Beware

AGS      'Wartime London', and other memories, by someone who has lived
            through that time
                                      Written in January 2007

Foreword I have purposely used real place names even though many readers will not know that part of London. To have done otherwise would have necessitated a long-winded detour that would have made the essay almost unreadable. If any one has a query, give me a call on CDCNottm@AOL.com

I was born on 19th December 1925, so you can see that the day war broke out on September the third 1939, I was thirteen. That 's a good age for memories to be embedded in one's psyche, but it's not a good age for a person to be perspicacious. At least, it wasn't in my case. I was a normal, slightly thick, young teenager who did as he was told. I had a dreadful father, who removed any fight I might have had before the age of five. He walked out on the family when my younger brother was born, leaving my mother to fend for herself and my brother and I.

However, this essay is not about my childhood woes, but a record of my memories at a momentous time in British history. As I'm not particularly competent at writing a flowing yarn, I will lay out the record in the manner that is used in technical writing. That's a field that I earned my living at for a year or so in the past. The topics below tend to run into one another, but I have listed them separately in an attempt at keeping control of the overall story. I'll try not to be too repetitive.

Index
01    The days and weeks leading up to the war
02    Gas masks and the threat of gas attacks
03    Moving to Bexhill
04    The blackout, the blitz, Air Raid Wardens and air raid shelters
05    Fire Watching
06    Food rationing and the general shortage of almost everything
07    The Air Training Corps
08    V1s and V2s
09    Being called up into the army and ending up in India

01 The days and weeks leading up to the war
The days and weeks leading up to the were extremely sombre. An air of foreboding seemed to hang over everyone. Most of the adults, of course, remembered World War One and it horrible consequences. Neville Chamberlain coming back from Munich was in all the papers showing him waving a piece of paper on leaving the aircraft at Croydon, and saying "Peace in our Time". I have no memory of any of the adults in my family passing a comment on this well-known event I refer any reader who is interested in the more formal history of that time to: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRchamberlain.htm

The newspaper editors, no doubt, were fully aware of the possibility of war. Pictures and articles were published in The News Chronicle showing how to black out all possible light from house windows and also how to make one room of the house into a gas shelter

02 Gas masks and the threat of gas attacks
In September 1939 I lived with my mother, younger brother, and my Uncle Bill at 10 Lisbon Avenue Twickenham. When my father abandoned us at 21 Cross Deep Gardens, Twickenham in about 1930, my mother was unable to keep up the mortgage on the house, and my Uncle Bill was our saviour. I went to Teddington Council School in Teddington and had about a three-quarters of a mile walk in each direction from 10 Lisbon Avenue,in Twickenham. There were no school dinners in those days, so it was a long trek four times a day. I went in one morning and found that all of us kids were to be fitted with gas masks. There were various sizes from a large man down to a baby. The facepiece had a single wide celluloid window, as distinct from the military gas mask that had two circular windows for seeing through. As one inhaled, the air was drawn in through the cylinder at the bottom front, that contained among other chemicals: active carbon. As one exhaled, the air was blown out of the side of the mask below the ears with a rapid blub-blub-blub sort of noise. With the baby device, it was a sort of bag that the mother (it was always mother) kept a pump going to keep the bag inflated with filtered air.

It was arranged that Air Raid Wardens would give the alarm if a gas attack happened. There would already have been an air raid warning that everybody would have heard. The "wailing winnies" were placed on high buildings at suitable locations. The mournful wail with a rising and falling note was as distinctive as it was possible to be. The quality of the sound was superbly fitted to the occasion; it put fear in you just to hear it. When the All Clear was sounded, it was a continuous note for about the same period of time.

It never came to pass that gas was used. Churchill made it quite clear that if Jerry used gas, he would get it back in full measure. The Germans weren't stupid, they probably knew that gas has to rely on very still weather. On the battlefield where it was used in WW1, the direction of the wind had to taken into account too. In Britain, the preparations were in place had gas been used. The Air Raid Wardenas were equipped with a football rattle and this was the alarm that gas had been used. The gas all clear was to have been a handbell similar to those used by old-time town criers.

