by Mike Brown
Kitty Pledger was a guide in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire:
I was a member of the 1st Shelford Guide Company. Besides our Guide work we joined in local fund-raising events to raise money for comforts for the troops. We also collected wastepaper and jam-jars – we were paid a halfpenny for a 1-pound jar and a penny for a 2-pound jar.
These activities were carried out as a company, but we older girls helped at the local military convalescent home. We worked on a rota, two of us going every Sunday morning. We helped with bed-making, cleaning the rooms, serving morning coffee to ‘the boys’, and with preparing and serving lunch. After we had cleared and tidied the dining room we were given lunch with the staff – we had the same as the boys, which was always a roast dinner, much enjoyed, as with meat rationing we didn’t often have a roast at home.
The Guide Association encouraged us by bringing out a War Service badge – this consisted of a gold embroidered crown on a navy-blue background and a separate strip with the year embroidered on it - for each year we did war service we had a new year strip – I did it for two years, 1942 and ’43.
Living in the country and not suffering heavy bombing, etc., we were still able to hold our summer camps. We did not travel very far, just to the next village, Stapleford, where we had a very nice meadow with a stream running through it.
Iris Smith was a Guide in Bristol:
I was in the 38th Bristol (Brooklands) Guide Company. When I joined the Rangers, we went over to St Mark’s Road where we were trained by the ARP wardens to put out incendiary bombs, they also talked to us about gasses that could be dropped, and what to do if a house caught fire. We also had to be able to cater for 100 people, in case they were bombed out, but luckily I never had to put this into practice. One other thing I remember, we were on a rota, and every Sunday morning, four to six of us went to help at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, cooking and rolling up bandages and the like.
We went on camp once during the war, we stayed in the high walled garden of a large private house just outside Bristol. We went in the morning at 6 o’clock and at 10 o’clock that night we went back to our own houses in case of air raids, then next morning we went back at 6 o’clock, and so on. . . .
Another thing was the Bristol Evening Post used to supply wool, you collected the wool and knitted balaclavas and such for the forces. My mother and I used to do it.
Gwendolen Fox was captain of the 30th Eastbourne (Hamden Park) Guides’s Company: ‘When war broke out most units closed as the children were evacuated but they drifted back and we had a very good wastepaper collection going. Raising money to send to the Red Cross and various appeals, also keeping the local army canteen supplied with table-tennis balls and buying wool to knit socks, helped by the parents. When I was called up the patrol leaders carried on, helped by one of the elderly Guiders from another unit.’
BOYS’S BRIGADE AND CHURCH LADS’S BRIGADE
The Boys’s Brigade provided the ARP messenger service in many places, such as Birmingham. So did the Church Lads’s Brigade, as Roy Coles of Bristol remembers:
I was in the Church Lads’s Brigade, we mostly did first aid, although the older lads provided messengers for the ARP and the Home Guard and did fire-watching in the evening, not at night. I did it at our headquarters.
I was on the Junior Youth Council which was part of a sub-committee of the local Education Committee. Our purpose was to bring together all the local youth groups, we used to organise parades for things like Warship Week. We also set up a Youth Parliament, and later [after the liberation] tried to arrange a visit to a concentration camp, although sadly this fell through.
AIR TRAINING CORPS AND WOMEN’S JUNIOR AIR CORPS
The Air Training Corps (ATC) was set up in 1941. Its purpose was to give early RAF training to boys aged 16 to 18. Squadrons were set up in schools and universities, or in local areas. Geoff Shute was one of those who joined:
After the war started, and when I was old enough, I joined the Air Training Corps. At the time I was a pupil at the Northgate Grammar School in Ipswich and we had our own Squadron, No. 786. Our evening meetings were held at the school and at weekends we were taught gliding on Ipswich Airfield. There were two other squadrons in Ipswich, No. 188 and No. 262. Needless to say, rivalry between them was intense, especially in the field of aircraft recognition.
