HOW I HELPED WIN THE 2ND WORLD WAR-AGED 3!

HOW I HELPED WIN THE 2ND WORLD WAR-AGED 3!

I was born 3 months after the war began,thus avoiding all responsibility for it! My first
memory was of seeing a bearded man come into our house,wearing a heavy overcoat and a
flat uniform cap. He diverted my mother’s attention completely away from its rightful
object-me! It was sometime later that I found out that he was a leading fireman,and had
just returned home from a 3-month stint,fighting fires in the Liverpool blitz.
For many years,I thought,to my everlasting shame,that he had become a fireman to avoid
call-up to the Army. I eventually learnt that he had been a volunteer fireman for some
years before the war,and had been refused enlistment because he was the only man in the
station who could keep the Coventry Climax firepumps on song. He had also built a
fire-engine at the start of the war from an old lorry-I later learnt that this had been done
all across the country. His role in the fire station,which was 3 doors away from our
house,was as mechanic ,driver,and first man on the fire escape.

A modest and reticent man,he told me little of the Blitz and the horrors he saw. I do
remember that he and his men once guarded an unexploded bomb for 2 days until the
Army could attend. As they walked away,the bomb exploded,killing the Army team. On
the lighter side , his crew were once transported in the darkness to a large mansion to get
a night’s sleep. When they awoke in the morning,they were in a large ballroom,with many
rather strange people peering through the windows,and making peculiar gestures. It was
the Rainhill Home for the insane!

I am still moved by the honour shown by ordinary people like my father in the war. When
my father’s best friend was electrocuted in the war whilst in the fire station,my father got
up from his sick bed(he had pneumonia),and followed the laddercarriage-mounted bier on
foot for several miles to the interment. It is not only the aristocracy who understand the
term “noblesse oblige”.

My own part in winning the war was when.at the age of 3,I became the fire station
mascot,driver’s mate,and tactician! I was equipped with a full uniform,including axe,and a
brassplumed helmet which I could hardly lift,let alone wear. I attended several fires,sitting
beside the driver,my father! I don’t quite think that would be allowable nowadays! As
regards the tactician job,the fire station had been provided with a large map and lots of
wooden models of police cars,fire engines, ambulances, etc. It was my job to distribute
these about the map so that the crew could plan their tactics for any eventuality-or so they
told me!

My family also did their share in the Armed Forces. Three of my paternal uncles enlisted
in the Army. One of them ,a competent driver ,was encouraged to volunteer for a special
job,but refused.following standard Army custom. Those who volunteered became driving
instructors,and spent the war in Catterick. My uncle footslogged through the war,and was
one of the first force into Belsen. Another paternal uncle ran away from home to join the
Navy whilst underage,had three ships blown from under him,and never recovered from his
experiences,drinking himself to death in his early fifties.

My only maternal uncle had been in the Army for years before the war,serving in India in
the King’s Own Irish Hussars. When the Hussars returned for the war,and each man had
his two horses taken from him,to be replaced with a seat in a tank,he followed his
commanding officer into the newly formed 1st Para. He went down into history by training
a chicken to parachute, and parachuted with it at Arnhem. The story of his subsequent
capture and escape is told in many books and films and in the regimental museum. When
he died after a lifelong Army career,having risen from boy cook to Colonel,he was buried
with full military honours-and we buried a chicken in his coffin with him.....

As a holiday,I was often sent to stay with his wife in York,where we used to count the
planes out at night,and the depleted number back in the morning. I remember being told
that a German pilot had strafed a church in York at the end of the morning service,and
had killed women and children. I cannot vouch for the truth of this,as propaganda took
some great liberties on both sides.

Our small town was 20 miles from both Manchester and Liverpool,and did not totally
escape the attentions of the Luftwaffe. Some dyspeptic pilot shelled the canteen of the
grammar school I was to later attend,and an unexploded bomb rested throughout the war
on a footpath of the farm I occupied in my twenties. Apparently,it had a notice saying
“Keep Off” or some such,as it waited for attention from the bomb squad!

On one famous occasion,a very young German baled out over the town,and ran along our
street in a great panic. A neighbour opposite,sweeping her front step,tripped him with her
broom,and he was soon captured. It is perhaps a sign of our humanity,and recognition that
many of the enemy were unwilling participants, that the neighbour was mostly frowned
upon for her action. In an evenhanded form of criticism,the local snackbar was ostracized
for refusing to make tea for a lorryful of American soldiers. We also saw many Italian
POWs,who were trucked in to work on the local farms,and seemed very happy to be doing
so!

I remember collecting shrapnel,but only one explosion. This was down to my father,who set
off a Fire Service maroon(an extremely large bomb type of firework!)to amuse me on Guy
Fawkes Night. A young soldier did the same a couple of miles away,was blamed for both,
and ended up in the glasshouse for his pains!

The end of the war seemed to be rather anticlimatic in our town,as too many people had
been bereaved for them to celebrate the end in too exuberant a fashion. My father was
awarded the Peace Medal.which he promptly returned,as my grandmother had been
awarded the same for organizing blanketknitting evenings!
I was given the first banana to arrive in town after a 5 year absence,but didn’t like it one
bit!

One last memory,so as not to forget the price which was paid for my freedom. Out with my
mother,some time in 1946,we met a frail wisp of a man,who spoke to my mother in a very
disjointed and incoherent way. She later told me that he had sat at the next desk to her in
school,had been somewhat of a heart-throb,handsome and full of go. The Burma Railway
had put paid to that,and to his future.

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