How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On

by Anton Rippon

  When getting near to our destination, we saw two small boy cadets sitting on a fence. As we passed them, one of the youngsters said to his friend: ‘Blimey, look at this scruffy lot!’

  His companion replied: ‘Sshh! Some of these are old Dunkirk men!’

  Unabashed, the first lad replied: ‘Blimey, did we have to depend on them?’

  Charles Isles, Newton Abbott

  A young American army officer was running along the platform at Paddington Station, looking for a seat in a train. When hearing the warning of imminent departure, he pushed his way into a crowded compartment. All the seats were occupied, including one by a dog. Attempting to displace the dog, he was interrupted by a frosty-faced lady who told him: ‘The dog belongs to a friend who has gone to the ladies’ lavatory on the platform and it is keeping her seat for her.’ Just then the train began to move. The American remarked: ‘Your friend is missing the train and will want her dog!’

  He then promptly thrust the dog through the window and took the seat. Whereupon a British army colonel, opposite, took his nose out of his newspaper, speared the American with a basilisk eye and growled: ‘You Yanks do everything the wrong way! You drive on the wrong side of the road, eat your food with the fork in the wrong hand, and now you have dropped the wrong bitch out of the window!’

  J. A. Hawkins, Buckfastleigh, Devon

  My brother was a major in the RASC. He and his men were sent on the hazardous mission of burying boxes of ammunition on the enemy beach, to be used by the men who were to make the raid on Dieppe. They duly buried the marked boxes. However, when the survivors returned, my brother learned that one box, marked ‘Bren Gun Ammo’, in fact contained thousands of loose false teeth.

  An investigation revealed that an army dental depot had reported losing a box marked in just that way but which in fact was used to store single dentures.

  He could only say that the next time they stored teeth in this way, they should make them into full sets. At least the invaders could bite the Germans to death.

  Mrs C. Murphy, Rotherham

  In 1942, I did my first six weeks’ training at Sowerby Bridge. Then, us soldiers destined for the Royal Signals had to stay in a large unused warehouse, ready for transport to Folkestone for nine months’ signals training. This particular evening, about one hundred of us rookies got together talking and, to my surprise, I found three other men who, like me, worked for the Gas, Light and Coke Company and were all fitters. We had much in common. Suddenly, in came the sergeant and said: ‘You lot – get a bed for tonight and shut up!’

  The four of us went to the end beds and I took the fourth from the wall. During the night the NAAFI was broken into and thousands of cigarettes were stolen. We were all suspects and, first thing next morning, it was: ‘Stand by your beds and bring out your kitbags!’

  Nothing was found, so the sergeant said: ‘Right, we’ll question you all separately.’

  The sergeant and two civilian police, trilby hats, pencils and pads at the ready, picked our corner in which to start. The sergeant asked the questions – name, service number, home address and occupation. Number one interviewee answered them all, finishing with his occupation: ‘Gas fitter, Gas, Light and Coke Company.’

  Number two gave his answers and, of course, the same occupation. The trio looked at one another, but said nothing. When number three gave the same answer – ‘Gas fitter, Gas, Light and Coke Company’ – the sergeant and his colleagues weren’t amused.

  Now it was my turn. This time, one of the detectives asked the questions. When he got to ‘occupation’, he was clearly irritated: ‘Now, go on! Say you’re a bloody gas fitter and work for the bloody Gas, Light and Coke Company!’

  In a low voice I replied: ‘Well, actually, yes, I do!’

  The warehouse exploded with delight. The detective threw his pencil and pad on the floor and jumped on them.

  He shouted at the rest: ‘If any more of you claim to be gas fitters with the Gas, Light and Coke Company, we’ll have to start again.’ It was quite a job to convince them that the lot of us hadn’t got together and decided to become gas fitters that morning.

  H. Walters, Southend-on-Sea

  I was called up into the Royal Artillery (searchlights), probably as a judgement on me for taking the mickey out of them during the pre-war training, as they never seemed to get anything in the beam. What a boring life! There were some characters, though, and I’ll never forget them.

