Dad In The London Rescue Service

Dad In the London Rescue Service

The following true story is as told to me by my father Charles Harte who was in charge of a rescue service depot in London during World War Two

“Well I’ll tell you a bit about my time in the rescue service, there’s a few stories there. I remember the fire of my birthday, the bombs were dropping like stink all around us and London Bridge to Elephant and Castle was ablaze. I’d never seen such a fire, I thought the whole of London was on fire. Fortunately there were no injuries. The amazing thing were the workers, they were terrific. It was Bermondsey you see and that was a real tough area, the workers were tough and so were the women. They were real tough women and I take my hat off to them.

Another time I remember was when a bomb had dropped at the side of the Town Hall and the building had completely collapsed with people under it. We managed to tunnel through and get two out but we could hear a third that we couldn’t get to. We could hear him moaning and propped the building up as we tried to find him using strong torches to guide us.

Two of us eventually got through to him, myself and Carter (one of the carpenters in my squad). It was stupid what we were doing really, things were collapsing all around us but we tried to move things as gently as possible with Carter propping up all the time. There was nothing else we could do though but get this poor fella out if possible. We gave him a bottle of water and tried to bring him round. We saw that his leg had been caught under a huge beam so we daren’t move him because if the beam was moved the whole house would come down.

We went back out and called a doctor, “I can’t go in there” he said “You have to. We can’t move him because the whole place will come down so you need to have a look at his leg and tell us what we can do.” We persuaded him to come in with us and he had a look at the situation. “There’s only one thing you can do” he said “You’ll have to cut his leg as close to the beam as possible to save as much as you can of the leg” So the doctor injected him to put him to sleep and sterilised one of our saws as it was the only thing we had to use. Carter said he’d do the cutting so me and Carter went in and managed to cut his leg two or three inches below the knee. I was surprised how quickly we were through, no sooner had Carter started cutting that the saw had gone straight through. We got him out to the waiting ambulance which took him to hospital.

Two or three months later he came up to the depot and thanked us, thanked Carter for what he’d done and said he’d saved his life. Carter got a medal for doing that which he’s got framed at home I understand.

They were good men at that depot, I remember they used to have half hour passes and used them to go off to the pub because there was nowhere else to go. Getting them to stay in was a real mission because there was nothing to do so I had the idea to hire a hall and arranged to buy a billiards table, pool table, darts etc with me going guarantor for it all. We charged sixpence a week for anyone who wanted to join the hall. Well people said we were mad, “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. With men like this they’ll tear it to pieces” they said. “no they won’t” I said and they didn’t. They looked after like it was gold dust. Whenever people leant across the table instead of using the rest someone would hit them across the neck with a cue and by the time the war finished the table was still in pretty good nick. The advantage was they never had to go out at night as there was so much to do in the hall. They saved money by not going down the pub and we always knew we had a full complement so it worked out for everyone.

I complained quite a lot to stick up for the men there, the food was awful and I wrote in saying the food wasn’t fit for a pig to eat, this sort of thing. They soon got fed up of me and one day they told me I was being transferred to another depot, the depot in West Square.

When I told the men what was happening they said “do you want to go?” “Course I don’t” I said “We’ll go on strike then” they said. That was a shocking thing to say, especially during war. They would have still gone out on raids though but they said they weren’t going to clean their lorries or tools or anything like that. Well that caused quite an uprise. The bloke from County Hall came down and gave me a good dressing down “You can get yourself in serious trouble over this” “I haven’t organised anything” I told him. “I just told the men I was leaving. But really, I like it here, I’ve got this place running smooth, why should I move?” The second force soon said they’d strike as well and in the end the blokes at County Hall came to the conclusion that they’d let me stay… and the food improved as well. So I did do some good for the boys.

Another thing I remember from this period was when we went out on a raid and a woman was trapped in the first floor, the staircase had been blown away so she was screaming at the window. She was thinking about jumping but we shouted to her “get back in, we’ll get you.” so we got the ladders up there and just as I was about to step from the ladder into the window the Gerry’s dropped another bomb up the road and the blast hit me and the ladder and that’s how I got my broken ankle. I think I had three operations before I had it put right and I had to pay for it to be put right .

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