Old Gaffer

Category: WW2

  • Evacuation Part 1

    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.

  • Leydene On The First Occasion

    From the IOM we were sent to Petersfield, in Hampshire, to the Naval Signal school called Leydene. We were only to be in Leydene for about ten days and in that time we had to learn the workings of some ten transmitters and receivers together with all the ancillary equipment, so it is unsurprising that I remember nothing of that first trip, except the way we were taught. To a young man who had led a sheltered life and had been tutored mainly by Oxbridge graduates, the spiel of the three-badge Petty Officer or Chief Petty Officer, needed to be experienced and still couldn’t be believed. The three badges denoted a minimum of thirteen years service, but many of these instructors had been brought back from retirement. The classrooms were converted Nissan huts containing the replicas of the radio transmitters we would find on the ships we were destined for. Some were small, not much bigger than today’s work-top washing machine, others occupied the area of the average kitchen and were contained within an earthed steel cage, with access through a door which cut off the power to the high voltage areas when the door was opened. Almost the first thing we were taught was how to circumvent this safety measure so we could test the beast while under full power, from within its bowels, so to speak.

    Most of us, who were used to radio receivers which were only one stage advanced from the crystal set, were amazed to see a valve the size of a large vase and resistors almost a foot long. The instructors had little to worry about with respect to discipline, we were so continuously bombarded with facts and so overawed with both the equipment and the prospect that we would, within a few weeks be in sole charge of its welfare, that there was neither the time nor the energy left to mess around. It was cramming taken to a fine art. Each morning we would be marched off to a classroom where we would discover yet another set with its own peculiarities. We carried a huge loose-leaf book containing all the circuitry and hints on repair, together with our class notes and a folder of a few pages of duplicated information supplied by the instructors. This library went everywhere, even to bed, because all spare moments were filled with catching up what we’d missed or mugging up what we had forgotten. I remember one of our class was married and had permission to sleep ashore with his wife. She complained that he spent most of the night sitting up studying this huge tome.

    In class we were perched on rows of long, heavy, oak benches, with no desk and no support for the back, like starlings on telephone wires. The keen ones sat in the front row and those who were in the class purely as an alternative to sailing on the Atlantic convoys, were generally either dozing or craftily smoking on the back bench. While what I was being taught was in itself a totally remarkable experience, the method of imparting that knowledge was even more extraordinary. Inside these sets were valves, resistors, coils and condensers in the main, with a few other bits and bobs to make the whole thing work, but our elderly instructors, when pointing to a component on a circuit diagram did not refer to it by its name but merely said “Now this li ‘l f….r ‘ere is connected to that li ‘l bastard there….” and so on. In fact it became such a routine that some of us were caught more than once anticipating and saying which epithet would be applied to what item of electronic hardware and were then promptly, in our turn, referred to by yet another and even more expressive phrase.

    Indeed there was the occasion when one of the instructors was inside a transmitter ‘putting on faults’ for an exercise in fault-finding. He was mostly only breaking connections, but sometimes he would insert a faulty component. The thing was that as one became more experienced the sounds of resistors being pulled from their anchorage or valves being released were so distinctive that most of us knew which piece was being tampered with. On this occasion there was a distinctive sound and someone on the front bench named the article in a stage whisper. Suddenly a face, surmounted by a battered cap, peered over the top of the fence round the transmitter and it said “Oh no ‘e F…..in’ ain’t” and disappeared to replace the part and pull out another which was equally recognisable. For me this incident epitomised the teaching in those first months of the war.

  • The First day Afloat

    Travelling since early morning, provided with food vouchers, eating on the run was difficult. The trains were full, and one spent the journey uncomfortably seated on a suitcase, while guarding a small case and kit bag, with a hammock in the guard’s van, At big junctions there were barrows selling sandwiches and tea and there were always the canteens run by the Salvation Army ( God Bless ’em ), but the problem was that, if you were alone, you risked having everything stolen, or had to take it with you to make a purchase, and risk missing the train. One tended to buy food at termini and not on the way. When I arrived at the ship, it was late afternoon, she was about to leave harbour to pick up a convoy in the North Atlantic. My first impression was of how small it was, two hundred and fifty feet odd in length and only twenty odd in the beam was not what I had expected, but as I was hurried aboard and sent straight down below, I saw little in that first glance.