3 Moving to Bexhill
At 10 Lisbon Avenue, my mother's mother also lived with us. She had been rescued from a lout of a husband a number of years before. But coming up to September 1939, Nan (our name for granny) had developed the family disease: bowl cancer. In those days it was a death sentence. I developed it ten years ago, and had an operation followed by chemo-therapy. I am now considered to be cured having had no secondaries after this period of time. My mother too had problems with uterine fibroids and heavy bleeding. Our doctor told my mother that he was unable to get her into any London hospital because they were all being closed in expectation of war causalities.
"Do you know anyone in the country who could take you and have the operation there?", the doctor asked. My mother knew a Mrs Kemp in Bexhill where we regularly went on holiday. In due course, Mum, Len and I went by train to Mrs Kemp at 14 Edinburgh Road, Bexhill. With Mrs Kemp's aid her doctor got my mother into Bexhill Hospital where she had a partial hysterectomy. As regards my grandmother, my mother told me later that she believed that the doctor had "helped her on her way" as the most humane thing that could be done in those dire days.

I went to school in Bexhill along with a lot of other official evacuee children from Deptford in East London. As the school had twice the number of pupils it was normally capable of handling, one group had lessons in the morning and all sorts of other activities in the afternoon. The second group had a reverse experience to the first group. The scheme worked remarkably well. I remember going to a church hall being given an impromptu lesson on Africa. Other times it was talks about just about every subject under the sun.

After recovering from her op, my mother got a job in a local ladies clothes shop. My mother had trained as a tailoress, but managed to turn her skills into dressmaking. At that time the two trades were considered totally separate. If you understand a bit about tailoring, as I do, you will see why two seemingly close trades are so different. A bit like an electrician doing plumbing.

In due course I left school at 14 (the normal school-leaving age then). I got a job at an electrical shop in the town. I cover that story elsewhere in my memoirs. One evening in either May or June 1940, we were walking along the prom and we saw a red glow in the sky a long way out to sea. We deduced later that the glow was probably the burning of all the fuel that the British Army disposed of at the Evacuation of Dunkirk. But it was a mystery to us at the time.

A short while later, notices appeared on lampposts and telegraph poles telling the civilian population to leave the area and seek residence as far away from Bexhill as was possible. A German invasion was expected at any time. If the family had children, the parent was to attend at the Town Hall and assistance would be given in evacuating the children. My mother duly visited the town hall and was told that "we can evacuate you and your younger son to Wales, but we can't take the elder boy as he is over 14. My mother replied to the clerk that "I suppose, then, I will have to go back to London". Bombing of London had started by then and the woman clerk was distraught. "You can't go back there, it's far too dangerous!"
My mother replied "Are you telling me that I should go to Wales and abandon my eldest boy in Bexhill?" The woman clerk had no answer. We went back to Twickenham and invited ourselves on to my Uncle Bill again. Mrs Kemp (our host) went to Kidderminster where she had relatives.

The journey back to Waterloo Eastern Section usually took two hours. We would change there and pick up a local train at the Western side of the station to travel to Twickenham. On this occasion, the journey took nearer to four hours and we went through all sorts of stations we had never heard of. There were also long waits between stations. During one of the waits we saw a parachutist descending. We never discovered whether it was a Jerry of one of our lads.

Suddenly my mother shouted "We're in Surbiton. Quick, get out, we can walk from here if we must". But we managed to get a 601 trolley bus to Twickenham Green, and a 90 bus to Fifth Cross Road where it was only two minutes walk to Lisbon Avenue. My Uncle Bill's cousin who was acting as his housekeeper met us at the door of number 10.

A lot that went on while I was in Bexhill. Barbed wire prevented anyone from going onto a beach. Rumour had it that the beaches were mined. A huge hole appeared in the promenade tower clock one day where a piece of concrete had gone through the clockface after an explosive demolition hurled a lump of masonry into the air.

Further along the beach were piles of sand, sprayed white to give the appearance of bivouac tents. They certainly worked as a Jerry ME109 machined-gunned them on one occasion. Mrs Kemp had a job as a Council Lavatory attendant and was pressurised by her employers into travelling to outlying lavatories to clean them. My mother taught Mrs Kemp to ride a cycle and on one occasion in Cooden, the iron railway bridge almost certainly saved both their lives. On that evening my mother asked me if I knew what sort of aircraft had black crosses on its wings. Mum said that the engine sounded "ever so rough". We learned a few days later through the grapevine that a ME109 had machine-gunned Cooden, and that the plane had been shot down near Beachy Head, a few miles to the west. The rough sound of the engine was probably machine-gun fire that my mother heard.

I left behind a valve radio and an exponential horn loudspeaker. These items would be worth a lot of money now as working museum pieces.

