A Potted History of My War Years Part 1

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Donald C. Linder, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A Potted History of My War Years Part 1

By
Donald C. Linder

In September 1939 I was entering my fifth year at school and was expecting to take my School Certificate exams in the summer of 1940. However due to the mounting crisis in the political arena, it was decided to evacuate the school to a safer area, as war was imminent.

I was living in Gillingham in Kent at the time, and being only thirty miles from London, and with the Naval Dockyard only a couple of miles away in Chatham, the Medway area was considered to be a likely target.

I believe we boarded our train on Sept 2nd and set off for Sandwich, which is the nearest part of the UK to the Continent. On a really clear day it was possible to see with the naked eye, land on the other side of the channel - a distance of some 20 miles.

On the afternoon of Sept 3rd, the school was grouped in an area behind the school we were to share with the locals, and then the Prime Minister Mr. Chamberlain declared war on Germany. This was followed immediately with an air raid warning which turned out to be a false alarm. Many of the lads spent time scrumping apples from a nearby orchard whilst the staff tried to get some sort of organisation into operation. This was most unfortunate, as it turned out, as they had been sprayed by same form of noxious liquid and a large percentage of the school spent the night being very sick.

I was billeted with three other lads in a council house, which meant two to a bed. Our hosts were pleasant enough, but the wife lacked in the cooking department. We lived on a diet of boiled beef and carrots.

I managed to get transferred to another family - a Mrs. Sawkins who had a grown up son and daughter. The son drove a lorry and the daughter worked in a laundry some way out of town. Also with me was one of the sixth formers - a school prefect. This was fortunate as he fell for the daughter, and each night, he would go to town and meet her off the lorry transport which brought her back from work. It was pitch black by that time and pupils other than prefects were not allowed out in the dark. However the girl had a friend who rather got in the way of my companion's romantic designs, so he took me along to escort the friend to her home, this giving him the freedom he desired. My 'affair' with the friend lasted several weeks, and in all that time, I never saw her face and I had no idea what she looked like. Eventually it all petered out.

I used to go home sometimes at weekends and on one such trip, my parents bought me a new bike. The first and only new bike I ever owned. It was a sit up and beg Royal Enfield with a 3 speed gear. Thereafter, when I went home at weekends, I cycled - a distance of about 45 miles along the A2 through Canterbury, Faversham & Sittingbourne. I would imagine that today that would not be a comfortable ride. I used to stop at Faversham to see my girl friend who lived next door to me, at home and whose family had moved to Faversham to see out the war.

I remember the winter of 1939, six foot snow drifts and the sea frozen in Sandwich harbour. One regular journey we kids made was to the beach. It was a mile or more from the town and reachable by bike through a toll road (it was private), or by walking over the golf course -- now very famous. I can remember skating on the ice in the bunkers during the winter. We had regular dog fights in the skies above Kent and the Channel, to watch which were interesting. What was more interesting was the flotsam washed up on the beach from the ships that were regularly being sunk. It was amazing how much booty we collected. Pencils and other school material, and even paper packed so tightly the sea had not damaged it. We even salvaged a large wooden rudder and carried it, with difficulty, back to town and handed it in to the coastguard, hoping to get some salvage money. No chance!

In the spring of 1940, it was decided that as all was quiet on the war front, we should move back to Gillingham. We had only been back a few weeks when the Dunkirk mayhem began. Our main evidence of this was the train loads of very tired service men going through the town.

It was then decided that we should go to Wales. We had no choice but to go as it was a vital year in our education and the school closed down in Gillingham. Off we went and finished up in Rhymney in South Wales.

I was extremely fortunate as I was billeted with a very pleasant family, the Watkins', consisting of 3 daughters and a dog called Nell. One daughter was a few years older than I, the middle daughter was just a year older and the youngest about 5 years younger. The father was well respected as he had a permanent job. Very few people in the village had jobs. He worked as a lorry delivery man for the railway. It was said that only twelve houses in the village had bathrooms. I was lucky - being in one of the twelve. The daughters were good fun and the dog took to me and followed me everywhere. Cattle, sheep, pigs and horses roamed freely through the village at all times. I remember one particular instance when all the neighbours were at their front doors chatting, as was common practice when a horse wandered down the street. It went into a house on the opposite side of the road. After a while there was much noise and shouting, and it backed out with a straw hat in its mouth. It was known afterwards as the horse with the `At e tude'.

