蜜芽传媒

Born in September 1935 I have no memory of the outbreak of war. Presumably the approach of my fourth birthday was far more important 鈥� But before long I knew there was a war on since it began to impinge on my daily life in Coventry. I had begun school but, because of increasingly frequent air-raids, we little ones attended either mornings or afternoons.

The family rented a terraced house in Welgarth Avenue. Dad worked as a lathe-operator at Armstrong-Siddeley while two elder sisters (I was clearly an after-thought or a mistake!) were just starting to work as shorthand-typists. There was also the eldest of the family, Joe, who was a sailor and already doing his bit as a wireless-telegraphist. He had already joined the Royal Navy when I came along so I hardly saw him at all.

One day came my first excitement of the war: the appearance on nearby open ground of an anti-aircraft balloon. Hearing about it from Orissa Head (a 鈥榖ig girl鈥� aged seven who lived two doors away), I raced to see it, arriving just as it was being inflated and beginning to rise up into the air. Such a thrill! But its presence meant that the enemy planes were bombing Coventry and that affected me on many nights. By now we had an Andersen shelter at the bottom of the garden and I would often find one of my sisters lifting me out of bed and carrying me outside at some ridiculous hour when all I wanted to do was dream about my winning this war single-handed. It was cold and damp in the shelter and scary 鈥� especially when we heard the drone of aircraft (It鈥檚 one of theirs.鈥�) and the thud of bombs.

There was one raid I had every reason to remember. We were celebrating my 5th birthday with a party on 19th September when we heard the ominous wail of the sirens. Within minutes my entire party fare had been whisked into the large communal brick shelter out in the avenue. As far as I was concerned, that all added to the exhilaration.

Mum and Dad were avid theatre-goers, my father particularly loving music hall and variety. So our visits to the Coventry Hippodrome were frequent and were not to be stopped by a war even though German raids were getting worse. But we needed to go to shows staged in the late afternoon or early evening. One day we left the theatre to walk the couple of miles home and found ourselves passing houses that had just been hit. Although Mum and Dad tried to hurry me past the scene I was aware of the ARP and police bringing people out on stretchers, some with blankets pulled over their faces.

One night we went out as a family to the roller-skating rink a couple of miles away. We left when a raid started and began to make our ways back home. To my intense delight we saw a plane in flames as it hurtled down from the night sky. Dad assured me it was 鈥榦ne of theirs鈥�. The raid seemed to be getting worse and we sheltered for a while under the railway bridge by the station. Eventually we made a dash of half a mile or so to the public shelter in Moseley Avenue. Only when the all-clear sounded did we emerge.

By now my parents decided that it would be better to leave Coventry at night and were not slow to accept an offer from a friend who had a flat in Leamington. So we would walk down to Coundon Halt and take the train to Milverton from where it was just a few minutes鈥� stroll to our hideaway. Early next morning we returned to Coventry. But it was now November 1940.

During the Coventry Blitz I was in the middle of mumps. The illness brought on nightmares in which I heard the steady clump of footsteps coming up the passage. It was Hitler and Goering coming to get me. Looking back on it, it was clearly my heart beating. I was also in a foul temper and would throw jellies at the wall! While I was thus preoccupied, my parents had returned to Coventry to what was left of the city. Our house could not be lived in, my father鈥檚 employers were moving to Lancaster and the family had been allocated a home in that city. Off they went while I recovered in Leamington. In December I was taken by train to join them. There on the platform was Joe who had been given compassionate leave to help us all. He swept me up in his arms and carried me all the way to my new home. After a couple of days he returned to his ship. We never saw him again.

The family soon settled down to its new routine in a strange place. Both my sisters found work with the Treasury of the Canadian Army who had requisitioned the biggest local hotel. I was sent to a private school and to have piano lessons. But my mother was anxious that I should not pick up bad habits by mixing too much with what she saw as rough northern children. In particular I was firmly forbidden to use the local dialect, even if I were to be considered 鈥榮tuck up鈥�. I soon came up with the solution. At school I spoke Lancashire; once home I reverted to speaking 鈥榥icely鈥�. Dad had found that the Winter Gardens at Morecambe hosted superb variety so we became accustomed to a trip on the electric railway at least once a week. There was a nasty shock for me one afternoon when we reached the station on Morecambe鈥檚 front; there was no longer any ice-cream. Like most families at the time, we loved the cinema, especially if one of the six or so cinemas in Lancaster or Morecambe were showing a film starring Bette Davis. We bought 78鈥檚 by Charlie Kunz or the Ink Spots. We listened to the radio. Saturday Night Theatre was a firm favourite, as was Variety Bandbox. But ITMA was not favoured.

Dad had served in the Great War and was now beyond call-up age but had joined the 蜜芽传媒 Guard. In addition to his uniform he brought home an ancient rifle and a clip of five wooden bullets with which to practice loading. Needless to say, we all had a go. He was given two main tasks. The first was escorting the occasional military convoy through the area in the dead of night. For this he was given a petrol allowance for our little Ford, but this job soon ended and the car had to be garaged near Lancaster Castle for the duration. His second task was patrolling the railway bridge over the River Lune; the only route up the west coast. Sometimes I would join him after one of his parades to walk home. I remember crossing the bridge by the castle one night and remarking on the distant red sunset. 鈥淣o, son,鈥� he told me. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the fires at Liverpool Docks. Jerry鈥檚 hitting them again.鈥�

In May the innocence about the war ended. Until then I was allowed to join Mum and Dad in bed on a Sunday morning while we all drank tea. One Sunday my eldest sister came quietly in with the paper in her hand. 鈥淭he Hood鈥檚 been sunk.鈥� she said. HMS Hood was Joe鈥檚 ship. Life was never the same again.
The initial shock and distress was awful. It got worse a few days later when Mum and I responded to a knock at the door to find a telegram boy outside 鈥� he himself can鈥檛 have been more than fifteen 鈥� with the dreaded brown envelope in his hand. The Admiralty told us that Joe was missing presumed killed. There was no body, no funeral, no means of saying a decent goodbye. Just agony.

