ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝

44 - Frank Kenny recalls his War Childhood:

"Well I was born in West Sussex, and my early childhood was based in Rye but my parents, my mother came from the Isle of Man and my father was brought up in the north of England, and that’s the basic background. And just before the war broke out in ’39, about a year before, my father had … I was born in 1933, so I was roughly when I was five my father moved up from Sussex, moved up to Derbyshire in the course of his professional work, and that’s where I went to school. I went to school in Derby.

my father was a lawyer. So that’s my wartime background. I started school in April …, no there’s a little proviso here Neville because as I said to you when I spoke to you in the library last week, obviously for someone who was a child of 6, 7, 8, 9 during the war then memory plays tricks. And my vision, my memories may be not entirely accurate, but I can only relate now at the age of 72, I can only relate to what I imagined happened to me or the impressions I gained during the war years. Some of them are quite vivid really, but they’re only tiny little fragments of time, but anyway that’s what I want the background, that’s what I want to establish.
So there I was going to school, going by bus accompanying my father on the 8.10, I think it was The Trent Motor Traction Company the bus company, and they ran a bus which we caught at 8.10 but it had travelled from a little market town called Ashbourne down to Derby itself. And so I started school, going to school on that bus with my father, and then low and behold having started school after Easter in 1940, the war suddenly declared; well ’39 I am talking about not 1940, ’39. And war broke out as Rob Wilton used to say (“The Day War Broke out”) so there we were, and very quickly, and this is (I may be absolutely incorrect in my timing), but it seems to me now in retrospect that within a very short time of the war breaking out in ’39, probably sometime in 1940, maybe when the first air raids took place, the schools in the town were all closed down. All the schools (I don’t know if all the schools) certainly my little junior school was closed down, St. Mary’s School, and that was it. It was closed down maybe for about a year and then re-opened.

From Derby, not all that many people were evacuated. Not many …, there were, because I do recall that hearing my father talking to a teacher friend who was evacuated with many of his pupils from Derby, some school in Derby, up to not very far away, up into a little place, I believe it’s still a little tiny place called Wingfield which is up in the, probably up in the north east of Derbyshire.

Funnily enough I thought about that this morning, (The Rolls Royce as a target. And of course the famous railway construction works, and so that was the (I forget what it was called), anyway it built railway engines and so on, famous for that, and Rolls Royce.
But I was thinking this morning somewhere in the back of my memory, to hearing a story that maybe this story I heard much later in the war that Rolls Royce wasn’t actually hit; Derby didn’t suffer a lot of blitz as Coventry for instance did, but I remember my father telling me that he was a …, he volunteered to go back into the army and he wasn’t allowed because of his First World War wounds, much to my mother’s joy I think. But he, he had to do some firewatching, maybe one night a week I don’t know, he was away doing is firewatching and I remember him saying that from the roof of the building on which he stood, he could (later in the war) he saw the huge blitz of Coventry but he didn’t see the blitz, all he saw was the glow.
Well I don’t know how far Derby is from Coventry, he was on a hill I believe, quite high ish up, but I don’t know how far, but he said there was certainly a glow in the sky, I remember him telling me in later years.
Anyway that is the …, I was talking about Rolls Royce, I was told that (maybe it’s not true) that the government built a replica of the Rolls Royce works, which was of course camouflaged, but they built a replica in some wasteland outside of Derby and that was hit on a number of occasions.
Possibly that was successful. But I always …, I want to emphasize that this is just hearsay.
So my memories of all the winter of 1940, it may have been ’41, but I remember those winters, ’40, ’41, ’42, the whole of the forties the winters were very, very severe and I spent most of my time in the winter not able to get to school, because the snowdrifts were so high and so on, and just sledging.