04 The blackout, the blitz, air raid wardens and air raid shelters
Back in Twickenham I got a job as a boy electrician at Langston Jones in Teddington. That was the real start on me becoming an electrician. It was a little family business owned by Ken Grundy. He was an enormous bulk of a man and managed to squeeze inside a Fiat 500cc two door car. This vehicle was the company transport. Ken also owned a large Jaguar. Both vehicles were taxed and insured, allowing Ken to claim the meagre petrol ration for both cars. It was illegal, of course, but nobody bothered; the larger petrol ration for the Jaguar helped Ken keep the little Fiat running. A small number of cars were seen with a gas bag on their roof where the owner had had the vehicle converted to run off town gas. All the sparks and myself used pedal cycles to travel everywhere. Langston Jones had an arrangement with a cycle shop in Molesey to provide us with one cycle tyre every two years. Teddington to Woking in Surrey, Teddington to Langley in Berkshire, were both long hauls. Unless we went into the yard first thing, we were expected to be on site at 8am.

A lot of journeys on foot pushing a barrow loaded up with conduit and cable took place to as far away as New Malden, from the yard in Teddington. Traffic was light and the risks pushing a barrow were very low indeed; just hard work. Pushing a loaded barrow over Kingston Bridge tried me to the utmost, even when aided by another lad. How times have changed.

A lot of the places I worked at are interesting to look back on. Victor Moyle was an iron foundry in Hampton Wick. The dirtiest place I have ever worked in. Piles of soot on every ledge above eye level A toolmaking firm in Queens Road Teddington where Livingston now stands. A huge electric motor at one end of the shed-like building with a belt up to an overhead pulley with more belts bringing power down to lathes and other machine-tools. Very hairy by today's standards. I saw an almost identical system in Syria in 1980. I don't think you can translate "health and safety" in Arabic!

These extended belts with no guards were the cause of a lot of women having their hair ripped out by the roots in Britain. The Health and Safety Executive of today would go apoplectic In fact a lot of petrol stations with a small workshop at their rear were conscripted into the War Effort by the Ministry of Production Those were the days when society discovered that women were capable of operating things like capstan lathes. Skilled fitters would set up the lathe and local lasses would produce large numbers of widgets for later assembly into aircraft or tanks in the larger factories. The organisation of the overall scheme must have been quite a complicated task.

I spent a while working at Hampton Wick Gas Works. I watched as the coke ovens were loaded with coal, and the fire below the oven baked the coal and made it give off not only coal-gas, but many other liquids in gaseous form. Remember, South Africa made all its petrol ('gasoline' for the North Americans, if any read this essay) at the time of international sanctions. It was at this site that I discovered the true meaning of "breeze". It is the coke rubbish left over when coke is extracted from the ovens. A breeze block in those days was just like a block of coke, and would burn just as well. Nowadays breeze blocks are made of 'clinker-breeze', the non-inflammable debris from power station furnaces. Working at Hawkers Aircraft at Langley during the war, we kept a brazier going for days on end using broken breeze blocks.

The 'blackout' was one of the more memorable aspects of wartime London. Not that we considered ourselves to live in London then. Twickenham was in Middlesex and London started about six or seven miles to our east. Incidentally, the government later abolished Middlesex, and caused all sorts of confusion by putting places north of the Thames into Surrey. It's a good job that the post Office introduced Post Codes that almost totally ignore place names. I do meander a bit, don't I?

But on the subject of air raid shelters, the east Londoners found that Underground Railway Stations were excellent. Scores of families would go underground as night approached and they would lay out bed rolls on the platform like in a floor-based dormitory. I don't know what the toilet arrangements were; but I expect something was set up. Needs must when the devil drives!

In Twickenham we used to sit in the lounge and simply listen to what was going on outside. At that time almost all air raids took place at night. Outside, searchlights would scan the sky to try and pick up an enemy bomber, but our AA fire was so inaccurate that, except that it made us feel that the bombers couldn't venture too low, the gunnery was a waste of time. I fact, pieces of shrapnel did quite a lot of damage to house roofs. A lot of tiles and slates were broken by falling pieces of metal. There were a number of bombs dropped in the Teddington, Twickenham, and Hampton area, but the great majority of bombs landed in one of the number of parks that graced the district. Whether Jerry knew that Eisenhower had a base in Bushey Park in Teddington, I don't know

