How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On

by Anton Rippon

  At the end of 1939, I joined the WAAFs as a sparking plug tester, but it was decided that WAAFs would take over from men to man barrage balloon sites, which was a very tough and strenuous job and the only branch of the WAAFs where you received equal pay to the men, and the only branch which you could not re-muster into another job.

  The balloons had to be unshackled and as the cable was paid out from the winch, the guy ropes had to be held until the balloon was at the point of detachment and the tail guy rope was held to the last, before the balloon was sent up. Well, the girl who was at the engine paying out the cable, must have put her foot on the accelerator because the next thing I knew, I was a few feet from the ground. I was petrified when I looked down. I didn’t know whether to hang on or jump! All the girls on the site were shouting out to the girl on the winch to stop the engine and I think she had as much of a fright as me when she saw me up there. I decided that the only thing I could do was to let go of the rope and I landed, twisting one of my feet quite badly. I had to have it strapped up for quite a time and I still have problems with that foot to this day. It wasn’t that funny at the time, but when I think how funny I must have looked – a good buxom wench like me, dangling up in the air on the end of that rope – I certainly have a laugh about it now.

  Mrs K. P. Ross, Northolt, Middlesex

  The scene is a small ward adjoining a general ward of a military hospital. A patient is brought in with a bad cough. He is under guard and is put to bed in a small one-bed ward adjoining the long general ward. The guard makes himself as comfy as possible with a hard chair and a newspaper. Night comes, and with it the change of staff. The night sister is kind and jolly, but also very busy. The orderly is new, but eager to please.

  During the small hours coughing is heard from the small room. It persists and at last sister pours out some cough mixture and calls the orderly saying: ‘Here, give this to the poor fellow.’

  There is silence for a short time, then the coughing starts again. Again, sister calls the orderly and, pouring out a sleeping draught says: ‘Give this to the poor man – he must have some rest. I’ll be along in a minute.’

  When she enters the small room a few moments later, she has a shock. The guard is about to drink the sedative. The patient is sleeping peacefully.

  G. A. Jennings, former VAD attached to the RAMC

  The following took place just after lunch on a warm summer’s afternoon during 1943 and was reminiscent of a Brian Rix Whitehall farce. For the duration of the war I was employed in the Admiralty within a very important office unit comprising naval officers but also staffed with civilian clerks and typists.

  The officer in the incident was a young lieutenant, a bachelor, whose home was in the West Country and who lived in London in a service club. Lacking the services of mum, or other female family member to rally round with the occasional sewing job, he relied upon his secretary to help him out now and then for any minor, but necessary, tailoring tasks.

  On this particular afternoon he had the misfortune to acquire a lengthy split along the seam of his trousers in the nether region. He arranged with his secretary to pass the trousers out to her for mending at her desk in the other office. He solved the problem of what to wear in the meantime by draping around his waist a tartan travelling rug that he kept in the office and used for sleeping when duty officer.

  The first part of the operation went well, and he returned to his desk where his strange apparel was hidden when he sat down. Unfortunately, the sewing job was delayed by several lengthy telephone calls that his secretary had to deal with. Before she had time to complete the repair, the young lieutenant had a visitor, a high-ranking naval officer from one of the Southern Commands, with many impressive rings of gold braid adorning his sleeves.

  The messenger who had conducted the visitor from the main entrance ushered him into the office of the lieutenant, who immediately rose to his feet to greet his superior officer with suitable deference to his rank, completely forgetting his unorthodox garb.

  The visitor’s bemused look took in the spectacle of the lieutenant standing there in his naval uniform, but clad from the waist downwards in a red tartan sarong, finishing just below his knees and displaying his socks and suspenders.

  Just then his secretary, flustered by the delay, rushed in with the trousers, nearly knocking the visitor over and exclaiming: ‘We should have done this after the office closed!’

  On seeing the visitor, her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Then she dropped the trousers on the floor, and fled before anyone could say anything. Lieutenant X retired, red-faced, to complete his attire while the visitor was pacified with a cup of tea, over which everything was explained.