A group of about six of us, all members of the ATC, used to spend our weekends cycling to the many airfields surrounding Ipswich. Once at any particular airfield, we would get as close to any aircraft as we could and make notes of serial numbers, camouflage and, in the case of American planes, the squadron and group colours painted on the fins, cowlings, etc.
Roy Coles of Bristol: ‘The school had its own ATC, it was the school’s cadet force. We used to go to RAF camps in the school holidays for training. We’d always get to go up in a plane, like a Wellington or an Anson.’
For girls there was the Women’s Junior Air Corps, which, like the ATC, was created to give early training for those intending to join the WAAFs. Members were instructed in physical training, games, first aid, morse and similar subjects. Optional subjects included anti-aircraft operational duties, radio location, signals, driving, electrical and engineering work, or clerical and office duties.
AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS
Often, one of the first casualties of a raid was the telephone service, the lines being brought down by explosions. The ARP services needed to send messages to tell the rescue services where people were trapped and so on, and any breakdown in communications would be very serious. For this reason, the ARP services used messengers, who ran messages on foot, or went by bicycle. The messengers were usually young boys or girls. Margaret Ladd lived in Southend-on-Sea:
I think I must have been 16 when I heard that the Civil Defence wanted girls and boys, together with their bikes, to do a messenger service one or two nights a week.
Southend was actually a hive of action during raids, mainly because of being on the River Thames and the soldiers at the artillery garrison at Shoeburyness were trying to shoot German bombers down before they continued up the Thames to bomb London. They hoped that bombs or planes might come down in the river, but a lot of them came down in Southend instead. Of course, there was a lot of shrapnel flying about as well. I remember dodging the hot pieces on the road, hoping that the tyres on my bicycle didn’t run over any.
Our activities continued all through the time of the doodlebugs coming over as well. They were OK as long as they kept going but the Ack-Ack fire sometimes caught them over at Shoeburyness and either exploded them or tipped them so that they didn’t get to their pre-determined destination. When you heard the engine stop, you hastily looked for somewhere to take cover.
Carol Smith of Dunstable: ‘When I was 14 I became a messenger for the ARP because I was used to riding a cycle all over the area. I used to go to ARP classes over an electrics shop in Dunstable, we were taught things like how to distinguish different gasses, also first aid.’
At first, these messengers could be as young as 9 or 10, but soon the minimum age was raised to 16 during the raids, with the younger volunteers being used for post-raid work. Working during a raid could be most dangerous, as this report from 1942 shows:
Particular praise is given by wardens to several boys who frankly confessed themselves frightened, but still did not hesitate to go out on long and hazardous journeys, not even when flat tyres could have been used as an excuse. Among the messengers was a small, pale boy who begged to be allowed to take a message, but the Chief Warden, feeling that the danger was too great for him, put him off time after time with various excuses, the final one being that he had no bicycle. ‘Please, sir,’ said the lad eagerly, ‘Billy will lend me his bicycle.’
After some hesitation the Chief Warden finally sent him off. After a long time, he returned, breathless, wide-eyed and bleeding, and covered with dirt. He asked to speak to the Chief Warden privately. ‘Glad to see you back, my boy,’ said the Chief Ward
en as he bent down to listen to the lad’s agitated whisper. ‘I daren’t tell Billy, sir, but I’ve lost his bloody bicycle. I was blown off it, and when I got up I could only find the front wheel.’
Ken Kessie was from Moreton near Liverpool:
I was 16 when the war broke out. I joined the ARP as a bicycle messenger. I remember one night a piece of shrapnel hit the mudguard and I pulled to a halt, I thought I’d been hit.
Another time a small bomb hit the Rally centre, the ARP headquarters for the village we were in – Moreton. It was a small reconnaissance aircraft that came down in Barnston, it ditched its bombs and one hit the small back room which was used as the messengers’s centre. We lost our personal belongings – I lost an air rifle.
