Authors: Sean Longden
Blitz Kids (20 page)
The dust he described surprised all who experienced it, thick clouds of dust and debris that had, in some cases, lain undisturbed for a hundred years or more.
In the battered and burning streets of his home borough, Sidney went out night after night to offer assistance to the wounded. In the first few weeks of the Blitz he went from being a youth with a basic understanding of rudimentary first aid to having a deep understanding of the horrors of modern warfare. Pulling the wounded from the ruins of their homes, treating them and helping them to ambulances, he was doing what he could to defy the enemy. All the time his experience was growing:
You’d find some people without a mark on them. Then you’d have a look, and they were dead – killed by the blast. They looked perfectly fine but were dead. I soon learned that if they had a small wound, the shock stopped it from bleeding too much at first. But if a main artery had gone you hadn’t got much chance of saving them – the blood would spurt up to the ceiling. If you are not there to press the pressure point immediately, they hadn’t got a chance.
His work was made worse by the fact that the bombing had disturbed the vast communities of rats that lived in the warehouses around the docks. As the fires raged and the buildings collapsed, the rats swarmed everywhere. Despite his dislike of vermin, Sidney worked on; this was no time to be squeamish.
After a month of seemingly constant bombing, the war came even closer to Sidney Ties. One night, as they waited for the all clear, the shelter was rocked by a tremendous blast and engulfed in dust. Immediately the people within began screaming, but Sidney was quickly to his feet, shouting into the darkness: ‘Shut up! You’re not hurt, are you? You’re still alive.’ Remaining calm, he checked and discovered that no one was injured. By taking command of the situation, he managed to calm the screaming women, helping them settle down as the bombing continued. The shelter had somehow survived a near miss. With order restored, Sidney once more waited for the all clear when he could safely search for people to assist.
Days later, his career as a first-aider in his home streets came to an end. Leaving the shelter as the air raid came to an end, he stepped out into the street:
I came out of the shelter and saw a big hole. Our house had been flattened by a parachute mine. I didn’t have a thing of my own after that. All my clothes had gone. My mother just saved one photograph of me at school. We met a policeman who sent us off to a rest centre on Mile End Road. We had nothing. Our clothes were in a terrible state, full of dust and blood. We just sat there on the floor, then someone brought us tea. I have no idea how long I was there.
They could not stay in the rest centre for long as there were already too many other homeless people in the area:
They put us on to buses and drove us away in the middle of an air raid. There were bombs were going off around us. There were bangs to the left and right, but I was not looking at anything. I was keeping my head down. They took us out to Guildford.
Though this marked the end of his first-aid work in the East End, it was not the end of his medical career.
Although Sidney had been forced out from his home, other young volunteers remained in the area. At Watson’s Wharf in nearby Wapping a volunteer fire service was formed by a group of local youths. The gang was led by a local docker, Patsy Duggan, who had wanted to serve in the military but was in a reserved occupation. The gang included: Frank Pope, aged 13; Freddie Pope, 16; Oswald Bath, 15; and Jackie Duggan, 17.
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Adopting the name the ‘Dead End Kids’, the boys formed into teams of four and used a handcart to transport their meagre fire-fighting equipment to wherever it was needed. They didn’t have fire axes, but carried iron bars to force open blocked doors. They had a ladder to access windows and buckets of sand to snuff out flames and incendiary bombs. When the sirens sounded the boys watched from the rooftops to see where incendiary bombs were falling, then raced off to deal with them. When they found the smouldering bombs, they tied ropes around the tails, dragged them away and dumped them in the Thames. The boys charged into bombed and burning buildings to rescue the inhabitants and were spotted escaping from buildings with their clothing smouldering. Two of the boys were reported to have died when a burning building collapsed on them.
