Blitz Kids (6 page)

Meanwhile, for those youngsters who had not been evacuated, life continued as normal across much of the country. For Peter Richards that meant working in the Post Office by day and spending his evenings at his local youth club:

Sport dominated much of his spare time. He boxed in the gym and went running in nearby Regent’s Park. He also noticed how some of the less active members of the youth club began appearing on the sports fields: ‘When they got called up they didn’t want to be a complete failure – they wanted to be reasonably fit.’ He laughed to see one newly animated colleague slow down after just 200 yards of a run. Stopping, he pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his shorts and exclaimed: ‘I think I’ll have a fag.’

His mate John Cotter had also by now left school. He had passed a scholarship to continue at school but decided against it: ‘I wasn’t doing very well. I just wasted my time. I was lazy. I was going to be held back a year before I passed my matriculation so I thought I might as well go and get a job.’ His mother soon found a job for him, securing a place in the civil service at the prestigious Colonial Office, where he worked in a department licensing exports from around the Empire and earned nineteen shillings and sixpence a week. His mother believed this would be a good career move, ensuring him a good pension in later life. However, in the winter of 1939–40, young men like John were not looking that far ahead.

Whilst youths like John Cotter did their best to ignore the war, others found there was no escape. In October 1939, fourteen-year-old Len Chester had mastered all the necessary bugle calls and ‘passed out’, ready to join a ship. In December he received orders to go to Scapa Flow to join HMS
Iron Duke
. Travelling north, he tried to prepare himself mentally for joining a warship. Arriving at the ship, he discovered there were only two boys among the 1,000-man crew. He also discovered this would mean living in virtual isolation:

Len soon learned that the strict rules were in place for a very good reason: ‘It was partly for my own protection: Paedophilia was about in those days – it’s not a new thing!’ As part of his introduction to life onboard, the sergeant told him: ‘Don’t ever get yourself in a confined space with Marine so and so.’ At first he was not certain what the sergeant really meant, after all, he had been sheltered from such matters until very recently: ‘I didn’t really have an understanding of it. To be frank, when I joined up at fourteen I still thought that baby’s came from belly buttons.’ Len later recalled that he grew used to a daily barrage of sexual innuendo – some of it innocent, some of it not – faced by ‘Boys’ on warships. It didn’t take him long to gain an increasing awareness of what he had been warned about. It became clear the Royal Navy’s reputation for ‘Rum, Bum and Baccy’ was based on fact:

Traumatic though such experiences were, there were greater dangers awaiting Len Chester in Scapa Flow. In March 1940 German aircraft attacked the
Iron Duke
: ‘My action station was beside the captain. And
I ran messages for him. Everyone was rushing here and there. It was ever so exciting. I wasn’t frightened. I didn’t have time to be frightened. I was dashing everywhere.’ As he moved around the ship, the ship’s anti-aircraft guns were firing at the enemy planes:

Filled with adrenaline, Len ignored the very real dangers as he continued his duties:

When the raid was over, a sense of calm was quickly restored and everybody swiftly returned to their duties. But first Len decided to collect a souvenir of the air raid: ‘I’ve still got the bullet that I dug out of the deck.’

The fourteen year old had come under attack for the first time. What made this attack notable was that after flying away from the
Iron Duke
, the German pilots bombed a nearby cottage. The only casualty, James Isbister, became the first civilian of the war to die on British soil. Just weeks later, Len Chester had his first introduction to death: ‘It was the first time I’d seen a coffin in close proximity, let alone six of them.’ On 3 May 1940 he was selected to play ‘The Last Post’ at the funeral of six seamen who lost their lives, some from a Royal Navy minesweeper, some from a Norwegian merchant ship. Arriving at the cemetery, he found there were many senior officers in attendance, led by Rear
Admiral Harold Walker, better known as ‘Hooky’ because of the hook worn in place of a hand:

He was expecting to be in trouble for his emotional reaction. However, Admiral Walker laid his hook on the youngster’s shoulder and said, ‘Never mind, laddie.’

On 9 April 1940, German forces attacked Denmark and Norway, where they finally came face-to-face with British troops. The next day Denmark surrendered, then on 3 May the British and French were forced to withdraw from Norway. One week later the Germans attacked Belgium and the Netherlands, and the British advanced into Belgium to meet them. Next, the assault on France was unleashed. After seven months of waiting, the so-called ‘Phoney War' was finally over.

For John Cotter and Peter Richards, the German invasion of the Low Countries and France meant one thing: their cycling holiday to the Isle of Wight had to be cancelled. With war raging just across the Channel, the two boys were more concerned with spending a long-weekend in the saddle than with what was going on in Europe. Furthermore, Peter had something else on his mind: his sixteenth birthday and the Civil Service examination that would determine his future in the Post Office.