And there were other jobs in the ARP. Barbara Daltrey joined the ARP in Windsor just before war broke out. ‘I was 16 and a half at the time. I was attached to the first aid parties. My shift was from about 10 pm to 6 am, when I was finished I’d go home for breakfast.’ Then there was acting as ‘casualties’ in training exercises; in Children of the Blitz, Robert Westall includes the story of one young ARP messenger who did this: ‘There was a label attached to my coat which stated “coal-gas poisoning, not breathing”. I lay there for what seemed an age. . . . I was eventually dragged from the ruins and laid on the brick-strewn path whilst being given artificial respiration. My ribs were bruised both front and back. I did not volunteer again!’
In January 1940, as a response to the massive German fire raid on the City of London, Herbert Morrison had brought in the Fire Precautions and Business Premises Order, drafted to ensure that men between the ages of 16 and 60 registered for forty-eight hours’s fire-watching a month. Many 16-year-olds were brought into ARP work by this. One such was Bill Sherrington, from South London. The City That Wouldn’t Die, which chronicles the events of the great London raid of 10/11 May 1941, tells his story:
Down at the Elephant and Castle, incendiaries fell so fast 16-year-old Bill Sherrington dashed to the nearest shelter for help, but found only sour looks –he must be mad to venture abroad on a night like this. So Sherrington battled heroically on his own, darting into houses the owners had left . . . stamping out some bombs . . . using a stirrup pump on others . . . tipping a flaming flower-box into the street seconds before the window frame caught.
There were many other small local groups. John Merritt remembers one which was set up in Virginia Water, Surrey:
About 1942 I started going to Sunday School at Christ Church in Christ Church Road. At about this time the vicar started a club for its children, boys and girls, and this was to be called the 4Cs club, standing for Christ Church Commando Cadets. This sounds rather military now, and on reflection, it seems to me to have been a mild form of the Hitler Youth. Our uniforms were to have a military look: grey material and a black beret. These never did materialise during my time there – but we did have a badge with 4Cs intertwined on it.
Our activities consisted of map-reading, tracking and signalling, much the same as the Scouts or Guides would have done. I was aged about 9 or 10 at the time and I quite enjoyed our meetings. I think the vicar was the only adult present, as I don’t recall any other grown-ups.
NINE
Spare Time
War or no war, for most boys and girls there was still spare time, and children being children they found ways to enjoy themselves.
COMICS AND BOOKS
With no television to watch, no computer games to play, children passed their time in other ways. Comics were immensely popular – there were far more titles available at the start of the war than today. For younger children these included Rainbow, Chick’s Own, Playbox and Tiny Tots; for older children such favourites as the Beano and Dandy, Knockout, Chips, Comic Cuts, Radio Fun and Film Fun. From 1940 paper shortages led to many comics closing down, including Tiger Tim’s Weekly, Larks, Golden and Magic. No new titles could be started on a weekly basis, but several small publishers produced one-off comics from time to time as paper became available.
Younger children’s comics carried on with no change to established contents, but characters in the ‘older’ comics went to war. Comic Cuts had ‘Big-hearted Martha, our ARP-Nut’, the Dandy had ‘Addie and Hermie’, alias Adolf Hitler and Herman Goering, shown as inept food thieves, while the Beano featured ‘Musso the Wop’, alias Mussolini. Barbara Courtney: ‘We used to read comics, the Beano and the Dandy, my favourites were Desperate Dan with his great big steaks, and Lord Snooty.’ Iris Smith: ‘I used to get half a crown [2s 6d; 12½p] a week pocket money. I bought the Girl’s Crystal comic every week – we used to take it down into our shelter – we had an Anderson – and Mrs Brain – she and her husband lived with us then – used to read the serial Barry and his Mobike to us all.’ – unlike many of today’s comics, there would be several written stories in a comic of the time, so they lasted for hours.
As the war progressed those comics that remained got smaller; before the war many had been the size of newspapers. The number of pages also decreased; in 1939, for example, the Beano usually had twenty-eight pages, by 1940 it was down to eight, with colour printing used only on the cover.
