A Young Boy's Early War Life

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Doreen Partridge of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Vernon Ledgard and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

PW 173 Vernon Ledgard
Part 1
A young boy’s early war life
Yorkshire , Elland
I was 13 years of age when the war was declared on September 3rd 1939, it was very exciting! Initially the only change was the ”Black Out”. All curtains had to be tightly drawn so that no light would show and street lighting was mainly non-existent. All vehicles had to have heavily masked headlights. Everyone was issued with a gas mask, which had to be carried in a cardboard box with a string shoulder strap.

My parents and I were at this time, living at the top of Exley Lane in Elland in a semi-detached house, which we had recently purchased new for £500. Elland lies between Halifax and Huddersfield, Yorkshire.

The government offered householders a chance to have a steel corrugated Anderson Air Raid Shelters. These were to be erected in the garden by digging out a four-feet deep pit of the necessary size. The shelter was placed in the hole and the soil was placed on the top to further insulate against shrapnel. My father refused the offer as he felt we would be more comfortable and just as safe under our solid oak dining table.

The first ten months of the war were uneventful and became known as the “Phoney War”. A very popular song of the time was, “We’re going to hang out the washing on the Seigfried Line”, this referred to the German first line of defence north of France and directly opposite the French Marginot Line. These were said to be impregnable with its underground chambers and heavy fortifications.

Everyone was keen to listen to the news on the wireless. Reports were mainly upon our air attacks in Heligoland and Kiel Canal area of North West Germany.

In the summer of 1940, there was a radical change. Germany attacked Holland, Belgium and North West France. This resulted in our evacuation from Dunkirk; thousands of troops returned with insufficient accommodation for them. The government requested any householders with a spare bedroom to accommodate some troop temporarily. Two British soldiers were taken by a couple living nearby us and they stayed there for three weeks.
Talk now centred on a possible invasion across the English Channel. Barges from the low countries were being assembled in French ports to transport the German troops. The greatest fear, however, was from the German paratroops, this instigated the forming of the civilian unit called the L.D.V. (Local Defence Volunteers), jokingly referred to as the “LOOK, DUCK and VANISH”. Men over the age of eighteen were encouraged to join and my father volunteered, I went with him to the local Territorial Army Depot where, after signing on, he was given a L.D.V. armband and asked to report one evening per week for training. Anyone owning a shotgun, sword or any lethal weapon was encouraged to bring them along when they were training. We were very short of small arms as most of these weapons had been lost at Dunkirk.

I left school at fifteen and became an apprentice in the drawing office of a civil engineering firm in Lockwood, Huddersfield, at the princely sum of ten shillings per week (50p in today’s money). On each working day, which in those days included Saturday mornings, I had to walk into Elland to catch a trolley bus to Huddersfield, then I walked to Lockwood and of course the reverse at the end of the day. I was also required to attend an architectural course three nights a week at Halifax Technical College. To do this, I had to walk to the bottom of Salterhebble Hill near Siddal, catch a bus to Halifax, followed by another long walk to the college, and of course the reverse to return home. I assess that I was walking at least twenty miles per week for work and evening classes.

All buses and public transport had their windows blacked out by being painted on the interior. Small holes had been scratched on the window so that people could see which bus stop we had arrived at; it was not unusual for people to alight at the wrong stop.
When I reached the age of sixteen, I was required to spend one night a week in the firm’s office as a firewatcher. We had a room with a wireless, three bunks, several buckets of sand and three stirrup pumps. The stirrup pumps were designed to fit in a bucket full of water and by pumping, would squirt water through a rubber tube. All this was to be used to put out German incendiary bombs, which could be dropped on the premises. We were paid a half a crown (2/6 now 12½p) for this duty. This may seem a trivial amount today, but the average wage at this time was around £4 a week or less.

I had been saving up for sometime to buy a second-hand 250cc. Velocette motorcycle. Petrol was severely rationed but a small amount of petrol coupons were available for anyone owning a vehicle. This allowed me to go by motorcycle one day a week to my work place in Lockwood. I did not have to pass a test, as manpower was not available for driving test instructors.

A law was then passed that all men over the age of 16 had to join one of the National Defence Forces, such as Air Raid Wardens, Home Guard etc., I volunteered to be a dispatch rider in the National Fire Service. This allowed me extra rations of petrol for my duties. I was given a heavy navy blue uniform and a peaked hat with a chinstrap. No one wore protective clothing in those days, only a pair of goggles. If it was wet weather, we covered ourselves with an old raincoat.

I was required to report for duty one night per week from dusk to dawn to be available to take messages in case of an Air Raid. Our accommodation was in the basement of a house in Northgate, Huddersfield. In this room were some wooden bunks and in one corner a pile of old blankets for our use. These blankets were riddled with fleas, which are very difficult to rid oneself of.

I was at this time, learning to play the trombone and occasionally, got a Saturday night gig which helped my finances. I was particularly friendly with a young man called Roy, also a musician; he played the string bass so we had much in common. Roy had a powerful Norton motorcycle which was his pride and joy, however, in those days, motorcycles had a tubular frame and Roy found that his had cracked, as no spares were available, Roy had the frame braised to repair it. One day, whilst travelling at speed, the frame severed and Roy’s leg was smashed on a telegraph pole and had to be amputated. A terrible tragedy for a young man of only eighteen years.

My teenage life was a stream of unending activity; besides night school, homework and all my other activities, I was needing to find thirty minutes a day to practice my instrument.
Many nights the German bombers would drone their way overhead making their way to Manchester and Liverpool, but luckily few bombs were dropped locally. One night, there was a great deal of aerial activity; I was standing in our garden and had a clear view over Halifax which was some miles away, and I saw the eruption of bombs, later finding that some people had been killed and there had been damage to several houses. I also saw several bombs exploding in fields at Southowram about a half a mile away, possibly the bombers were just getting rid of them.

Pr-BR

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