My War 1938 - 1947 Part 2 of 8

1941 / 1942/1943

In January 1941, one Saturday morning, I was in our back garden chopping fire wood when I heard footsteps approaching up our side path. It was two friends of Arthur, who asked for my Mum. She was not in, having gone into Middlesbrough shopping, and would not be back for another hour or so. They then told me that another friend of Arthur’s, a young man called Gordon Bruce, who had gone into the RAF, had been reported missing. Since he had just been home on Christmas leave, and only returned to service a few days previously, this was quite a shock. I told them I would tell her as soon as she returned home, and they left me. As soon as she came back I told her, and she went up to see Gordon’s mother, and to see if there was anything she could do to help. Gordon’s body, and the wreck of his plane, was not found for another week or two. It appeared that, having qualified as a Sergeant Pilot, he had been posted to a squadron somewhere in the midlands to complete his training in readiness for full active service. Out on a practice flight he and other members of his flight had entered a thick cloud. The others all came out, but not Gordon, who had somehow lost himself. The irony was that his radio was working perfectly for transmission but not at all for reception, so he was unable to receive signals from the ground, when they might have been able to help him to discover his position. At last he ran out of petrol, and tried to glide down to land on a place which appeared from the air to be level. It was only when it was too late to take any remedial action, even if his engine had been working, that he could see that it was in fact very uneven, and the danger he was in. As it was, he crashed and was killed. He was the first old boy of the school to loose his life in the war.

This was my School Certificate year (the then equivalent of O Levels), so I worked as diligently as I could until the summer. I sat all my exams, hoped I had got them all right, and then set myself to occupy my time by acting as a sort of deputy assistant voluntary air raid warden cum fire watcher until I could join the Home Guard. In fact, I passed in all subjects, with six distinctions, two credits and a pass.

There was, of course, no summer holiday that August, but instead I went up Wensleydale to a farm near Hawes to help with the harvest, .Mr Dent, the farmer, believed that I was there to work, as I did myself, and accordingly he expected me to be able to handle a pitch-fork as adroitly, and to work as fast, as he and his Irish labourer did together. It was quite an experience to be alone in the Mow (as they called it) while enormous masses of hay were pitched in for me to Strow (again as they called it) all on my own. At least they got a rest when I was completely buried by the stuff and the farmer had to come and rescue me. I wished I could have had a rest too! Still, we all learn from our experiences.

I was there for some three weeks, and when I left the farmer gave me a small wage (very small), but I expect it was all I was worth.

In September I started working towards my Higher School Certificate, and also went down to the Police Station in the Town Hall to register my intention of joining the Home Guard. I was a little surprised to find that so far as the police were concerned that was all they wanted to know. Which unit I joined was up to me, so I talked it over with my Father, and he suggested that I joined the Marton detachment. Since he was an officer there I could see that there could be advantages for me, so I did just that. I went up to the Home Guard headquarters in the middle of Marton village, where I was registered as a member of one of the two platoons stationed there, issued with a rifle and bayonet, which I had to keep at home, and for which I was responsible for maintaining in readiness for action, a battledores suit and forage cap, a Green Howards capbadge, and shoulder flashes to sew on the sleeves of my tunic. They had no boots, so my Grandfather very kindly gave me an old pair of his. These were not regulation pattern boots, but they served their purpose until a pair of ammunition boots which fitted me arrived in the stores.

We were on call 24 hours a day in case of emergencies, but as a regular training schedule we paraded every Sunday morning, and in the evening once or twice a week. It is surprising what a lot of work you can get through in such a short period. Drills, of course, were the first things we concentrated on, and it was not long before we learned the basics of parade ground drill, techniques of how to fire a rifle (preferably accurately enough to hit a target), bayonet drill, how to fire and maintain a Lewis Gun (the Great War portable machine gun which we used instead of the Bren Gun which was used by the army), the revolver, the Blacker Bombard (a heavy spigot mortar reckoned to be able to ‘knock out’ most tanks), and another mortar, whose name I forget, which fired glass bottles filled with ignitable substances mixed with phosphorus, so that it would ignite as soon as the bottle was broken. Later, and only occasionally, we were allowed to practice throwing live No. 36 grenades (or Mills Bombs, as they were familiarly known). The rifle and machine gun we used was the American .300 in. calibre as used by the US forces in the Great War, but since its mechanism was almost identical with the Lee Enfield small arms weapons of the British Army the same training served for each. Approximately once a week we performed guard duty at the headquarters, reporting there by ten o’clock, mounting guard at that time, and changing sentries regularly until six in the morning, when we stood down and were free to return home.