  Mrs D. Faithfull, Pinner, Middlesex

  At the beginning of the war, my London office was evacuated to a newly built block of flats in Surrey. All our young boys either volunteered or were called up in their various age groups. Many joined the RAF or the Royal Navy. Some served with distinction and always came to see us when on leave. Naturally, we felt a great pride in ‘our’ boys. So when in 1942 the older sample were called up, they also came to see us and had the usual spate of questions to answer.

  One of those that returned was Henry, who joined the RAF and came to see us in his aircraftsman’s uniform a few months later. He had been in our office several years and was a reserved, quietly spoken fellow, not given to much obvious humour. The questioning went like this:

  Us: Are you going to be a pilot?

  Henry: Oh, no.

  Us: What then? A navigator?

  Henry: Oh, no.

  Us: But you will learn to fly?

  Henry: Oh, no.

  Us: Why ever not?

  Henry: I don’t particularly want to.

  Us: Then you’ll have to be a gunner or something?

  Henry: Oh, no. I’ll be ground staff.

  Us: What? A penguin?

  Henry: I think that’s what they call them.

  Us: But you will serve overseas, and you’ll have to fly to get there.

  Henry: Oh, I hope not.

  Us: Why? Don’t you want to serve overseas and help in the fight?

  Henry: Oh, no. Not in wartime.

  Us: Not in wartime? What do you mean?

  Henry: Not in wartime. It’s far too dangerous.

  There were no more questions. We simply laughed ourselves silly but Henry remained quite serious.

  Gwen Harris, Oxted, Surrey

  Here are some extracts I saved from letters to The Pensions Office:

  ‘I am glad to say my husband was reported missing. He is now dead.’

  ‘I cannot get sick pay. I have six children. Can you tell me why?’

  ‘This is my eighth child, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘In reply to your letter I have already co-habited with your officers, so far without results.’

  ‘I am writing this for Mrs J. She expects to be confined next week and can do with it.’

  ‘I am sending my marriage licence and six children I have. One died, who was baptized on half a sheet of notepaper by Rev Thomas.’

  Betty Quigley, Glasgow

  I was a special constable in Scunthorpe during the war. One early morning, during an air raid, a bus drew up alongside me and the driver got out.

  ‘Where’s the lambing pen, mate?’

  I looked at him in surprise since he seemed to have a bus full of passengers rather than a lorryload of sheep.

  ‘I’ve thirty-six pregnant women here that I want to get rid of!’ I directed him quickly to the nearby maternity home.

  G. F. Leawing, Lincoln

  Things could get awfully mixed up during the war. My wedding day took place on 5 September 1939, two days after war was declared. My fiancé, Sidney Glasby, and my brother, William, decided to have a double wedding at our local registry office. The registrar was away so a young man took his place. It was his first duty. He nearly married me to my brother, making us stand side by side without bother
ing to find out who was with whom, until we enlightened him.

  Lucy Glasby (née Harris), Clapham Junction

  On another occasion I was working at a housing estate. There were some forty-six incendiary roof fires during one raid and a housewife told me she’d been unable to stir her man, a former trawlerman who’d been serving on minesweepers and was enjoying a bit of leave with a drink or two, to join her in the shelter. I was on watch for incendiary targets and I saw one go right through the roof of her building. I took my stirrup pump and bucket and entered the building and went up to her upstairs flat. I shouted, trying to locate the man, but there was no reply. When I got upstairs I checked each room, one at a time. Eventually I found both the man snoring away, and the hole in the ceiling of the bedroom. Smoke came from a hole in the bed, between the chap’s legs. The bed was on fire. He was coughing and snorting, but didn’t wake. I got the stirrup pump and started to put out the fire and he began to stir. When he realized his situation he leapt from the bed. He pulled the bed over on its side and we saw that the bomb had gone right through a spiral bedspring into the floor, where it had stuck on a joist. With the fire extinguished he told the chief that he’d been so fast asleep that, if it hadn’t been for me, he would have ‘lost his lot’. I knew he was stinking drunk, but said nothing. I think it was very easy to get like that for men coming home on leave.

