on an operation or merely a course. In spite of these precautions many were caught as they landed in Holland. It was said later that one of the men I used to go to London with for nights out was a Nazi spy passing information. I was never able to confirm that.

I remember one of the men in particular, but not his name. He had been caught by the Nazis and had escaped. He arrived in England, either through Sweden and the North Sea, or through Europe to Spain and then London. When he arrived in England he had a large strawberry mark, on his face, yet he was so keen to get back into the fray he was prepared to undergo a skin graft. When I last saw him his face had not healed enough for him to leave our country. Many of the men had come from the Dutch East Indies.

The Doodle-Bug Sophie and I were just married, on our honeymoon and staying in a hotel almost opposite Glenlea. We would travel to the City by train,. Each night, coming home from London, as we handed in the ticket to the collector on the station at Dulwich he would say ‘Sorry you’ve got to walk!’ until this became a family saying. It was while we were at the hotel that Sophie first became acquainted with the Buzz Bomb. During one night, as she was a lighter sleeper than I, the siren must have woken her and then she heard the wavering, sometimes stuttering buzz of the bomb, sounding for all the world like a two-stroke motorbike with fuel troubles.

Unsurprisingly she woke me and then followed a conversation for which she has never really forgiven me. She has always considered that I acted boorishly, while I was only being logical. The difference between our outlooks rested with the facts that while I had become hardened to the vagaries of war in all its guises, she had only experienced a few air raids, and, being half asleep I reacted normally instead of in my new role as protector of the Soph.

“What’s that?” Soph – fearful. “It’s a Doodle-bug.” “It’s a what?” “It’s a Doodle-bug, a flying bomb.” “Oh my God!” “Don’t worry, Dear, if you can hear it you’re safe and if you can’t its too late to do anything about it.” “You’re dead?” “Yes. Go back to sleep, it’ll be all right, we get hundreds of them all the time.” “You expect me to go to sleep? Shouldn’t we be in a shelter?” Then followed the placation, the reassurance, all of which was worth being woken up for, but in spite of that I was never really forgiven.

Those of the Television Era would not appreciate the shock of misconception suffered when brought face to face with a politician whose appearance and mien have been conjured from only newspaper articles, radio interviews and radio comment, when there was no TV. Recently, all we see is the top few of our leaders and their cohorts . Prior to then they were constantly in the public eye, on TV, in newspapers and magazine. We could assess their physique, their mien, whether they were arrogant, self-seeking or evasive. In 1940 it was a matter of forming an impression on little or no true evidence. Such was the shock I received when, in the Home Guard I was paraded for the benefit of politics, patriotism and publicity.

One day Skipper informed us that on the following weekend we would be going for an exercise on Epsom Downs. End of story. In those days everything was secret, so what we would be doing on Epsom Downs would be a mystery until we did it. The only part of the weekend which stands out is the time we spent parading in front of the stands awaiting the arrival of Atlee, the Deputy Prime Minister. The day was as hot as I have experienced, one of those scorchers typical of the South East, which are not helped by being slightly humid. Standing there in our battledress serge, with a tin hat on, awful leather puttees and heavy, studded black boots, one could feel the perspiration running down the spine.

There used to be a macho tradition in the Guards Regiments that if a soldier fainted flat on his face while on dress parade, he was left there until the order was given to cart him off. I’m assuming the logistics of the alternative, of people rushing about being compassionate, was less important than keeping the ranks nice and tidy just as the King (as he was then) was about to take the salute. Actually, if one thinks of the size of the spectacle and the complication of the manoeuvres at the Trooping of the Colour, if a couple of them did collapse and his mates did rush about, there really could be chaos. It also had something to do with malingering, making sure the soldiers really did faint. I understand that if they fainted they were on a charge; – such is the way of the army, or was then. There we were, then, hundreds of us lined, up in the heat, being made tostand at ease, stand easy, and all the other ways soldiers have to  stand including presenting arms, all in the interests of making us smart and keeping us alert, in the sweltering heat. Every now and then there would be an almighty crash. Some poor sod had hit the dirt. Then nothing; we were on parade after all, even if the criminal who had the temerity to faint was only a clerk out of ‘Rents’ doing his bit for K & C. Minutes would elapse and then someone would gather him up and his day of glory would be over, our torture would continue.

Atlee was heard to arrive several hours late and the remnants of us could not have cared less by that time. We were drilled for his delectation and then he sauntered down the ranks peering at us and stopping to say words of encouragement to men with campaign medals from the First World War. It was at this point I became disillusioned with politicians for all time. I have since read and been told that Atlee was a very clever and astute man. I saw someone entirely different. I saw a small, hunched, unprepossessing man with a glazed stare, tired and feigning interest unconvincingly. What a waste of time for both of us,