Never did we feel hungry, I don’t think so. We had the …, we were probably healthier because we had a much reduced intake of sugar and things like that, butter and so on, but we lived in the country and there was a wonderful black market system that everybody got involved in, and we used to get, I remember, buy a side of bacon from our butcher, being cured in one of the local farmers’ farmhouse, hanging from his rafters in his kitchen, and my own memory of it was that it was rather fatty, and it was very salty, but we kept our own chickens, that was a novelty, and the same farmer, one of his fields, came onto our boundary and so he allowed us to run these lovely mostly Rhode Island Red chickens, and they were all over his fields. So it was completely wonderful in the spring, ‘cos obviously to see these chickens and there were always four or five cockerels. Now of course the cockerels particularly, we bred our own, we hatched our own, we learned how to do this, hatched our own chickens and of course the cockerels were particularly choice! They were specially fed on the side with corn, for eating, and so we always seemed to …
We had the ration I remember going into Derby with my mother and going to one of those typical old fashioned grocers, only elderly (because most of the younger men had gone to the war) elderly gentlemen serving, and you sat on a high counter, you sat on high stools whilst they took your order, and your ration books, and there was always “would you like, madam, another quarter of tea?”, black market under the counter, and a little bit of extra butter, maybe an eighth of a pound, but it was all… And of course one was registered, as we all know, one could choose roughly choose what butchers, what grocers one went to certain different types of food. So after, the upmarket, “county” type of grocers I was talking about, they were for …, my mother registered there for certain things like butter and tea and so on, and around the corner from them was old Mr. Skinner believe it or not, wonderful name, the butcher who must have been highly involved in the black market because he and his brother, who eventually had 3 shops, and after the war they always each of them had a Rolls Royce and so on, they had done fairly well for themselves, that was in a little street that I believe was called East Street, or Eastgate, anyway that was the butchers. One had a choice, to a certain extent, I don’t know how it worked I can’t remember, anyway I remember that that we had different stores for different products in shops.
Anyway the chickens by the way, going back to that for a moment, there was a lovely grain, an animal food shop for pets, and these …, the special grain we bought there called Indian Maze, and lovely kind of reddish grain, quite big grain.

Do you know, I don’t think,(animal feed was rationed), my memory of having to go into town on the bus or on my bicycle for that matter, and bring back a brown bag which was filled with different types of grain. I don’t think we had a particular book or anything like that, and I don’t know whether we were registered there or not, there we are.
We didn’t keep pigs or anything like that, but chickens were the mainstay of our extra meat, and getting the (in inverted commas) black market bits and pieces.
I remember one thing, my brother going to visit a school friend of his, who lived in Sheerness, on the island, and this boy’s father was a military officer and he was abroad quite a lot, but I remember that he must have come home on leave when my brother was visiting once during the summertime, and my brother came back with a bag, and he had one banana and one orange! I hadn’t seen a banana or orange for about four years, this was getting on towards the end of the war, maybe ’45, ’44 - ’45, probably ’45 and came back, and I had lunch (the usual family lunch), and then my mother gave me the choice of a banana or an orange, and I couldn’t remember how they tasted, what the taste was, and so I had my lunch and then I peeled the orange and ate the orange, and about five minutes later I was violently ill! Only because my stomach wasn’t used to this, funny the memories one has, extraordinary. And I can’t remember what happened to the banana, my brother probably had that, although he had had his fill at his friend’s house.
I have got my next memory down here, evacuation from Dunkirk, evacuation. Because on the local estate I mentioned last week, Kedleston Hall which was the Curzons, Scarsdale Curzon family and the army quickly threw up a … I remember this that they didn’t have any huts, they just threw up bell tents in the grounds around the hall itself, in an emergency, all these Dunkirk evacuated troops came back, and some …, quite a large number of them were billeted in these tents, and I always remember that …, I just remember it was a very, very cold night and there was a knock on the door and there was snow on the ground, a knock on the door I don’t know, maybe half past six and blackout of course, and I don’t know if my mother or father answered the door, and there was a soldier there (I heard the voice, it turned out it was a soldier there) who said could you let me have something to drink, a glass of water? Either my mother or my father said no come in, come in (he was out in the cold), so he stepped in and he was followed by about fifteen colleagues who followed him in, and so my mother rushed around getting hot drinks, and food for them and so on; I can’t remember much but I always remember that. And so sudden (the Dunkirk disaster). And I had imagined that …, I just can’t imagine what it was like.

