Blog

I’ll describe the marvellous institution of Cluttons of 1940 in detail elsewhere, but refer to it here to set the scene of the Westminster Home Guard. Someone misguidedly told me that going to university during the war was a waste of time, with evacuation the degree would be worthless and I would probably be called up halfway through the course. WRONGGGG!! But the decision was made and I was articled as a Valuation Surveyor to Cluttons. – the most august Surveyors in Britain, The building, near the Victoria Tower at Westminster, of redbrick and cream sandstone, is at least 150 years old. That first day is impossible to describe – the transformation from the schoolboy to the worker The building itself had a faint aroma of polish and leather bindings, not unpleasant, which imparted a feeling of familiarity. There was a little self-contained flat at the top of the building, where ‘Skipper’, the Janitor lived with his wife. Skipper was ex- regular army. His additional duty was to train the section of Home Guard which had been formed from members of staff and a few from other offices. Sam Clutton, a Partner, was the officer in charge and actually had converted a Rolls Royce into a troop carrier, for us, his little band of followers. We paraded in the basement like ‘Dad’s Army’, had bayonet practice and the sergeant’s description, instructions and logistics were so bloody and graphical, I opted for the Navy on the spot. In the office basement Skipper had erected a firing range and had fitted some 1914/18 0.303 rifles with Morse tubes so we could fire 0.22 ammunition. The basement ran some considerable distance under the building so we were able to lie, kneel, stand and fire at targets which were stationary and moving. Apart from the odd exercise, the visit to see the Northover Projector and standing guard on Buckingham Palace our duties were mainly to swell the numbers of the Grenadier Guards in blockhouses round Westminster.

THE VERY ODD HOME GUARD EXERCISE Our office platoon, of the Westminster Battalion, had to perform exercises, which could take place in parks, on Wimbledon Common, anywhere. Of them all this was the oddest. They generally consisted of creeping about in an ill-fitting uniform with an empty rifle, drinking tea at an all night stall with big wedges of sandwiches and /or a pink and white coconut cake to fill the corners, and riding in the back of the Rolls. However, one night we were told we were going to enter into an ‘exercise’ with another HG unit from, I believe, Transport House. The idea was we would be the invading army and were to attack HQ, which was to be Transport House, while they, the enemy defending Transport House, would stop us. I used to play games like that when I was in short trousers I forget the details but several things stand out clearly; there were no ground rules laid down about how the sortie was to be carried out, we were formed into groups of about four and sent out to follow different routes. We set off. Half way between our office and theirs, standing in the centre of a square, was a church that had recently been severely bombed. My mate and I, with a couple of others, started walking towards our objective and it soon dawned on us that there was absolutely no hope of passing undetected in those streets unless one could hide. There were a few buildings with steps leading down to a basement entrance, but they were traps for sure. Then we saw the church. Immediately we realised that if we could climb into the half-torn bell-tower and stay there undetected, the defenders would pass us by, which is exactly what happened, although our perches were precarious, to say the least, and today the Health and Safety Act would preclude soldiers from being allowed to take cover like that for merely a practice, We duly arrived at our goal and said that we had captured it. This was obvious as there was only one man there manning a telephone, and there were four of us. When we retired to the basement of our office we felt pretty satisfied with our evening’s work.

During the following week all hell broke loose. We thought we were going to be praised for initiative and inventiveness, instead we were castigated by the powers-that-were for not playing to rules they had thought up after we had beaten the enemy, though not by Sir, who agreed that we were right. The British Military seem to be totally crazy and have strange ideas about war. I sometime wonder if it has dawned on them even now, as it seems to have done on most other nations, that the idea is to kill the other side by any means at all and not get our own chaps killed at all – after all dead is dead. I often think they have always had it the other way round – ‘it’s not cricket, old man, to hide in a church.

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.