The US forces brought with them glossy American comics such as Superman and Batman. These seemed even more glamorous compared with their monochrome wartime British cousins. Charles Harris: ‘I never got pocket money – I used to earn 6d going out with the baker on his round. We spent it mostly on sweets and comics, the Beano, the Dandy, the Rover and the Hotspur were my favourites. We also got American comics, like Superman, and Batman, but they were thick, like books. When you’d finished with them we used to swap.’
Most comics produced a Christmas annual, and this continued throughout the war. At the beginning of the war other books were produced with the war in mind, such as the Black-out Book, designed to be used in the shelters: ‘Here is the ideal companion for those black-out evenings – a volume which has been aptly described as “The One Hundred and One Black-Out Nights’s Entertainment”. Problems which Father will enjoy solving, quiet corners for Mother, puzzles and things to make for the children, games and competitions, nonsense rhymes and brain tests for the entire family’ – it almost makes an air raid sound fun!
Children’s books also continued to be produced, some using the war as a background for their adventures. Richmal Crompton’s hero William Brown had a wonderful chance to exercise his ‘talents’, in William and the ARP (1939) later published as William’s Bad Resolution, William and the Evacuees (1940) later published as William the Film Star, William Does His Bit (1941), William Carries On (1942), and William and the Brains Trust (1945). Among other things, William manages to have fun helping refugees, in air-raid shelters, collecting salvage and chasing suspected spies, hoarders and black marketeers, as well as causing trouble for an air-raid warden, the Auxiliary Fire Service and, of course, the police.
Enid Blyton continued to produce children’s books throughout the war, although the war itself was rarely mentioned in them. Her output was prolific, with over 100 titles published between 1939 and 1945. Some were for smaller children, such as Five O’Clock Tales (1941) and Enid Blyton’s Happy Story Book (1942). For older girls, she produced, among others, the St Clare’s series of books, the first, The Twins at St Clare’s, appearing in 1941, followed through to The Fifth Formers of St Clare’s (1945); St Clare’s was a girls’s boarding school which the war seems to have passed completely by. For boys and girls the Famous Five appeared in Five on a Treasure Island (1942), Five Go Adventuring Again (1943), Five Run Away Together (1944) and Five Go to Smugglers’ Top (1945).
W.E. Johns’s hero, Biggles, once again took to the air – although he would by now have been well into his forties, having become a fighter ace in the First World War – in eleven wartime books, spanning almost every corner of the war. Titles included Biggles Secret Agent (1940), Biggles Defies the Swastika (1941), Biggles Sweeps the Desert (1942) and Biggles in Borneo (1943).
In 1941, Johns introduced a
new female character, Worrals, in Worrals of the WAAF. She went on to appear in Worrals Flies Again (1942), Worrals Carries On (1942), Worrals on the Warpath (1943), Worrals Goes East (1944) and Worrals of the Islands (1945).
Malcolm Saville began writing at this time, publishing his first book Mystery at Witched in 1943, followed by Seven White Gates (1944), Trouble at Townsend (1945) and The Gay Dolphin Adventure (1945), which has lost, or perhaps gained, something in the changing use of language over the years.
RADIO
The BBC had been broadcasting television programmes since August 1932, but television sets were available only to the rich – for the vast majority of people the radio, or the wireless as it was called, was the main form of home entertainment. It was on the wireless that most people heard the Prime Minister announce that Britain was at war. Television broadcasts ceased immediately, and the radio schedules were changed - a new version of the Radio Times was even rushed out on Monday 4 September with the new schedules in. The children’s programmes were broadcast in Children’s Hour, between 5 and 6 o’clock, every day but Sunday. The original choice for that Monday, the first day of the war, was scheduled as:
Another story of Samuel the Snail
Some favourite gramophone records
The cases of Constable Crush
The best and easiest way to keep fish
There is a saying that truth is the first casualty of war. On Wednesday 6 September children’s programmes were back, but only for half an hour, and so they remained throughout the war – they were still called Children’s Hour, so in that sense the Radio Times was, in a way, correct, but the children were not fooled. However, this was partly made up for by the fact that an edition of Children’s Hour was introduced on Sundays.