    After saluting the quarter deck, giving my name to the Boatswain’s Mate, I dropped my hammock and kit bag through a hatch and followed gingerly down a steep steel ladder into a world of new noises and smells. The nickname for those ships was the ‘sardine tin’ and it was apt. Passing on the corridors, or ‘flats’ as they were called, was an intimate affair and all living a prescription for claustrophobia, even before they battened down the hatches on us at times of action. There were strict levels of social strata, unwritten rules concerning movement from one stratum to another and relationships across strata boundaries, but these rules, provided stability if not confidence. I had arrived just as the evening meal was concluding and someone asked me if I was hungry. I was starving, and was presented with a huge plate of roast meat, potatoes, and vegetables all swimming in greasy gravy. I tucked in. I have written elsewhere of my initial problems with being a Hostilities Only rating and in living in the Petty and Chief Petty Officers’ Mess.

    We left the Firth of Forth even before I had finished eating and for a while I tried to get myself sorted. We sailed north and then followed a route the men referred to as ’round the North Cape’, which I took to mean through the Pentland Firth, and out into the Atlantic. That was where we really found the weather. The ship rolled and pitched for all she was worth and it was then I regretted the roast dinner; I was ill.

    At some point later, one of the Radar operators came and told me that one of the sets had broken down and that I would have to fix it. Seasickness was no excuse and duty came first, so I went. I discovered that soldering was called for and that was my personal Waterloo, in more ways than one. The radar set I was working on was large enough for me to be able to fix a bucket within its confines and use it as needed while breathing in the cloying and stinking fumes of the soldering flux, which only added to my nausea as I hung on for dear life, while the ship tossed itself about. At the same time, I was trying desperately to give a good account of myself on my first trial. From that moment until we brought the convoy to harbour more than a week later I was permanently ill, I could not bear the heat of the air at hammock level and slept on the floor of my office, which was not much better as the steel floor vibrated in tune to the engines. I prayed for death and gave not a single thought to those who would accompany me. I was prostrate, in pain and almost demented. When I ultimately went ashore, the jetty appeared to be rolling and pitching as the ship had, until my brain got itself in gear. This affect is not uncommon after very bad weather. The strange thing is that after that voyage, in similar circumstances later, irrespective of the weather and not withstanding that some of the experienced men around me were sick, I was never ill again.

  • Grenadier Guards At Whitehall

    In time we, in the Westminster Homeguard were chosen to man blockhouses in Whitehall. Crude, concrete structures, set across a road leading to Whitehall and with a gate making free access impossible. Our job was sentry duty outside the blockhouse on ‘X’ nights a week and at weekends. In the blockhouse it was like a squat, comfortless, and outside, bitterly cold. There were three troopers, a sergeant and me. They all had ammunition I had none, presumably for their safety rather than my own. It was here that I first came across the unthinking use of expletives, the more disgusting the better. The ‘F’ word was used indiscriminately, certainly rarely in context and often between syllables. In retrospect I find it strange how soon I became acclimatised to the whole atmosphere. Our blockhouse was beside the Liberal Club, one of the clubs in London and the Members, on duty nights, welcomed us and allowed us to use the club between bouts of duty and to have a half of Bitter in those august rooms, if we liked when we were doing duty at weekends. It was another world. The quiet smooth running of the club was like a well oiled engine which had been in service since the dawn of time; the unruffled, discreet way the staff appeared to serve, almost without being there, the over-stuffed, oxblood-coloured leather, the rich carpets and curtains and above all the almost cloistered atmosphere of the billiard room, with its raised leather benches, its green baize and cowled lights over the tables, a world away from any previous experience, and awe-inspiring. It seems it took a war to break down the barriers.