Air Raid Wardens were recruited from the civilian population. They gave wannabe dictators a useful job that let them be 'somebody' in society. They toured the streets after dark looking out for any windows that showed a chink of light. Navigation then was a long way worse than it is now. The Jerry aircraft knew they were somewhere over the West London area and would use a light on the ground as an indication of a building. Hence the need for total darkness on the ground. Bus and car lights were very heavily shrouded so as not to let a glint of light go skyward. A householder allowing a light to show in the street would be prosecuted. A few ardent Wardens even called out the Home Guard when someone had gone out and left a light on. A marksman would shoot out the light if no-one was at home. Whether a prosecution followed, I don't know, but a shattered window, glass all over the floor, and a bullet hole in the wall, probably served just as well. And as many walls were lathe and plaster, the bullet-hole could well be in more than one wall.

Hawkers at Langley, as well as being an aircraft factory, had its own airfield. The RAF used it occasionally. To overcome the problem of fog making landing difficult, FIDO was introduced. "Fog, Intensive, Dispersion, Of, was a series of paraffin burners around the streets local to the airfield. A very large number of these burners were positioned for up to a mile from the airfield in the direction of a landing aircraft. When visibility was bad, and an aircraft wanted to land at Langley, a large number of the burners were lit so that the hot rising air would carry away the fog. There weren't many airfields in the greater London Area, so a distressed aircraft could get down, even in bad weather. The barrage balloons that were a deterrent against a Jerry attacking aircraft, were lowered and 'our kite' could land safely. A lot of ingenious ideas came into being in WW2!

Back in Twickenham, we didn't have an air raid shelter. I don't know why, but can guess that my uncles who were all in the building trade knew the hazards of the brick-built ones in the street. The brickwork was of a poor mix and it was possible to scrape the mortar out between the bricks with a screwdriver. If a bomb landed nearby, and the walls collapsed. a very heavy concrete roof would fall in onto the occupants. It was suggested that street air raid shelters were a sop to the alarmed public, rather that a real protection. But there were other shelters that were good.

The Anderson Shelter was a sort of shed made of wide strips of heavy corrugated rolled steel sheet curved in at the top. These sheets were bolted together to form a wall and ceiling. The shelters were semi-underground with the excavated soil being piled on top of the 'building'. Unless a bomb landed very close by in the direction of the opening, the Anderson was a very effective shelter. Later in Hampton where I lived in a house owned by another uncle, who took advantage of depressed house prices to buy a nice house at 88 Percy Road in Hampton, I spent just one night in the Anderson Shelter. It poured with rain and we woke up to find our bed clothes dipping into the three inches of water on the floor. My mother opined "We'll surely die of pneumonia out here, we do stand a chance of survival in the house".

There was another type of shelter that I feel was a very good idea. Herbert Morrison gave his name to the Morrison Shelter. It was a heavy steel dining table with substantial steel mesh at the sides. People would bed down under the table, and if the house was demolished by a bomb, you stayed put until rescued the following day. During the bombing campaign, the Councils had teams of workers who could be called on at short notice to do all sorts of jobs. From making a roof watertight after a nearby bomb stripped off all the slates or tiles, to digging people out of collapsed buildings. The Fire Brigades were augmented by the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS). On many street corners were erected Emergency Water Supplies (EWS). These were circular tanks made of galvanised corrugated iron that housed ten thousand gallons of water for use by the fire brigade if the mains water failed. A few cases of kids having a dip in the warmer weather were stymied by having a heavy mesh over the top of the EWS tank.

05 Fire Watching
Incendiary bombs were a real hazard. A little bomb weighing only a couple of kilos contained phosphorous and other inflammable material that could cause a building to burn down if not tackled immediately. But Britain was up to it, and I expect the Germans were too, as we gave them even worse than they gave us. Most of the domestic and semi-domestic buildings in London at that time had a lot of wood in them.

Air Raid Wardens were tasked to recruit workers in shops and factories to stay overnight on certain days to tackle an incendiary bomb if one came through the roof. Buckets with water or sand were positioned around the premises to be readily to hand. The Fire Watchers were shown how to use a stirrup pump to damp down the bomb until it burnt itself out. The Air Raid Wardens had quite a lot of powers. One came into Palmers in London Road Twickenham and asked the boss for a list of employees. He went down the list allocating each member of staff what nights they had to do fire watching.
My mother objected. "I've two sons and a brother who I keep house for, and I have to do the shopping as well. I can't possibly do fire watching."
"You will, or you will be prosecuted"
"OK I'll argue my case in Court"
The air raid warden stalked out and my mother never heard another word. The other members of staff, including the boss, all did their stint.