Scrap metal, I have got down here waste paper collection, scrap metal. We as children …, I don’t know when this happened, 1941/42, the government started, for children, they would provided or you could earn or win a badge, but a different badge for the amount of product you took in. And so we built, myself and two friends we built on an old wooden tea chest, and we put wheels on this, two big bicycle wheels under the tea chest, and then a piece of wood nailed or screwed to the under part of the tea chest, which extended to the front, and two smaller pram wheels which could be steered!
Yes, a sophisticated piece of mechanism that, and special bolts through it, and so on a so forth, and I remember we didn’t have a brace and bit, but we got a poker in the coal fire, and burned through the wood. And I think this thing lasted for about 10 years, quite amazing, and never had a puncture. Although bicycle wheels at the back. The bicycle wheels I found in a wood near a main road, maybe four or five bicycles had been dumped there, perfectly good condition, so they were probably stolen by the local troops or something like that I don’t know why they were dumped there, anyway I took two of the wheels off and used them. Anyway, that’s how we went round collecting waste paper and scrap paper and scrap metal, waste paper as well.
Another memory I have, later in the war was summer, beautiful summer’s evening, sitting on the top lawn (we had two lawns), a lovely secluded top lawn with apple trees round the edges and so on, and I suppose it would be about six in the evening, lying on the grass with one or two; I think my brother was there and my mother and one of her friends, and seeing these …, one of these thousand bomber raids, and for some reason the area, that area must have been a collecting from all the different air bases, and they came in maybe I don’t know, tens, six, eight, huge Lancaster bombers and the noise went on for hours as these things came over and met and then they went off, sky (probably incorrect memory) the sky seemed to be littered with these, and then mainly (no fighter aircraft at that time) and certainly I remember these “flights”, “wings” or whatever it is of these huge bombers were off, and very slowly, the noise going off on one of these raids, it’s very sad when one looks back on that.
Searching for shrapnel, I mentioned this last week, and the bomb craters, the nosecone. Even a half of a nosecone was much prized, but there were rumours that we shouldn’t be doing that, because there could be unexploded bomb there. Roadblocks, yes well cycling, as the war went on did a lot of cycling, cycled to school, and so on, and I remember, yes the roadblocks, the soldiers there with fixed bayonets sometime stopping everybody that was going down.

Someone was trying to sabotage the factories. Well you see there are rumours, and rumours and rumours and I remember hearing rumours, even footsteps in the snow in the winter, this must be a German spy. And rumours that there was someone seen signalling to the aircraft, the German aircraft going with torch, anyway.
Oh the buses, yes of course you probably remember this do you, the blackout windows, the blue, all the windows were obscured and the driver’s little cabin, he obviously, his windscreen was not blocked but in the winter or at night, then there were blinds that were pulled right down behind the driver they pulled them down.
Yes, that’s right, they were painted grey. But I remember, I think I remember, that all the windows throughout the war, every window in the bus was painted blue, but they left a small, tiny little area in the centre of each window so that one could look out to see where one was, it’s unbelievable isn’t it?
Oh yes, I remember going to the Isle of Man summertime, summer holidays with my mother, and taking the boat, the Liverpool/Isle of Man ferry, and my memory is that outside, as we left the Mersey, or got to the estuary of the Mersey, seeing just the top of the mast of ships which had been sunk.

I wasn’t aware that it was used for internees... Oh yes, I was because I remember the …, particularly, yes they had a special uniform with patches. Now I remember the Italian, because we had Italian on the local farms in England. The Italians were seen to be quite a large number of them, later in the war, say in 1943 I suppose, something like that, and they had brown uniforms with coloured patches of …, at the heart, on the back, around the legs, so that we were told because if they tried to escape, the patch could be aimed at by the guards. Yes indeed I remember, yes I remember seeing some German, they were quite sullen but the Italians I remember were very friendly, more relaxed, particularly with children. They used to bring little gifts that they had made out of willow, willow twigs, little baskets and so on, they’d made out of that.
So those are my …, basically the very few brief topics I have then.

Many years later I came to Stratford; I came here for business purposes just for 3 months, and I am still here and I am here basically, 40 years later - with a little break for business purposes I left this area, out about 4 years or 5 years, that little mission was finished and I came back and brought my family, and we decided …, looked around the south of England decided that we’d come back and live in Stratford;
I'm very happy here."

Š Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.