For the Duration - Chapter Five

Chapter Five
THEY BAIN’T OXFORDS

AS THE FIRST WINTER of the war merged into spring, the long heralded and much feared air raids had not occurred, and the enemy was still across the English Channel. With time, people had adapted as best they could to their new situations. Servicemen learned to cope with boredom in unfamiliar territory, while their womenfolk somehow countered loneliness at home.
Bampton’s population was undergoing a change. By the spring of 1940, considerably fewer evacuee children were living in the village than had been the case before Christmas. Perhaps little Johnny’s postcard home read like a distress signal; or young Mavis had not written for two months; or, by reading between the lines of Mrs. Grimshaw’s letters, Tommy’s mum knew that all was not well.
Whether for reasons such as these, or because they missed their children, or simply out of curiosity, more and more cockney parents managed to visit their children in Bampton, and to meet the foster-parents. Friendships sometimes developed between town and country guardians, but more frequently such visits led to the return to London of Johnny, Mavis or Tommy. The government tried to counter this trend, and lurid posters warned mothers against letting their offspring return to the cities, but these attempts were largely ignored. After all, where was the danger? How was London worse than Bampton? Hadn’t they been wrong about the air raids?
If I ever heard on the wireless anything about the state of the war, it was by chance, for I made no effort to listen to the news. Mary had several popular daily newspapers delivered, but the only thing I recall looking at was the comic strip Jane, in the Daily Mirror. This long-limbed, lissom creature was invariably accompanied by her dachshund on its leash — (was it called Fritz?) — and looking back over her shoulder at cheekily smiling servicemen.
I may not have read newspapers, but I read comics hungrily; comics, and the boys’ papers consisting entirely of serials, in small print. “Penny dreadfuls”, these latter were called, and “bloods” was the term used for them in the boarding-school which I attended a year or so later. Perhaps “blood-and-thunder” is its origin.
Of the comics, Beano and The Dandy were my favourites, with characters like Desperate Dan always embroiled in impossible action, and Weary Willie and Tired Tim (a couple of lazy tramps), touching a sympathetic chord in me. What I really liked, however, was to settle down somewhere — anywhere — with an assorted pile of Champions and Hotspurs, Wizards and Magnets. Most of the lads that I knew were similarly addicted. We would swap bundles among one another, and the supply never ran out, with fresh editions churned out every week for us to devour.
The same old pre-war diet of adventure was there — the Canadian Mounties, the Foreign Legion, exploration in the tropics or the frozen north — but now the mixture was frequently spiced with the intrigue and action of warfare. That dashing and glamorous hero of the skies, Rockfist Rogan, R.A.F., had taken over in his Spitfire from the Great War’s aces in their biplanes. Even Billy Bunter and the rest of the Greyfriars crowd found their lives being touched with the villainy of espionage.
A bookcase in Mary’s front room provided a further source of reading. Bert had subscribed to a set of omnibus volumes, a uniform collection of red-covered books, of which I grew fond. Each contained fifty stories of the same type or theme: westerns, war, humour, adventure, exploration, and so on. The one that I pulled from the shelves the most often was titled: Fifty Great Disasters and Tragedies that Shocked the World. The Titanic sank; the River Tay railway-bridge collapsed; the Hindenburg came down in flames, and an earthquake devastated San Francisco. Fifty stories: there were vicarious thrills and action aplenty in that book.
I read the companion volume on Bravery in the Great War, too. Were all wars like this? Would Bert experience such things? No, this war was clearly different. The men had put on their uniforms and left home, but they weren’t fighting. There had been a lot of talk about air raids, but our skies were peaceful, weren’t they?

*

Summer was approaching, and one sunny afternoon I was dawdling along Bridge Street towards the Market Square, when I saw an unusual sight. I had reached the stretch of road along which the dealers used to pace their horses during the fair, demonstrating the animals’ style and fire.
Bampton’s fair and its associated horse fair were not held during the war, but the days of the fair had been highlights of our pre-war summer holidays. Stalls, sideshows and rides filled the Market Square, and spilled down its approach roads. Bampton swarmed with fairground people and gypsies, these latter — with their caravans, scarves and swarthy appearance — suggesting wildness, romance and far-away places. The gypsies were very much to the fore when the horses were showing their paces. So much noise, colour and vitality...
On this day, however, the roadway was empty. Bampton was lazily quiet. No horses were tethered against the wall. No gypsies or farmers were arguing the merits or value of the beasts. But, wait — what were those men doing there, lolling on the footpath, and slumped against the wall? They looked like soldiers, but never had I seen such scruffily dressed soldiers.
Some were actually in shirtsleeves, and several had their battle-dress tunics unbuttoned. Some wore forage caps; others were bareheaded. And they were silent. Their faces were expressionless as they leaned against the warm strength of the wall. They were certainly the most unsoldierly-looking soldiers that I had seen in Bampton. They looked blankly ahead, at nothing. I passed by in the roadway only feet from them, but no eyes flickered.
Next day I learned a new word, Dunkirk. The men whom I had seen had simply been exhausted; physically spent and emotionally numbed. For the first time, an episode in the war properly registered with me. The evacuation was being hailed as miraculous, defeat or no, and a Sunday shortly afterwards was proclaimed a National Day of Prayer, in thanksgiving. Bampton church was full, that morning.
The vicar’s words were stirringly patriotic, and I was much moved by the feeling in the church, and by the full-throated singing:

“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.”