Mum never got over this blow. From that time on she wept too often. Her health got worse and she contracted leukaemia, dying in her fifties with Joe鈥檚 name on her lips.

But life went on for the rest of us. It had to. I formed my friendships at school and some of us worked for the government seeking out enemy spies who turned out in the main to be fellow pupils or teachers we didn鈥檛 like. My sisters were not slow in seeking out boy-friends from the various service personnel in the area; for number two sister Geoff from the Canadian Treasury, Chuck who was part of an American unit and the occasional trump card at the office-training camp near Blackpool. Number one sister got us involved with the Dutch.

The Royal Dutch Navy had some of its fleet in hiding at Glasson Dock some four miles from home. The family formed a liaison with members of the crew of the good ship Van Galen. We were invited on board ship and we brought Dutch sailors home to celebrate Christmas with us. The favourite was a tall handsome seaman named Jan. When the Dutch sailed for the Far East, Jan wrote to my sister and then stayed with us when the ship was back in this country. They fell in love and married in January 1945 at the Priory Church; he in his uniform, my sister in powder blue. The weather was so wintry that no vehicles could get up to the church so we all had to plod through the snow. By this time, however, my sister had followed the family tradition and joined the Navy as a WREN.

In 1944 Dad鈥檚 job was transferred back to Coventry and he had to leave us to our own devices. He took digs in the city, searched desperately for somewhere we could live and came back up to us in Lancaster for the occasional weekend. Thus I became the man of the house at the age of eight.

In early June I was in trouble at school. Heaven knows what I had done but this wretched school mistress took exception to me one morning and threatened all manner of awful things for the afternoon. At home for lunch we heard on the radio that D-Day had arrived. The excitement was extraordinary and that terrible woman had forgotten all about me when I returned to school. That night I remembered General Eisenhower in my prayers with grateful passion.

In the summer holidays we often went for evening walks by the River Lune. These would sometimes be quite late for, with Double British Summer Time, it often stayed light till after eleven o鈥檆lock and Mum knew I found it difficult getting to sleep while it was daylight. Another favourite walk involved our going to Ingleton and taking the wonderful waterfall walk. That was charming in itself but there was another attraction. More than halfway round, and you emerged onto Pennine moorland, there was a farm where you could get extra off-the rashion eggs鈥�

Mum provided the rump of the family with a stark choice one day. We could either go on having sugar in tea or we could have some home-made jam. The decision was unanimously for jam. But Dad, being away, never gave up his three spoons per cup.

Mum and I went to Morecambe some afternoons for a treat. One 1943 day we popped into the cinema to see 鈥楨scape to Happiness鈥�. Halfway through the film stopped and, after a few minutes delay, a slide was projected telling us that Italy had surrendered. A man behind us murmured 鈥極ne down 鈥� two to go.鈥�

By now we were making the occasional trip back to the Midlands to keep in touch with the family, usually staying with Auntie Mill in Warwick. Journeys by train were very uncertain with constant stops and being shunted aside while important military rail traffic took precedence. Once we tried the trip by car (where Dad find the petrol?). We broke down in southern Lancashire and sought help at an isolated farm where w e were fed and put up without question. That was how things were.

In January 1945 Dad announced he had found a house and was trying to find anything with which to decorate it. With the odds and end of paint he could lay his hands on he produced a stippling effect on the walls and would hone his technique while playing the finale of 鈥榃illiam Tell鈥� on the gramophone! So we moved back to Coventry.

The house already had a telephone installed. We had never had one before. Engineers arrived to disconnect it but Dad swore he needed it for his reserved occupation. He got away with it! We needed to share a line with another subscriber for some years but WE WERE ON THE PHONE. Our only problem now was to find anyone we knew to talk to鈥�

I was now at the council school I had left in 1940. In Lancaster I had enjoyed the benefits of a private education so I thought it rather lowering to be again here I had started. Indeed Mum and Dad were none too happy either so I was in a preparatory school by the end of the summer.

In the meantime war was working towards its end. One of the great shocks was the arrival at the concentration camps. The Daily Mirror had a full two-page spread showing the emaciated bodies in the pit of Belsen. Mum was terribly moved.

By the start of May there were preparations being made at school for a huge outdoor bun-fight and party. On areas of waste ground near home bonfires were being constructed, some with effigies of Hitler ready to be burned. Shops were looking out pre-war bunting for display when the big day arrived.

VE day was great for me. That party at school was enormous fun. But at home things were quiet. The family found no cause for rejoicing, simply a sense of relief that the sacrifices 鈥� in Europe at least- were coming to an end. To a nine year old boy things looked different. Now that Germany had surrendered- and would surely be followed by Japan before long- was that the end of the excitement? Was it all going to be dull and boring from now on.

Nevil Malin

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