A Wartime Child

Origins

Holiday spoiled

WWII started on September 1, 1939 and I remember it well, as I was with Mum and Dad on a very rare holiday at South Shields, staying in a ‘boarding house’ rather than being sent to stay with relatives as my older brother Geoff was. I remember the sand and the waves that filled and stretched my brown bathing costume knitted by Mum, and Dad in his brown Sunday suit and trilby hat (only worn on special occasions), sitting well back on the beach from the incoming waves. I also remember a funny bloke waiting till folk moved away, and then sieving the sand where they had been sitting, presumably hoping to find a few coins or more that had fallen out of their pockets.

And then it happened – Dad suddenly declared that we were going home, as everyone was talking about the news that Britain was officially at war with Germany! At age 5, I didn’t understand much about the politics then but I knew from Dad’s tone that this was deadly serious. I knew he’d been in WW1 as his old tunic and army cap always hung behind our front door at Noble Street as fodder for the moths until Mum cut it up to go into a hooky mat. I loved all the badges on the tunic of the ‘Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry (DCLI)’ which I started to collect like other lads in the street as the war went on.

It wasn’t till years later that I understood why Dad had so many regimental badges after joining up in the Northumberland Fusiliers, with his final ‘war medal’ as it was called with his name around the rim of the Worcester Regiment. He had also been in the Yorkshire Light Infantry and then the DCLI. The reason I realised was because of the massive death rate after each battle, when the remnants of one devastated regiment were joined to the remnants of another, before the next entry into the bowels of hell. He never talked about it.

I could see from Dad’s mood that he was not happy, and soon got the feeling that after having one go at ‘The Jarmans’ he would be more than happy to go back again and finish the 'buggars' off for good and all. Thankfully for the family he was too old, and working on the railway was classed as being in an essential occupation, but he was not happy but accepted that he could make a contribution in the Home Guard, and certainly kill any Germans that tried to land in Bellingham!

Starting school

I started at the Church of England’s Reeds Charity School at the end of summer in 1939 as the war got into gear, and went to school each day with a brown cardboard box with a shoulder carry-cord around it containing my gas mask. The class had practice sessions each day when we’d put the masks on, looking like a herd of wee elephants, and breath in hard enough and long enough to hold a sheet of paper over the muzzle. It was such a relief to get it off before the eye window steamed up, even though we were given some greasy stuff to prevent that. If we hadn’t died of gas, we surely would have died of suffocation!

So Bellingham was at war with Mr Hitler! As far as I was concerned it dominated our lives as Dad and Mam read every word in the Daily Herald newspaper we got each day, and listened to every news bulletin on the wireless during which there had to be complete silence. So we kids couldn’t miss learning what was going on by reading headlines and looking at pictures of the war in the Picture Post magazine, especially of the King and Queen inspecting the bomb damage in London and talking to the poor folk with no homes left. The current Queen was regularly photographed in her role as an attractive ambulance driver.

Our lugs got acutely cocked to find the channel on the wireless to list to Lord Haw-Haw with his news from Germany. We used to imitate his call of ‘Germany calling, Germany calling’ telling us the ‘true’ news of how things were going in the war, and not to believe the trash the BBC were feeding us. He claimed American citizenship but that didn’t save his neck from the rope after the war which the media covered in great detail.

Some folk in the village said they had seen the remnants of ragged soldiers who they were told had got back from Dunkirk. Some ragged tired men stopped at the Hott farm and slept the night in the hayshed on their way to somewhere further on. They must have come up by train but little comment was ever said about them. Farmer Matt Dagg was happy to let them sleep there but worried if they smoked and set the shed alight. They moved on with no conerns.

Tyneside bombing

I had an aunt and family who lived in Lemington about 10 miles up the Tyne from Newcastle and we used to visit them, always after I had been sent to Dunterley farm to buy a couple of rabbits for 10 shillings from Frankie Bell. We took them on the train with us wrapped in brown paper often with blood showing through the parcel, and I had the job of skinning them when we got there. This meat was not under any ration control which soon came in for all other foods – so clipping out coupons was the standard ritual whenever I was sent shopping. Even coupons for clothes which we bought few of as Mum was a skilled seamstress and there was always plenty of hand-me-downs from others.

When the air raid siren went off we rushed into the brick shelter fitted out with bunks and emergency rations like a very special box of chocolate biscuits that were never opened. Many friends I visited while in Lemington had ‘Anderson’ shelters which were made out of corrugated iron in holes dug in their gardens which provided great fun to play in. My aunt and cousins always wore their fur coats as their most valuable and warm garments.