  We had a young Londoner who was very dim and talked through his teeth. I say he was dim. Before the war he’d been a bookie’s runner and he could tell you how much was due to you for a shilling each way if you won at odds of 31–7.

  Anyway, one morning the NCO detailed him to fill all the hurricane lamps with paraffin. Off he went, but soon came back and said he couldn’t do it because there was no paraffin. The NCO said: ‘Quite correct, but the paraffin is being delivered this afternoon. Until then, go around the site and clean all the glasses.’

  Our friend thought very hard for a moment – always a dangerous thing for him – then replied: ‘OK, but it won’t take me very long. I can only think of two men on the site who wear glasses.’

  A. J. Johnson, Solihull

  Between 1941 and 1943 I was stationed near Thurso, Caithness, in the very north of Scotland. During the worst of one terrible winter, with several inches of snow on the ground, I was transferred to Brechin. There were huge delays on the railway line and it took me hours to get through to my new posting. An officer welcomed me and said that I’d done very well just to get there. When he checked my papers he was astonished to find that I hadn’t had any leave for about a year, so I was given a week’s leave and set off on a really difficult journey to Derby and the wife I hadn’t seen for a year.

  It took me about twenty-four hours to make the trip through the snow, and when I finally arrived there was a telegram waiting for me. I was being called back to Brechin immediately. So I travelled back to Brechin – it was another very long trip and some trains had to be dug out of the snow – and reported for duty, whereupon I was told that my unit, stationed near Thurso, had called me back. So I went back there, again experiencing all the vagaries of the Scottish weather and more delays, and eventually reported to my original commanding officer.

  ‘Yes,’ the officer said, ‘the reason we’ve called you back is that we’ve been looking at your records and we see that you haven’t had any leave for over a year. Why don’t you take a week’s leave and report back to us before going to Brechin?’ So I set off for Derby again. I was travelling the best part of the week, and I never did go to Brechin. I returned to my original unit and remained with them.

  Tim Ward, Barton under Needwood, Staffordshire

  I managed to get on an intensive course on radar at Blackpool Tech. There were about 110 of us altogether and we were a motley lot. Every Friday morning we paraded right along the front at Blackpool. This was a sight to be believed as we were chosen for our educational record, rather than for our soldierliness! The full sergeant in charge used to take us and one Friday he told us he’d had enough. We must do better or else. He boomed: ‘Hold your heads up, swing your arms – and look ahead. No point in looking down. They’re too bloody mean in Blackpool to leave threepenny bits in the gutter!’

  A. J. Johnson, Solihull

  Sam Weller – his parents may have been fans of Charles Dickens – was an airman stationed at Diamond Harbour, near Calcutta. A mysterious tropical illness had left him completely bald with, quite literally, not a hair on his head. Eventually he was issued with a service wig, whispy, stringy and straggly. On his first day off after acquiring the wig, Weller went into Calcutta in his best starched bush jacket, slacks and solar pith helmet. Walking down a busy main street thronged with fellow servicemen, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  Turning, he was confronted by a military policeman who snapped: ‘Airman, haircut, you.’

  Weller swept off his helmet with one hand, his wig with the other,
to reveal a bald head glinting in the sunshine.

  ‘Oh, so you think so?’ he replied.

  A. F. Dawn, Derby

  I was travelling north on a train full of soldiers and we were approaching Preston. Trains almost always stopped for several minutes at Preston and there was a great place for tea if you were quick – but if you weren’t quick you’d never get served. As the train came into Preston station, it slowed down to stop. One soldier was standing right by the door. His boots were already off but he took tea orders from two or three others and hopped off the train as it rolled to a stop. He sprinted for the tea stall in his socks. He’d gone about ten paces when the train suddenly, surprisingly, picked up pace again and headed north. The soldier on the platform stopped running and looked back in horror as everybody shouted through the window at him: ‘Keep mine warm until I get back’ and ‘Extra sugar in mine.’

