Home Front

I am Albert Stanley Massow, born 4th November 1913 at Cressy Place, Stepney in East London.
I left school in 1927 and trained as a plumber. In 1930 I and 2 friends, Dickie Aldridge and Teddy Rundle, joined the Territorial Army, attracted by the money. I was only 17 at the time so fibbed about my age but was soon caught out and my father had to be persuaded to sign my papers for me. Very many years later I discovered details of his, not very distinguished army career, which probably accounted for his initial reluctance for me to join.

You signed on for 3 years at a time. At the end of 3 years I was romantically attached and didn’t re-sign, my friends did, I never saw Dickie again, many years later I bumped into Teddy at Liverpool Street station and he told me after surviving the evacuation from Dunkirk and the Italian campaign he served the colours for many years before he was able to resume his civilian life.
I married in 1937 and lived in leafy Leyton.
In 1939 I had been working for a property company in Stamford Hill as a plumber, repairing the many houses they owned and rented. Then I went to J.F. Matthews of Forest Gate. They did contract work for the Railways and sometimes in the London Docks.
The war started very slowly but after the bombing started we were working on the Railway works in Devons Road, Bow to repair air raid damage, and re repair it after successive raids. These important workshops were used to maintain the locomotives that ran many of the services into the London Docks.
During the blitz we were in our air raid shelter in our garden. One night a bomb struck with a “whelp” between our house and the one behind. It didn’t go off. Our neighbour Mrs. Dare, called out to see if we were OK, before belatedly emerged. Later we went onto the street to see red lights and a policeman who wanted to know what we were doing. I told him it’s where we lived, but we were told to leave. We went back into the house dressed up in the best clothes we had and went to friends in Suffolk for a while.
My sister Lillian, was killed in an air raid in October 1940. My wife came to see me at work and told me to go to my family as she knew instinctively something was wrong, but not what. Eventually my sister was found and identified by the nail polish she was wearing in defiance of our mother’s instructions.
My cousin had been killed the night before. After coming of duty as a fireman in London with a mate, too tired to go down the shelter, they slept in the house, which was bombed. I didn’t find the chronology of these events until the advent of the internet.
As well as working we were required for fire watch duties at regular intervals at home and at work. 10pm until 4 am. At home, I used to walk around with a bucket of sand and a stirrup pump to pick up the incendiaries. My wife accompanied me on many occasions.
The wooden sign on the house and the stirrup pump associated with these duties was still on the house when it was pulled down in the 1960’s.
The menfolk in a neighbouring house were frightened to venture out on these adventures and refused to take part, their house was the first one in the street to be damaged by the bombing.
At work for some reason we were required to remain indoors. One of our mates couldn’t stand being inside so ignored these instructions and stayed outside. One night after the raids he had disappeared, we assume he was a victim but we never knew for sure. The Firewatch duties were really tiring on top of a full working day.

Subsequently I was directed to the new airfield construction at Finmere in Buckinghamshire. The conditions and the terms and conditions would be unacceptable today. We worked 6 days a week and every 8 weeks were allowed a weekend pass to go home. I Remember the tortuous train journeys from Marylebone to darkest Bucks with its, I think, 19, stops. After a while, in the company of the site agent, who I knew anyway, and who lived near my sister, regular weekend trips home were the norm. The agents brother was Transport Manager with access to an RAF lorry.
Every Saturday this vehicle was dispatched to London to pick up supplies and I cadged a lift home but I had to make sure to be at the pick up point for the return journey at 6 sharp on Sunday evening.
After one weekend away we returned to find 4 people had died, in a hut in which normally 24 men would have slept, from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. It was a nice September evening the Tortoise stove had been left with its lid off, the windows were open but the people below the window sill height had died. 2 of the men shouldn’t have been there anyway. It was subsequently discovered that there were no holes in the dampers and I was ordered to remove all the dampers from all the stoves, this problem effected every military installation in the country.
There was a very thorough coroner’s enquiry. 2 of the victims were 18
Year old labourers from Leytonstone, who I knew.
Conditions were primitive, we were working in the mud building this runway. The mud is the thing that sticks in my mind, working in ordinary boots. We didn’t have any rubber boots because they were on rationing, so we went on strike.
Ernest Bevin came to see us and warned us that we would all be called up. The site agent was, shortly afterwards. Dictatorial politicians,
Nothing changes!
I thought if I am going to get called up I might as well hand my notice in and have a couple of weeks off. It also meant I would be called up from home not Finmere, which had advantages.