Tyneside shipyards were a great target for German bombs, as were the iron works and coke ovens at Consett, and the Lemington glass works. My Uncle was an Air Raid Warden (in the ARP) so was always out on watch for bomb damage during raids and folk in need of help. Seeing large barrage balloons floating in the air were a permanent feature of our visits to Tyneside, and at night the search lights were fun for us kids to watch scanning the sky for enemy planes after the siren had gone off.

Strange kids in the village

Then to our surprise there were groups of strange kids in the village. They were evacuees from Brownrigg Camp School that had been built of all wooden materials in 1938, but converted in 1939 as a refuge for pupils from Tyneside to get away from the bombs and industrial pollution. As a consequence they overflowed the Council School forcing some pupils to be taught in the Town Hall for a while. None of them seemed to go to the Reed’s C-of-E school. Many Bellingham kids treated them as a major threat, and I remember my older brother talking about the fun of having fights with them in the village back lanes.

I have memories of them having to attend church where they filled the very back pews in St Cuthbert’s church with their constant chatter during the boring sermons, much to the annoyance of Canon (Daddy) Flower and Mrs. Flower, sitting in her personal pew that nobody dare use not far in front of the students. The domestic and teaching staff at Brownrigg over the years provided many an attractive wife for smart village lads.

Bellingham lookout

We also had our own Bellingham scanners – the Royal Observer Corps with their rough wooden lookout HQ on the top of the Blue Heaps, where each night at around sunset we’d see the team including George Batey, Billy Beattie and Percy Bolam complete with bait bag walking up the steep hill past Noble Street gate to start their duty. Their role was to spot and identify planes and report this information to a contact further on. They didn’t like us kids snooping around and we couldn’t get into the wee building on our regular trips there.

The ship building yards on the Clyde and Glasgow were a regular target for German bombs. I well remember one night, after all of us in Noble Street had double checked our window blackouts for cracks of light so no German bomber could see. Cars had visors over head lights and even a humble torch had to have the top half of the lens blacked out. We all stood out our front street in awe and horror to see dark shadows and hear their massive dull roar. The sky was full of silhouettes of German planes all heading in one direction – to dump hell and death on the people of Glasgow and its shipyards!

We kids were also plane spotters, and Billy Little in our street got a regular magazine called -The Spotter’ which showed every detail of a plane based on its silhouette, and we used to test each other.

Plane crashes

Great excitement happened when the news reached the older lads in the village that a Spitfire had crashed on Dunterley Fell, generating a rush to see the wreck and souvenir parts to bring back and tell the great story. I was too little to go but big brother Geoff went and came back with some perspex, presumably from the windscreen. I remember being shown a finger ring somebody had fashioned from it. The Cheviots were a regular graveyard for planes of both combatants. One of the most famous was an American Flying Fortress which crashed with all killed and found by a shepherd’s collie dog. In recent times I read that the families of the flyers paid the site a visit to commemorate their great loss.

Dumped bombs

Living ‘oot bye’ was no guarantee of safety from bombs, as German planes being chased home regularly dropped their payload on the way. There were the remains of bomb craters on the fell near Dally Castle where this had happened.

Prisoners of War (POW)

The Polish prisoners held at Lewiefield near Kielder were the most famous being guilty of supporting the Germans when their country was invaded by the allies. They were let out once a week and must have been allowed to go to Hexham as Dad was a regular railway guard on the late train on a Saturday night which went from Hexham to Kielder. He told many tales of their antics, probably alcohol fuelled, such as opening the carriage door with the train in motion and going along the footboard to get into the next carriage. Royal Navy officers were in charge of them.

The other much loved German prisoner was Ted who worked on the Demesne farm. We never knew his surname. We kids saw him regularly as we passed the farm gate and he would come and chat – probably missing a family back home. He was probably like so many young men on both sides of the conflict, conscripted to go and kill young men like themselves for some stupid political reason made by folk who would never face danger themselves on the other side. He was not allowed to play football for the Bellingham team although Graham Batey remembers that he would have loved to do.

He always wore his German army cap which interested and scared us kids. Nobody can remember how long he stayed at the Demesne after the war or what happened to him. He would return to Germany speaking a weird kind of English his family would think!

Dad’s Army – the Home Guard

I often think that the TV programme was a documentary rather than fiction, as we used to make great fun of the Bellingham Home Guard who we kids used to go and watch parade outside Fountain Terrace on a Sunday morning. Harry Glass from the Railway Hotel was an officer along with Tommy Robson of Bridgeford. Dad was a sergeant.

I remember them having shooting practice with .22 rifles, and occasional night manoeuvres when Dad came home with a blackened face. He kept his rifle and bayonet upstairs that I used to play with and point out the window and aim at the sheep on Beattie’s fell.

