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I promised your researchers at the Stourhead, Wilts, display of both wars’ memorabilia, some months ago, that I would pass on a rather special story from my book on the wartime fire-fighters, Are you 17?, ISBN 0 9517757 1 5.
It was told to me by Jeff Robson, a women’s hairdresser, who volunteered and joined the Auxiliary Fire Service in answer to the 1938 appeal. When the blitz on London began he was in charge of an AFS sub-station in Caversham, Reading, Berks.
Everyone was waiting with almost frantic expectation and wanting to go and help when the red glow of the fires filled the sky in the east over London. When the plea for help came Jeff, like many others, took his crew and pump to the city.
He gave me a graphic account (from his own notes he had written soon after) of the dash: ��ѿ��ý Guards with rifles and fixed bayonets barring the way, fearing invasion, the shock of the first anti-aircraft guns firing and the shrapnel crashing down - it is all written down for posterity in my book, the only one I know which tells their story from 1938 to 1945.
There isn’t room to repeat here, except to record the terrible fires and bombings as they cross through the centre of London heading for the docks. Jeff’s crew took over from exhausted Londoners: “The branches were throwing out powerful jets of water, a solid stream for 150 yards. Talk about David and Goliath. Containers of incendiaries were dropping out of the sky, opening and spilling out 36 foot-long bombs, which in turn were sending out glittering showers of white splinters of magnesium…”
It clearly was a night beyond anyone’s imagination. “The flames”, he told me, “were a beacon of immense proportions to any and every enemy plane…”
Then he told me the story I promised to put on the ��ѿ��ý history web site.
“Suddenly along the street, in the middle of the maelstrom, a middle-aged woman - a real East-Ender, the people London was to learn to be proud of - carrying a large wash-stand jug. Beside her was a little kiddie, she can’t have been more than four or five, clutching a handful of tin mugs.
“She came up to us firemen and said ‘Would you chaps like some tea?’ Yes please, we all replied, suddenly we realised how dry were our throats in the gasping heat and smoke.
“Putting the jug down amid the debris, she took the cups from the child and wiped them in her apron, oblivious to the hell around, and then poured the tea. Never did tea taste better…
“But why are you out with your child in the middle of a blitz? She shrugged her shoulders - ‘I thought the men would like a drink. They must be thirsty with all that heat.’
“She took the cups and, with the child at her side, set off towards the dock gates to offer her tea to any man she saw.”
When Jeff got back home he told me he said to his wife, “Where the hell did she get the water and heat the kettle?”
End

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