As the Blitz raged, Britain’s youth played their part in keeping the country running. The Auxiliary Fire Service had accepted large numbers of teenage boys – officially from age sixteen upwards but often much younger – to act as messengers. Equipped with either bicycles or motorbikes, they raced around their local areas, delivering messages, fetching fire crews from one area to another as their services were needed. Some of the boys were shocked – and secretly surprised – to find themselves working as messengers in fire stations which had curiously been issued with antique rifles to defend against invasion. Added to that, they were allowed time off school to carry out their duties. As such, the jobs were greatly prized by youths who knew their
mates envied them. During the Battle of Britain, one downside was that they had to remain on duty and could not race off to watch dogfights in the skies above them. Instead, their work took precedence.
Scouts and Guides played an increasing role during the bombing. Guides with ‘Pathfinder’ badges volunteered to use their knowledge of local areas to show people through blacked-out streets to reach shelters. Boy Scouts went out during raids to show firemen where they were needed. Their youthful enthusiasm for the task was sometimes met by officials who did not make their lives any easier. One teenage ARP messenger was cycling through the nightly air raid when he was stopped by a policeman. The constable then asked him, in all seriousness, whether he realized he was riding a bike at night without lights. As they were talking a bomb fell nearby and both the constable and the boy threw themselves to the ground. The policeman stood up and continued: did the boy know he was on the wrong side of the road? More bombs whistled down and yet the policeman continued, lecturing the boy on road safety.
This sense of duty was displayed by thousands of youths who braved falling bombs to ensure they ‘did their bit’. In north London, seventeen-year-old Home Guard volunteer Geoff Pulzer and his mate Derek, were sent to guard a local reservoir:
It was about 500 yards away from my house. My mother was quite upset because I had to walk up there. The planes were overhead bombing and the anti-aircraft guns were firing, but we had no tin hats. When we got there, there was a guard hut covered in sandbags. That was when we were given a steel helmet – there weren’t enough to go round.
This shortage of helmets was initially a problem in most Home Guard units. One section commander was forced to join a queue in a department store in order to secure two helmets. He queued alongside children who were buying the helmets to wear when playing at soldiers.
Despite the twin dangers of enemy bombing and shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns, the two boys decided to relieve the tedium of guarding somewhere that did not seem to be a target for anyone: ‘It was quite boring, just standing there, so we used to drill each other. We
would take it in turns to march up and down, whilst the other was shouting orders.’
Whilst older boys were serving in the Home Guard, the Boy Scouts became active in civil defence. Some sixteen-year-old Scouts helped to collect the corpses of those killed during air raids, stacking the bodies ready for collection and identification. Younger Scouts helped collect and transport furniture from bombed houses, moving it into storage until families were rehoused. Others helped the elderly to erect air raid shelters. In tube stations, Boy Scouts supported morale by leading sing-songs among the underground population.
Some teenagers paid the ultimate price for the dedication to duty. One of these was sixteen-year-old Kenneth Wiggins, a member of the Boys Brigade, who was a fire-watcher with the ARP. One September morning he was on his way to work at the Boys Brigade London headquarters when the sirens sounded. Rather than taking cover, he continued on his way and was killed when the street was struck by bombs.
The story of the destruction of Coventry touched the hearts of a nation, but that one night of bombing was not the only time German bombers visited the city and was not the only time that the heroism of its inhabitants was displayed. Three weeks earlier, Betty Quinn, a member of the St John Ambulance, had been called on to do her duty. She later described the events of that night:
The bombing that night began with a shower of slow-burning incendiaries. We all ran around putting them out with sand and earth. Then a man ran up to me and told me one was smouldering on his roof. He asked me if we could get a ladder and go up into his loft before the house caught fire. I hated heights and was really nervous, but between us we managed to put out the flames with the help of a bucket and a stirrup-pump. Then, as I walked home the main shelling suddenly started. It was very dark, the sirens were wailing and our anti-aircraft guns were blazing as the bombers dropped their high explosives.