We used to laugh as the HQ seemed to be the Snug at the Fox and Hounds, and I used to joke that a single German paratrooper could have taken the lot prisoner. Dad used to teach bayonet practice and was told that he scared the living daylights out of them and was told to tone it down! He sadly had seen the real action with such a gruesome weapon.

As a result of seeing all this drilling, we Noble Street kids knew all the drills and whoever was sergeant major for the play, could shout commands at us like a real professional. I had an Aunt in Winlaton who got me a real khaki suit made and we all made wooden guns and bayonets. The ‘Cowboys and Indians, bows and arrows’ phase had move on with a vengeance! Aunt Martha and Uncle Bill managed the Highlander Inn in Winlaton and Hitler, sadly for him as well as my aunt, dropped a bomb in Winlaton that damaged part of the pub. I knew then victory was guaranteed as her son-in-law Reg was in the Coldstream Guards already in Germany, and I insist that he single-handed won the war cos Aunt Martha was so wild about what Hitler did to the Highlander. Good job for Hitler she didn’t get hold of him!

I wrote letters to Reg with B.A.O.R. (British Army of the Rhine) and he sent me replies, often with lines blacked out (Ed: redacted by the censors), as presumably they contained dangerous comment that could have affected the outcome of the war!

The real soldiers

Then one day after the war had been going for a short time, there was great action in Geordie Breckons’ hayfield at the bottom of our Noble Street gardens. Bell tents were erected, a latrine was dug which we viewed with great interest, and ‘real sowldjers’ as we called them moved in. They were the Lancashire Fusiliers and looking back now, must have been getting ready for D-Day.

They drilled and went on long route marches and when they came back sweating and thirsty, we kids grabbed their water bottles and ran to fill them from the tap in our back lane. Each of the 10 Noble Street houses befriended 2-3 of the lads, for which they were eternally grateful to get a bit of normal company and home cooking. I remember a Len and a Martin as our lads, and often wondered what happened to them. I’m not sure if they went to Otterburn military camp to train, but certainly other troops came through who did, as a friend remembers camping at Hesleyside Hall on the way before D-Day and the lovely co-operative maids there he said.

The endless concern of who would not come home

There is such a contrast illustrated in the lych gate at the Bellingham cemetery between those who volunteered for WWI, when so many young men from Bellingham and the district saw a trip to France and ‘home by Christmas’ as a great adventure. Attitudes were different in WWII when young men were called up, as few volunteered knowing what they were going into. The names on the cemetery lych gate wall tell it all. Above are those who gave their lives for our freedom, remembering it was a very close call for us, saved really by 30 miles of Channel water and brave lads in Spitfires.

Missing and Killed in Action.png

We were special friends with the Masons having lived beside them for years. I was so excited to see Jack once on home leave with his famous Red Beret and parachute badge in it, and we grieved with the family over his loss for years. I think he was called up and didn’t volunteer as he was a key man at the butchers in the village. May they all Rest in Peace, but sadly in some foreign field. Those who did come home to the celebration of all Bellingham folk included George Milburn, Selwyn Ridley, Harry Armstrong, Tucker Kirkup, David Daley, Tom Telford and Jimmy Welton.

Spitfire week

I remember a project along the pavement in Front Street beside the phone box, appealing for pennies which were laid out in a line along the edge of the pavement. The aim was to get enough donations to go towards building a spitfire. I can’t remember how long the line had to be but at 240 pennies to the pound it would have to go a long way to Hexham and back a few times. It was the spirit of the project which was important. There was also a ‘Pennies for a Battle Ship Week’ with the same objective. They were great morale boosters.

Scrap metal

Anything metal suddenly had value, and I remember the Council yard with a great heap of used tins that when it got too high was flattened by the steam roller and carted away. Unlike the houses in towns, very few houses in Bellingham had cast iron railings to be cut off and taken away to be melted down.

VE Day

I have faint memories of the celebration in our back street to end the war in Europe on 2nd September. But we were still reminded that the Japs had yet to be dealt to and I’m sure some local lads did service in the jungles of Burma.

Is it over?

I remember the front page pictures in the paper of the bunker when Hitler blew himself up and Mussolini hanging upside down after his execution, and the news when the Bellingham lads were back home.

Occupation

I have Dutch and Belgian friends of my same age and when questioned they reluctantly talk about living in a country as a child occupied by an enemy that you were brought up to hate. I find it hard to even start to imagine, but thankfully we Bellingham bairns didn’t have to face the horror. My lasting memory is that it was a very close call for us, and I often wonder how it would have all ended. I may have been writing this in German!