    Tedium epitomises the lot of the lower ranks in all the services and I include the police in this. The aspect I have found strangest is that at the time we are not aware we are wasting our lives. The system really works, all that marching up and down, forming fours or whatever, standing to attention with ne’er a muscle moving, does seem to concentrate the mind in the physical sense rather than the metaphysical, to a point where it is incapable of critical thought. The greatest of all boring duties is ‘Guard Duty’ in whatever service one is in. In the police, especially in Ireland during an ‘Emergency’, it can be lethal, in the Navy it is a joke, unless one is caught, and in the Army it is taken very seriously, even when all that is being guarded is so insignificant that no one would want to steal it or copy it anyway. The main function of the guard is to keep on the alert in case he is caught, having a crafty pull on a cigarette, is improperly dressed, or is slouching, all deemed to be heinous crimes with unspeakable punishment if caught. In wartime there are innumerable sergeants and officers creeping about trying to catch these guards committing these diabolical offences.

    At the time we also had the Blitz to contend with. I was on guard duty outside the blockhouse in Whitehall on a very black night, when a shadowy figure approached. I said the obligatory ‘Halt! who goes there? Approach and be recognised.’, feeling like a total idiot, knowing full well it was one of the Regiment, nobody else would be fool enough to be out in the small hours on a wet and cold night. It was the Guards Officer doing his rounds, and I suspect my lack of sincerity must have come through. “Who the f…. are you?” he said with all the venom of an embittered mother-in-law. There was absolutely no way he could have thought I was other than what I represented. . I was sure the officer, even if he were dim, could not have been unaware of what and who I was. Anyway, it would have been on the order-paper or some typically bureaucratic sheet. “Home Guard, on duty. Sir.” I replied reasonably, with my bayonet still pointed at his supper.” ‘X-ing Home Guard!” he said and pushed past me with hardly a glance at anything but the bayonet which I was now waving about as I grounded the rifle. The poor Guards sergeant, who was a decent fellow, if also scathing about the Home Guard, got an earful, which carried out to me even through the layers of sacking, which acted as blackout curtaining. If one had the opinion one was aiding the war effort by being in the Home Guard, a few weeks with the Guards soon made it clear one was as useful and as desirable as another head.

  • The Guards, Homeguard and Buck House

    Presumably, as a morale booster, a genius at Whitehall thought it would be a ‘terrific idea’ for the HG to mount guard at Buck H, unaware what the poor devils would suffer at the delicate hands of the Guards’ Drill Sergeants. An edict was read out at parades. I assumed it was an honour for the HG while paying homage to His Majesty, KG6. They wanted the platoon to provide men six foot in height -‘volunteers’. Skipper made us fall in, put us through arms drill, finally picking those he thought would disgrace us least – I was one.

    We reported to Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk each evening for two hours, training in the art of guarding, that involved stamping the feet at every opportunity until the Achilles tendons ached, carrying a rifle at the ‘slope’ and marching back and forth – doing everything old Skip had taught us but with ‘snap’. ‘Put a snap in it, lad’, was the cry. There was a S’nt Mayhah, not a sergeant major, dress cap placed parallel to the ground, black peak flat on his face so he had to hold his head back to see where he was going, and a device under his left arm, called a ‘pace stick’. To assess the level of detail these guys entered into, the S’nt Mayhah invariably held this pace stick parallel to the ground, with the point held between the first finger and thumb of the left hand, with the remainder of his fingers extended, his right hand loosely closed with thumb extended on top and the arm raised to shoulder level on alternate strides. Someone in our platoon
    wondered who had time to wind them all up before we arrived.