  Tim Ward, Barton under Needwood, Staffordshire

  I had a spell at Catterick and we were in huts built about fifty years earlier. They had been designed to sleep about eighteen men, but since we were in double bunks they now housed around sixty. So with blackouts in place, the atmosphere was rather overpowering to say the least.

  In the still of the night, one of the chaps broke wind rather noisily. His bedfellow on the top bunk rebuked him and said: ‘What do you want to do that for? It’s bad enough in here anyway!’

  His mate replied: ‘What are you beefing about? You have to fart in here for a breath of fresh air!’

  A. J. Johnson, Solihull

  I was a Japanese POW sent to help build a runway on the outskirts of Makassar on the island of Celebes. During the yasmi – rest period – one of the lads came across a hoard of toilet soap in a Jap hut and promptly secreted a bar away in a little pouch which he had suspended under his crotch, hoping to beat the inevitable search when we arrived back at camp. On the way back it began to rain – one of those typical torrential downpours in the Far East – and we were ordered to ‘run, run . . . quicklee’. The faster he ran, the more luxurious the lather produced by the friction of the soldier’s legs. It was the whitest of white trails ever blazed in the Far East.

  William Climie, London

  The scene was a seaside villa near Catalina in Sicily and men of 2 Troop (Heavy Weapons Section), 3 Commando had just returned from a raid on the Italian mainland. Even after this traumatic experience the commandos still had one chore to complete: a weapons inspection by a young second lieutenant.

  When the officer reached Ginger Hodgson, a tough Yorkshireman from Leeds, he was offered Hodgson’s Colt .45 pistol.

  ‘Bad barrel, Hodgson,’ said the young officer in a disapproving voice.

  ‘Yes sir,’ barked Hodgson, ‘. . . in the sea at Vaago, sir!’

  He was referring to a famous commando raid which took place in Norway in December 1941.

  ‘Oh I see,’ said the officer and continued down the ranks as the men behind him sniggered.

  Moments later the penny dropped: ‘Wait a minute, Hodgson, you weren’t at Vaago.’

  ‘No sir, I wasn’t. But the pistol was.’

  Frank Smith, Luton

  An RAF corporal had just taken a commission and, as is the usual custom, was due to be transferred to another unit. Before his posting, however, he was given the task of orderly officer on the day following his being granted his commission. During his tour of the dining hall at breakfast time, he stopped beside another corporal and asked the usual question: ‘Any complaints?’

  The corporal looked up from his meal and answered with a wry grin: ‘You damn well know there are: you were sitting here yourself yesterday!’

  Silently the new officer, now with a red face, and the orderly sergeant, with a sly grin, moved on.

  Mr R. Munday, Gravesend, Essex

  In the week leading to D-Day, I was serving as an eighteen-year-old ordinary seaman on the light cruiser HMS Scylla. We were all keyed-up awaiting the great day when we would sail across the Channel to begin the invasion. The ship would put to sea most evenings on exercises and most days we would be at anchor outside Portsmouth Harbour. Our days at anchor were spent keeping the ship in readiness for battle, and on one of these days I was detailed to paint part of the superstructure behind the forward funnel. The colour of the paint was, of course, battleship grey. The main object for me to paint was a vent that carried stale air from a compartment below deck. The top of this vent had a stout wire mesh to stop objects falling into the compartment below. A heavy lid on a hinge was at right angles to the opening, which would be closed and battened down at sea to act as a blackout and also to stop sea-spray entering.

  I had painted the air vent and had started on the lid, putting the gallon paint tin on the wire mesh so that I could reach it with the brush. Eventually I came to a very hard-to-reach part that involved me getting myself in a very awkward position. In my eagerness to complete the task, I lifted the catch holding the heavy lid upright to paint behind it. The lid closed with a very heavy bang and, while still using the last brushful of paint, I was confronted with a terrible sight.

  In front of me stood the chief cook, covered from head to toe in a mixture of custard and battleship-grey paint. His face, including his beard, unrecognizable under this mess. It suddenly dawned on me what I had done. On closing the lid, I had forgotten that the paint tin was beneath it. As the lid slammed down, it smashed the tin through the wire mesh, sending it falling at least twenty feet into a large vat of hot custard being made ready for lunch in the galley below.