  Mrs J. W. Graham, Lanarkshire

  It was one of those beautiful evenings that close one of June’s perfect days. We three, loathe to go into the house, sat in the garden talking and remembering other nights that we’d shared as drivers in the ARP service.

  We were becoming enveloped in a long silence of perhaps sombre memories of those far-off times, when I reminded the others that it was twenty-two years ago exactly since Hitler had begun his doodlebug attacks, sending waves of the first of his secret weapons. They caused such widespread damage that communications were getting very strained, and the ambulance and rescue squads were getting adept at judging just where the fall would be after the V1 engine cut out. Not waiting for official instructions, most of the personnel would be on incidents – destinations unknown – leaving the depot bare of manpower.

  About 2.30 a.m., a call for the mobile canteen came in. Like so many of the vehicles used by the ARP, it had been converted from an ambulance to its present use. It was pretty ancient, its gear lever was on the right-hand side and you could see the road through the gears. It had been fitted with a fifty-gallon water tank over the driver’s seat, and if you wanted to turn a corner without the vehicle toppling over, you always saw to it that the tank was full. One side of the vehicle had been made to open up, forming a canopy over the counter. Someone had always to be inside to rescue something or other that moved from its moorings.

  This night, when the call came, there was only one other person beside the depot chief who could come with me, and that was the cook who had stayed on all night, as she was too frightened to go home. She wasn’t a particularly bright person, but was willing to go in the back. I asked her to get a crate of milk loaded, only to be told there were only two quart-bottles until the milkman came. Heavens! Eighteen cups to a pint – that wouldn’t go far.

  I told her to keep things like the primus stoves on the floor as much as possible, and that when I banged twice she should start filling some cups before pulling up the flap, and so be ready for the big rush when it came.

  The sky was just beginning to get that pearly look of the dawn, but there was still the throbbing of German bombers and the sound of distant gunfire. It was a terrible business remembering to use your right hand to change gear, and I always had to look down. So I was unable to stop a friendly warden when he banged twice on the side of the van in greeting.

  From the back of the van there was a terrific rending sound and a bang. Stopping, and hopping out round to the back, I saw that, at what the cook thought was my signal, the flap had been opened and sheared off as I’d passed a lamp post before pulling up. Poor cook was looking a bit white and strained, but I said not to worry and placed the flap against the wall so that we could collect it on the return journey. She’d placed all the cups and saucers out on the counter too, and they were a bit of a shambles.

  A short way down the road, I began to pull into a clear space when, without warning, the road caved in and the front wheels sank down to rest on a pipe of some sort. The noise from the back was ominous. I had visions of scalding water, the floor awash with tea, and a prostrate cook. I tentatively opened the door and wanted to laugh, and yet could not, at the sight of all that broken crockery, the urns slowly dribbling out tea into the sink, and the cook, who had come to rest sitting in a bucket, clasping the two quart-bottles of milk. Out of the debris we salvaged a dozen or so cups, and for anyone very thirsty, a few saucers. It all became a bit hilarious, with hands snatching cups before they’d been rinsed and the queue for saucers, all moaning, while we were trying to get used to standing at an angle.

  On returning to the depot and leaving the canteen to be towed out, we found another job lined up. A young baby, just three days old, had been injured and was in hospital. Its mum was unharmed in the rest centre, and every three hours we would be collecting her to feed her baby. It was 5 a.m. The milk round had started.

  May Simpson, Romford, Essex

  Another time, a bomb hit a hose that was being used to fight a fire caused by incendiaries and all the water cascaded all over us. We were wet through – but cheerful.

  For two weeks we were evacuated from Woolwich Hospital down to Farnborough. One night there was a noise on the roof and this turned out to be a German airman who had baled out of his bomber. I don’t suppose he thought that was funny, but we did.