During the service, eyes were drawn to the soldiers in the congregation, but these men had not been in France. Those lost-looking men in Bridge Street had been with the B.E.F., though, and now they had left Bampton, sent to regather their strength and spirit at home on leave, up and down the land. As the column of men swung away from the green outside the church, their parade over, scattered applause broke out involuntarily from the onlookers. The “Dunkirk spirit” was a phrase as yet uncoined, but the khaki-clad shoulders squared with pride, and the men’s step became a touch more jaunty.

*

That summer, we would sometimes cycle along the Buckland road towards Tadpole Bridge, which spanned the River Thames. A few hundred yards downstream was a favourite picnic site, euphemistically known as Sandy Beach. It was considered a safe paddling spot for young children, as the gritty river bed shelved gently from the bank, yet it afforded some challenge to older ones, as a deeper channel had to be swum if the other bank were to be reached.
This opposite shore was a muddy contrast, a pock-marked watering place for a herd of dairy cows. I was to make this crossing as a teenager, when I felt mildly surprised to think that it had once seemed so formidable a feat. We then swam lazily upstream as far as the bridge.
In 1940, however, I could not swim. We would bathe, though, and afterwards we would lie in the sun to dry, experiencing that delicious sensation when the body is immersed in warmth, when waves of heat lap the skin. The grass might prickle beneath, but nothing could spoil this blissful lying under the hot sun.
We would lie and talk; or dream our dreams; while the high-pitched shouts and laughter of children at play in the shallows, and the rougher cries of the older boys at their teasing and horse-play blended comfortably in the background. Much of the time, too, the engine notes of aeroplanes would be present. A lazy droning from high, high in the heavens best suited such a mood.
We prided ourselves on our plane spotting, even though we often had nothing to contend with but trainer aircraft. A Spitfire speeding across the sky, wing glinting as it caught the sun, always lifted our hearts; but we still watched the leisurely Anson, and followed the steady progress of the ubiquitous Airspeed Oxford. The Harvard, too, buzzing stridently, seemed ever in our skies. Its tone was not at all relaxing.
I think that low flying was rarely legitimate: it was, however, not uncommon. One summer afternoon, a demonstration of hedge-hopping by two Harvard pilots wrecked the peace at Sandy Beach. The planes first appeared from downstream, flying very low, and apparently following the river. They were over and beyond us with a whoosh and a roar, almost before we were aware of what had happened. A few startled cries turned to relieved laughter as the planes disappeared upstream.
Perhaps a minute later, they were back. This time they approached the river from behind us, across the fields, and we heard them coming. Knowing that they would pass low over us, we were prepared for that heart-stopping moment. But that did not make it less unpleasant. Playing follow-the-leader, the Harvards made four or five passes directly over our picnic spot, the last time diving in terrifying fashion at the little patch of sandy shore, swooping skywards at the last moment and banking left, downriver. A final waggle of their wings, and they were gone.
Nobody had appreciated the pilots’ skill. The flyers probably thought that they did no harm — a bit of fun — but they left behind them some sobbing, distraught little children, at least one near-hysterical young mother, and some shaken lads and girls. We boasted afterwards of the event to our friends, but we had felt real fear.
“Silly sods! Might’ve killed someone!” Derek’s words summed up our thoughts, as we made our way back along the riverbank towards Tadpole Bridge.

*

One evening a few weeks later, a group of boys was gathered near the War Memorial, on the edge of the Market Square. Some straddled the crossbars of their bicycles; others sat rocking gently on the low iron chain which, looped between low supports, encircled the memorial.
“Hey! What be they?”
Someone had spotted three planes directly overhead, in formation, reflecting the late sun. They were flying high, and we considered what they could be. They were not single-engined fighters, nor were they Whitleys or Wellingtons, the bombers we were most accustomed to.
“They bain’t Oxfords, be they.” Simmo wasn’t asking, he was clarifying his viewpoint.
“Blenheims, that’s what they be!” This was from Mike, an older brother of my friend, Derek. The identification was beyond me, so I said nothing: but Mike knew what he was talking about.
A series of dull explosions and a confusion of sharper ones told us that Simmo had been correct — they certainly were not Oxfords — and that Mike’s assessment was definitely wrong. German aircraft! The enemy had flown directly over Bampton, and we had seen them! The action at the aerodrome was a couple of miles away, and it made almost no impression on us; but we had seen enemy aeroplanes for the first time, and heard our first bombs drop.
Firemen converged on Brize Norton from Bampton and other nearby villages and, during the next day or two, news of the damage and casualties gradually spread. Several hangars were hit, and one burnt out, and an unknown number of planes on the ground had been damaged or destroyed. Some airmen had been injured (again, no one seemed to know precisely how many), and two civilian workers had been killed.
There had been no warning, and the raiders had been able to drop their bomb loads and depart with very little hostility directed at them. Overall, the raid was part of the German campaign against English airfields. The war was no longer a phoney one.

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