As seventeen-year-old Betty near home, a small girl suddenly appeared, calling out for help:
Something was obviously terribly wrong and I told her to run on to the ARP post to get help while I dashed down the road. As I ran I looked ahead and realized a bomb had made an almost a direct hit on an Anderson shelter. As I got near I realized our neighbours, the Worthington family, were all trapped inside. Instinctively I started digging into the rubble with my bare hands. It was too slow to work like that and I frantically looked round for something to use. Remarkably I found a spade lying nearby. I remember hearing moans from inside. I also remember there was no shouting, no screams.
Amidst the bombing a young boy on a bicycle suddenly appeared and Betty sent him into the house, through the back door which had been torn from its hinges, to collect blankets:
I can still see his frightened face. I told him ‘just go and do it’ – then other people started arriving to help. We all worked together, fumbling around in the dark with only light from the shells exploding overhead. Together we got the family free. There were Mr and Mrs Worthington, their daughter Joan, who was a friend of mine, and I think two other sisters and two other girls. Amazingly they were all alive but injured. I helped to give them first aid. One of them was cold and I just pulled off my brand new black coat and laid it over them.
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As anti-aircraft guns continued to fire and bombs continued to fall, Betty comforted her neighbours as they waited for help to arrive. For all her efforts, the entire family died in hospital. The only survivor was the girl who had first alerted Betty. For defying the bombs to save the family, Betty was awarded the George Medal. She received the award at Buckingham Palace in 1941. When she later met Winston Churchill he poked at her chest, moving the lapel that half obscured her medal, telling her: ‘Show your medal … be proud of it.’ With typical modesty, Betty Quinn later said: ‘I still don’t necessarily think I deserved it. I was only brave because we had to be’.
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To her, she was simply ‘in the right place, at the right time’.
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Another brave teenager was West Bromwich schoolgirl, Charity Bick. She had been desperate to join the ARP but, as a fourteen year old, she was too young. She had attempted to volunteer but, arriving
at the depot and giving her true age, she had been sent away. Determined to serve, she pestered her father – himself an air raid warden – until he agreed to lie about her age. Returning to the depot he informed them that she was sixteen and she was accepted as a messenger.
During air raids, her job was take messages between various ARP posts, ensuring they knew where their services were needed. Despite the falling bombs, Charity continued to carry out her duties:
There were times when I was close enough to be put off my bike but I don’t think you really get frightened at that age. I’d just jump back on and we’d talk about it when I got back from that message. I suppose there were times when I could have died but you didn’t think about that. The message had to get through and that was all that bothered you.
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She also dealt with incendiary bombs, moving them away so they could burn without doing any damage. In September 1941 Charity was awarded the George Medal for her work in the Blitz. She was the youngest ever recipient of the award.
Charity Bick and Betty Quinn were not the only teenage heroines. In September 1940, sixteen-year-old Rose Ede (later Rose Taylor) crawled into the ruins of the farmhouse at Buttons Farm, Wadhurst, East Sussex, which had been demolished by a German bomb. Earlier she had gone outside to investigate a bomb that had landed in her vegetable patch. As she did so she was blown off her feet by a bomb landing on her neighbours’ home. Along with her father, Rose rushed through the rain to the house: ‘It was pitch black and there were aeroplanes flying overhead so you couldn’t see or hear anything. We found two of the children quite quickly but one of the girls was still missing.’ One child was found still in her cot, which was perched on the edge of the bomb crater. A second was found in the wreckage but the third was buried. As her father lifted a beam, Rose crawled through the wreckage to find the girl: ‘I was crawling around on my hands and knees for a long time and then I suddenly felt a foot. It was such a relief. If they hadn’t been in their beds they would have been dead.’
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The children were pulled clear, but they were unable to save the mother. Rose later admitted:
The sight of the wreckage is something I’ll never forget. No one realizes the damage a bomb can do until they see it … If I had thought about what I was doing perhaps I would have been afraid but I just went into the demolished building and that was it.
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She was awarded the George Medal for her heroism, first hearing of the award when her name was read out on the radio. Rose helped the children’s father care for them for two years until she was called up for military service.