06 Food rationing and the general shortage of almost everything
Food rationing became a way of life. Everything was in short supply, including food. In World War One, the country was close to revolution. towards the end; the working classes were, quite literally, hungry. A story of my mother's: her mother had just had a new baby, a yearly event with her sex-mad husband. Annie went to Coppins and saw a well-dressed woman come out of the shop with a tin of baby food. When my Gran went to the counter, the assistant (a man), told her he had sold out. My Gran was desperate. She did what she had never done before. She went into the police station. In those days, the police were given a wide berth by anyone who wore shabby clothes. But as I said, Nan was desperate. She explained her plight to the sergeant on the desk. The copper replied "I really have no power, but let's see what a uniform can do. Come back in ten minutes while I finish this paperwork, and we'll walk to the shop together."

Ten minutes later the police sergeant walked into the shop with my granny waiting just outside the door. The copper asked for a tin of baby milk, and was given one. He paid for it and called my Gran and said to the red-faced assistant "You didn't have any when this lady asked". No answer. "When she comes in again, you'll serve her with some, won't you?" My mother said to me that her mother told her that the copper's tone of voice implied "or else". The copper refused my gran's payment with the words "don't bother madam, I earn more than you do." The reputation of the police improved markedly due to that event.

In WW2 rationing began almost as soon as the war started. I can't remember all the things that were on ration, but they didn't include vegetable and a lot of other foods. The website:
http://www.livingarchive.org.uk/nvq03/julia/rationing.html
lists what food quantities were available. The site quotes the weights in grams, but they were actually measured in ounces. 28.349 grams to the ounce will allow the reader to convert. I don't remember bread being rationed.

Things like oranges were extremely short and greengrocers had a few occasionally. The rule was "if you saw a queue, you joined it" and found out if you wanted what was on offer when you found out. The shopkeepers used to restrict purchases to what they considered to be fair to each shopper. In most cases a big family got the same unrationed goods as did a small family.

Eggs were on ration, but you could get chicken food by surrendering your egg ration. Many people, like us, used to keep chickens. The rationed chicken-food was topped up by all sorts of scraps like potato peelings et cetera. In general there was sufficient food. Of course, if you had money you could eat in a hotel or on a long-distance train. There were also a small number of British Restaurants that catered for working people. Volunteers used to cook and serve plain meals for a shilling a time. A shilling being five pence may sound ludicrous now, but at that time it was a sensible figure for a small but adequate meal. Works canteens also used to get rations too, but factory workers were way outnumbered by other workers. My wife, who worked in a factory canteen here in Nottingham during the war, remembers some confectionary being off ration; and there was a scrimmage when these sweets were put on the counter after the main meal had been served.

Not only food, but many other things were in short supply. Wood screws was just one item that was difficult to obtain. Businesses were generally able to get sufficient tools and general materials to survive, but practically nothing was available in bulk.

07 The Air Training Corps
Not very long after coming back from Bexhill and working at Langston Jones, I joined the Air Training Corps. The ATC was the cadet branch of the Royal Air Force. A retired RAF Flight Lieutenant was the commanding officer of 267 Squadron based at the Thames Valley Grammar School in Fifth Cross road Twickenham. We had aircraft recognition lessons, Morse Code lessons, and a bit of drill training. It was whilst in the ATC that I had my first flight in a Tiger Moth at Fairoaks Airfield in Surrey. I remember sitting on my parachute in that tiny rear cockpit. The intercom with the pilot was via a voice tube. Looking over the side of the motor-cycle-sidecar-sized body, really made me scared. The ground was a thousand feet straight down. But we were told many times that a Tiger Moth was almost impossible to crash. If the pilot got into difficulty, he just took his hands off the controls and the plane would right itself. It was a superb early trainer.

Later at Abingdon in Oxfordshire, I had a flight in an Avro Anderson. It was one of the early models that needed a lot of puff to wind the undercarriage up and down. I got that job, but failed miserably to complete either the up or the down. I was asked if I could navigate by dead reckoning using a map of the area. Again I failed miserably. We landed at York and flew back later to Abingdon. I had two stripes by then but had no leadership qualities whatsoever. But learning the Morse code stood me in good stead for the trade test in the army that got me into the Royal Signals

08 V1s and V2s
While at Langston Jones I was working in the control room at a gunsite in Richmond Park when the first V1s arrived. A daytime air raid warning had been sounded and the sparks and I were chucked out of of the building. We stood outside on the grass and gawked around the skyline having nothing else to do. We looked in the direction of London and noted that an AA battery further east had opened fire on a tiny plane. "They've hit it" we shouted as the plane took a dive towards the ground. Little did we know then that that the enemy was doing exactly what it was programmed to do. At our distance of several miles we didn't see the explosion on the ground. But it wasn't many days before this new weapon was understood by most of London.