It was a great place for us lads who were all 15/16. On Sunday nights, most of the village, or so it seemed, turned out and paraded up and down the main street, known locally as the monkey parade. The girls were very attractive and the lads were keel. The object of the exercise was to pair off and disappear up the hills on either side of town. One side was in England and across the river, it was Wales. We took great pleasure in telling them how grateful they should be to be living in England. Nowadays it is in Wales! We also used to cycle to Tredegar, a small town on the other side of the English hills where there was a swimming pool, to Bargoed down the valley, which I presume was in Wales where there was an Italian cafe, which sold really lovely ice cream and sometimes to Merthyr Tydfill, which was a larger town.

Not long after arriving, the Home Guard was formed to supersede the LDV. Many of our teachers were appointed officers, and when recruitment began, many of us went and joined up. We should have been 17, and our teachers knew how old we were, but they signed us up without any argument. As soon as I got my uniform I went with friends to Merthyr, and had a proper studio photo taken. I became a signaller which, because it meant learning the Morse, code proved useful later on.

Most of the parades that followed concerned learning drills and how to use and treat weapons in common usage. However it also included exciting trips across the hills on the back of motorcycles. I cannot remember why, but it was good fun! I do remember one exercise. A crack regiment of Scottish soldiers was going to make an attack from Merthyr towards Tredegvr along the top road. I was stationed at the side of a bridge with another signaller, and a corporal who was in charge. We had a view right across the valley to a pub on the other side. The pub was the Home Guard HQ and we had to warn them by signalling with flags, should anything occur. After a long wait we suddenly became aware that the road across the bridge was full of invading troops. Our corporal, who was stone deaf had no idea what was happening as he couldn't hear the vehicles which were passing us. We felt that we had to warn HQ, so we stood up and in full view of the passing `enemy', signalled our messages. They took no notice of us. I think they passed the pub also. Nobody had worked out how to stop them.

At the end of that term after taking our exams, we decided to go back home and reopen the school. My house was closed up because my father was an engineering officer in the RN, and served in both wars, and he had been stationed up in Liverpool on a destroyer on convoy protection duties. My mother had gone up there and got rooms in a private house owned by an elderly single lady. I had spent school holidays up there and been blitzed for my troubles. Two nights under the stairs while all hell broke out around us! She had moved all the valuable stuff down to my aunt's house in Bath for safe keeping. That house was hit by a 1,0001b bomb in the Bath blitz and everything was blown to bits.

Back in Gillingham, I went to live with my father's father and sister. My grandfather was 80 and my aunt was a severe asthma sufferer.

As senior pupils and prefects, we were given the job of working out the school timetable. We devised a clever plan. We had a large sheet of paper divided into rectangles - each rectangle represented a teaching period. We then cut out other pieces of card, some with teacher's names on them and some with class details. These were laid in the rectangles so that no teacher or class was in two places at the same time. It took a long time to do it. We were very pleased with ourselves when it was completed. It just needed to be recorded in writing. As we got up, my friend put his blazer back on and the bottom corner of it swept over the board and wiped out at least a third of the week. He was popular!

We realised that we were not going to take the Higher Certificate exams at 18, so we began to look for jobs. We had also continued our service in the Home Guard. My friend George got a job with the War Office Y Group and went to one of the forts which surround the Medway towns for training. The only other jobs available were clerical jobs which I did not want, so in December 1941, I joined him. The WOYG was the predecessor to what is now known as GCHQ. It involved learning the Morse code and being able to use it at high speed. Then operatives were sent to various places in the UK where they found, tracked and recorded messages from the enemy. These were sent to Bletchley Park for deciphering. It has been said that this operation reduced the length of war by two years.

Pr-BR

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