  Betty Sheperdson, York

  I was a full-time Civil Defence volunteer and my husband, who had an artificial limb and was employed on the Tyne by a well-known shipbuilding and engineering firm, was a part-time CD volunteer. We were always busy as there were many ‘guest nights’, as we called the air raids, most of which seemed to come on moonlit Friday nights.

  During one particularly heavy raid, with ack-ack fire going on and shrapnel crashing down, my husband was manning his post when he heard two seamen coming up the main road, pretty drunk and singing and staggering about. He yelled: ‘Come on you fellows, take cover,’ and then went back to his post. When I got down there I discovered two very wet chaps. There was a brick-built public shelter nearby, but in their inebriated state they had mistakenly stumbled into a demonstration Anderson shelter that was awaiting removal. It had filled with water and the pair were drenched. They spent the rest of the night in the public shelter, soaked to the skin from the waist down, but very sober. My husband made them hot coffee and I took this to them along with a couple of blankets to warm them up. They were particularly unhappy because, somewhere along the way, they had lost the bottles from which they had been drinking. The following day, when the Anderson shelter was pumped out, lying in it were two bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and half a bottle of rum.

  Another night I discovered two bearded sailors hunkered down against the wall, talking to my husband. They said they’d have preferred to take their chances at sea because they felt safer aboard a moving target.

  Mrs J. W. Graham, Lanarkshire

  One early summer’s day, after I’d been through a high concentration of tear gas while training in full uniform but minus respirator, I travelled home on a bus. I sat close to the open entrance because of the effect the tear gas had on my eyes. However, as the bus filled – eventually there were people standing – I caught sight of some passengers surreptitiously wiping their eyes and blowing their noses. When I rang the bell to get off, the conductress, a friend of mine, was upstairs taking fares. When she came down, she said: ‘I could understand this lot with hankies at the ready in winter, but what’s the matter with them today I don’t know.’ You can guess that I did, but I didn’t dare say a word. My uniform had become impregnated with the tear gas, and as the vehicle
filled and heated, the gas started to react until the whole of the lower-deck passengers were getting very weepy-eyed. They just didn’t know why.

  Mrs J. W. Graham, Lanarkshire

  I was a nurse on nights at the Woolwich Hospital when at 5 a.m. on 14 September 1940, a high-explosive bomb hit the big main wards. I was buried under the rubble and I still think it was a miracle that I survived unharmed, except for cuts and bruises. I wormed my way up and out and carried on helping to move the patients. Then it was noticed that I had a great red stain on my back, but investigations proved it to be from a bottle of ink. Matron kept asking me: ‘Where is your cap, nurse?’ My hair was piled high with debris, dust etc. and I was also stone deaf for about two hours and she was worried about my cap. Years later, when excavations began, my cap-brim was found under all the rubble, but the rest of the cap was lost for ever.

  During one air raid, all our electric lights failed just as a baby was about to be born. However, we did have a gaslight that was quickly put to use and the baby was safely delivered. Then a bomb hit St Mary’s Churchyard at Woolwich, and we were told that the coffins flew about in all directions. One corpse had the chin still strapped up.

  Betty Sheperdson, York

  THROUGH CHILDREN’S EYES

  Time changes everything. When, in 1978, I first made an appeal for amusing stories from the Second World War, many of those who responded were middle-aged men and women. They had seen the war through the eyes of a child. Their perception of life on the Home Front was entirely different to those who were already adults when war was declared.

  One such man was Jim Phelps, in 1978 a forty-eight-year-old recreation officer with Derby City Council. On 3 September 1939, Jim was nine years old and one memory of that Sunday morning had remained with him. Tears streaming down the faces of his neighbours finally brought home to young Jim the reality of it all. Up until then, war had been a game played with lead soldiers and a toy cannon that fired matchsticks. But on the morning of Sunday 3 September 1939, Jim saw his mother’s friends hugging and weeping. For the second time in a generation, Britain had declared war on Germany. In that moment he did a lot of growing up.