The "doodlebug" as it became known, was launched in France, Belgium or Holland, by a steam launcher. The ramjet engine needed a certain airspeed to operate, and the powered launch gave sufficient airspeed for the engine to take over. The navigation was crude, but effective. The flying bomb was pointed in the general direction of London. and its fuel load was calculated to be just enough to last for its journey. Our anti-aircraft fire was remarkably inaccurate, so it was only a lucky fluke if a doodlebug was hit by AA fire. The RAF were a little more successful. A Spitfire could just about keep up with a doodlebug, so if an RAF fighter was inland from the enemy, the pilot would attempt to fly alongside the plane and get one wing of his plane under the wing of the invader, and with a tricky manoeuvre he would flip the doodlebug wing up. The automatic control of the enemy was not capable of rectifying that sort of assault, and the doodlebug would crash. There were a lot of large holes in fields in Kent where flying bombs had landed. A spoiled field of parsnips was considered better that a demolished house in, say, Wimbledon.

I doubt if the German High Command anticipated the response of the British public. The aim of the V1 was to terrify the population into pressing their government to sue for peace. But the Brits can never be anticipated. The doodlebugs became a sort of macabre game. I remember sitting in our lounge in Hampton when we heard the doodling sound of an approaching V1. We got up hurriedly and went outside and looked toward the south.
"There it is! Which way is it heading? It's going over towards Croydon, some poor wretch over there will get it!" We went back indoors to listen and wait for the distant bang.

I remember working at that same gunsite in Richmond Park, and again we had been thrown out of the Control Room. I heard the doodling noise and looked southwards to see the beast. It was coming directly at us. I watched. and suddenly the engine sound disappeared. I immediate got on to the ground behind a Nissan Hut face down. I waited and waited for an eternity. I eventually heard a bang a long way to the north.

The doodlebug had two modes of ending its journey. Either the compressed air bottle powering the engine control had run out, or the other bottle powering the flight controls became exhausted. The V1 either did a power dive into the ground, or it coasted silently until it lost sufficient airspeed to maintain flight. In my case the bug's engine bottle had run out first. What was most annoying was that when I got up from lying on the ground, I found I was covered in tar where I had laid in a pool of the stuff that had leaked out of a damaged barrel. Mum was not amused when I arrive home.

09 Being called up into the army and ending up in India

September 1944 came and I got my calling-up papers. I had to go to the Kingston Labour Exchange and register. I went to Hounslow and had a medical and passed A1. But my mother sent a letter somewhere about my childhood illnesses, and the fact that I may, perhaps, have a chest of lung problem. I got called back to Hounslow and they had a closer check at my chest. They found nothing and in due course I get a train warrant and instructions to report to York. I believe the barracks was at Strensall.

Primary Training was not too ridiculous. I got fitted out with a uniform and formally inducted into the army with "the King's Shilling". A very old custom that is worth reading about. I marched up and down, crawled through mud, fired a rifle (I'd already done that in the ATC), fired a Bren Gun, and threw a 36 Mills Grenade.

At the end of three months I had a trade test to decide which Corp I would be posted to. A bit of maths, a bit of Morse Code appreciation, and a mechanical aptitude test. This latter test consisted of taking a rim lock to pieces and re-assembling it. I ended up in the Royal Signals at Catterick. Training took place on 19 and 22 radio sets, more Morse Code, learning about the Fullerphone, and a lot of other bits and pieces. Electricity and magnetism classes.

While I was at Catterick the army decided to form another training regiment at Whitby. My platoon was chosen to be part of this new regiment. We went by train to Whitby, and were put into the Royal Hotel. Pre-war hotels were not like they are today, and as all the unnecessary furniture had been removed, the place was a multi-storey barracks. The tiny fireplaces in the rooms cried out to have a fire lit in them as the whole building was cold. But to have been caught nicking coal out of the huge pile at the back of the barracks, would have landed one in serious trouble. The story of plies of coal being whitewashed is true. It had little to do with bullshit, but rather more to do with spotting if the heap had been tampered with. P.T. on the beach in January was also a chore and a half. But I survived.