For some British children the German invasion of the Low Countries had an immediate and violent effect. Sisters Yvonne and Julienne Vanhandenhoeve were living in the Belgian port of Antwerp with their English mother and Belgian father. Born in south London in 1928, Yvonne and her family left London after Mr Vanhandenhoeve's fur
business had collapsed following the Wall Street Crash. Her sister Julienne had been born in Belgium in 1930. At home the two girls spoke English, whilst at school they spoke Flemish, and with their Belgian family they spoke a mixture of Flemish and French. As Julienne later recalled, she only spoke English until the day she started school, when she cried her eyes out in confusion to hear everyone speaking a language she could not understand. As both sisters recalled: when they were in Antwerp they thought of themselves as Belgians, but when they were in England, they thought of themselves as English.

With Belgium under threat from Germany, the sisters and their mother were uncertain of what the future might hold. Then, in May 1940, with the Germans advancing, eleven-year-old Yvonne began increasingly aware of the ominous situation: ‘We didn't have much time to think about things. The war started and suddenly we were off. People were loading up carts. We saw people we thought had come from Holland. Maybe they were heading to France? We didn't know.' However, although she realized her parents were concerned, Yvonne was surprised to learn the decision had been taken to leave for England. Her mother was desperate that they should make the journey.

The first stop on their journey was the British Consulate where they were given the news that a ship – SS
Ville de Bruges
– was leaving for England on 13 May, but that only British nationals would be allowed to board. As a result, their father would have to stay behind in war-torn Belgium, with the intention that he would follow later. They rapidly packed up their possessions including clothing, paintings, photo albums, sheet music and the family silver. The girls even took their schoolbooks in the expectation that their education would continue in London. Next came the moment that the family was divided. At 4 p.m. the girls and their mother left the family home to begin the journey to London. As Yvonne recalled: ‘It seemed exciting. It was a surprise. I had to accept the idea. I wasn't quite certain why we were going to England. But it did seem to make sense.' Despite the sudden change, the girls were told by their mother that they would be staying with their aunt in Morden, as they normally did on their annual holidays. If anything, this journey was even more convenient than the route used each summer. The ship was heading directly from Antwerp to Tilbury: normally they had to travel by rail to the Hook of Holland to board
for the trip across the North Sea. As the ship departed the girls felt they were simply heading on another summer holiday.

Having said goodbye and boarded the ship, their whole world began to change. Only women and children had been allowed to board, with the Consulate having told them no men would be allowed to travel in order to ensure the Germans would not target the ship. It made little difference. The next morning the vessel had begun the journey along the River Scheldt towards the sea when it was targeted by enemy aircraft. Standing on the upper decks, as Yvonne Vanhandenhoeve remembered they were saying goodbye to their home city, the civilians heard the ominous drone of approaching aircraft. The sense of excitement that had greeted their departure was soon submerged beneath the violent reality of their attempt to escape to reach England. As the girls watched, German planes opened fire with machine guns, strafing the decks. As Yvonne recalled: ‘It was nerve-wracking because the noise never stopped. The aircraft swooped down: it was the first we knew of the troubles ahead.'

The girls and their mother rushed inside, sheltering from the bullets that rattled off the decks, when they heard a terrible noise. The staircase they were standing beside was torn open as a bomb crashed through, exploding in a machine-room below decks. The explosion killed a number of the would-be refugees. The girl's mother later wrote of their ordeal:

Surprisingly, there was little panic – it seemed the crew were more shaken than many of the passengers. As Yvonne remembered: ‘We realized something was happening, but as children I don't think you panic so much. I think I panicked more afterwards.'

With the
Ville de Bruges
heavily damaged, the decision was taken to abandon ship. The lifeboats were swung out ready for the passengers to disembark. With the ship burning, the passengers were ushered on
to the exposed decks, given numbers allocating them to lifeboats and told to prepare to disembark. However, there was another surprise for the Vanhandenhoeve family: ‘Instead of looking after women and children, the seamen were more concerned about saving their own lives and they got into the boats before us. They weren't at all helpful. They weren't worried about the women and children. Everyone was looking after number-one.' As Julienne later recalled, their poor mother had to fight with the ship's crew to get help to board the lifeboat.

After a two-hour wait, the girls and their mother were able to board a lifeboat and were rowed to the riverbank. They were offered passage on a police launch back to Antwerp but refused, not feeling safe on the water. Disembarking, they faced a two-hour walk along the riverbank, through a tunnel and back to the docks, where they could board a tram to their home. As they walked back, they were struck by the sense of uncertainty. They had packed up their home, left behind their father, been machine-gunned, had their ship blown from under them and been lucky to escape with their lives. They had lost most of their possessions – including all their clothing and many treasured family items such as photographs. As their mother later recorded, the girls cried their eyes out when they realized how much had been lost, including their communion dresses, rosary beads and schoolbooks. To comfort them, she explained that there was only one thing that really mattered: it was a miracle they had survived the attack on the ship and had been safely reunited with their father. Now they were heading home. All Yvonne could think was: ‘What will happen next?'