    The S’nt Mayhah had a voice like thunder and I assume, abused his own sergeants to impress upon us civilians the yawning gap there was between a soldier and a Home Guard. That we were held in complete contempt was patent on arrival, and as the S’nt Mayhah probably had additional duties in consequence didn’t help our cause. One other odd, peculiar particular was the Officer-In-Charge. Dressed like the S’nt Mayhah but with a Sam Brown across his chest, his hat with the flattened brim, he marched back and forth, parallel to the Birdcage Walk railings, swagger stick like the pace stick, under his arm, precisely held, but he looked neither to left or right, he ignored what was going on beside him, of which he was in charge, and just stamped his feet as he turned round at each precise end of a the exact course of pacing. Periodically a sergeant or the S’nt Mayhah would stand in his path, sufficiently far along the track so he could put on the breaks and stamp to a halt. They would salute one another for the umpteenth time, both shout something unintelligible as if a field apart, salute yet again, stamp a few times, part company and the officer would start his pacing again like an automaton.

    It was June and the weather was wildly hot, I had only a singlet under my battledress tunic, a great mistake. For hours on end, night after night, we sloped arms and ordered arms and we tried to ‘put a snap in it’, but achieving that was almost impossible towards the end of the evening because our collar bones were sore with the repeated battering they received from the rifles as we obeyed instructions, shouted in our ear, strength five, ‘don’t put it down, slap it down’. We had done a full day’s work already, we were being abused as if we were raw recruits and this our chosen profession. Resentment reigned large. My friend Farrer was becoming as miserable and bolshie as I was . The crunch came on a Saturday Now, not only my collarbone, broken years before, but the skin was so sore I could barely take the rubbing of the uniform on it. At ‘Shoulder arms’, I tried to find a spot on which to lay the rifle, it took time. A sergeant, taller than I, and a great deal stronger, standing immediately behind me, watching me as I started to lay the rifle down tentatively, hit the rifle on the barrel when it was about six inches from my shoulder, so that it literally crashed down on all the pain – “I told you to smack it down not lay it down”, he bellowed in my ear. For a moment I was staggered both by the pain and the brutality. One minute they were implying we were no-hopers, the next we were treated as if fully trained but malingering. I took the rifle off my shoulder and turned to the sergeant and explained rather tersely that I was a civilian trying my best but as my best was not good enough I was resigning from his care. After all these years I have no idea what I really said. I walked sedately off the parade ground. Whether the automaton saw me is unlikely, whether he cared is a definite negative. none of our platoon were at the Gates of Buckingham Palace in June when the Press pictures were taken.. Probably we were all dismissed and Guardsmen were dressed in our awful uniforms and out there, pretending – serve ’em right!

  • The Northover Projector

    Some lunatic inventor had thought up the Northover Projector.- an enlarged version of a toy cannon I had as a child. The toy worked on the principle of a leaf-spring fixed tightly up against the back end of the barrel while one slid bullets (match sticks) into the business end. They slid down the barrel, when one pulled back the spring the match followed it. On release the spring propelled the match out of the gun and hit toy soldiers with considerable force at least 36 inches away. The Northover Projector had a wind-up spring instead of the leaf-spring, otherwise the thing was much the same as the toy cannon – made by the Germans in the twenties – a symbol of the efficiency of the War Office in general, and their thinking with regard to the Home Guard in particular.

    Representatives of all the platoons of the Westminster area were taken by bus to a secret location which we reckoned was Box Hill, formed up and marched into a forest. arranged in a semi-circle in a clearing, at the centre of which stood the Northover Projector (NOP) along with Mr Northover (I think). I remember it was a squat little thing, the gun, not Mr Northover. The NOP was shiny as if cobbled together out of spare aluminium bits. We were then instructed on the ammunition, which was a form of Molotov Cocktail, consisting of petrol with a cube of phosphorous floating on the top in a lemonade bottle. We were informed that the phosphorous would burst into flame when exposed to the air and ignite the petrol, and they were right. Later it occurred to me that, all things considered, I would not like to have to make a Molotov Cocktail, I couldn’t quite see how to get the phosphorus into the bottle without exposing it to the air.

    A huge target of corrugated sheet steel had been erected against the forest backdrop and the NOP faced it squarely. We were told how tricky phosphorous was and how to aim the thing, then some one stepped forward and dropped a bottle of lemonade down the barrel, pulled a lever and off went the bottle. It reached the steel sheeting, cleared it by feet and then went on to explode against a tree and start a forest fire, an eventuality no one seemed to have envisaged because it took a while to put out, especially as it was mid-summer. Indeed that was all we saw of the demonstration, we were loaded up, late in the evening and returned home. I never again saw or heard of the Northover Projector from that day.

  • Belfast Shipyard Part 2

    Shipbuilding is probably the most complicated and detailed engineering exercise, outside aeroplane design. The size of a ship, various hull designs, its use, all give multitudes of options from the thickness of the plates, to the design of door handles. All the equipment has to be installed which involves designing the positioning, the fixings and the power. Multiply this throughout the ship and the complexity of design is mind boggling, and is transferred to construction on the day the contract is signed It is therefore no wonder that in 1943, Belfast shipyard, Harland and Wolf, among others in Britain was working flat out with an enormous workforce.

    Drafted in, in ’43, I joined the Port Wireless Officer’s Staff. We had a small office, a shed, on the edge of the largest dry-dock in the shipyard, the Thompson Dock. From there we telephoned our headquarters, Belfast Castle, and reported to the Port Wireless Officer, (the PWO), everything was going well even if not, and enquired his pleasure. The Castle had been the property of Lord Shaftsbury, and prior to the war, used for public functions. The HQ of the navy in Belfast, was HMS Caroline, a concrete bottomed WW1 warship. The Castle had already been taken over, divided into small offices. Ours, in the old ballroom was one of the nicest, with a view over Belfast Lough. In a tower at the East end was a large signalling lamp, which Wrens used for asking ships coming up Belfast Lough to identify themselves. The shed on the dry-dock had a couch doubling as a bed, the usual office equipment, plus our tools and spares for the radio sets we fixed. Our job was to inspect all the radio wiring and installations, make sure the equipment was in order, sail on the first trial and approve the work, – ships as large as the cruiser The Black Prince, and as small as landing craft. Sometimes I would also have to go to places like Greencastle, County Down, to repair sets for the Coastguard.

    A Stupid Ritual, A Near Disaster
    It was just before the Italian landings that several Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs) were brought into Belfast to be fitted out as Landing Craft Guns (LCG’S). They were in several of the dry-docks, and the work was so urgent all the trades were working together, so there was controlled chaos, which meant that I had to work at night when thing had quietened down. The modifications to the LCGs consisted of making living quarters in the centre of the ships which would house the gun crews of Royal Marines and would also act as the support for the 4 inch guns they proposed to use for shelling the shore before the landings. To enter the dry-dock one passed through huge wrought iron gates, at least twelve feet high, supported on Gargantuan pillars. The gates were most impressive and were opened every morning and closed and locked every night. When I had finished work at two one morning, I found the gates were closed. It was dark, and no street lights due to the blackout. With a torch I managed to see enough to tie all my tools, meters and equipment, together with a length of flex. Wrapping the flex round my wrist I climbed to the top of the gate, hauled the gear up one side and down the other, and finally clambered down the gate, safe and sound – just – it had been a hazardous experience. The jolt came later. As I was walking back to the hut I found the walls on either side of the gate had been blasted away in the Blitz – I could have walked round the pillars and out of the dry-dock. I was l told the unions insisted the gate keeper was an essential part of security and he was to be retained. to continue opening and locking the gates morning and night. Such are the rocks of precedent upon which our war effort was built.

    When I arrived back at the hut I was too tired to put up the blackout, instead I put on the electric fire and crashed out on the couch. After a while I woke thinking I was taking the flu, coughed, turned over and went to sleep again. I awoke twice more, but on the third occasion I lifted mytorch to see the time only to find the beam of the torch was no longer than two feet, the room was filled with a white choking smoke. Immediately I went to the door, I was both sick and dizzy. It transpired that someone had leaned a coil of rubber-covered telcathene cable against the fire and it was burning. I am convinced if I had gone to sleep just once more I would never have awakened.