It was an Electricity and Magnetism exam at Whitby, where I got a hundred percent marks. The only time I can remember getting that mark. We had trips around the countryside in a Bedford fifteen hundredweight army truck where we worked a 22 set back to base. Mostly Morse Code, but occasional R.T. I finally passed out as a B3 OWL (Operator Wireless & Line) I was sent to Huddersfield where I got 14 days embarkation leave. On return to Huddersfield I was given three stripes as an Local Acting Lance Sergeant for the voyage. This just demonstrates the incompetence of the British Army. I had no leadership qualities whatsoever.

V.E. Day came and we were permitted to go into Huddersfield to join the celebrations. I didn't bother, I never have been one to join the mob in such events. I stayed in barracks. Two days' later I went by train to Liverpool where I boarded the SS Samaria. Some wag had got a rumour going that we were sailing for Bermuda. It turned out, however, that we went through the Straits of Gibraltar instead. A few hours in Malta where, I imagine, we loaded some provisions, and on to Port Said and through the Suez Canal.

At Port Said we had a load of peddlers at the side of the ship trying the sell us things. On through the Suez Canal and in to the Red Sea. We stayed a few hours at an east African port where a small group of squaddies disembarked in full khaki battledress. We were told that these chaps were destined to go direct to a hill station, and there was nowhere en-route to change out of khaki drill. The Red Sea was extremely hot, even sitting on deck close to the bows and having the breeze in our face.

We arrived at Bombay and took a local train to a large railway station. Everyone was told that they could do their own thing but to be back on this platform by 1800 hours. We had been given some rations and had several hours to kill. I watched what went on in the station. I was fascinated and slightly bemused, never having been outside of England before. Not only were people milling about all over the place, but many had a farmyard in tow. Goats, chickens and other livestock seemed to accompany people on the move. A lot of local trains came in and out of the station, but 'our platform' remained empty. I had a wander outside the station and got a bit lost. What was most disconcerting was that everywhere I looked, I saw a swastika painted on a wall. I didn't know then that the symbol has some religious meaning. I'd only ever seen it as a Nazi emblem.

I desperately looked for a white face, and when I found one, he couldn't speak English. He might have been Portuguese, as later I learned that Goa had been a Portuguese colony and Goa is close to Bombay. I found my own way back to the station and didn't dare venture away from the platform after that. I had my three stripes all through the journey from Huddersfield, but at no time did I use that authority. I had no idea what I was supposed to have been doing. I joined a messdeck on board and mixed with a lot of other NCOs. The stripes were just so much wasted cloth.

At the appointed time, the rest of the party assembled at the platform in the Bombay station, and we boarded a long-distance train. The terrain between Bombay and Mhow was true Alpine country with high bridges across ravines, and tunnels through the next peak. We arrived at Mhow and were taken to a barracks by army lorry. At an early stage while in a line with a lot of others, I removed the stripes and threw them away. They were never mentioned by anyone in command.

Following various inoculations, I was put on a train to Poonah. The Indian trains had four classes: third, inter, second and first. Second and first always seemed to be a small suite with a shower and WC. We all travelled second class. At Poonah we were loaded on to another army truck and after a fifty mile trek we found ourselves in Kedgoan, a tented camp with no mains electricity. I was drafted to act as assistant to the chap who ran the battery shop. All buildings and tents were lit either by paraffin pressure lamps or 12 volt battery lighting. There was a camp cinema that showed fairly up-to-date films. No charge was made to use the cinema.

It was during that period at Kedgoan that the R.A. were waterproofing their vehicles. The engine and other sensitive parts were covered in a sort of Plasticene to keep water away from electrical parts in particular. We were getting ready for a beach landing on the coast of Japan. The regiment had already engaged with the Japs in Burma, and were seasoned fighters.

We always wore "bare buff" during the day. Shorts, chaplis, underpants and nothing else. (Chaplis were a sort of locally made open-toed sandal. We would play the char-wallahs at football and regularly lose. The local chaps wore chaplis but would run up to the ball and kick off the footwear and boot the ball with their bare feet. Although we were rajahs to them (rich men) we were friendly. Our name for them "wogs" was just that; a name.