Life jogged on quite serenely with this routine rapidly becoming second nature to us. If one or more of us was chosen to learn some new skill, such as map reading or first aid, we would be enlisted in to the appropriate class, and be expected to attend it until we had acquired the appropriate level of knowledge.

On Sunday mornings we usually practised battle drill, at first in the cricket field opposite the headquarters , and later, as we became more expert, in the fields and woods surrounding the village. Sometimes we had to dig new trenches when the old ones needed mending or repairing, and sometimes we would be taken on a route march to ensure that we were reasonably fit, and to make certain that we were familiar with the countryside, and with the roads and paths in the area for which we were responsible. Sometimes, on a route march, we would be accompanied by our band , a small collection of drums and bagpipes of which we were very proud. Since there was a regular call-up of men to the army, we had a regular replenishment of recruits from civilian life, so that there was always a change in the composition of the platoons. This also meant that with the regular losses of men to the army, there was a constant need for new junior NCO’s to replace them, so our officers were constantly on the look-out for possible candidates for promotion. I was not untypical in that I was promoted to lance-corporal after less than a year, and to corporal some months later.

We had a very mixed bag of representatives of all sorts of trades. My platoon commander was a draper (Managing Director of a departmental store), and my platoon sergeant was a wholesale fishmonger. One of our corporals was a school teacher, while others occupied all sorts of posts in the iron and steel works, which in those days were the principal employers in the Tees Side area. I, and a few others of my sort of age group, occupied the more junior ranks of the non —commissioned officers. Some of my fellow rankers had served in the army before, at least one in the Boer War., some in the Great War, and at least one in the current war, when he had been a despatch rider at Dunkirk,. only to be taken out of the army to pursue his speciality job in the steel works. I never achieved more than the rank of corporal, but when I was sent on a course to the training depot of our mother regiment, The Green Howards, I was able to wear the stripes of a sergeant without any awkward questions being asked. The course lasted for a week, and proved very valuable to me, the things I learned there proving of considerable value to me when my calling up papers finally arrived.


One thing I did enjoy was the determination of our officers to foster the spirit of comradeship in the ranks by encouraging social meetings. The most popular of these was what we called a ‘Sing Song’. All the members of both platoons, of whatever rank, were encouraged to come to these, and we would all meet at a designated time, on a designated evening, in the biggest room in the headquarters, where a ‘pie and pea supper’ had been ordered. Once all the food had been eaten, and the tables cleared, the volunteer pianist would strike up, and the singing would begin. We sang all sorts of songs: raucus music hall choruses, some of them very old indeed, songs from the Boer War, more from the Great War, and progressively up to the modern ballads we heard on the radio or on stage in the Middlesbrough Empire (the local theatre). Sometimes someone would sing a solo, and at Christmas carols were a popular choice. The only one I remember was an old carol (how old I do not know) which was one of the most popular. I have no recollection of ever having heard it being sung anywhere else. It went -

I saw the old homestead and faces I knew,
I saw England’s valleys and dales,
And I listened with joy,
As I did when a boy,
To the sound of the old village bells.
The fire was burning brightly,
While the snow fell down softly outside,
For the bells were ringing the old year out
And the New Year in.

At last it became evident that I should receive my mobilization instructions before too long, and I went on what would be my last weekend camp near Roseberry Topping. On the Saturday night we had arranged a (by our standards) large night exercise. All went well until the end of the exercise was approaching, when we heard air-raid sirens start up all across the valley, and we knew that there was a raid on Middlesbrough approaching. Two or three of us settled down on a point of vantage half way up the Topping, where we knew we should get a perfect view of whatever was going to happen. Sure enough we soon heard the sound of German bombers approaching, and the whole area was lit up by a succession of flares dropped by the waves of planes attacking us. The defense was ready, with searchlights trying to catch enemy planes in their beams, guns firing from the ground and their shells exploding in the sky, and anti-aircraft rocket batteries sending up huge salvos of rockets, each of them composed of dozens of lethal weapons, aimed at the area of the sky where they hoped their targets would be.

This went on for about two hours before the sound of the enemy engines became fainter, and then died away. From where we were we could see some fires burning, but there were few of them, and we began to feel that so far as we were concerned the show was over. Indeed, it was not until some fifty years later that, while a new railway line was being constructed, the wreck of one of the German planes was found, still with the remains of its crew inside it, buried twenty feet or so underground. At least those airmen received a Christian burial, however long it took to find them.

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