  The chief cook and some of his staff, all of whom happened to be standing near the vat, were covered in this mixture of custard and paint. Awaiting a burst of anger and having visions of spending weeks in detention quarters, I gazed at the paint-covered cook. After what seemed like an eternity, and to my great relief, the chief cook burst out in a fit of laughter and beckoned me to follow him to view the devastation below. Still laughing, he showed me the galley covered in the slime and when I offered to help clean up, he advised me to get to the other end of the ship when painting in future.

  Needless to say, the news quickly spread throughout the crew and no one had an appetite for custard with their pudding that day. I was immediately christened ‘the Custard King’ and was subject to good-natured banter for days afterwards.

  William Foulds, Haslingden, Lancashire

  I was in the merchant navy and served on several ships belonging to various companies. One of these was of the T & J Harrison ‘Hungry Harrison’ Line of Liverpool. As the nickname implies, rations were of the minimum and when, as often happened, we had to sail off-course because of suspected raiders in the vicinity, they grew even less.

  On one occasion, a grumbling able seaman said: ‘On every other ship after two or three weeks at sea, I always dream about luscious women. On this one, all I dream of is pork chops!’

  Things got so bad that a delegation went to see the captain, taking with them a tray of food. Eight men asked whether it was right that they should have such meals. Thinking that they were complaining about the quality rather than quantity, the captain picked up a knife and fork and tucked in. When the plate was clean he looked up and said, triumphantly: ‘There was nothing wrong with that, was there?’

  ‘Maybe not, sir,’ came the reply, ‘but that there food was for the whole ruddy watch!’

  Kenneth S. Allen, Northwood, Middlesex

  In 1944, I was at the School of Technical Training at RAF Locking. Every Thursday was what the officers called ‘Domestic Evening’, although the rest of us called it ‘bull night’. Each airman had to polish his bed space and this polishing got to such a fine art that we used to tie pieces of rag under our boots to help polish the floor and avoid making any scratch marks.

  On Friday when we were in the workshops, the CO and his retinue, consisting of adjutant, flight lieutenant, station warrant officer, flight sergeant, orderly sergeant and, bringing up the rear, the hut corporal, did the inspection. When we got back to the hut
at lunchtime, there, pinned to the table, was a note that read: ‘The occupiers of this hut will stay in tonight and re-clean it.’

  Everyone in the forces knows that you obey the last order, and argue for ‘redress of grievance’ afterwards. So, after tea, we got stuck in and cleaned the hut again, without much enthusiasm. Eventually we collared the corporal and asked which part of the hut was causing the problem. We thought it was as clean as most others and better than many that had not had to be re-cleaned.

  After a while the corporal said: ‘Just get on and clean everything. I’m not having the CO come in here and saying again, for everyone to hear, that this hut is beyond reproach.’ I don’t think that a hut corporal had ever got so close to being murdered.

  George Godfrey, Bridgend

  Corporal to new squad: Is there a clerk here?

  Bloke next to me says: Yes, Corporal.

  Corporal: Right, you will be in charge of laundry packages.

  Bloke to his mate: Why pick on me?

  Mate: You volunteered, didn’t you?

  Bloke: No, my name is Clark.

  D. B. CURRAH, NEWQUAY

  When a baby arrives in the family of a crew member, it is the custom, if the ship is in a home port, for the baby to be named on board, in the presence of the ship’s company. If acceptable to the parents, it is traditional to bestow the name of the ship on the child – ‘Penelope’ for example. But, of course, not all parents wish to do this, and often have deep family reasons for making an alternative choice.

  Chief Petty Officer Henry Chew and his wife duly presented themselves, complete with infant, on the quarterdeck of the ship at the appointed time. They handed over the baby to the tender arms of the ship’s padre.

  With the child held correctly and firmly in his left arm, he dipped his right hand into the waters of the font, turned to the parents and, with due ceremony, asked them: ‘What is the chosen name for the child?’