Back in Leyton I went to the Labour Exchange and there was a notice asking for people with Marine experience, I reported was interviewed and recorded as having special skills and was sent to the London Docks.
Here we were engaged on repairing merchant and military battle damaged ships. There was a French frigate with a crew which seemed they would have preferred to be in France. A French liner which repeatedly returned to port with faults, the crew didn’t seem to have the heart for the task.
After working all night in the bilges of another ship, removing some pipework for repair, I emerged in the morning and saw see was flying a red flag. I asked my mate what the red flag signified, “It’s carrying ammunition” he replied. One day a ship came in for repair with so many holes in it, it was a wonder it still floated, but they were all wanted and they were repaired.
Another time we were regaled by stories of someone claiming to be a safe cracker and how he’d been dropped into France more than once, to use his talents. I wasn’t convinced, even when he opened the ward room safe on the warship we were on. Many years later he was on the television recounting the same stories.
I was in the docks working on a Polish destroyer when the Yalta agreement became known. We wondered why the ship wasn’t armed. The reason for which became quite clear when the Poles discovered the terms of the agreement, and rebelled.
In June 1944 I had to go aboard the troopship Neuraylia, berthed in the London Docks, to do some repairs in the engine room.

Whilst searching to find a route through for some pipework I discovered a void in which were hidden thousands of cigarettes and spirits. I took some of these out and started giving them away to the soldiers on board. However, as soon as one of the officers found out, the cigarettes were thrown overboard and soon there were hundreds of packs of them floating in the dock. The ship had been stranded for a while previously, and the then occupants, had helped themselves and hidden the bounty in the expectation of retrieving them later.
Talking to one of the soldiers he told me they were off to invade France, he asked me to phone his wife as he had overstayed his previous leave and hadn't been able to get back home. His wife was with her family and her father was a lockkeeper on the Thames. I subsequently did phone them to tell them that the soldier was OK but I wasn't able to tell them where he was or what he might be doing.
When the ship was repaired it sailed and I stayed aboard whilst it made its way down the Thames. At the estuary I was amazed to see hundreds of ships, LCT's and the like, assembled ready to take part in the invasion of France. It was an incredible sight. I left the ship at Southend, via the very scary ladders down the side of the ship, and travelled back to London.
I worked on the Baffin and the Ridley which were commercial ships converted to carry the Pipe line under the Ocean, known as PLUTO. I saw the pipe being made at the Callender Cable works in Woolwich but I didn’t know what it was. There was always some cover story which we believed, most of the time. I remember working, repairing the Polish ship Sorbiesky and the Westernland a Dutch ship. The Westernland was the ship we worked on when other work was short, it remained in the docks for months. I remember parts of the engine on the deck, then one day we went to work and it was gone!

Later during the early days of the invasion, we were in the company of a Polish army preparing to go to help in the battle for Caen. A more tough, aggressive and determined group of people it would difficult to imagine.

Volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm in 1944 but was in hospital with Plurosy when the call up papers came. Was off work for nearly a year.

When the first Doodlebugs were being fired I was in Grove Road in Leyton just after one had come down, it didn’t go off. I gave the motor a kick, it looked like a washing machine motor, then, someone told me it was a rocket, I didn’t kick it anymore!

After the European war finished I received notification that I wouldn’t be required for service in the European war but would be for the Pacific war, then the first Atom bomb dropped!

My brother Stanley was a commando. I asked him why he had volunteered for such a risky unit. He replied that most people from East London joined the Middlesex Regiment. The officers of the regiment were far more interested in their Sam Browns, parades and appearance than training properly and were likely to get them killed. If that was the case, they might just as well get the extra training, pay, and a better chance of survival. My brother lived to be well over 80.
Another brother John as an 18 year old was sent to India and my older Brother Charley was in a restricted occupation driving large lorries around the country.

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