Growing Up In WWII

When the 2nd world war was started I was 13 years of age. I should have stayed on at school until I was 16 year. My school was taken over as a fire station. So my education was finished. There was a school opened up by the authority, but it was just useless more or less a child minding service, all children were mixed, and the standard of education was nothing like the high standards of my previous school. After a few weeks I left, I was always hard working and I did what part time jobs I could get to earn a few shilling. At 14 years I started full time work, at Kennedy’s cooked meats and sausages shop, at Rye Lane, Peckham. Just after beginning work the Blitz started, there were food shortages, and long queues. The shops got together and started a voluntary fire-watching group. There was a dozen or so shops working together, and my brother, Derek, and I volunteered. We were both under aged, but were accepted, Derek was 15 and myself just 14. We got paid five shillings a night plus supper. You slept when you could when things got quiet during the night. There was a full time fire watcher, who stayed awake all night, and woke you up when things happened, we found it an adventure, we would put a bucket of sand over the incendary bombs to put them out. All main roads in those days were wooden tarred blacks and soon caught alight.

We were stationed in Mullers fish shop in Rye Land, Peckham and did one night a week, but my brother and myself, always were on standby to help out if some one could not attend and we would earn an extra five shillings, 25 pence in today’s money.

When I was 15 I left Kennedy’s to train as a typewriter mechanic with my brothers. I joined the Home Guard at 15, Dads Army along with my brother Derek who was 16. We should have been 18 to join but just said we were 18 and we were in. We trained in the Drill Hall in Linden Grove, Nunhead Lane, Peckham, London, people called it Dads Army, and it was also Lads Army as most of the younger soldiers were in the forces. There were many older men who had served in the 1st World War and they were great guys. We did not have much equipment and most of what we had was obsolete. Our prized possession was a Spigot Mortar, which would have been useless in action but we were all keen. I was a crack shot at hand grenade throwing so I was made an EY rifleman. It was a converted Lee Enfield rifle with a steel cup fitted on it to put the grenade in and was bound with copper wire on the stock to strengthen it. You did not fire it from the shoulder but fired it like a mortar. I have never ever seen another one like it but there must have been many more. We were shown sticky bombs and how to use them — you stuck them on the side of enemy tanks and vehicles. We used to do guard duty at Heber Road School, East Dulwich; we had weekend maneuvers some times at the Scout camp at Down in Kent.

With all this we carried on normal lives, carried out work and enjoyed life as teenagers do. My brother, Derek, was put into a rocket gun anti aircraft unit; he spent one night a week on duty. In my sixteenth year I left the Home Guard and worked as a steel erector, or iron fighter, for a couple of months I worked the ground then I went aloft as I had a good head for heights. For this I was paid a mans wage working for Bolton and Paul of Norwich in their steel erection gang. I worked at Miles Master Aerodrome putting up steel hangers and assembly lines. Miles Master built a modern two seater training aircraft and Tommy Roes was a test pilot there; he was a 1st World War pilot. He once gave me a flight — I was live ballast — up to test the new aircraft for its weight load.

Just before my 18th birthday, I was balloted as a Bevin Boy so I went off to the coalmines. I did my training at Hordon and Easington Colliery I then went on to training at Pelton Fell pit in County Durham. It was an old pit almost derelict, full of Victorian pit gear, a time warp in mining. I worked with an old minor named Armstrong; he was a lovely man and showed me every job in the pit, which I found interesting. I had a pony named Joker, I found the miners a wonderful work force but the Bevin Boy scheme was a flop, the brainchild of Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour. The hostel we were billeted to was run like a borstal institute as the manager of the hostel was a warden from a reform school. We paid £1.50 a week to the hostel for our keep which left us just a few shillings pocket money. We formed up a Bevin Boys association the regular miners would have none of it and said it was a break away union and threatened to strike so the Bevin Boys association was out lawed and its leader was sent to prison for a month. At the end of the war the Bevin Boys scheme was in a shambles. Some stayed behind in the pits, I was put into the Army.

I felt I had a lovely teenage life, but looking back we had to grow up fast. I could fill page after page with detail but have kept this brief.

This was my war, looking back I feel I was like a cat with 9 lives.

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