One day at morning works parade the CO made an announcement. He had to announce how sorry he was, but our little escapade had been called off because the Japanese had surrendered. It was the only time in my life that I have heard an officer boo-ed on parade. It wasn't loud, but it was quite noticeable. Christmas came and went with a cup of tea in bed laced with Whiskey. I don't like it; it spoils both the tea and the whiskey.

I was taught to drive a fifteen hundredweight Bedford truck before the war ended. I imagine that as beach landings have such high casualty rates, anyone who was capable of driving a truck would be taught to do so. My driving test was a bit of a farce. A regimental driver told me to "drive to that tree about half a mile away. Change up through the gears properly". I did as I was told without making too much noise in the crash gearbox. "Drive back to were were when you took over". I turned the truck around and drove back. "OK you've passed. You'll get your licence back at camp."

The road that I drove on was totally deserted. We didn't even see a bullock cart. I kept that licence and got it converted into a civvy one when I was demobbed

I had a month's UK leave before returning home from India. The leave was known as LIAP (Leave in advance of Python). "Python" was the codeword since before the war for the end of a seven-year term in India. That month's leave consisted of three weeks boat-journey home, a month at home and three weeks back. Ten weeks all told away from the regiment. After the war ended the regiment moved to Meerut. Most of the chaps went by train but I joined a small group who travelled by road. I did a bit of driving. We stopped over a weekend at Agra, and I've always regretted not seeing the Taj Mahal. I could have joined a few lads who were taken to see that piece of Indian history.

After moving to Meerut, I had a few weeks in the Himalayan foothills at Chakrata, an old RAF camp that the army had taken over. The full spectacle of the Himalayas to the north. I always look down my nose now when someone talks of a mountain in Britain. Chakrata was a hill station at 8,500 feet and was an army camp.

After Meerut, the regiment moved to Dehra Dun, and again I spent a while at Chakrata manning a 22 set (radio) back to base. When back in Clement Town in Dehra Dun, I fell ill. I was trucked to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) where they initially thought I had malaria. When the whites of my eyes started to turn yellow, the diagnosis changed to 'infective hepatitis'. While in that hospital the regiment returned to the UK.

When I was discharged, I was given a rail warrant to Dulali. Train journeys in India always took nearly a week. I ended up at Delhi where I reported to the Military Police. The train to Dulali was a week's wait. I was taken to the army camp in the Red Fort and learned of the size of that small town inside the twenty-yard thick walls. I was told that the evening before I arrived at Delhi, there was serious rioting. When I arrived, Ghurkhas were manning every bridge-crossing with a Bren gun.

I spent the week doing nothing in the Red Fort other than sleeping and eating. I was then taken by a Landrover back to Delhi station and caught a train to Dulali. I can't remember a thing at that site, but I do remember leaving Bombay in a troopship. I don't remember its name either. What I do remember was the PA announcement as we pulled away from the dock in Bombay. "If you want to see the most magnificent sight in the world, go to the stern and see BOMBAY FROM THE REAR END OF A TROOPSHIP". I'd never heard that before or since, but it sounds like a hoary old joke that all ex-Indian Army squaddies will have heard.

Three weeks later we docked at Liverpool and I went to a camp in Carlisle. A few days there and I went to a camp in Kington in Herefordshire. A few weeks there before going to Aldershot and discharge. I remember manning the camp switchboard at Kington. The Officers Mess asked me to call the Town Clerk's Office, they gave me the number. I called the town switchboard and asked for Kington X X X. The GPO operator knew her job. "I'm afraid Mr smith will be at lunch. Call back at two o'clock". Those were the good old days before even local dialling existed, except in central London, and all those exchanges had names with the first three letters being the dialling code.

All the exchange names had a local input. It must have exercised the GPO a great deal to find names that could give unique letters for dialling codes. Mayfair, Paddington, Waterloo, Teddington Lock, Molesey, and a lot of park and road names such as "Cross Deep" in Twickenham. There were three letter to all the dialling holes, giving a little more scope that would otherwise be the case.

I do remember calling home from Kington to Hampton: MOLESEY 2062. I got connected to a Birmingham number instead. I think it was MOSELEY 2062. At home, we were one of the few private houses that had a telephone in those days, and telephone calls were expensive. It cost me a shilling to phone Guildford from Marble Arch using a call box. A lot of money in 1949, and I only had three minutes to get my message across.

At Aldershot I was fitted for a new suit and given a ration book and a rail voucher. I still had two army greatcoats that I had collected. Clothes rationing was still on, and my mother made good use of the heavy serge fabric of those coats.