The next big shock was for their father, as his wife and children returned to the family home. At first their mother hoped the family might be able to reach Ostend and find a passage back to England. However, she soon realized there was little chance of getting her girls on to another ship after what they had experienced. Furthermore, the girls were sick after the effects of the smoke onboard the ship. Before any such plans for escape could come to fruition, events overtook them. The city was heavily bombed by the Germans, forcing the family to take shelter in their cellar.

Within days the German Army occupied the city, moving in to requisition property and occupy homes. There was nothing the family
could do to replace their possessions and no way of applying for compensation; after all, the British Consulate was now closed. Then came the question of their status: fortunately, their mother's dual nationality meant that the family were not interned by the Germans and were able to live in relative security.

During a similar evacuation of Britons from the Belgian port of Ostend, a group of British schoolgirls joined military personnel onboard a British freighter, SS
Abukir
. There were around 200 people onboard when she was attacked by German E-boats. The
Abukir
sank within a minute, with just twenty-one passengers and two crewmen being rescued. Among the casualties was seventeen-year-old William Blair of Belfast, an ex-boy of the Prince of Wales Sea Training Hostel in London's Limehouse.

Just four days after the Germans launched their assault westwards, the British government took the next step towards the full mobilization of the nation for total war. On 14 May the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, announced that he was forming a new force for the defence of the realm. The Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) was intended to be a voluntary militia of around 150,000 men aged between seventeen and sixty-five. Such was the clamour to sign up for this unit that some men were reported to have arrived at police stations before Eden had even completed his broadcast. In the first twenty-four hours more than 250,000 men and boys had volunteered, meaning that the authorities soon ran out of enrolment forms. By September, with the nation standing almost alone against the might of the Nazis and fearing imminent invasion, the newly christened ‘Home Guard' had 1,700,000 volunteers.

In these early days men turned out for duty armed with whatever weapons were available: homemade ‘pikes' little more than a length of wood with a bread knife tied to the top, golf clubs, heavy walking sticks – anything that might do injury to the enemy. Retired officers paraded with their old service revolvers, whilst shotguns and hunting rifles were common in rural areas. Those able to secure a little petrol constructed ‘Molotov cocktails' or made primitive flamethrowers from
stirrup-pumps
designed for fighting fires. Units lucky enough to have machine-guns mounted them in carts that could be towed behind cars, giving them the semblance of being a mobile unit. Others were so
badly equipped they initially equipped themselves with rotten potatoes studded with old razor blades. One young volunteer, who had just been turned down by the Army as too young, recalled his father appearing with a German rifle he had brought home from France in 1918 and fitting it with a bayonet that had spent the intervening years as a fire poker.

Yet whilst history has overwhelmingly concentrated on the image of doddering old men – veterans of the Boer and Great Wars – turning out night after night as impromptu heroes willing to sacrifice themselves to save the nation, there was another altogether fresher element to the force. Thousands of teenage boys heeded the call to arms. Often ignoring the official lower age limit of seventeen, youths flocked to join the Home Guard. One teenager recalled how he and his mates, all underage, joined the Home Guard because the officer was the father of one of his mates and decided they should join. He later recalled being refused beer in a pub due to his age. His officer confronted the landlord and told him that if a boy was old enough to wear a uniform, he was old enough to drink beer. One lad, who claimed to be the youngest member of the Home Guard, was just fourteen. He was recruited whilst working at the Admiralty, having got that job due to his membership of the Sea Scouts.

For all the jokes about the Home Guard, they played a serious role in the conflict. The very first Home Guard unit successfully to engage the enemy was an anti-aircraft unit on the south coast, two of whose members were sixteen years old. It was not just anti-aircraft gunners of the Home Guard who were in danger. In total, more than 1,200 members of the organization were killed whilst on duty or died of their wounds. Many were killed in air raids or in accidents with weapons they handled without adequate training.

Yet in the early days of the ‘Home Guard', despite the very real threat of invasion, many of their activities seemed like a game. As one young recruit noted, it was, ‘Like playing Indians but with a real rifle.'
1
The childish nature of events that summer was summed up by the experience of a unit that attempted to drill on a patch of waste ground. They were driven off by a group of cricket-playing boys who called out: ‘But, mister, we were playing 'ere first.'
2
One youngster who joined the Home Guard was sixteen-year-old John Cotter:

Another sixteen-year-old volunteer was Geoff Pulzer, an accountant's clerk in the City of London. In the months leading up to war, Geoff, a pupil at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, in Cricklewood, north London, had taken little interest in politics. He was also less than concerned by his studies, meaning the war had an immediate effect on his life: